《An Angel Called Eternity》


 The Field Rats Banquet - Prologue:

    <u>The Twenty-Sixth Day of the Sixth Moon, 853 AD</u>


    Few are still living who can remember the Days of Silence. None in the mortal world today have ever seen the visage of an Angel and been cursed with the image of madness burned into their mind, nor have the still living seen the otherworldly creatures that sprang forth in that ancient time, still nesting in the darkest corners of the world today, preying on the dreams of the men-folk who live oh-so-slightly outside their reach.


    The great heroes of that age have all been consigned to drift on the sands of time, even their greatest deeds only known to solitary monks and holy men spread across the world''s breadth. Clan Aecrypt, The Brother-Kings Wulfstan and Ingulph, the Last Stand of the Priests of Arwyn, and a hundred other great tales have faded from the memory of those who now live, even though without them there would be no world left for those left behind to live in. Is it any wonder then, that the men of today have forgotten what happens when the heavens deign to look upon their world?


    The heralding of the meteor shower was perhaps one of the holiest and yet inauspicious signs in all of the known world. From the frigid tundra and verdant forests of Kliskorios to the remnants of the Sotenari on Sothettar, the eyes of all turned skywards on that most unmoving of nights. It was a breathtaking sight; the heavens themselves opening up to cast their gaze upon the world they had for so long shown no interest in.


    Of course, there was no single message for people to believe in when they saw this lightshow. The Khan of one of the tribes of the Skonisnomas claimed to have been visited by the spirits of the owl and the crow, who told him to unify his people for the coming of their Great Khan, though he knew it would not be him.


    The Jaerl of the Scelopyrene brought together the warrior-lodges of his people and whipped them into a frenzy, his Druids whispering the wishes of the raven-god into his ears; blood and battle were demanded from the northmen, and so he roused himself from his throne of skulls, raised his arming sword and claymore high into the air, and bellowed out a mighty war cry for all his people to follow.


    Further south the Sotenari knelt wherever they stood, giving praise to the Messenger-God that he may continue to deliver their prayers to the rest of that ancient and forgotten pantheon, whilst the Tildans, Alema and Dathan peoples took up arms against each other once more, the meteor shower being taken as a sign that the gods desired war on the unbelievers.


    And yet our tale does not begin with any of these messages, nor does it concern itself with the thousand prophecies of the Anatolikoi on their little island.


    In the Kingdoms of the Klironomoi, the priests of the Carpenter''s Son called for the people to look upon this day as a day of ill omen; no good could come of these daemon-sent signs. And so, the good and the faithful, the holy and pious, took to their chapels to pray for their souls, and damn those faithless hounds that brought these inauspicious signs to their homes.


    And on this day, under these inauspicious stars, a Prince was born...


    <hr>


    <u>The Field Rat''s Banquet - Prologue</u>


    Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.


    <u>The Twenty-Fourth day of the Seventh Moon, 872 AD


    Aenirhen, Northern Teleytaios, Klironomea</u>


    "I hear you''re to set off on your little expedition then?"


    The prince rolled his eyes, sweat dripping from his forehead. His friend''s smile was twisted from the scars on his face, though no less teasing was conveyed because of it.


    "I am, yes. Ser Romanos has selected those to come with me as a kind of test for them, I think. You know, see if they can take orders from me without complaint."


    "Why wouldn''t they take orders from you?"


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at his friend, his tone somewhere between joking and exasperated.


    "You know damn well why. There may not be any noble houses left in this kingdom, but their children still flaunt their noble blood. For them to be taking orders from a bastard like me, well... it doesn''t matter anyway. Romanos seems confident that they won''t cause any trouble, and he knows the six squires better than I do."


    "Six squires then, is it? What does that take your temporary retinue to now? If we include the two preachers, that is."


    The prince thought for a second.


    "Twenty-two, all told. That''ll be twenty-three in total, including me."


    Elikoidi looked away.


    "Twenty-four."


    "Twenty-four? You''re not seriously thinking of coming with me, are you?"


    The spymaster rolled his eyes, as though even the thought of travelling such a distance to some ruin was beneath him.


    "Don''t be ridiculous. I mean I''ve found you a cupbearer."


    Lykourgos took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.


    "I''ve already told you I don''t need a cupbearer. I''d rather keep to myself, thank you."


    His friend scoffed at that.


    "Oh, stop putting on that solitary act, you and I both know you''re an extremely social person. Besides, this one reminds me of Alekos when you were fostered together."


    There was a smirk on Elikoidi''s face, and the mention of his first friend sent a pang of something through the prince that he couldn''t quite identify. He quickly pushed it aside. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve.


    "That''s a dirty move Eli, but I''ll take him with me if you insist. What family does he hail from?"


    His friend smiled another twisted smile at him.


    "I thought that trick might work. The boy''s got some blood from the Eleutherios family, though only a couple of drops. I found him, well, my rats did, on the streets of Anaria. You''ll get on well enough with him, since this one actually has a working brain between his ears. He''ll do well by you."


    Lykourgos nodded, not exactly thrilled to be sharing a living space with someone else, but willing to bear it nonetheless. Besides, if Elikoidi didn''t think he was that bad then Lykourgos would take him at his word, given his friend''s seeming inability to tolerate any form of... well, anything that annoyed him for more than a day or two.


    "I leave for the Horndaal tomorrow."


    "The Horndaal? Whereabouts is this ruin?"


    "A week or two west of here. If the rains stay away, we should easily make it in ten days."


    Elikoidi nodded.


    "Well, me and Romanos will try and keep things from falling apart while you''re away. Try not to get captured by any cults this time."


    Lykourgos flushed red and rounded on his friend.


    "That was one time! I was delirious from injury and- oh never mind, stop smirking at me damn you!"


    Elikoidi let out a mirthful laugh, the scarred, blackened skin tightening around his face as he did so.


    "I jest, come on. You still owe me for that, by the way.


    "It''s been four years now!"


    The spymaster prodded him in the chest.


    "And you have still yet to pay me back for it."


    Lykourgos sighed. They''d played this song and dance a hundred times already, and damn him but somehow it was still fun.


    "Try getting into a near-death situation and then I''ll save you, how does that sound?"


    "Deal. Now off you go, you''ve got some last-minute planning to do."


    They looked at each other for a second, then began laughing. Lykourgos wasn''t sure why, but he was willing to bet that Elikoidi wasn''t either. They clapped each other¡¯s arms in a firm grip.


    "I''ll see you in a month or so, if I don''t catch you as we leave."


    His friend nodded.


    "Im headed back to the capital tonight, so it''s unlikely I''ll be there. Good luck, I hope you find something that''ll help with your little crisis of faith."


    He shouted back at Elikoidi as he walked away.


    "I told you not to call it a- oh Angels preserve me, never mind."


    It didn''t matter. He had more important things to busy himself with.

 Lykourgos I: On the Shoulders of Ancients

    <u>Lykourgos I: On the Shoulders of Ancients</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Seventh day of the Eighth Moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>The Horndaal, Southern Archic Mountains, Klironomea.</u>


    The first thing the prince noticed as he awoke was that today was far colder than the days that had preceded it. It was a frigid morning on the slopes of the Horndaal, dew still resting atop the grass and dawn''s first light shining through the clouds in aureate hues. To be fair, when you were camped in an old ruin at the base of a mountain, every morning was frigid, but this seemed... different. He chuckled to himself.


    It seemed like some of Dreamwulf''s teachings were rubbing off on him after all; his storm-sense was improving somewhat even if progress was glacially slow. Still, he didn''t think such ill weather would roll in today. Autumn wasn''t set to end the summer for at least another week, and so the autumn storms shouldn''t start up yet either.


    He looked to the outskirts of the ruins they had camped in, and noticed a few of his company carefully dismantling the remains of the curtain wall, the damp, mossy stones being gently lowered and placed in neat rows behind them while they worked. There were twenty-four of them here in total, including Prince Lykourgos himself, but aside from him they were mostly made up of assorted servants; stable-boys, Farriers and Pages made up the majority of the company, though a few more interesting outliers could be found amongst them.


    There were half a dozen Squires in the makeshift retinue, each of them hand-picked by his friend, Ser Romanos, for their loyalty and forthcoming talent. They were certainly good, but none of them could best him in single combat, and that meant none of them could best Romanos either. They were exceptionally loyal to the Violets, but he knew they cared little for his task here, save for Eros Eleutherios. Eros was talented with a blade, singularly loyal to the prince and devoted to learning as much as he could about all the interpretations of the Church. He would definitely be speaking to Romanos about inviting him into the Order when they returned. Quietly, of course; it wouldn''t be proper for a bastard to be interfering in the affairs of a Knightly Order of the Crown, even if said bastard was a Prince.


    He shook his head to clear his thoughts. It would do him no good to contemplate his birth-status here, it only ever led to loathing and scheming. And yet the throne was his by right...


    He turned his thoughts back to the members of his company, and for those he may find useful in the future. There was a Cupbearer in his employ; a nimble and sunny young lad with some small amount of noble blood, found by another friend of the prince, who had come across the boy roaming the streets as a pickpocket and beggar. This was his first time leaving the capital since his employ, and was a test of character for the young lad, not set by the prince, but by his old friend, Elikoidi.


    Elikoidi and the Prince had known each other since the prince was no older than ten winters, and in the last eight years they had become fast friends and firm allies. Sure, there was a bit of rivalry between them, and they appeared to despise each other in public, but it was friendly rivalry, and both of them had made the deliberate choice to avoid appearing as friends in court. After all, Elikoidi was well-connected and a good spymaster; any seeking to dispose of the half-breed Prince would surely attempt to employ him, and so the prince would learn of the conspirators.


    He knew that Elikoidi would have chosen this young lad as the Prince''s Cupbearer as a test of loyalty and confidence. If the young Cupbearer, Ilias, performed his duties well and could give a detailed list of the characteristics of a few of the men in the group then he would do quite well indeed, though he may keep him as his Cupbearer regardless of the outcome. He was kindly and cheerful, that much was certain, but quiet unless invited to speak freely. He had a way of moving and speaking that was disarming to most, and downright distracting to those who preferred the company of their fellow man.


    His gaze drifted to the embers of the campfire, and the figures tending to the camp chores around it. There were a pair of religious figures, one an Oblate of a monastery worshiping the Carpenter''s Son and the Angel Hydran named Dreamwulf, a stout member of the Old Church if ever there was one. Almost every hour of the day, he could be found debating theology, rites and scriptures with the other religious figure, a Presbyter of the New Church, Nasos.


    Nasos, much like Dreamwulf, was a devout follower of the Church of the Carpenter''s Son, though that was where their similarities ended. He was the fourth son of a minor Noble, whereas Dreamwulf was the second son of an old farmer. Dreamwulf had found faith after the Black Grave had taken his family from him, and he still bore the scars both physical and mental from the toll the disease took. By contrast, Nasos had always been herded towards life in the Clergy of the New Church, and so had never considered alternate views on the faith. Lykourgos had worried that the two of them would come into conflict over their opposing views, however the discussions of their differences only served to enlighten each other as to why they believed in their interpretation of the Holy Edicts.


    He was stirred out of his musings by the arrival of Eros, still wearing his padded armour, who dipped into a deep bow.


    "Your Highness," he started, "may I speak in confidence with you for a moment?" The prince nodded, and motioned for him to speak. The Squire looked unsurely at the young Cupbearer, who simply smiled back at him.


    "The boy will say nothing, you can trust me on that. Continue."


    Eros nodded nervously.


    "Certainly, my Prince. It''s just... I know of your studies and travels, and I know you have your theories and beliefs, but I still don''t know what we''re here for. An artifact of some sort, discarded in this place sometime after its abandonment when the Old Kingdom collapsed, but I fail to see as how something left here of all places could be useful to proving your beliefs."


    The bastard Prince raised an eyebrow in bemusement. Few today knew of the Old Kingdoms existence at all, let alone that this place had once been of import to it.


    "And so you are wondering what we are here for?"


    The Squire nodded unsurely, before pensively pressing his hand to his chin, and shaking his head.


    "No, your Highness. I wonder... what do you hope to find? Not what do we expect or hope to find here, but what do you hope to find in general?"


    The Prince nodded twice, acknowledging the worth of the question, and motioned for the Squire to take a seat. Without even being told, young Ilias had pulled a chair up to the small table for Eros to sit on. As the Squire settled in and the Cupbearer moved back into the corner of the tent, the prince picked up a small, weathered notebook, waving it slightly for effect.


    "What you see here, Eleutherios, is the latest clue on this trail I have been pursuing for years. In this notebook, a woman details her time with a small company of men and a mysterious child to this place. The child, they all claimed, could hear the voices of angels, and would scribble down their teachings into books in languages that none of them had ever seen before, let alone could read. Somewhere around the mid-point of their stay they buried a small wooden chest into the wall, to seal away whatever the child wrote. They don''t say what it contains, but im willing to bet it''s the next step in proving my theory true."


    The Squire, to his credit, seemed largely unphased by the peculiarity of the situation, only nodding his understanding making to stand.


    "Thank you, your Grace. If I may take my leave?"


    "''Your Highness''."


    The Squire blanched as Lykourgos smirked at him.


    "I-"


    "''Your Grace'' is reserved for the Crown Prince and the King, and I, as you well know, am neither. Therefore, I am ''Your Highness''. You really should know this if you''re to become a Knight in the Order of the Violet." He paused, letting the words sink in to the young man, before gesturing for him to leave. As Ilias pulled aside the curtain door to the tent, he called out to him one last time.


    "Oh, and Eros?"


    The Squire froze in place, wheeling around to face Lykourgos, who nodded once and gave him a far more genuine smile than the smirk he had borne a moment prior.


    "In times of uncertainty, it is good to know who''s side you stand on."


    The Squire nodded in return, his already pale face betraying his understanding of the double meaning behind his words.


    "Aye, my Prince."


    <hr>


    "Angels be praised, I need a break from these constant petitions. I thought travelling to the middle of nowhere on the border of the civilised world might mean that the petty nobility would leave me alone, though it seems I may have hoped for far too much in that regard."


    Lykourgos moved to leave the tent, beckoning Ilias to follow him.


    "Come on, let''s see how the boys are doing. It''ll do you some good to get out of this tent anyway."


    The young cupbearer made to follow, hurriedly gathering the prince''s cloak and Longseaxe, attaching them to his person as they walked past the rest of their small encampment.


    "Well, what do you make of our curious Squire?"


    His Cupbearer smiled sweetly, nervously glancing to the smouldering remains of the campfire. Following his gaze, the prince saw the Squire sat on a small log, intently listening to Dreamwulf and Nasos explain the differing interpretations and meanings behind the faith. It was refreshing to see two Clergymen who did not attempt to impose their views, but allowed their flock to come to their own conclusion about their beliefs. He looked back to his Cupbearer, who''s gaze had not once left the three of them.


    "Well?"


    "I''d make quite a lot of him, given the chance."


    The Prince spat out some of the water he''d been drinking, and spent the next ten seconds hacking before settling into good-natured laughter.


    "Are you alright, your Highness?"


    He enunciated the words ''your Highness'' in a mockery of the Squire who appeared to be the target of his affections.


    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "Quite, though I wasn''t expecting you to be so direct."


    Ilias sheepishly smiled, rubbing the back of his neck.


    "Well, one must always speak their mind when asked by royalty."


    "Not quite. Only half-royalty."


    The servant rolled his eyes and scoffed in a good-natured manner.


    "Come now your Highness, you and Master Elikoidi got me this position thanks to me having a few drops of minor-noble blood. I think if I called a half-royal illegitimate, I may also be invalidating my own position here."


    Now this was surprising. If he knew Elikoidi, and by the Carpenter did he know him, Elikoidi would not have mentioned Lykourgos'' role in Ilias'' position at all, meaning that Ilias had come to this conclusion by himself, somehow. Still, this would be a good test for the lad.


    "Me and Elikoidi? As I''m sure you''re aware, we fell out years ago and have yet to make up. I doubt we would be able to work together particularly well."


    "So you say your G- your Highness. I must have been mistaken. It''s just that... well, you two spend an awful lot of time together for people who despise each other so much. That and I swiped a copy of a letter your sister wrote detailing Elikoidi''s fascination with how you think."


    Lykourgos was smirking again now, though wider than before. This young man was a wealth of talent just waiting to be honed.


    "Interesting, still, enemies can respect each other."


    The Cupbearer nodded.


    "Indeed, your Highness. It would explain your sibling''s own admittance of admiration for you."


    He looked incredulously at Ilias as they passed into the abandoned Greathall of the Castle.


    "Roma and I detest each other. Fiercely."


    "I was referring to Rhema."


    "Rhema? And how the hell were you able to decipher his babblings?"


    Ilias smiled up at him. Well, now he knew why Elikoidi chose this one; that was a dangerously pleasing smile. He cleared his head as the cupbearer spoke.


    "I had to engage in some... interesting mental gymnastics."


    The Prince snorted, looking at the summit of the dilapidated Greathall.


    "That certainly sounds about right. Here, come and help me get to the top of this hall, I want to see the view from the highest point in this castle and this is one of the only remaining buildings in a somewhat stable condition."


    The Cupbearer nodded, and Lykourgos noticed a very well-hidden gleam of excitement in his cupbearer''s eyes. It seemed he was looking forwards to this as well.


    "At once, my Prince!"


    The view from the top of the Greathall was a spectacular sight. From here you could see everything between the Farwald and the Aenir river, luscious greens and deep blues arrayed against the grey stones and white caps of the Archic mountains. If he had his brother or sister''s talents for the arts he most certainly would have called for an easel and canvas, but alas, he was far too busy for such flights of fancy.


    "So, a box of some description?"


    He turned to his servant.


    "Indeed. Should be oak, with a brass latch."


    "And if there is no box? If we''ve come here for nothing?"


    Lykourgos turned to him with an irritated expression, three and a half years'' worth of mockery being recalled in seconds.


    "Mind your tone. If we cannot find it here then we move to the next mountain hall, and then next after that, to the top of Anamanesis if needs be."


    His tone had become more bitter, the possibility of a dead end here being all too real. After all, if he couldn''t find anything to further his goals and studies here, he effectively had no leads left to scour through, and that would render the last three years of his life effectively moot. The thought of returning with nothing but an empty void where his triumph should have been turned his stomach, until he was certain he would bring up what little he had eaten today.


    "It is here. It has to be."


    The Cupbearer made a supplicating gesture, looking down at his feet.


    "Of course my Prince. Forgive me, I should not have spoken out of place."


    He sighed exasperatedly, remembering who he was speaking to. This was not one of his siblings mocking him, nor his father or some lord south of the Einar. This was a servant who had barely reached manhood, and had done nothing to warrant such vitriol.


    "I apologise for my crassness. It was unbecoming of me. I only meant to say that I have worked for years attempting to find this box, and believe this to be the correct location. I truly do not know what I will do if I am wrong about this."


    They lay there in silence for a small while, enjoying the warming rays of sunshine as a respite from the cold mountain air, the silence a welcome break to the both of them, even considering the previous subject matter. It was quite nice here, actually; despite the cool mountain air, the stones they were led upon had soaked in the warmth of the sun all day, and as such there was a pleasing warmth to be felt. He could allow himself to rest a touch, after all, it was very rare he took any time away from the capital, away from the happenings of courtly life and the constant awakenings no matter the hour. No one would fault him if he enjoyed a little rest for a few minutes, would they?


    <hr>


    "Your Highness!" A voice called from the base of the Greathall. He blinked his eyes open, and looked down at the Squire. He didn''t know this one by name, but as far as he recalled he was a distant relation of Eros. He motioned for the man to continue. As he spoke his voice took on an excited tone, and his face split into a huge grin.


    "We''ve found it!".


    "The box? You''ve found the box?"


    The young squire nodded his head excitedly.


    "Yes, my Prince! It''s been found, along with a... person?"


    The Prince rolled his eyes. Having just found what he''d been looking for all these years, why did they think he''d be interested in a vagabond found loitering around the castle?


    "A person? Really?" He asked, voice laden with incredulity.


    "Yes, your highness! A young man was found unconscious in a hollow section of the wall. We''d been excavating from the top down when Oblate Dreamwulf said he could hear a difference when tapping the haft of a spear along different sections of the curtain wall, so we took off the next few layers around where he could make out the difference and found a man clutching the box!"


    Lykourgos made to climb down, assisting his cupbearer where necessary. This changed quite a few things. He had assumed they meant a person was found nearby, not that they had found someone holding the box.


    Maybe it''s the child the woman spoke of in the journals? He thought to himself. If that were true, then he would not only have a few more clues in his search for the unifying mythical figurehead in all religions in the civilised world, but perhaps even an answer!


    "Have any of you disturbed the body or box?"


    The Squire shook his head.


    "No your highness. Eros and Nasos wanted it to be left as we found it until you arrived, and after we explained what it looked to be to Dreamwulf he agreed wholeheartedly. It has been left untouched, save for the layer of stone covering it which, of course, has been removed."


    He nodded at the Squire. It seemed that Eros and the two young holy men had taken de-facto control of the expedition in his absence. Good. If there was anyone he trusted out of this group, it was the three of them, if for no other reason than one was hand-picked by his closest friend and the other two wore the cloth of the church, and so would never seek to divert a holy mission from its path.


    "Show me to where it was found."


    The prince had made his mind up. He was definitely keeping Dreamwulf as a member of his personal retinue. The Oblate looked at him with pale, milky eyes.


    "I could ''ear an echo when I struck right e''re. Marks it out fer bein'' hollow that does."


    Dreamwulf, for all his strengths, stuck out from the group like a sore thumb thanks to two very obvious factors. Firstly, coming from a rural, peasant family, he was of Skraeling stock. The Skraeling''s had been the native people before the Klironomoi had been forced to migrate from Dathan northwards to Klironomea. Ignoring the fact that, by itself, that made some of the more... outspoken members of the expedition feel he was inferior to them, it was compounded by the fact that he spoke in Old-Klironomean, which, despite being extremely similar in almost every regard to High-Klironomean, was utterly incomprehensible to the majority of those nobles and city-dwellers too stuck-up to even consider learning a "peasants language", making conversation hard for him outside of about three people in the expedition.


    The second, more obvious factor, was that of his run-in with the Black Grave. Half of his right arm along with swathes of his chest and back were covered in patches of tough, dark grey skin that bordered on obsidian black in some places, and on top of that, both of his eyes, which had once been green according to him, were now a milky white, with two slightly discoloured grey circles where his irises had once been. His blindness may have been a great injustice thrust upon him, but the prince would be damned if he said he wasn''t glad for it now; without his other senses improving to accommodate his blindness, the expedition could have been here for days longer than needs be otherwise.


    The Prince smiled and nodded, hoping Dreamwulf could at least hear the appreciation in his voice if he couldn''t show it to him.


    "Oblate Dreamwulf, you excel yourself. Thank you for your assistance."


    The Oblate bowed slightly.


    "I live to serve, yer Grace."


    A few members of the expedition muttered at the use of "your Grace" rather than "your Highness", but in fairness to Dreamwulf, there was little to no difference between the terms in Old-Klironomean. He spied Eros looking pointedly anywhere but the prince, likely still embarrassed about slipping up himself earlier, and the Squire didn''t even have the Oblate''s excuse of a language barrier.


    The prince hopped up onto the remains of the low curtain wall that once served as the boundary of this mountain hall, barely waist high now thanks to centuries upon centuries of abandonment and his expedition''s ministrations. Looking into the hollow chamber that his men had uncovered, he could see that it was about six foot long, two wide and one deep. It wasn''t carved into the wall in a sophisticated manner, rather the hollow section had been built into the structure, as though it had been uncovered, it''s inhabitant and box placed in the gap, and then finally rebuilt to cover it back up.


    The box itself was nothing special at a glance, no different from how the notes the prince had found previously described it: oak with a brass latch. It was small enough to rest gently on the chest of the man it had been buried with, who rested his hands around the box in a position that suggested some sort of ritualistic burial, like the men of the north were want to do when someone of importance passed on.


    The man himself had dark hair, pale skin and a serene expression on his face. He looked... well, he looked as though he hadn''t decomposed at all. In fact, the prince thought with a rising amount of shock, I think he might just be unconscious, or... sleeping.


    He gently took the box from the hands of the young man, and moved his now-empty hands to rest on his chest. As he did so, the prince noted the extremely subtle rise and fall of his chest.


    Angels above, he thought to himself, he actually is just asleep!


    The Prince called out to Dreamwulf,


    "Dreamwulf, come up here, would you? You''ve got by far the best hearing out of all of us. Can you hear him breathing?"


    The Oblate cupped his ear, moving it close to the young man''s mouth and nodding slowly.


    "Indeed yer ''Ighness,"


    Ah, so he did hear the reaction when he said "your grace".


    "though I am slightly confused as to why I couldn''t ''ear it before."


    The Prince nodded, his hand pressed to his chin.


    "Perhaps the box was compressing his chest, or else maybe he had ran out of air, entombed as he was in the wall, though that raises more questions than it answers, for instance, how has he survived trapped in there?"


    Eros spoke up, also clearly in thought,


    "And why was he buried alive with his box?"


    The expedition members sat around in silence for a few minutes, some clearly just enjoying the respite that the stop provided, though most lost in thought. Eventually, the Prince stood up again, turning his attention back down to the assorted members of his retinue below him.


    "We have what we came for now. I want our camp packed, the horses fed and last fires doused in the hour. Afterwards we return to the capital by the Riverroad, crossing to the Coastroad after Aenirhen. Any questions?"


    A farrier spoke up near the back of the crowd.


    "What of the man we found, your Highness?"


    He didn''t have to think long to reach a conclusion, but for some reason holding his doubts at bay seemed difficult here, more so than normal anyways.


    "Load him onto one of the carts, and try not to disturb him too much. We''ll try and wake him when we get to Aenirhen, see if he might know something that can help me with my studies into the myths of old."


    The camp stayed quiet, the men digesting their tasks and, if they were honest, putting them off. The silent spell was broken when Dreamwulf, dependable as ever, rose to his feet, clapped his hands together once, and loudly proclaimed,


    "Right then, you all ''eard his ''Ighness, and I don''t hear anyone moving. Come on, if we wan'' get back ''afore ''arvest season we need to get a move on!"


    The Prince smiled to himself. He was definitely going to keep Dreamwulf in his retinue.

 Lykourgos II: The Riverroad

    <u>Lykourgos II: The Riverroad</u>


    <u>The Fifth day of the Ninth moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>The Riverroad, Northern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    It took a moment for him to orient himself. The world was so much larger than before, and he wasn''t used to the how fast his wings were beating, leading to him veering left, then right, until he was able to hover in a position that could charitably be called ''stable''.


    He looked around for the woods-cat that had been chasing him and his brother, and, sensing no trace of the predator, looked to his brother standing on the forest floor. His brother looked panicked, opening his beak to chirp out a-


    The prince woke with a start, the sleeping forms of a few of the men visible in the blackness of the night. He turned to stare at the sky, his vision of the stars obstructed by the thick forest canopy and clouds above them. Rising from his rest and, ignoring his body''s ache of protest, he carefully started to walk towards the Riverroad and the campfire they had left there before moving into the woods to sleep. Perhaps he would be able to gleam a few insights and ponder some of the questions that had recently been raised, after all, it was hardly as though he had been given nothing to think about.


    How had the young man, entombed in coarse stonework as he had been, remained alive? What was the significance of the contents of the box? And for that matter, the men under his command had taken the discovery of an undying man with very little confusion or dissent. But then, Lykourgos thought to himself, so have I.


    It had been a week since the prince''s company had set out from the Horndaal, and despite initial difficulties involving a wooden bridge, a storm, and a remarkably stubborn pack-mule they had made good progress on the journey back to Anaria. The journey, though initially tough thanks to the severe lack of local infrastructure, had become remarkably easy-going once they reached the Riverroad.


    Let it not be said, however, that easy-going translated to enjoyable; less than a day after they left the Horndaal a downpour had begun, and it had yet to let up. Indeed, as they moved closer to the sea the rain only seemed to pick up, with the men having to dismount their horses for fear of one of them stumbling and throwing a rider, the threat of such a fate present even as dirt trails and cobbled paths gave way to paved roads and civilisation. The body of the young man had been kept in a cart, with a blanket hastily thrown over the top of him to keep him warm without covering the face.


    Lykourgos wasn''t sure exactly how warm the blanket could be keeping him now, what with it being completely soaked in the downpour, but it wasn''t as if the unconscious man was going to care much. As his thoughts turned to the strange man they had found, he noticed movement by the campfire. He reached for his longseaxe, only to realise that he had left it where he had been sleeping. He cursed himself for his thoughtlessness, and instead pulled a dirk from one of his boots.


    He crept closer to the figure resting at the campsite, and as a beam of moonlight lit the figure, he realised it was only Dreamwulf. Indeed, the blind man seemed to be leaning back, sitting atop one of the logs that had acted as benches when they had made camp for the night. Moving to sit next on the log next to the Oblate, he marvelled that he had yet to be heard by his companion. He coughed twice to grab his attention.


    Dreamwulf grabbed his billhook and brandished it at the area where the prince was sat. Lykourgos caught a hastily concealed spark of panic on the lowborn''s face as he spoke.


    "It''s only me, friend. I don''t think I''ve ever been able to catch you off-guard before."


    The blind man leant against the wooden shaft of his billhook, breathing heavily.


    "By the ''ngels, frightened me ''alfway to death yer ''ighness."


    He smiled fondly at his servant.


    "You don''t need to use High-Klironomoi when it''s just us, Oblate. The old tongue serves just as well outside of court."


    "Are we alone, yer Grace?"


    The Prince blinked twice at this question. Of course they were alone, and Dreamwulf would surely know this, after all, even without his sight he could tell a person by their footsteps twenty paces away. Surely, he could hear or feel the presence of-


    Ah. The prince realised. Of course. The rain must be throwing off his other senses. That explains why he insists on holding onto Nasos'' cloak as we walk; it''s so he doesn''t lose the group.


    He shook his head and answered the question.


    "Yes, we are. I would have you speak freely and truly to me when we''re alone; you''ve never failed in your judgements so far anyways."


    The Oblate smiled kindly at him, with a hint of mischief in his face.


    "True enough I s''pose. After all, one of us knew there was a summer storm coming, and it wasn''t you, was it?"


    The Prince gawped.


    "How did you know I thought there wouldn''t be a storm? Can you read minds?"


    The farmer''s son chuckled heartily.


    "No, yer Grace. But you were bein'' all confident, like there weren''t a thing that could go wrong in yer plans. That''s how I knew you didn''t think there''d be a storm."


    Despite his annoyance, the prince chuckled. It''d do no good to mope like some pampered princeling just because he couldn''t master a skill in a moon that had taken someone their whole life to develop.


    "Why didn''t you warn me?"


    "Well, how ''re you s''posed to learn if I tell you when''ere you''re wrong?"


    Lykourgos feigned a sighed in resignation. Dreamwulf was not only a valuable member of his expedition, but also someone with which to have an enjoyable conversation at the end of the day without him constantly worrying about the stifling propriety of ''proper'' courtly conversations. It couldn''t hurt to float the question of service now, could it?


    "I''d like for you to join my retinue. Nasos too."


    In an instant, Dreamwulf''s face changed. His brow creased in thought as he brought his fist to his mouth, obviously pondering what to say.


    "I can''t speak for Nasos, yer Grace, but I''d be honoured to continue to serve. I... I''d ask a condition of you though, if that sits all well and good with you?"


    The Prince nodded once, and waited for Dreamwulf to state his condition. When no response was forthcoming, Lykourgos slapped his hand to his forehead and repeated his affirmations aloud.


    "Sorry, I meant to ask you to name your condition but I... well I forgot that you can''t..."


    "See? It''s no problem yer Grace. I only ask that you ''elp me pen a letter to the monastery that I''ll be leaving, and give them a donation for my absence."


    The Prince, about to nod again, shook his head vigorously in order to keep himself thinking straight.


    "Certainly. I shall see to helping you with the penning of the letter, and the donation, once we arrive at Aenirhen. Shouldn''t be much more than a day now, then we can get started. I am glad to have you with me, though there is one more line of thought I''d like to speak of with you."


    The man nodded.


    "Of course, yer Grace."


    "Your Billhook. Can you use it in combat? I only ask because of your eyes. Apologies if this topic is sore or comes across crass, I do not intend to offend, I only ask out of genuine curiosity."


    Dreamwulf raised his hands in a gesture of supplication.


    "Peace, yer Grace. I am adept at using this weapon, though only so long as I can ''ear or sense my opponent. In weather like this-" he gestured around at the sodden earth before continuing "then I will admit I am of less use."


    The Prince pondered this.


    "Would you care to learn to fight with a sword? Surely a more knightly weapon would befit one with royal favour?"


    Dreamwulf chuckled again.


    "Yer Grace, ''spectfully, I was a farmer before I found faith and learned t'' fight. This Bill is just a longer version of what I used to ''arvest grain, but trust me yer grace, this thing ''as reaped far more than hay in my ''ands."


    Seeing how solemnly he had stared at his weapon, and how sombre his voice had become, the prince was inclined to believe him. He moved to stand by the Oblate, and patted him on the shoulder.


    "I would very much like to train with you soon. Go, head back to the camp. It''s late enough for you to have been up. I''ll take the next watch."


    Dreamwulf rose to his feet, supporting himself with his billhook as he slipped on the rain-slicked ground.


    "Thank you, yer Grace. I would be honoured to train with you as well."


    Truth be told, the prince didn''t intend to be awake for long. He knew they''d be relatively safe here, after all, he''d seen to the eradication of most of the bandit plague in his lands himself. He just wanted to take one more look at the young man in the cart before heading back to sleep. Approaching the cart, he hoisted himself up and sat on one of the cart''s low wooden walls, looking down upon the sleeping figure.


    The man looked young, perhaps the same age as the prince himself. He could see his hair was black and his figure slender, but that was almost all he could make out in the dark. He was lying perfectly straight, with his hands resting atop his chest as if he was a statue to some long-dead King, holding a sword against his body to shield him in the journey from this life to the next. His expression had changed gradually over the journey to one that looked markedly more peaceful than before, and his breathing seemed to have deepened over the course of the last few days.


    Lykourgos found himself both looking forwards to and dreading the moment he awoke. It would be both a great learning experience and a moment of surreal discomfort, as this clearly strange figure had already caused some discontent in his camp. Two squires had to be constantly monitored now, as they had loudly proclaimed this figure a symbol of sin for his unnatural life and attempted to slit the sleeping figure''s throat. Lykourgos wasn''t about to let some over-zealous noble children ruin what he had found, at the very least not before he was able to glean every last morsel of information from the figure.


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    He moved to walk back towards the camp, stealing one last look at the peacefully sleeping figure in the cart before he reached the treeline. It would be an early start tomorrow, and so it would be best for him to get some rest while he had the chance.


    <hr>


    The prince scowled as he awoke the next morning. Once again, he had had the same dream, and once again he had been awakened at the same point. Dreams had meaning, anyone who studied theology knew that, but it seemed to end every time he was about to learn of the message. As he all but stomped his way to the Riverroad, he found his vision drifting back to the cart. Was the sleeping man something to do with this, or was it something else? His dreams had always been vivid, but he usually found himself unable to remember them afterwards. It seemed that, in travelling to the Horndaal to find answers, he had only brought himself more questions. As much as he relished the thought of tracking down further mysteries and myths, it was nonetheless frustrating to find that his efforts never seemed to bring him any closer to enlightenment, only highlighting how little humanity knew.


    He rubbed his eyes as he moved to rouse the others. He''d been the first to awake again, and had only really gotten a few short hours of sleep, though years of constant awakenings and well-placed paranoia had ensured that he could go about his day like this with relative comfort.


    It didn''t take long to get the rest of the entourage ready and moving; say what you will about the lowborn servants accompanying them, but their loyalty and desire to please outweighed any fatigue they may have been facing after days of nonstop walking. He briefly saw Nasos scolding Ilias for complaining about the early start again, whilst simultaneously stopping the young boy from slipping and falling into the mire that the fields around the road had become. He watched as the young cupbearer flared his nostrils and pursed his lips, steadying himself and walking to the road in measured, careful steps. The prince chuckled somewhat, allowing his men a last minute of rest before continuing forwards.


    As they stopped for lunch on the Riverroad, Eros pointed to a rider on a hill further down the path. Lykourgos raised his sword in greeting, though not knowing who it was that was hailing him. The mounted figure raised his own sword, and promptly turned and rode away.


    It didn''t take long before more riders appeared. Just as the expedition had moved onwards to the very same hill the last rider had been seen on, a group of mounted Knights hailed them. Each wore steel plate and a cloak of violet, and around each waist was strapped a longsword. Each one of them held the reigns of five horses, including their own. The Knights dismounted and knelt as they approached the prince, their leader speaking all the while.


    "Your Highness, the Grandmaster awaits you in Aenirhen. He says he needs to speak with you at the first possible moment. We have brought spare horses to ensure you can travel to him with utmost haste. Follow, if it please you."


    The Prince furrowed his brows in confusion. Romanos was one of his longest and most respected friends. When the Prince had asked to be left alone while on this expedition, he would have respected that desire, not sent an escort to get him back to Aenirhen.


    Not unless something was very, very wrong.


    "Stand. Myself and those capable in combat will ride to Aenirhen on the fresh horses. The others will oversee the cart and our cargo. Is there a second party coming along the road soon?"


    The Knight smiled and nodded.


    "When our scout reported the cart, Grandmaster Romanos knew you would loathe to leave it unprotected. A second party, shielded and without spare mounts, rides towards us as we speak."


    The Prince hummed to himself happily. Romanos knew him well, that was for sure.


    "Right." He turned back to the party, and raised his voice to give orders, "Eros, get yourself and the rest of the Squires mounted. Dreamwulf, can you ride?"


    "Aye yer ''Ighness, -" came the response, "-with the rain gone I should be fine to keep up."


    The Prince nodded to him tersely, hoping the slight grunt of affirmation carried the message across well.


    "Mount one of the fresh horses. Ilias, you''ll be riding with Dreamwulf."


    The young cupbearer looked at Lykourgos, obviously perplexed.


    "I still need a cupbearer." Lykourgos didn''t elaborate further, simply mounting up on a fresh horse, a black destrier with a clearly well-groomed mane.


    "Thank you for the extra escort and horses, Ser..."


    "Aethel, your Highness."


    "Ser Aethel. Thank you."


    Looking at the surcoat of the man in front of him, Lykourgos could clearly see the badge displaying a red cross on a white field above a single red bar, marking him to be a Knight-Lieutenant of the Order. Aethel. He must have been newly raised to his rank, the prince reasoned, after all, Romanos would only send those loyal to the violets to escort him, even if the prince had never met them before. He nodded tersely again, and without another word, the prince set off down the Riverroad at full gallop.


    <hr>


    With fresh horses and good conditions, they made it to Aenirhen in less than three hours. The large settlement was situated at what had once been an extremely profitable crossroads, binding east with west and north with south. Alas, the old settlement had fallen far since the ancient days of the Old-Kingdom. The Riverroad, running all the way from Aenirhen in the west to Sygomidopolis in the east had seen rejuvenation in the last decade under the stewardship of the prince, or at least the stretch under his control had, making up somewhere around a quarter of the road. Still, the prince reasoned, it was a vast improvement upon how it had been before, and besides, it was in far better shape than the Coastroad.


    The Coastroad ran from north to south, all the way from Aenirhen down to Castelos guarding the southern border of the Heptarchy against the Al-Alema. Despite the entire modern road being rejuvenated, which was one of the few plans his entire family agreed upon, you only needed to look north to see that the road had once gone much further than Aenirhen. The Coastroad had once continued far to the north, with a mighty bridge across the river Aenir. This bridge once linked the lands of the Old-Kingdom with that of its northern tributaries, and was once one of the great wonders of the world, though both the bridge and the stretch of road leading to it had long since fallen into disrepair.


    Even though the prince would have loved to restore the bridge and road to their former glories, he knew it was but a pipe dream. The ability to effectively project power north of the river would be invaluable in preventing Scelopyrene raids, at least along the coast of the river itself, but Lykourgos knew he was allowing himself to be influenced by his pride. Even if Teleytaios had the military strength to cow the barbarians into submission, he knew that the effort of rebuilding the bridge would bankrupt the Kingdom in its current state. Even if the Heptarchy were united into a new Kingdom of Klironomea, it would likely be decades before the new Kingdom was rich enough, powerful enough and most importantly stable enough to warrant repairing. No, the Great Bridge would remain a prestige project to be undertaken in the far future, if at all.


    He was shaken from his musings by Ilias. At the cupbearer''s request, Dreamwulf had pulled his horse alongside the prince''s, allowing the young boy to speak with him.


    "Your Highness, if I may, why have you not given this place a city charter yet?"


    The Prince blinked at him twice, wondering how a child who had, as of slightly over a month ago, never left the capital, even heard of a city charter, let alone know that this place didn''t have one. Dreamwulf, somehow as observant to the situation as ever, filled in the blanks for the prince.


    "I was telling ''im ''bout this place as we rode, m''Prince. He asked me about this city and then I told him it wasn''t one. He asked me why, I said I didn''t know, and now we''re here."


    The blind farmer smiled gently at Ilias, ruffling his hair with a free hand. Ilias scrunched his face up and swatted at his hands, drawing a good-natured chuckle from both the blind man and the prince.


    "It is a good question, my Cupbearer. The answer lies in the fact that only my father can hand out city charters, and though I have requested it on three separate occasions, my sister is able to convince my father to deny it. There are very few things he will deny her, just ask my brother."


    There was a moment of silence as they continued through the streets, each one of them knowing what had happened to the prince''s brother. After the bureaucracy had been re-established in Teleytaios and the rebel Lords defeated, despite having been expecting a full third of the Kingdom''s lands to be leased to him as was planned to have happened, their sister, the golden child, had been able to convince their father that she deserved the lion''s share of the lands promised to their brother, and with a few honeyed words had reduced the King''s only trueborn son to ruling a few scant counties on the southern fringes of the Kingdom, his every attention on preventing raiding parties from the Al-Alema from ravaging the countryside.


    "So why doesn''t her Highness wish for this place to receive a city charter?"


    "Because cities are, by design, extremely powerful in terms of trade and commerce, especially one poised as well as this is at an intersection in two major roads."


    The Cupbearer nodded, the information seeming to slot into place for him.


    "And if you had a city, it would make you more powerful, which her Highness wishes to prevent."


    Lykourgos smiled at the young Cupbearer. He caught on quickly.


    "Exactly. Now, if I-"


    He was interrupted by the clacking of hooves along the cobbled roads. Looking to the source of the noise, he was met by none other than his childhood friend and confidant, Ser Romanos, the Knight of Violets and Grandmaster of the Order of the Violets.


    He dismounted his horse as his friend did the same, clasping each other''s forearm in a soldier''s handshake.


    "You wanted to speak with me Ser. Would privacy be better?"


    His friend shook his head.


    "In all honesty, yes, but I know you won''t want to waste the time when you learn of the news."


    "What news?"


    His friend looked away, an expression somewhere between mental preparation and pity on his face. He took a deep breath, looked the prince in the eyes, and delivered the news.


    "Your father has been taken ill. Deathly ill. Many of your supporters in the last few weeks have slipped out of court, and for all I disagree with the man, I must say I was gladdened to learn that Master Elikoidi had been able to slip away from the capital. Your sister is already moving, and your brother has returned to Anaria. I suggest you take an entourage of men and get there as fast as you can yourself."


    He took all of this information in, fully trusting in his lifelong friend about the news. He would never lie about this to him. He resaddled his horse having only just gotten off, much to the destriers chagrin, and listened as Eros spoke.


    "Myself and the others can be ready to leave in half an hour, my Prince. We can reach the capital in two weeks at a steady pace, a few days less if we risk tiring the horses."


    He shook his head at the Squire.


    "There''s no time. I can reach there far faster by myself if I travel light. Are the waystations still in place across the northern stretch of the Coastroad?"


    His friend nodded, but looked apprehensive.


    "My Prince, I must protest, if you travel alone, you will be easy pickings for your sister''s supporters. Even if she doesn''t command it, it only takes one man with a crossbow looking for royal favour to end you."


    He ignored his friends protests, instead barking out his own orders.


    "Eros, Ser Aethel, I want that cart and its contents guarded without tampering day and night until I get back. If I find that anything has been damaged, I will be very unhappy."


    There was a slight edge to that last part that his brother had once called his ''Sergeant voice'', but he pushed that memory down. Any memory of his brother before the madness took hold over him was too painful to remember at a time when grieving was a luxury he could ill afford.


    The game had changed; the board had been rearranged whilst he had been away, and he had to be absolutely concentrated on this if he wanted to succeed here.


    "Ser Romanos, call our banners. I want the levies and Armsmen drilled and your Knights to converge on the north, post-haste. Understood?"


    His friend clapped an armoured fist over his heart.


    "It will be as you command. Ser Aethel, see that yourself, your brothers, and those escorting the cart the prince speaks of guard it vigilantly in the western Chapterhouse. The rest of you, with me."


    He spared one last look at the prince before he set off on the long road to Anaria.


    "Good luck, my Prince. May the Angels protect you."


    The Prince nodded back at him, and sped off at full gallop through the southern gate.


    Im going to need it. He thought to himself, as the frantic chirping of a bird rang through his head.

 Lykourgos III: The Prelude Ends

    <u>Lykourgos III: The Prelude Ends</u>


    <u>The Eighth day of the Ninth moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    It didn''t take too long for Anaria to come into view, compared to the two weeks it would have taken the full party anyway. Within three days he could see the resplendent white walls dotted with grey keeps and gatehouses, which had been built far earlier in the city''s history. It looked as though the constituent parts of the defences had each been inspired by different architectural styles, creating a strange blend of rough stone, brick and carved stone. To his eyes, it spoke of style over substance, and a complacency in strength. He curled his lip at the sight in a sneer. Was it any wonder he''d had to save this city when his "oh so perfect" sister had failed to convince the southern lords of the necessity of reinstating the old bureaucracy?


    He turned his head and spat at the ground, the mere sight of this damned city bringing out anger from deep within his being. I can''t allow my emotions to override my mind, he chastened himself, not at a time like this, as he willed himself to remember happier times in the city. His mind brought forth images of all the times he had ridden through the Last Avenue in the summer solstice, the lowborn hailing him as "Our Prince!" as he ate and drank amongst them. Images of his trueborn brother sneaking out of the Palace to join him in revelling in the festivities, and of the florist''s daughter who, at the beginning of every summer solstice as he rode down the avenue, would present him with a flower-crown made from the most beautiful violets he had seen, the lowborn crowning him the "Prince of the Violets", from which his faction at court then took the name, "Violets". He smiled. It was, for him, a simpler time, when could be certain that his father would govern, he would do what he could to assist, and his brother, no matter what, would have his back.


    Things had changed since then, he mused as he rode into the city, guards dressed in green surcoats hailing him as he passed through the gates. His brother still cared for him, of that he was certain, but madness had warped it into a special kind of care, the kind of care that can drive one to unspeakable acts that alienate them from the object of their care. If his brother was having one of his good days, Lykourgos was certain that he would be able to coordinate with him effectively, provided he had not arrived too late.


    Aside from his personal status and relationships, as he looked around the city he knew for a fact that nothing had changed. In all the years he had lived here, all the stench of mankind had hovered over the place. Salt and sweat and filth hovered over the city like a storm cloud, raining down a horrible smell all hours of the day. A moon or two spent in the countryside had cleared his mind of the smell of the city, and he found that it made it all the more potent when he returned.


    The route to the palace was one he knew off by heart, having walked and rode it a thousand times. Ofttimes he would encounter lowborn men and women petitioning him for some blessing or other, or offering their own blessings upon him. He always found it amusing that, despite already giving so much to the realm, these people were so willing to give more to him! It was humbling to know that these people looked up to him, and regarded him as a kind and just prince. He only hoped he could do right by them, when the time came. Given the nature of his return, the prince was unable to stop to hear petitions or blessings this time around, though he did allow himself to stop just for a minute when a young girl, who looked barely a dozen winters, proffered a single large violet to him. A few minutes later, and he arrived at the palace with his head held high and a flower behind his ear.


    "BROTHER!"


    Lykourgos looked up from where he had just dismounted his horse. Approaching towards him, grin threatening to split his entire face, was his trueborn brother, Rhema. He was barely able to get his foot out of his stirrup before, ignoring the proffered handshake, his brother crashed into him and wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug. Lykourgos smiled despite himself. He may be mad, but in his brother''s own words, "I''m your brother first and insane second!".


    "Angels, I''ve missed you. It''s been what, two years now?"


    Lykourgos smiled, prising himself away from the hug.


    "Indeed. I''d returned from Aenirhen for the winter solstice, and you''d managed to sneak into the city for the festival and find me, just like when we were kids."


    Lykourgos caught a glimpse of sadness pass across his brother''s eyes, before his typical mad energy smothered it, and just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone. Rhema looked around, clearly puzzled.


    "Where... where is the rest of your retinue?"


    "There isn''t one. It would have taken me far longer to get here if I wasn''t riding alone."


    His brother pulled him close again, and lowered his voice.


    "You damnable fool! You know this city is crawling with our sister''s creatures. How easy would it be for an ''accident'' to befall you here whilst you''re alone? You''ve handed yourself over to her on a platter you idiot!"


    Lykourgos sighed, acknowledging that the words of both his brother and Ser Romanos rang true.


    "True enough, but you''ve got men in the city, don''t you? The city guard answers to you, no?"


    Rhema made a noise somewhere between an exaggerated, depressed sigh and a discontented grumble.


    "The loyalty of the guard varies from captain to captain, and I''m not likely to be present in the city much for the next few days. By order of the council, which conveniently now contains only those hoping for our sister''s ascension, I need to go hunt down bandits patrolling the eastern approaches to the city. The fact that these bandits have been seen wearing red surcoats and wielding billhooks was not mentioned in the council, can''t think why."


    Lykourgos snorted, and his brother did likewise.


    "She may be smart, and she may have a good head for intrigue when it comes to her own, personal touch, but as soon as she involves other people in her plots they all start to fall apart."


    They smiled at each other, allowing a warm silence to fill the air for a good few minutes.


    "So," Rhema started, breaking the silence, "how fares the northern lordship in these times?"


    <hr>


    "So that''s how you got here so quickly!"


    Lykourgos nodded his head.


    "Indeed, the building and maintaining of messenger stations along my half of the Coastroad was one of the first things I did when given lordship over the north. All I had to do was swap horses at each waystation so as not to tire them and risk an injury, stopping for a few hours of sleep at night and carrying on the next day."


    Rhema nodded at their conversation. Their reunion had been pleasant so far; his brother had acted more like the curious, bright young boy he once was as opposed to the violent sadist he seemed to have grown into. Even still, eight hours into their conversation and more than once small cracks had begun to appear in his brother''s demeanour, leading Lykourgos to one conclusion.


    He''s holding himself together for my sake. He wants to try and bond with me properly without snapping. It was a touching, and almost endearing gesture, and while Lykourgos knew it could not last, he chose to savour the return of the brother he knew for a little while longer. They would be admitted to see their father, and the Inner Council, tomorrow, which would mean confronting his sister again. He was quite content to spend a little more time with his more agreeable sibling before breaking this peaceful spell.


    "You know, I''ve been having strange dreams of late."


    "Oh?" His brother replied, a hint of something in his voice that signalled he knew more than he seemed.


    "The same dream repeats night after night. I''m a bird, flying above the forest floor and being chased by a woods-cat. Another bird sits on the floor and tries to chirp out a message, and-"


    "What does the warning say!" His brother cut in, his words pouring out so rapidly that it took Lykourgos a second to make sense of the jumble before speaking.


    "I don''t know what it says. I wake up as it opens its beak."


    The bastard watched as Rhema cursed under his breath, and raised a hand to cover his mouth, before an odd thought struck him.


    "Hold on, I never said it was a warning!"


    He levelled an accusatory look at his brother, who held up his hands in a weak gesture of defence.


    "Lucky guess?"


    It came out more as a question than a statement. Lykourgos didn''t stop his glaring, causing Rhema to throw his hands up in the air from where he sat.


    "All right, look, I learned some stuff from various Alemans we''ve captured over the years and tried to send you a warning, okay? I know you''re into occult stuff so I figured you wouldn''t mind if I tried to send you a message about this that couldn''t be intercepted, okay! Not that it worked anyway..."


    He slumped down into his seat, arms crossed over his chest.


    "It''s a story for another time, okay?"


    Lykourgos nodded, not wishing to push too far and snap his brother out of his fragile state of sanity.


    "Okay. How about a new topic of conversation."


    His brother nodded, visibly reinflating at his lack of pushing.


    "Sure. You taken up with any cool people recently? There''s this kid in my retinue we found in an abandoned chapel in the wildlands on the border. They''re really loyal, but extremely strange, even compared to me!"


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.He broke out into laughter at the end of his sentence.


    "How so, ''weird''?"


    He waited for his trueborn brother to regain control over his laughing for a moment, then patiently gestured for him to continue, ignoring his brother''s silent apology. He was doing well enough controlling himself at the moment, there was no need for him to chastise himself over so simple a thing as laughing.


    "Ahem. Anyway, they''re very strange. They often breaks out into trances and recites prophesies, omens and riddles of the past, future and present, though you need to decipher half of what they say, since otherwise it comes out as gibberish."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow. Assuming that this was true, and he had no reason to doubt his brother in this state as far as he knew, it would seem as though he had found some form of Seer.


    "That is indeed most interesting. Would I be able to meet with this seer or are they otherwise unavailable."


    "No, they''re still at Castelos at the moment... do you truly believe me? Without doubts on this? I understand if you don''t, I know how I can-"


    He cut his brother off with a kind, but firm voice.


    "Peace. I believe you. I would be further set in my belief if you had proof, but I have no reason to refute your claims anyway."


    Rhema smiled at him. Lykourgos knew he would regret this eventually. At some point, maybe not today, but at some point, his brother would sink back into madness, and his grief would set in again.


    He shook his head and banished the wayward thoughts.


    "I do have an interesting retinue member, by the way. He''s a blind man, an ex-Oblate and a hardy man. Can move just as well as any other despite his disability, and can sense storms coming in hours, sometimes days before they occur. He also raised a good point to me recently; I offered to train him in the use of a sword, since it''s a far knightlier weapon than his billhook, but he said, quite rightly, that if I intended to fight on the battlefield again, it would make more sense to learn to fight people wielding billhooks and spears. From what some of the Squires have told me he''s no pushover either, even though his world is in perpetual darkness."


    Rhema grinned.


    "Okay, now that is cool. I''d like to meet him at some point, watch the two of you spar. It''ll be funny to watch you get knocked out by a blind man."


    He playfully punched his brother on the shoulder.


    "Very funny little brother, very funny indeed."


    <hr>


    The next day came and went with surprisingly little fanfare. The council had barely spoken a word to either of the brothers, and their sister was nowhere to be seen. Rhema had been able to scrounge up some information from a lady-in-waiting, who claimed that Roma was displeased to have both of her brothers at court together at the same time, especially with how Lykourgos seemingly rode half the country in half a week. Later that day Rhema had left on his assignment to hunt ''bandits'', leaving Lykourgos to while away some time by himself in the palace. He''d planted the violet that had been given to him in the palace gardens, and then retreated to the library, away from prying eyes.


    As much as he hated to admit it, both Rhema and Romanos were right; almost all of his allies and friends had slipped out of court and the city, each likely converging on the north through Master Elikoidi''s "ratlines", a series of clandestine routes in and out of the major settlements of Teleytaios, and likely a few more besides. It was odd that his sister was avoiding him. She''d never particularly liked him, but that normally meant that she stood just out of reach and insulted him, not hidden herself away in seclusion.


    "Far be it from me to question small mercies." he said to himself, before setting himself back onto the task at hand. He had gathered a list of father''s symptoms, and was cross referencing them with Healer Minwu''s Compendium of Medicinal Knowledge and Physical Maladies, Volume IV. It wasn''t a particularly thrilling read, but if he could pinpoint a single malady as the cause of his Grace''s symptoms, then he could help the physicians to ensure he made at least a partial recovery. He had just reached the end of a particularly lengthy segment labelled ''The Healing Effects of Cleanliness'', when he was startled by the appearance of Rhema to his right.


    "I''m here. Got back early with the heads of the bandits. Earlier than she wanted, but not nearly early enough."


    Lykourgos blinked at him in confusion, before his youngest sibling spoke again.


    "You know you''re too late, right?"


    That made him start.


    "What? You mean father..."


    He couldn''t finish the sentence. The man hadn''t been good to him since his trueborn siblings came along, but he''d still raised him up until that point, and that counted for something in Lykourgos'' eyes.


    "Nah, the old bastards still kicking, but only just. No, I mean you''re too late to stop her."


    He put such emphasis on the word ''her'' that it was impossible for the prince to misinterpret his brother''s words


    "Nonsense, if father isn''t dead then she can''t act. No one would support her claim whilst he still lives."


    His brother smirked at him. It was an unsettling, deeply unnerving thing, not at all like the true smile he had worn the day previously.


    "And what," his brother asked, "is stopping her from killing you right now? You are not in your lands now, not yet. These people are not loyal to you. They still remember how you crushed them in the field at Haestinghen, old fools, and bear you no small amount of resentment for the fact that if it had not been for you, they would still have their old lands and titles. You have travelled here alone, and if you don''t leave tonight, you will die here alone- no, scratch that, you''ll die and I''ll be made to die with you, and that¡¯s far worse."


    His brother snorted at his own jape. Lykourgos immediately looked to his brother, then his surroundings. At that moment the bells at the Westcoast Church pealed out, ringing once in a clear and loud clanging noise. Bell-Signals were simple things, though clear enough to understand. One toll rang out, then after a pause four more. Death, followed by Man. Seeing as the bells only rang for people of great import, it didn''t require much guesswork to reach a conclusion. Father was dead. The King was dead. His brother clapped him on the shoulder and looked at him with a serious face, Lykourgos couldn''t remember the last time his brother had looked so deathly worried.


    "Good luck. You''re going to need it. So much rides on you getting back north safely. When you get there, call your banners and speed south. She''s acted first, and fast, but there''s still a chance for you to get out of here and depose her."


    He looked at his brother, seeing one last glimpse of the boy he remembered from before the madness set in.


    "Brother," he started, "you can come with me. You''re a damn good commander and you know how she''s going to act. Come with me."


    He stretched a hand out to him, and his brother looked at it with a look of resignation and sadness on his face.


    "Would that I could. I have things I must do here, but I wish I could go with you. Instead, I offer you two warnings. The second will reach you as you crest the hill north of the city, but the first I give you now; the next time we meet, it may not seem like I want you to help me."


    He looked at his brother, puzzled. He had no idea why he had taken to speaking in riddles, but to be honest-


    "Why are you still here? Your horse has been saddled and provisions given. Don''t eat them, they''ve been laced with some sort of sleeping agent so her men can catch you on the run. Ride hard and fast. GO!"


    With that last statement from his brother the spell was broken, and he ran.


    He''d reached the stables and saddled his horse with ease, then galloped through the Last Avenue to the West-Gate. The north gate was closer, true, but if his brother was telling the truth then this was the safest way; there would be too many guards on the North-Gate and the poor in this part of the city knew him, supported him, even. He suppressed the thought that he was leaving these people to suffer under his sister. His brother may have seemed insane, but his sister was ruthless, power-hungry and arrogant. Given the fact that his brother had told him she intended to capture him, which would start a civil war, that was a type of madness all unto itself. He was shaken from his thoughts as a group of people were congregating around an armsman in red liveries. Several men were shielding a woman from the armsman, who was clearly growing more and more impatient with the congregation.


    "What you bear is a sign of dissent to her Grace. You will hand over the crown, and prostrate yourself before her Grace, begging her for forgiveness."


    A crown? How does a lowborn gain control of a crown? He shook himself. Whatever she was holding was surely immaterial, the important thing was that he could do this one thing to help here, and somewhat assuage his rising guilt. As he dismounted his horse, he felt a growing sense of anger at this armsman, this wretched armsman, who had entered an area of the city where the people had chosen him, and sought to steal and punish them for standing up for themselves and the true heir. He stalked towards the confrontation, the woman''s voice growing clearer as he approached.


    "He was the one that supported us, not her! He always came through for this part of the city, without fail. He will come, you''ll see."


    The armsman''s face grew red as he ground his teeth together, at his wits end. With anger painted across his face he raised his billhook and slammed its haft into the gut of one of the men, who collapsed winded. The prince saw red, and with less than ten meters between himself and the wretch he broke into a sprint, raised an armoured fist, and swung with all the strength he could muster. The offending armsman had hardly realised the prince was there, a shocked expression barely mustered as the blow connected with his jaw, sending him sprawling to the floor.


    Lykourgos clutched his hand, feeling where a finger had broken under the force of the impact, and looked to the small gathering of lowborns. Some looked at him with reverence or awe, but most simply looked grateful. The woman stood out from the rest of them though, he knew he had seen her somewhere before, and she had a glimmer in her eyes that he could not quite place. She held out her hands towards him, and in them she held-


    Oh.


    The prince raised his injured fist to cover his mouth as he looked away, eyes watering. She wanted to give him this, just as he was leaving them to potentially die here?


    In her hands she held a very simple flower crown, made out of beautiful dark violets.


    "I cannot remain in this city."


    He choked out the words barely able to force himself to look at them, these people who had trusted him to lead them, who he was leaving, who surely would-


    "I know. Ride hard, your Grace, and when you return, the throne will accept you like none other."


    "I will come back for you all, I promise."


    His words came out as hardly a whisper. Strange, that he should feel so strongly for people he barely knew at all, and who he would likely never see again.


    "We know, your Grace. You always do." Came the wheezing voice of the man who had been struck. Others joined in their affirmations, before the woman- the florist, the one whose daughter used to hand over the crown, he remembered, - gave him the crown. As he placed the crown upon his brow and saddled his horse, he spared one last look at the small crowd of lowborns behind him. The woman simply nodded once, and he took off through the still-open gate.


    "I will return. I promise."


    <hr>


    He crested the hill outside the city, and waited for the second of his brother''s warnings. He allowed his horse to rest at the top of the hill whilst he looked at his provisions in his bag.


    "Ah." He exclaimed as he rooted through his bag. His brother was right, his provisions had indeed been tampered with. He dumped the provisions, save his waterskin, and made a note to remind himself to wash the inside of the saddlebag in a stream tomorrow.


    He waited for twenty minutes in search of a warning, watching as certain parts of the city seemed to be waking up, even in the depths of night. He could hear the commotion in the city, and a small fire seemed to have started on the Last Avenue. He winced, again suppressing the urge to ride back and try to help those that looked up to him. He would do no good there. Just as he felt as though he couldn''t take anymore and made to saddle his horse, finally the warning came.


    The bell on the Westcoast Church began to toll again. Once, twice, thrice, he continued to count the tolls on the bell, and his heart sank to the pit of his stomach as he realised the meaning behind his brother''s last warning, As the bell struck its thirteenth toll, he closed his eyes and prayed to hear it ring at least once more.


    He did not.


    Thirteen tolls meant only one thing.


    Murder.


    That night he dreamed he was a bird. He took flight and chirped at another bird to follow, to follow to safety and to hope.


    The other did not respond for what felt like hours, but eventually it did.


    It chirped back that it was tired.


    So tired.


    So very tired.

 Lore Chapter: Klironomea and Teleytaios

    <u>Twelfth Day, Third Month, 870 AD.


    Alekos Virgilos, Prince.


    Kingdom of Polaeros.


    Polaeriopolis.


    The Seeker''s Palace.</u>


    Dear Alek,


    It has been too long since last we spoke. I am thrilled to hear about your book you are compiling on the cultures of the world, and more so that you contacted me asking for my own viewpoints and writing to assist you. It almost feels like those halcyon days in Aenirhen, both of us being fostered under Lord Brathaxe. Enough of my pleasantries, there is time enough for me to write them at the bottom of this letter; You have asked for my input on Klironomea and Teleytaios, and so I shall oblige.


    Once, centuries ago, the continent of Kliskorios was divided into two great kingdoms; the Kingdom of Klironomea, and the Kingdom of Terranea.


    Then came the War of Sundering and the Year of Desolation, and the two great kingdoms were gone, replaced by a hundred petty despots, oligarchic councils, military commands and theocratic statelets. Over time these petty nations coalesced, and the lands that were once united as Klironomea became the Heptarchy.


    Whilst the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy are more relevant in modern history, Klironomea itself has tales worth telling. Its armies of professional soldiers could put to shame any other on the continent, their infrastructure projects still span across the breadth of the Heptarchy and beyond, and the famous and infamous monarchs of that time are remembered by the masses, even when all else is forgotten.


    Klironomea was founded, fittingly, with the Return of the Klironomeans. A tribe who had once lived in the centre regions of Klironomea, forced out of their homes into the Dathan peninsula. Hundreds of years later they returned, subjugating or else destroying the myriad peoples who had once lived there, taking it all so that they may never be forced from their homes again. Whether or not these legends are true is the subject of much scholarly debate, but what is certain is that low-klironomean, the lowborns in the Heptarchy and even the Old-Church are heavily influenced by the Skraelings, who were the dominant power before the Klironomeans returned.


    The Kingdom itself was quick to dispense of feudalism, instead operating on a bureaucracy headed by the petty nobility and town councils, ensuring that there was never any one person strong enough to challenge the rule of the Kings. The Klironomean Legions were the greatest fighting force in all Kliskorios, for other nations relied upon warriors or slaves, whereas Klironomea only took on the free and the disciplined, breaking almost any army that dared to invade their homeland.


    The first Klironomeans, influenced by their time in Dathan, adopted the teachings of the Church of the Saint, however the natives were not easy to part from their own Corvid Pantheon, and it seemed as though religious strife and civil conflict would engulf the new Kingdom even as it took its tentative first steps into the world. In the end the solution for this issue came from Agia, or Saint in low-klironomean, Arwald. Saint Arwald preached a hybridisation of the faiths of the local Skraelings and the Klironomeans. Each of their seven deities became Angels rather than Gods, and he claimed that it was they who had empowered the First Saint in the Age of Silence to beat back the darkness.


    The Jay became Demea, Angel of Fertility. The Owl became Polaris, Angel of Knowledge and Stars, the Jackdaw became Arnka, Angel of the Hunt, and so on. The most curious shift is that of the Crow, the head of the Corvid Pantheon, into Hydran, the Angel of the Seas. It seems a most curious shift, until one realises that, whilst it may seem strange to strip away the aspects of fatherhood and kingship from the crow and leave only one of his more minor aspects, there was already a symbol of fatherhood and kingship in the Church of the Saint; the first saint himself represented these things, and was made to sit at the head of the pantheon, leaving Hydran dominion over the seas and the stars alongside Polaris.


    For just over three-hundred years spanning eighteen Kings and four Royal Houses the Klironomeans would forge a kingdom that ranged across all the lands from the Great Ocean in the west to the Drakespine Mountains in the east. The kingdom reached its greatest extent in the reign of King Wulfstan II, wherein it had conquered the Ibaenean Peninsula and a third each of the Tildan and Dathan Peninsulas, leaving Terranea as a rump state and a shell of its former self.


    During the reign of his son, however, the Kingdom of Klironomea was at last defeated in battle, and the land shattered into a thousand pieces. From these pieces seven successors would rise, each one claiming the mantle of the true heir to Klironomea, hoping to reunite the former kingdom under their own rule.


    Foremost amongst these seven successors is the Kingdom of Teleytaios. With the largest population, professional army, knightly order, second largest landmass, and having its seat of governance in the old capital, Anaria, there are few who would not say that Teleytaios is the strongest of the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy.


    Controlling the entirety of the western coast of Klironomea, which by itself makes up the vast majority of the Heptarchy''s coastline, it is naturally given that Teleytaios is gifted with a glut of skilled seamen; sailors, fishers, whalers and merchantmen from across the north flock to Anaria and Aenirhen, and even exotic goods from the south sometimes find their way into the bustling markets of the capital.


    The kingdom itself has shrugged off the petty feudalism of its neighbours, reinstating the system of Royal Bureaucracy that was lost when the Kingdom of Klironomea fell. Of course, the high nobility wasn¡¯t happy to simply give away what was left of their power, and rose in rebellion against my father.


    I shall touch upon the so-called ''Twilight Rebellion'' later. First we must look at the royal family of Teleytaios.


    The Royal House, House Sperakos, once served as hereditary commanders of the Royal Fleet. When Klironomea collapsed they centralised their power in the capital and surrounding lands, quickly carving a new realm out of the disparate petty fiefdoms that sprang up in the decades after the Year of Desolation. They had to fend off outside invaders and internal claimants with diligence and efficiency to keep hold over their kingdom. Now we stand as the longest unbroken royal line in the history of every nation in the Heptarchy, and the Kingdom that proceeded it as well.


    Our family''s coat of arms has forever been a single blue flower upon a purple field, though few members of the house have ever taken it as their own sigil, unmodified at least.


    My father, King Cordan Sperakos, took a red flower on a blue field as his sigil.


    I took a purple flower on a blue field for my sigil; the colours of my family inverted to signify my bastardry.


    My sister, Princess Roma Sperakos, has taken the heraldry of our father for her own.


    My brother, Prince Rhema Sperakos, instead has a light-green flower on a dark-green field.


    Where our family may not share one coat of arms, we do share our words;


    "Where Clouds Meet Waves, There Shall We Dwell."


    Its meaning is plain to all those who read it; we do not fear death or hardship, for we know our destiny is to one day sail to the heavens and take our place alongside the saints, free from the trappings of worldly life and struggles therein.


    Of course, every ruler needs a place to rule from. The Royal Family, my family, rules from the city of Anaria. The city is the largest on the continent, not by a wide margin, but a great expanse is still covered by its old walls and gatehouses. Before being the capital of Teleytaios it was the capital of Klironomea, and even before the Klironomeans returned to Klironomea it was a position of importance, being the place of meeting for the Skraeling Greatmoot.


    If one were to enter the city, it would likely be from the east. The east of the city is largely residential in nature, with huge stretches of compact housing broken up by the odd market square or church. To the south lies what was once the productive heart of the city, the workshop district, though nowadays there is little made there. The south of the city is built on and around a series of eight small hillocks, which the nobility, having been ousted from their rural castles and manors, have instead bought out and fitted to contain manse after manse of luxury and opulence.


    If one travels west they will find the great dockyards and ports of the city, bustling with local fishwives, southern merchants, and sometimes even Brythonian whalers with their leviathan-ships. Indeed, the docks of Anaria remain one of the only man-made places that such great vessels can safely moor and weigh anchor, and a great many Brythonians take advantage of the thousands of unemployed dockhands and sailors loitering around by employing them for their expertise on their ships.


    The stories that those whalers must be able to tell, travelling so far out, all the way to the Ouroborisian Sea, where one can sail in a straight line for a month and never see land, the great creatures they find there... whales, colossal squids, and I have heard rumours that some of these men have laid eyes upon aquatic umbra, each one a dozen miles long. If such rumours are true, then they are surely some of the only men alive to have seen such a terrifying and magnificent sight, as those umbra left on land now rarely grow larger than a barn.


    To the north of the city there is, fittingly, the northern district. Originally it was designed as a self-sufficient fortress within the city; a place where the people could live relatively normal lives, albeit with a slightly marshal bent, in times of peace, and an impenetrable redoubt and fallback point in times of war. Nowadays, after two centuries of borderline abandonment, it mostly acts as a secondary residential region; its residents live lives even poorer than their peers in the eastern district, and their shanty towns are closer to slums and stys than dwellings fit for a man. And yet there they reside, eking out a forlorn existence on the scraps of the capital.


    In the centre of the city resides its crown jewel; the Old Keep. Its name is the last relic of what it once was, since nowadays it is a sprawling palatial complex with bureaucratic offices, royal chambers, open gardens, and drilling fields. There¡¯s even a small barracks for the royal guards. The Old Keep, or simply ''the Palace'', is truly one of the greatest examples of a royal residence in the known world.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    The borders of the Kingdom I call home stretch from the mighty river Aenir in the north all the way to the mountains of the Brokowa Heights in the south, and from the Great Ocean in the west to Owkrestos and Nordicos in the east. As the second largest and wealthiest of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy defending the borders has never been truly difficult; Owkrestos and Nordicos are both insular and relatively friendly, with the exception of border skirmishes and bandits crossing between the kingdoms. The mighty fortress of Castelos and its twenty-mile wall bar the way to the hostile Al-Alema to the south, whilst the rush of the Aenir does the same from the north. Both from north and south great armies could propel themselves towards Teleytaios, but they would hardly be a scattered band when they crossed the border.


    This means that the only real threat comes from the hordes of Scelopyrene barbarians to the north, whose longships allow them unrestricted access to almost the entirety of our coastline. Even so, they have never dared attack our lands in force, indeed, never have they so much as attempted raids on our coastlines.


    Teleytaios follows the Church of the Saint, though its worshippers are far from unified. The vast majority of the populous follows the Ybridica Agiathos, or the Old Church in low-klironomean. The majority of the upper classes and those living in Anaria tend towards the New Church, the Alithini Agiathos, however smaller, insular groups exist which still propagate the words of the various cults and sub-sections of the faith. The Ichorian Cult, Cult of the Ampithere-Worship, and the Cult of the Deep Waves all boast large congregations, indeed, the Cult of the Deep Waves is the only one of the minor cults to boast of a substantial following in Anaria itself, as the majority of those in the western districts of the city pray to the Angel Hydran for protection on his seas.


    Some even whisper that the mysterious Cult of the Choir have strongholds hidden in the midst of our kingdom, though there is little evidence to suggest such an abhorrent faith exists at all. Any faith that demands its adherents cannibalise the divine is on such a level of madness that I sincerely hope no one is capable of falling so low.


    Even the Silent Cult has gained followers in recent years, especially around the outbreaks of the Black Grave in 858 and 862 AD, as people took to worshiping the Angel of Death so that they may ensure a peaceful afterlife for their families.


    No look at Teleytaios can be complete without mentioning the Twilight Rebellion. The victory of the royalist forces in the last act of the nobility''s defiance have paved the way for the reintroduction of the bureaucratic system, lost in Teleytaios since the shattering of Klironomea and the formation of the Heptarchy, and the beginning of the end of petty feudalism.


    The war began with my father sending every lord and lady in the land a missive stripping them of their lands and titles. I had previously served as Lord-Protector of the North, and the lords there knew me well. Many agreed to lay down their arms and take on new positions of power, removed from rulership but not from power. Those that didn''t amassed themselves in the west at Seastream, where I was able to soundly rout their forces with the assistance of those loyal to me and my father. I found myself in a slight predicament from a wound I''d taken in the battle, but that isn''t important here.


    After another month of rallying, making plans and waiting to hear news from my father and siblings it occurred to me that we were waiting when we should have been moving. The nobles to the south had some twenty-thousand men under their banner, and we only had ten-thousand, but that didn''t matter, because I''d just received a raven stating that my younger brother had been captured outside the town of Haestinghen. We rode south, and some of my fury at those who dared to harm my brother seemed to spill into the army. We stood eight-thousand strong, outnumbered by half, with only a fraction of their heavy cavalry and knights. I was young, only fifteen years old, but it didn''t matter. My younger brother was their captive, and my army was as buoyed with bloodlust as I was. We walked away from that field bloodied and bruised, but they barely walked away at all. Two-thousand of our royalist forces lay dead, but every man we lost killed three of theirs.


    I ordered Haestinghen be damn near stripped bare that night to try and find my brother, only to find that the nobles had escaped with him in the rearguard. It was then that Ser Romanos and the beginnings of his Order came to me, offering me aid. It was him that stopped me from razing the town completely in anger, instead directing us west. Apparently the six-thousand survivors that had fled the field were moving to meet with the main noble host, which had been besieging Anaria since the start of the conflict.


    Our army was allowed a single day of rest, and even then I felt restless. We departed the next day, and marched with damn impressive speed. Were it not for our baggage train falling behind we may have caught them that first day of the march.


    Instead we marched for weeks as they slipped away from us. As my brother slipped away from me. We eventually caught them as they reached their friendly camps before the walls of the capital, and then we fell upon them like savage beasts.


    The Battle of the Anarian Marches ended the Siege of Anaria and made sure that the Marches were well fertilised that year. I still had my six-thousand veterans bloodied from Haestinghen and Seastream, and the two-thousand who hadn''t been present. Not only that, but we were reinforced by Ser Romanos'' own five-hundred mounted knights.


    A force of eight and a half thousand men was arrayed against the now ten-thousand before the capital, far greater odds than before, and we were still in a bloodlust from being denied my brother''s return. They outnumbered us still, but that doesn''t matter nearly as much in a war camp. I rode at the head of the charge, behind only Ser Romanos on his great steed, and plunged myself into the battle.


    My lance broke off into someone''s chest on the initial charge, and a longbow brought down my destrier, throwing me from the saddle. I fought first with my sword, and when that shattered I picked up a war-pick. When it proved too heavy for my young body I abandoned it in favour of an axe. When the axe-head got stuck in a man''s skull and I couldn''t wrench it free I picked up the next weapon, and the next, and the next. I fought with spear and sword, hammer and javelin, axe and dagger, until eventually the fighting ceased with four-thousand of the noble forces dead. I found my brother, and while he had always been unstable he was now completely shaken, his mind given over to fits and madness from the trauma of his captivity.


    I wanted to hang every nobleman and lady who had rebelled for what they had done; some fourteen thousand men lay dead and the King''s own trueborn son had been held in captivity, but my father was persuaded otherwise by my sister, who instead offered clemency to the lords if they would lay down their arms and become a part of this new bureaucracy we were to create.


    When my father agreed with her and the nobles called it an ''acceptable offer'' I stormed back to Aenirhen enraged. I would follow my father through any course, but I was so given over to rage that I wouldn''t return to Anaria for two years.


    For some, the Twilight Rebellion was a war to regain the bureaucracy of old.


    For me, it was a war to get back my brother.


    I don''t think I succeeded.


    The modern military of Teleytaios is one of the greatest in the Heptarchy. The kingdom can call on six-thousand Armsmen, professional soldiers, at any time, and one thousand of them are trained in the building, maintenance and usage of siege equipment and field-artillery pieces. Teleytaios is actually one of only three klironomean kingdoms to maintain such an artillery force, and it is certainly larger than its peers.


    Aside from its Armsmen, there are some three or four thousand knights in Teleytaios, including chapterhouses from both the Order of the Bloody Cross and the Order of the Hanged Martyr. By far the largest of the Teleytaian knightly orders is the Order of the Violet, led by Grandmaster Romanos, which has come to encompass the majority of knights in the kingdom, though hedge knights can still be found wandering from village to village in search of work and acknowledgement.


    The Knights of the Order of the Violet may appear as little more than a band of standard knights at first, but that is because the ones most commonly seen are merely members of the Order, not yet brought into its ranks fully as Violet Knights. The Violet Knights are true soldiers and great warriors, wielding greatpikes of castle-forged steel and clad in plate armour, the charge of their thundering destriers could turn even the staunchest of armies into ribbons of flesh and piles of crushed bone, as I witnessed personally at the Battle of the Anarian Marches.


    Despite its large professional force, the majority of Teleytaian military power still comes from the conscripted masses; some twenty thousand men are able to be called upon, and while they may not be professionals a great many of them have some level of experience, whether it be from fighting bandits, raiders or umbra.


    There are few sellsword companies operating out of Teleytaios; its relatively stable and peaceful nature when compared to the chaos of some of the other kingdoms, Licotemos or Owkrestos for instance, means that very few see the profit in remaining in Teleytaios for long. Doubtless in the event of a looming conflict some companies would be lured in, but it is far more likely for a company to be formed of Teleytaian sellswords and then venture abroad looking for work. One such group is the Band of the Wren, but it is a common fallacy that Symon''s Starlings is Teleytaian. Whilst the majority of the company, as well as Symon himself, is Teleytaian, the company was actually formed in Owkrestos. However few there may be in the kingdom itself, the various bands of sellsword expatriates could be a formidable force if brought together.


    I know my vision of the Kingdom of Teleytaios may appear biased, and that is because it is. I was born here, I''ve lived here almost my whole life, my best friend was fostered here with me, before he left back for home, and my family have ruled these lands for almost a millennium unbroken. This kingdom, so dear to my heart, seems now to be on the rise. With the death of the nobility and the chaos in the rest of the Heptarchy, it would only take the right leader to reunite the disparate Kingdoms back into the single greatest power the northern continent has ever known; the Kingdom of Klironomea.


    I hope writing of my own knowledge living here is sufficient for the book you are hoping to compile, my friend. I have missed you in the years since you left, but I hear that you may soon be coronated? If that is the case, then congratulations! If possible I would be honoured to attend, though I fear that with my father¡¯s refusal to name a successor the realm will be too paralysed for me to leave for some time.


    I apologise if at times it seems as though I have allowed my emotions to cloud my words, since I''ve never been that good at understanding emotional reactions, but then you were the one that taught me not to worry about expressing my emotions sometimes. I hope your own Kingdom of Polaeros is treating you well? If this book of yours is to encompass as much as you say it would, I would be more than glad to assist you going forwards in my free time. It may not be as easy as when we were children, what with the thousand and a half miles between us, but I still remember those long nights we spent together hiding in the library, reading of ancient cities and great heroes until the sun came up and we were dragged out by the scruffs of our necks.


    I still remember how we smiled at each other those nights, even as we were dragged out. You say I changed after Haestinghen, and I think I have now finally come to terms with it and have gained at least some closure. I was so blinded by fury at the time that I didn''t even realise that I''d killed my first man. I killed seven more at the Marches. I don''t think it''s possible to remain unchanged after that, but I wish I had known how to deal with it better than I did; it was never my intention to push you away, but then you''ve accepted my apology in three visits and a hundred letters now. It will be good to see you again soon, Alek.


    I miss you dearly.


    Your friend, now and always,


    Prince Lykourgos Sperakos.

 Rhema I: A Jesters Throne

    <u>Rhema I: A Jester''s Throne</u>


    <u>The Eleventh Day of the Ninth Moon, 872 AD</u>


    <u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    "The hour grows late, and you have yet to move."


    The young Prince looked out of the window and snorted. It was the early morning, hardly what one would call late, but then he supposed that he had never really been one for attending meetings and the like on time. He shrugged at the woman who had turned to look at him.


    "I got lost on my way here?"


    The words came out more as a suggestion than a statement. To be honest he didn''t care what Marshal Crowe thought, the woman had made it clear that her support belonged to him no matter his own actions. In a way it was comforting to have someone skilled in the martial arts so close to him. By all means, he trusted in his own abilities to protect himself if it all went to shit, and he knew Seventh definitely kept a few tricks, and knives, up their sleeves, but he wasn''t sure if he could protect everyone else he was supposed to either. Her though... well, there was a reason she was the first woman in Teleytaios to reach the rank of Marshal-at-Arms. If anyone could get someone out if it went to shit, it was her.


    "-my Prince?"


    He blinked twice, his gaze refocusing.


    "Hm? My mind ran away from me again. Why were we meeting?"


    Her eyes softened somewhat, clearly misinterpreting forgetfulness for madness, but there was no other indication that she cared to pursue that thread, or Angels forbid, pitied him. When he saw the pity in his brother''s eyes after he slipped up on the night of their reuniting it nearly broke him, though his willingness to move past it was one of the ways Rhema could reaffirm that he wasn''t any less himself for his bouts.


    Nights like that always tasted of fresh grapes and fine wine.


    A hand was laid on his shoulder, calloused and heavy but surprisingly gentle.


    "Come, Hieromonk Auldwyrm and the Seer await our arrival. Events are moving faster now than ever before. Have you heard the rumours from the south?"


    The south? They were in the south right now, and he had yet to hear of any happenings. Well, he had yet to listen in any Inner Council meetings either, so he couldn''t be completely absolved of blame there. It wasn''t his fault that all the meetings were so boring! Wait, did she say-


    "Hieromonk Auldwyrm? As in, head of the Drake Church?"


    She nodded, rebuking him while she did so.


    "If you refer to the Cult of Ampithere-Worship as such I doubt he will be so friendly towards you. They may be a minor sect of the faith now, but they are venerable and proud."


    "Too proud. The dragons have been gone from the world for as long as anyone knows. If there is any basis in their beliefs, it''s long since lost relevance. And their insistence on only using High-Klironomean in their iconography, liturgy and literature is infuriating and endemic of that pride. Honestly, the Drakotheous Agiathos? Come on, it sounds cool but so do the names of all of the major sects when spoken in High-Klironomean. Archaearchonian Agiathos, Anoikos Idonistikos Agiathos, Athorybe Agiathos Aenethar-"


    Marshal Crowe must have realised he had lost his trail of thought, and cut him off before he could continue, eyebrow raised.


    "I wasn''t aware you paid attention in your religious studies. Forgive me for the assumption, but I could never imagine you paying attention to scripture."


    He shrugged noncommittally. She wasn''t wrong, he hadn''t ever paid attention in the lectures he''d been subjected to, he much preferred studying in his own time, or else with a friend. He''d hyperfixated on the Church of the Saint in all of its variations for a while after his madness had first started manifesting, hoping that it would lead to his ''salvation'', whatever the fuck that even meant to him anymore.


    The arrogance of his religious lecturers brought back old feelings of anger when he walked. He must have partaken in dozens of methods to satiate his madness throughout his life. What right did the clergy have to condemn his vices? When he was younger, he had spent more time praying each day than most did in a month. He would confess, he would light candles, he would listen to the sermons, sing the hymns, walk amongst processions of flagellants, all of it for nothing. When he knelt before the stone carving of the crucified mother and the stained glass depicting the hanged son, he poured his soul out to them, and they ignored him. He had never trusted the church since then, never willingly set foot in a holy place. How could he, when he knew he was not wanted by the divine? He wondered if his brother had ever had that same feeling of aloneness, of being cast adrift amidst an inky-black sea. He hoped not. He didn''t deserve to feel that way. He couldn''t think of anyone who did.


    Once, not that long ago, he had a nightmare in which he stood before not a statue of the crucified mother, but the crucified form of the young Seer in his retinue. The young servant looked terrible, as though they were hours from death, with tears of blood leaving pink trails from their eyes to their cheeks, hair matted and suck to their head with sweat and ichor. He still remembered the way Seventh had gasped between, slow, shallow breaths.


    "My Lord, My King, My God, forgive them, they don''t understand what they''re doing."


    He remembered waking up and immediately throwing up afterwards. Ever since nightmares had always tasted of sweat and fear. When he had seen the same image again while scrying it had sent him into a nervous breakdown that had lasted the rest of that day and the next, and neither he nor Seventh felt comfortable scrying for some time after that, the sight of one of his closest friends dying a death as slow as that dampening any enthusiasm he had for dream-magics for weeks, especially seeing as their abilities painted them in a very negative light in the eyes of the overly-zealous idiots that made up the more radical followers of the church.


    He sighed as they came to a stop outside his private quarters. It would do him no good to get stuck in the past at the moment. He could indulge himself in happy memory after happy memory as much as he liked when the grand performance was through and the curtains drawn.


    "After you."


    Came the voice to his left as the door was opened for him.


    He braced himself for dealing with another zealot, letting out a resigned sigh.


    "Fine."


    As it turns out, he needn''t have worried. Hieromonk Auldwyrm, despite looking older than any man he had met before and styling himself as the highest authority for the Drakotheous Agiathos was actually a very salt of the earth, respectable man. He didn''t ramble endlessly about piety, he didn''t shout and wave his fist around, and most importantly, he was smart.


    When Rhema first entered the room, he was pleasantly surprised to find the old man engaged in polite, perhaps even friendly, conversation with Seventh who was sat opposite. Both were drinking nettle and cow parsley tea and the old man seemed not at all put off by the blindfold Seventh insisted on wearing constantly. There was a part of him that wished that Seventh could have arrived a few days earlier, if only to have met with Lyk. He imagined Seventh awkwardly standing in place as his brother looked him all over like some kind of fascinating experiment. An obsession with the occult must have run in the blood, somewhat at least. He broke himself from his humorous reflections as the old man rose to greet him.


    "Your Highness! It is wondrous to meet you at last. There are several things to discuss, but most importantly, you have my support in the coming weeks. Whether you stake your claim or back down, we will follow your lead."


    He looked at the man, saying nothing. Eventually Marshal Crowe must have felt too awkward just standing there, and elected to continue the conversation herself. To be honest, Rhema was just surprised at the man''s seeming inability to find anything startling. He was in a room with a Prince with a reputation for madness and butchery, the only woman he knew of who held a high military rank and a blindfolded mystic. The three made for quite the odd group, but then this was a man who worshipped the memory of long-dead monsters that had once devoured armies and torched cities on a whim. Looking at it that way, Rhema supposed that maybe this wasn''t a man able to make rational judgement calls.


    "Our Prince thanks you for your support. We understand that there is much contention over the throne after the tragic death of King Cordan, and the backing of an organisation as prestigious as yours will surely help our cause."


    Rhema held back a scoff. Prestigious? A handful of disconnected, scattered hamlets and the occasional village of adherents were all that remained of the Dragon Church, most of them even more insular and inbred than the usual remote lowborn settlements in the Heptarchy. He saw a small gleam in the man''s eyes. I guess he isn''t completely immune to pride and sweet talk after all.


    He stopped himself from saying anything reckless and endangering his plans when he spoke, trying to find something to bring up to lessen his own awkwardness having not said anything this whole time.


    "What were the two of you talking about when we entered the room?"


    "Ah, I was explaining to the young Seer here the difference between the various subspecies of dragon. Whilst High-Klironomean sees them all as the same, the lowborn dialect knows well to mark the differences between them, such as the lack of legs on an Ampithere, or the lack of wings on a Drake."


    The Prince nodded, pretending to be interested. Such flights of fancy had once had him view these creatures as the most interesting things he had ever learned of, but as with most things, the hyperfixation left as soon as it arrived. Still, here was a man willing to risk unofficial persecution and harassment to travel here and proclaim his support for him in person. A snub or rebuke would be rude and counterproductive here, especially since the Hieromonk was nice to Seventh. If he wasn''t then Rhema would''ve had no qualms with being petulant, but that didn''t matter at the moment.


    "Well then." He clapped his hands together. "Let''s get started!"


    <hr>


    When the talks concluded two hours had passed in relative peace. Hieromonk Auldwyrm parted in good spirits with a promise to bring a thousand men from across the realm to the northern district, just as Rhema asked him to. All that was left was to speak with Crowe.


    "Your Highness. You keep something from me. I have controlled my curiosity thus far out of respect, but if something important is being withheld from me I would like to know if at all possible."


    He squirmed in his seat. He couldn''t care less about keeping information from her, but when she looked at him like that, he felt like a child being chastised again. Do I tell her? It would allay her fears and she deserved that much from him at least, but that raised risks by itself. Should he-


    There was a small flash of a gentle blue light from around Seventh''s blindfold, and another cryptic prophecy made itself known, using the young Seer as a mouthpiece.


    "Horse and rider, longship and wings,


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.blood and tears from the death of Kings,


    the maker awakens, entombed in stone,


    his dreams lie shattered, save his throne."


    Marshal Crowe looked at the young servant with something approaching timidity, or as close as was possible for someone as remarkable as her to feel. She sighed as she made her way to the door.


    "I will see myself out on that note. Please, if there is something I should be made aware of, let me know."


    Seventh turned to him when the door latched shut. Rhema smiled back, though they couldn''t physically see it.


    "Well, that saved me from that predicament. Thank you."


    "I had no control over that, as you well know. I still don''t understand why you don''t tell her. There''re few people you can trust more than her, so why leave her in the dark?"


    There was a knock at the door.


    "Brother? I come with a proposition. I ask for an audience."


    Rhema grimaced at the prospect of talking to her, but knew it would have to be done at some point if he ever wanted to see his plans come to fruition. He nodded at Seventh, who stood to open the door. Before he reached the door, Rhema bid him listen one last moment.


    "In order to fool your enemies, you first have to fool your allies. If my own advisors believe it..."


    "Then she will too..." He saw Seventh let out a grin to rival his own, seeing what the prince was getting at. "Understood, my Prince."


    "Your Highness."


    In an instant Seventh had reverted to the perfect image of courtly manners. Their bow was poised and perfect, their tone equal parts respect and deference.


    It was enough to throw Roma off her own courtly act for a moment.


    "Ah yes... you. How very..." Rhema watched as his sister''s face struggled to find a polite term for "unnerving". Eventually, she settled on one. "... unexpected." That got a laugh out of the prince. Unexpected? Who was she expecting to find if not the person who had spent the last two years as his shadow, the Angels-Damned Patriarch?


    "Your brother has had a long day so far. What is it that brings you here, your Highness?"


    His grin grew, threatening to split his face. She had never liked his little Seer, hated hated hated their pagan magics and foresight. Watching her attempt to remain civil as they spoke to her was almost worth having to put up with her by itself. She looked over to him, her smile clearly strained. Looking at her false smile caused his own grin to drop. He hated that smile, it always tasted of perfume and poison and deceit. Still, he had a part to play in this grand performance, and play it he would.


    "Oh come now sister, they''re only curious as to your reasons for coming here. After all, you do have a reason for being here, don''t you?"


    He laughed at the thought of her willingly speaking to him, thought of the disgust she must be feeling, having to ask him of all people for help, causing more laughter to peal out before gradually descending into a hacking cough. Roma took a deep breath and sighed, seemingly composing herself.


    "I do. I have a great deal to discuss with you in the wake of father''s passing. Come, let us talk."


    She offered him her hand. He sneered internally. Why would he go to an area where she held the upper hand when he could stay right here.


    "On the contrary, there is little to discuss, elder sister of mine!"


    He enunciated the last part of his sentence, over-dramatising his actions.


    "After all, our woefully outnumbered brother will surely be found soon enough, won''t he now?"


    He bounded over to her and took her hand, pulling her towards a table and some chairs. As his back was turned to her he grimaced. If looking at her false smile tasted like poison, holding her hand tasted of blood blood blood-


    He let go of her hand as Seventh pulled a chair out for her, giving him a kind smile, which he tried to return. Not that it would matter, the blindfold they wore most of the time stopped them from seeing anyway, so it wasn''t like they could actually tell if his smile was genuine.


    "I was hoping to speak with you in private."


    She looked straight at Rhema, never breaking eye contact. It was remarkable, he thought, that she was able to meet his gaze when she wanted something from him but never at any other time.


    "Fine I guess, Seventh, would you mind heading to your quarters?"


    Seventh dipped into a deep bow and walked out of the door, electing not to speak but instead nodding once at Rhema, letting him know that he could do this. He scoffed. Of course he could deal with her, he had for years now, and even though he hated having to speak with his sister he knew that she hated it far more, and that spite would fuel him here. All he had to do was hold himself together enough to not snap and spill everything.


    Hours. They had been sitting and talking for hours. If she mentions the benefits of combining our forces once more I''m going to do... he thought for a good few seconds about what he''d do, before gently exhaling and refocusing. He needed to hold himself together, his brother needed him to hold himself together-


    "And that is why I believe that you should sit the throne."


    Now that caught his attention. Did he want the throne? Fuck no, he''d read enough horror stories about the reign of Arwald III to know that he would slip down that same dark path, and he would not be a second manic King thank you! But still, he was an actor here, and he knew his part. He forced another grin to manifest on his face, teeth bared and eyes focusing back onto Roma.


    "And what would make you put aside your claim to seat me on the throne."


    He watched as the ghost of a real smile passed across her face, no doubt because she thought he had taken the bait.


    "Well, you are the only trueborn son of the last King. By common convention, that makes you the heir to the throne."


    His false grin became real. Now he knew for certain that she was bullshitting him. She would never bring up ''common convention'' if she was being truthful about her intentions. She could win over the rest of the court with honeyed words and perfumed actions, but he could smell her shit from a mile away.


    "Well, far be it from me to turn down such a magnificent blessing. Say dear sister, do you think the Church will be offended if you crown me?"


    She looked genuinely surprised by that statement. He relished in her look of confusion, her hand pointing at her own face as if she were speechless, and pictured how good it would look once she realised what was really happening.


    "Yeah, you! After all, it''ll show the court our unity and solidarity against our brother."


    It physically pained him to hold in the manic laughter building up in his gullet after saying such ridiculous shit out loud. Unity? Solidarity? Angels above, the only way they would stand together willingly would be if a Second Age of Silence befell them.


    "Yes... yes, that should be acceptable, even to the stoutest of church-primacists. I would be honoured to bestow your crown upon you. Thank you, brother. I shall send for your little... thing we sent out earlier. Good day."


    She patted his shoulder and gave him a predatory smile before walking away. The taste of bile rose in his throat, he wasn''t betraying his brother, he was acting, he needed to remember that, he wasn''t actually siding with her, Lyk would understand, surely, he-


    <hr>


    When he awoke, he felt the back of a cool hand pressed to his forehead, and let out a whine. He tried to open his eyes, but immediately snapped them shut again. Too bright, he thought to himself, way too bright. The cool hand withdrew itself, causing him to whine again. The hand moved his arm out of a puddle of something wet, and he felt the scars on the palms.


    "Seventh?" He croaked out the name as he came too, opening his eyes far slower this time. He looked at the table he had passed out on and looked at what his arm was in. Eeeewww, okay, now that is gross.


    "Here, your Highness. Or is it your Grace now?"


    Rhema shook his head as Seventh cleaned the vomit from his arm. It was mostly just bile, thank the Carpenter he''d not eaten before the meeting.


    "What happened, Rhema?"


    He shook his head gently at the other''s prodding, putting aside the last however long he''d been passed out.


    "Our plans are uncompromised, everything should be going just fine. We just need to play for time and fuck up as much shit as possible."


    The young Seer raised an eyebrow, the blindfold raising with the gesture.


    "Such as excluding the church from your coronation ceremony?"


    "Yep! That''ll rile up those old bastards and lie-peddlers!"


    "Whilst also allowing your brother to claim that you are not legally King, since the church will not sanction such a turn of events no matter what her Highness claims."


    He nodded, only half listening. He was trying, but it seemed his latest episode had taken a lot out of him. He moved to sit at the head of his bed.


    "Hey, can you do the thing again?"


    The Seer looked at him, concerned.


    "Are you sure? Is there anything in particular you want to try and see or are you just looking for an escape?"


    He looked away sheepishly.


    "A bit of both, to be honest."


    A gentle sigh filled the room, and Rhema watched out his window as the sun began to set on the horizon. He felt the bed shift as Seventh sat at the foot of the bed. He watched as Seventh removed their blindfold and gently lay it to his side on the messy bed, their eyes blinking open and shut repeatedly as they adjusted themselves to seeing properly.


    "I can never get over the mess your room is whenever im here."


    "Trust me, it''s way worse when you''re not here to clean up for me."


    They laughed a quiet laugh. It tasted of peaches.


    "Ready, your Highness?"


    The Prince nodded once, and locked eyes with the Seer. Their eyes were inky black, broken up only by sparks of light blue that formed, flickered and faded in an instant. He latched on to those sparks, the sensation tasting of autumn and winter and dreams, allowing himself to forget who he was, fully focusing on those sparks.


    He looked around, finding himself in a black void, and immediately looked for the closest spark. As he approached it, the spark took form as a quick series of images flashing across his vision; he saw a crown of gilded flowers in the mouth of a winged stag, before the image transformed into a room of red and green snakes, hissing and bowing before a shapeless figure as a serpent hissed in the blackness. Seventh''s voice spoke a dozen times at once, echoing in the void.


    "I see a Kingdom, sevenfold,


    a crown of flowers, a brow of gold,


    one whom death has yet to claim,


    another, scornful, rendered tame."


    He laughed at that. These prophecies were always had such needlessly complicated wording. Couldn''t he just see one without having to concentrate on translating dream-magic into useful information? He sighed, closing his eyes, and willing himself to wake up.


    Waking again was a chore, but then it always was after seeing those visions. The hour was far later than it had been; though he felt as though he''d only been there a minute, it was now easily four in the morning. Seventh was still at the end of the bed, though their eyes were shut and they were peacefully sleeping, curled into a ball with their blindfold sort of draped over their face in an effort to cover their eyes. The prince rolled his eyes and removed the blindfold. So what if a few people went mad when meeting their gaze? If anyone came in here and woke them up from their rare actual sleep, then Rhema couldn''t give a shit if they went mad. He was fine, and he''d looked into their eyes for scrying a hundred times. If they couldn''t handle it they were weak-willed anyway. He closed his eyes again and willed himself to sleep, pulling Seventh up the bed to hug them. He smiled. Seventh would be fine with it. Probably. He did the closest he could to shrugging in his position, deciding that it didn''t matter.


    Today was stressful, his friend would forgive him for taking a little bit of comfort, and it would also be really funny when they tried to get up early to do their chores and found themselves stuck. He chuckled quietly, as he drifted off back to sleep.


    <hr>


    Eight days had passed since his dealings with his sister, and the day of the coronation was nigh. It was rushed, half-assed and bare, in no small part thanks to the fact that armies were already moving around the Kingdom, and with no small amount of displeasure the Church were voicing their dissatisfaction with the soon-to-be-monarch, further riling up the lowborns in the northern and eastern districts of the city who already tended to support his brother. He surveyed the crowd of assorted noblemen, all looking at him in disdain, a few faces wearing grins to match his own in the crowd, almost all supporters of his faction at court. He scoffed. The hemlock faction was useless at court now. He needed his men in the northern district for the next part of his plan.


    He pushed the thought to the side, allowing the grin back onto his face. His sister didn''t seem too phased by his rapidly shifting facial expression and unease. He supposed she was just used to it by now. As he walked down the centre aisle of the throne room, he caught sight of Seventh stood to the right behind the throne, just as some knight he didn''t know stood to its left. He was certain he''d seen the Knight before, but he''d be damned if he remembered him. Seventh gave him a rare smile, their stoicism melting away in a moment of reassurance as Rhema approached the throne. He sat, lounging in the sacred position of power as all expected of him, and smiled at his sister. He breathed in and out like Seventh had taught him, inhaling, holding, and exhaling at a four, seven, eight rhythm. He took in the scene in front of him and tried not to be overwhelmed. I''m not a traitor, I''m doing this for him. I cannot be a traitor, because I''m not the true King.


    His breath hitched as the crown was lowered onto his head, and he froze in place. If anyone else in the room recalled that day, he knew that they would remember seeing him without his trademark grin, and he knew that that was bad for his part in the grand performance. He forced himself to grin, screaming at himself internally to just smile, smile, just keep fucking smiling, and heard the crowd recite their oaths to him. With a forced smile in place and his arms stretched out wide, as though he meant to gather the whole courtroom in his arms, he stood up from the throne and unsheathed his sword, holding it so it pointed down the centre aisle, and watched as the crowd knelt. As he stood there, they chorused, albeit reluctantly, the words that would mark him as a traitor to all those who didn''t know of his plans.


    "Long May He Reign."

 Lykourgos IV: The March of the Violets

    <u>Lykourgos IV: The March of the Violets</u>


    <u>The Twenty-First Day of the Ninth Moon, 872 AD


    Aenirhen, Northern Teleytaios, Klironomea</u>


    It had taken him a full week to return from the capital. A week of laying low, avoiding roads and inns, deliberately doubling back and wading through streams even when he felt he was alone, just to make absolutely sure any trackers would be thrown off. He doubted he needed to be this cautious in the open countryside, after all, his sister was barely known even in her own lands. To her, if you weren''t of High-Klironomean stock, you weren''t worth speaking too. This of course, had caused a few incidents. He chortled when he recalled the time she had caused a diplomatic mix-up by ensuring all royal missives were marked with "Anariopolis" as opposed to the far more common "Anaria". Remembering little things like that kept him going through the week, especially now she would have to debase herself consorting with the Low-Klironomeans to rally support. Angels, she must be hating this more than any other.


    Twice he was made to conceal himself when a company of men whose allegiance was unknown passed by. Maybe they were his supporters, but seeing as they were marching south and wearing red surcoats, he highly doubted it. When he had at last reached the Einarbrycge he was exhausted. He hadn''t slept in two days, but was still greeted with a full company of Men-at-Arms, both sides of the bridge standing in full uniform with weapons drawn, standing at attention for him. He supposed it was meant to be a moment of glory or splendour, but in his mind the vision of a ragged, tired, hungry prince crossing to his realm-in-exile felt a lot more like a foreboding statement than a splendorous one. That feeling only compounded as the men on the southern side of the bridge followed him across, the last of his men in the south moving north with him.


    It made sense, after all, the men were to be mustered in Aenirhen on his orders, but there was still that sense of foreboding, of finality, as he crossed the bridge to the north. No, I can''t think this way. We''ll be crossing the bridge in mere days, a week or two at most, depending on when they make their move. This is only the beginning. Locked in his own thoughts and only having slept for a few scant hours in the last week he didn''t even notice as he began slipping from his saddle, a few of the closest Men-at-Arms moving too late to catch him as he fell. He looked up and saw blank eyes as he hit the cobbled floor.


    <hr>


    He awoke in a comfortable bed in what he quickly surmised to be his own small keep in Aenirhen. The walls were of rough stone, the window illuminated only small patches of the floor, and the ashes of a fire smouldered in the fireplace opposite from him. Hearing the sound of breathing he turned and found Ilias sleeping in a chair next to him, dirk in hand. He raised an eyebrow. Was his cupbearer attempting to act as sentry, or merely being overly cautious? It didn''t really matter, after all, the young man was attempting to protect him while he was unconscious, and that was commendable enough. Even still, Lykourgos thought as he prodded the cupbearer''s arm, he may need a few lessons in alertness.


    The prince turned to the door, hearing the distinctive ''thud'' of a haft hitting the floor outside. There were a few seconds of unintelligible conversation, and then the door was opened to reveal Elikoidi, his old friend, with a small tray containing a teapot and two cups. He hadn''t even stepped into the room before he was startled by the prince''s now sitting form. Lykourgos lazily waved at him, gesturing him over. He saw relief flush Elikoidi''s face, quickly smothered as a lazy grin took its place.


    "You know it was quite impolite of you to collapse like that. Maybe next time you could try... I don''t know, not passing out onto hard stone?"


    Lykourgos smiled. Of all the things his friend could''ve said upon seeing him for the first time in months, just as he had woken up from passing out no less, somehow this was the most ''Elikoidi'' thing he could''ve said. He looked at him with a fond smile.


    "I''m glad to see you too."


    Elikoidi looked at him, clearly annoyed, as he set down the tray on the bedside table beside Ilias.


    "No, no, nonono, you do not get to make me feel sentimental and warm while I still have months'' worth of quips to make about you, this is so unfair!"


    He threw his hands up in mock frustration, and Lykourgos let out a hearty laugh.


    "Okay, okay. How did you know I would wake up now?"


    His friend cocked his head to the side, and gave him a strange look.


    "But I didn''t... oh, you mean the tea?"


    "Yeah. I mean, there''s two cups."


    Elikoidi rolled his eyes.


    "It''s not all about you, your Princeliness. It was for Ilias and me. He''s been here since you were brought here. Alertness could use some work though..."


    Lykourgos snorted.


    "You know, I was thinking the same thing. How long have I been out for, exactly?"


    There was a single heartbeat before Elikoidi responded.


    "Not too long. some forty-eight hours." He raised his hand in a halting gesture before Lykourgos could speak. "I know exactly what you''ll say, so let me save you your breath and answer your questions before you ask them." He moved to sit at the end of Lykourgos'' bed, one leg crossed over the other, both hanging over the side. He raised a finger as he listed off each point.


    "Yes, two days. No, neither of your siblings have made any advances on us, nor do they seem to have caught wind you knocked yourself out. Yes, there have been some minor skirmishes or somesuch thing in the south, Romanos can catch you up on them, and yes, I have been doing well, thank you for asking."


    He lowered his fingers, and began checking his nails. Lykourgos sighed. At least some things hadn''t changed in the last few weeks.


    "So, who stands guard?"


    Elikoidi smiled again.


    "Dreamwulf. You''ve struck gold with him. He says you wish to make him a member of your retinue?"


    Lykourgos nodded once.


    "If I may make a suggestion?" He didn''t wait for permission. "Your Personal Champion. Perhaps, once all is said and done, he may even earn the position Royal Companion. He''s the one who carried you back, and he''s been stood outside your door, billhook in hand, ever since."


    Lykourgos looked to the door again. Impressive fortitude, though by itself nothing overly special. Elikoidi rolled his eyes, and Lykourgos flushed red. Of course, out of everyone in the keep, he was in a room with the one person who could pretty much read his mind.


    "Apologies, but do go on."


    "As you say, your Princeliness." The tone was teasing, though in a way that would surely have come across as antagonistic to anyone observing. After all, after spending the greater part of a decade together there was little they could say to the other without the other knowing the true meaning behind the words.


    "Before that moment, I''d watched him spar with a dozen Men-at-Arms, a few Sergeants and Lieutenants amongst them. He knocked them all onto their arses, longest duel lasted a couple of minutes. He was a damn sight. Saw him with his shirt off for a few as well, when he started to get a sweat on."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow.


    "I thought you weren''t into that kind of stuff."


    Elikoidi daintily raised a hand to his chest, and made an undignified sound.


    "Oh honey, I thought you knew better than this. Just because I don''t have any interests in relationships or sex doesn''t mean I can''t appreciate a damn good sight. Especially when that sight has the same scars I do!"


    Lykourgos laughed at the teasing tone of his friend, in some ways glad he was comfortable enough in his lack of attraction to openly admire others. On the other hand...


    "I suppose you''re glad he couldn''t see you, save you from the shame of being caught?"


    "Hah, as if I still feel shame! Anyways, after he made his martial superiority known despite his handicaps, he didn''t gloat or boast, simply talked with the men he''d fought and a few others and gave them pointers and advice. Lemme tell you, he didn''t pay for a single drink that night."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "Now that is quite impressive."


    His friend chuckled.


    "Hang on, it gets better from here. He carried on doing this for a few days, and every day his crowd grows bigger, right? So, at some point a few Knights catch wind of this. A few Hedge Knights, some in the Order of the Violet, come to see him and his crowd. Actually, at this point the crowd had just as many tavern-girls in it as soldiers, and I don''t think they were looking for the sort of tips he was giving the Men-at-Arms."


    Lykourgos laughed.


    "How crude of you. One would think you''ve become uncouth."


    Elikoidi said nothing, rolling his eyes again in an attempt to appear annoyed, though this was undercut by the smile that remained on his face.


    "Anyways, so this one Knight challenges him to a duel. Full on duel, first blood and all that. Dreamwulf was definitely hesitant, but once the young fool made the duel a point of honour, he agreed. So, they stand at opposite ends of a hastily formed circle, and this Knight, in full plate armour and armed with both a Kiteshield and a Greatsword, stands to fight against this blind, unarmoured, shirtless man, armed with nothing but a common billhook. You know what happens next?"


    Lykourgos shook his head, admittedly quite enraptured by the story.


    "Before the duel even begins, Dreamwulf turns around and makes a statement that "This will be an example of the benefits of the billhook when facing a heavily armoured opponent.", which of course annoys the young Knight, who charges at him. Dreamwulf may look quite bulky, but he''s deceptively agile as well. Not necessarily fast, but definitely agile. Every sword stroke was parried or dodged; every attempted feint was turned aside. In the end he was able to get his hook around the head of the shield and ripped it from the Knights grasp, before he kicked it away. They then fought for some time, and credit where it is due, the Knight gave him a better fight than any of the Armsmen had.


    Eventually Dreamwulf knocked him across the head with the same hook that tore away the shield. The Knight was on the floor, and Dreamwulf says to listen closely to the Men-at-Arms around him. He makes a point of showing the curve and point of the billhook, and demonstrates its purpose. Says that the point is perfect for wedging between the armour plates of an opponent such as this, and as this young Knight nearly pisses himself when Dreamwulf turns around. Dreamwulf gently digs beneath a gap around the knee joint and digs just enough to draw blood. Says to everyone that, obviously in a real battle you''d dig a lot harder, then drags the Knight to his feet and pats him on the back. I was genuinely quite impressed. And what''s more, whenever he spoke, the men actually watched and listened. They weren''t just mindlessly watching a fight; they were actually trying to learn."


    "And you know this how?"


    Elikoidi gave him a deadpan stare.


    "Because I''ve made a very successful career out of reading people. A career that has saved you more than once, might I add."


    This time it was Lykourgos who rolled his eyes.


    "Is this about that time in Seastream? Because if it is, then I''ve already told you-"


    "That you had it under control, yes. Remind me, what stage of your plan was ''Get captured as an intended sacrifice by a cult of the Silverian Church?''"


    Lykourgos looked away sheepishly, and Elikoidi cupped a hand around his left ear.


    "Sorry, what was that? I can''t hear you."


    "None of them... can we not talk about that? It wasn''t exactly fun for me either. Let''s get back on topic. From what you''ve said Dreamwulf seems to be quite capable. I''d be interested to test myself against him at some point, though make a note of those who listen to him and, as you say actually listen. See if we can''t encourage their willingness to learn, those sorts of men make for good Sergeants."


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    Elikoidi nodded.


    "Well, you''re not getting out of bed anytime soon, so I''ll have food brought up to you for when I return. Drink some of the tea, make sure you wake Ilias for some as well. I''ll bring in the other members you''ve spoken of taking on as well as Romanos, see if we can''t get an impromptu ''Inner Council'' meeting going."


    "You know, I could go to the Inner Council chambers."


    Elikoidi''s face screwed up, the blackened patches of almost scaly skin from his bout with the Black Grave peeling back in discontent.


    "Absolutely not. You are staying in bed for the rest of the day to recover. I''ll bring the others to you."


    Lykourgos sighed as he left.


    "Mother hen."


    "I heard that Lykourgos!"


    A voice echoed back through the hall.


    "No, don''t go in yet. I''ll bring the others down, then one of your new sparring partners will relieve you."


    Ah, he must be speaking to Dreamwulf. If he were made Royal Companion at some point it wouldn''t exactly be the first time a commoner held the position, nor even would he be the first blind man to hold it. He would, however, be the first blind commoner in so high an office. With that thought ringing through his head, he fell back to sleep.


    <hr>


    When he next awoke Ilias was awake beside him. The tea must have gone cold some time ago, and Dreamwulf was now seated in another chair opposite his bed, slumped down and eyes drooping. His billhook was hooked through the arms of the chair, keeping him from falling forwards, his head leaning on Nasos'' shoulder, providing further support. It the Presbyter had any qualms with this seating arrangement he didn''t show them.


    "I told you to take a retinue."


    The voice of Romanos was unmistakable, as was the tone of worried anger behind it. The prince shuffled himself in his bed to face his old friend.


    "I stand by my decision, flawed as it may have been. More people means more time. I hardly made it in time as it was, and any party with me as I left would have got me found as I returned."


    The word ''fled'' died on his lips, swiftly replaced by ''returned''. If any of his companions caught wind of his slip, none were discourteous enough to point it out. I am not fleeing. I am taking the logical course of action.


    Romanos gave an exasperated sigh.


    "So you say, my Prince. I understand that it may have been the best course of action, I only wish that there were better courses to take."


    "As do I. Still, there is nothing more to say on this subject, save this."


    He pointed at Dreamwulf.


    "I name you my Personal Champion."


    The Oblate snapped awake, jolting upright and immediately winding himself on his own billhook haft that lay across him. Nasos and Ilias both gave good natured, half hidden chuckles, whilst Elikoidi chortled openly, snorting and laughing until Dreamwulf composed himself.


    "My Prince, I-, well I... I am ''onoured beyond belief. Are you abs''lutely sure? I don''t mean no disrespect, nor to second guess you, but I''m... you know..."


    "Blind? Yes, I have noticed. Elikoidi has informed me at some length of your prowess with that billhook, amongst other things."


    He looked at Elikoidi, expecting him to have the decency to look embarrassed. Alas, it was an effort in futility. All he got in return was a cocked smile and a raised eyebrow.


    "But that is enough for now. We will speak no more on the matter. Ser Romanos, see that he is given his mark of status. We have a war to plan."


    Nasos spoke up.


    "Your Grace, if I may, you should be resting. I mean no disrespect, but you came here half-dead, and there was more than one bone I had to set. There is no shame in taking a few days to rest."


    He shook his head.


    "Impossible. The realm will not wait for me. The first rule of a siege is that any party that remains idle from the onset of the siege has already lost. So too it is with claimants and succession crises. If I fail to act in the first few days, perhaps weeks at the most, I will have already lost the support of any still declared for me in the south."


    Nasos made to respond, but Lykourgos cut him off. He wants me and the others to be safe, that''s all. Lykourgos ignored the voice in his head. He didn''t want to cut off the young Presbyter and apparent healer, but he couldn''t afford to bandy words on a non-issue. The Kingdom would not wait for him. The war would not wait for him.


    "Elikoidi has made me aware of a few skirmishes in the south. Would you care to elaborate on them?"


    There was a noise at the door. Three knocks, then a pause. Four more.


    Elikoidi rose.


    "That''ll be for me. Won''t be too long, I know you couldn''t bear to be without my presence any longer than necessary darlings. Don''t stop on my account."


    Romanos grit his teeth at the catch-all nickname the prince''s other friend liked to give everyone around him. He sighed and unclenched his jaw.


    "The skirmishes. There haven''t been any ''true'' skirmishes yet, only a few riots between opposing groups of lowborns and the occasional duels between rival Knights within their Chapter-Keeps. The major exception are the holds of Carthos and Ousdaal. The local Chaptermasters penned a joint plan and sent it north to us, instead of sending men. They said that by the time they would receive a response they would have already set their plan in motion."


    Dreamwulf nodded slowly, a grimace on his tired face. It seemed as though he may have had some light shed on this already, though Ilias and Nasos clearly had not had any light shed on this issue at all. Romanos took a deep breath; whatever he was about to say clearly did not sit well with him or Dreamwulf.


    "They say that they have prepared their holds for a siege. There aren''t many men in either of them, since they''re only small, local keeps, but enough that the enemy would be forced to divert forces south. The youngest of their numbers want to sally forth with all of their combined strength, but the elder Knights know that they will serve you more effectively holed up, drawing away the enemy. So, the two parties compromised. They struck a few Rose patrols, burned their banners and rode back almost unscathed, save an unlucky few. Now, even as we speak, they are barring themselves in, preparing to give everything to help us win."


    Lykourgos licked his lips, finding his mouth to be far too dry. Nasos handed him a cup of nettle-tea, still hot.


    "Here. The old pot was cold so I brought some more."


    The Prince nodded his thanks, and drank greedily from the cup. There was a moment of silence that stretched longer than he was comfortable with as the others watched him drink. Well, most of them watched him anyway. He finished with a gulp and wiped his mouth into a provided handkerchief.


    "Thank you. I see now why you looked unhappy, Ser. How many men are preparing to lay down their lives to draw my sister''s gaze away?"


    "Five-hundred, a mix of Knights, Squires and other menials who will no doubt be being trained in rudimentary swordplay in the coming days. Some three-hundred and fifty at Ousdaal, and a smaller group of one-fifty in Carthos."


    "If we are able to win quickly we might be able to save them, though the risk of them simply storming the walls makes that admittedly unlikely. Tell me of our own forces, discounting those five-hundred."


    Romanos nodded, and Ilias handed the prince a paper scroll with the information laid out. He read it whilst Romanos recited the figures out loud.


    "As you wish. Currently marshalled are some two-thousand Knights, mostly of the Order of the Violet, some five-thousand Armsmen, a thousand of which are trained in the operation of siege equipment and field-artillery pieces, and another five-thousand levies, mostly volunteers looking for pay, though a great many joined out of a personal motivation to see you on the throne. They remember how you helped them in the past, and have not forgotten to aid you now."


    Lykourgos swallowed hard, the memory of those people he had left behind in Anaria seeping back to the surface of his mind. He sighed to clear his head, and turned to look back at Romanos.


    "And my sister?"


    "Well-"


    "I believe I am better equipped to answer that question, if it please you."


    Elikoidi posed dramatically against the doorway, and the prince rolled his eyes.


    "Your sister, as our gallant friend has informed me, has swayed some fifteen-hundred equally gallant Knights to her side, as well as two-thousand odd Armsmen and fourteen-thousand levies. Oh, and she''s hired a few Sellsword Bands as well; both the Band of the Wren and Symon''s Starlings signed contracts with her a little over a week ago, while you were still in the capital I believe. Rather brazen of her, but I''d be lying if I said I didn''t respect that particular brand of courage somewhat. That would add another four-thousand to her side, battle-hardened men as well."


    The Prince watched as Ilias made to speak, but was cut off by both Romanos and Dreamwulf.


    "Those cutthroats are no match for Knightly steel!"


    "The boys''ll make ribbons of ''em, you watch!"


    Romanos'' face went wide for a moment, then he turned to a smirking Elikoidi.


    "Hold on, that makes up the entire remaining military might of Teleytaios. Are you telling me that Prince Rhema has gathered no supporters?"


    The smirk on Elikoidi''s face turned into a grin, as he was want to do when he knew something Romanos didn''t.


    "I was wondering when you''d catch on to that, dearest Knight. I think you''ll be surprised to know that your siblings-" he turned to Lykourgos, a finger pointed forwards, "Have put aside their differences. Princess Roma has relinquished her own claim to the throne in this conflict, and has personally crowned your brother King."


    The room fell silent, the political gravity of the moment not lost even on the lowborns in the room.


    "You have my sympathies, my friend."


    Ser Romanos leaned forwards, and laid a hand on the prince''s shoulder.


    "I know you have always cared for your brother, but he is mad. There was never any knowing what he would do."


    Lykourgos sighed, the lump in his throat slowly being replaced by a strange sense of apathy.


    "It doesn''t matter. He was always the wildcard in the race for the throne."


    Suddenly he heard the chirping of a bird, and his vision flashed white. He saw the briefest, tiniest glimpse of a winged stag, with a robin atop its shoulder. Even as the vision flashed before his mind, he heard his brother''s voice ring clear in his head.


    "The next time we meet, it may not seem like I want you to help me."


    He lurched forwards in bed, stopped by the much smaller Ilias, as Nasos sprang up and righted him, pressing another cup into his hands. Lykourgos drank, and willed the room to stop spinning. He held up a single finger in the universal sign for "Wait.", then turned to Elikoidi.


    "Actually, I think in this matter I may know something you don''t."


    His friend''s eyes narrowed, thin eyebrows furrowing in annoyance. Seeing Elikoidi''s reaction brought a smile to the prince''s face.


    "Well? Don''t keep me waiting."


    There was a demanding edge to his voice, and Lykourgos could hear the tapping of his foot against the floor.


    "You really are one of the best Masters of Silver the realm could have asked for, you know that? Whenever you don''t know something you''re desperate to find it out. However, in this matter I''m afraid I need to keep my lips sealed. I mean no disrespect towards your ability to do your job, nor to any of the rest of you for insinuating disloyalty, but I have reason to believe there are other machinations being executed in our favour as we speak, and I do not wish to see any potential actions thwarted by my own indiscretion. I suggest we turn back to the matter we were discussing prior to this. Ilias, I believe you wanted to say something?"


    The young cupbearer seemed to shrink under the attention being given to him, save for Elikoidi who shot the prince his signature "We''re talking about this later" glare. The cupbearer started perking up somewhat when the Squire Eros smiled and nodded at him.


    Ah, he must have been the sentry whilst Dreamwulf was in here. Strange, I never noticed him enter the room. He must have come in when Elikoidi received his news.


    "Whilst I mean not to question our position, I am slightly worried by the disparity between our army- begging my pardon, your army, and your sister''s army. If we have some twelve-thousand men, and her Highness has over twenty-thousand, can we win this?"


    Romanos nodded, answering for the prince.


    "Yes. Whilst it is true that the forces of Princess Roma outnumber us by some margin, the majority of our forces consist of trained, professional career soldiers. By contrast, though she has many more men, only some three and a half-thousand are professionals. I refuse to count Sellsword rabble among the professional soldiery, as even if they are more competent than peasant levies, it is not by a wide margin. Aside from that they lack men skilled in the building and use of siege equipment and large field artillery. Even if they did, their musters began several days after our own, and they currently control twice the territory we do, and as such it will take them far longer to organise. They also need to divert forces south to the sieges of Ousdaal and Carthos, at least one and a half-thousand in total if they hold to conventional wisdom, and far more if they intend to storm the walls." Romanos smiled kindly at the young Cupbearer. "When you begin stacking the odds like that it doesn''t sound so bad, does it?"


    Ilias nodded in response, a somewhat weak, though still genuine, smile appearing on his own face.


    "No, I suppose not."


    <hr>


    All things considered Lykourgos was glad to have awoken when he did, for only a few hours later, with much of the topics of conversation concluded, another messenger came for Elikoidi. When he walked back in the room, he had a grim smile on his face that reminded the prince uncomfortably of his brother, the dead skin pulling taut as he did so; the everlasting gift that the black grave had given him. He didn''t wait for anyone to ask about the news.


    "Four-thousand levies have been spotted marching towards the Einarbrycge, by all accounts they''ve set their eyes on a spot some twenty miles from the bridge to set up camp. Symon''s Starlings march with them in full strength, making for around six-thousand men in total. According to the aide-de-camp of one Marshal Harran, who leads them north, they have orders to fortify the southern end of the bridge and await reinforcements. They will camp for a day or two to gather supplies and scout ahead, then complete their mission."


    Lykourgos gulped as all eyes went to him. He was no green-boy, after all, it was him who defeated the last remnants of the old nobility at Haestinghen, but this decision seemed to have so much more weight behind it. Back then he was fighting for his father, but now these men would be dying for him. He let out a breath he didn''t know he had been holding in.


    "Ready the men and get me ready to move out. We''ll steal a night''s march on them and take them by surprise come the dawn."


    "A night march? Are you sure it''s a good idea?"


    "Normally no, after all, there''s no better way to lose half your army than to have a few companies blunder into each other in the dark and begin fighting. However, if this camp truly is only twenty miles from the Einarbrycge, I see little danger in so short a march. Fifteen miles south tonight, then a few hours rest till the morning. Before the sun comes up, we attack. If Marshal Harran is as incompetent as his brazen camp positioning would suggest, this should even our numbers out somewhat."


    Romanos nodded grimly, swallowing hard as well. Lykourgos looked at him in expectance, waiting for him to speak.


    "My Prince, I ask only that you think a moment if this is truly what you wish. If you swear your sword to your brother now, you will live on, potentially keeping your previous position as Lord-Protector of the Northern Lands, but once we cross that river there is no going back. I do not tell you to give in, only to pause and think on the risks involved."


    He closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. Romanos was right, in a way. If he went back now, tail tucked beneath his legs, he would likely be allowed to live. But for how long? He slowly shook his head. Here was his first challenge, and he would not falter here. Here he would triumph or here he would die.


    "We march south immediately. If they want the crown that badly, the least they can do is fight me for it."


    Romanos let out another sigh of his own, and slapped his fist into his breastplate.


    "So it shall be. I will ready the men."

 Lykourgos V: The Road to War

    <u>Lykourgos V: The Road to War


    </u>


    <u>The Twenty-Fourth Day of the Ninth Moon, 872AD</u>


    <u>Southern Einar, Central Teleytaios, Klironomea</u>


    Usually, night marches are difficult. Entire companies can lose sight of those in front of them in the black of night, leading hundreds of men miles off course. Some stories from the prince''s childhood told of entire armies blundering straight into an enemy force, where free-for-alls dominated the coming hours and no man was sure if he had just stabbed an enemy or his brother. Last night''s march, thank all the Angels, seemed to be an exception to the rule. Careful planning, clear routes, and stringent safety measures, largely thanks to the Lieutenants-at-Arms being exceedingly dutiful in maintaining order, meant that come the end of the march there had been no major incidents.


    Camp had been set less than five miles from the enemy so that the men might snatch a few hours of rest, tents were set in neat rows and columns with a firepit for every four tents, waiting to be lit in the morning. By his side was Dreamwulf, who still had yet to sleep. Lykourgos, Nasos, Ilias and Eros had all asked him to stay behind and rest, but the newly assigned bodyguard had been resolute in his refusal.


    "I''ve been named the prince''s Personal Champion. It''s my duty t'' remain at his side throughout all battles. Besides-" he continued, gesturing to a still-injured Lykourgos, "with how your hand is, I don''t reckon we''ll be in for much of the fightin''."


    Lykourgos had grinned despite himself. Here was a man of duty.


    One thing that had limited the potential for a disaster was that the army had been split in twain; Ser Romanos had departed from the main column with almost every mounted combatant falling under his command, and they were now headed some twenty to thirty miles west to a rather insignificant little village called Suthenfordeinar. He had instructions to pivot south at daybreak, since he claimed he could reach the village by sunrise, and smash into the flank of the levies in the late morning. Assuming the intelligence Elikoidi provided was correct, and he hadn''t given the prince reason to doubt him thus far, Marshal Harran would doubtless prove a mediocre commander at best. He would have learned the aspects of command and tactics in theory, but putting them into practice? That was something else entirely, as Lykourgos learned in the Twilight Rebellion, so named for it being the last time the high nobility would be able to ride in force against the crown.


    Apparently, the young Marshal hadn''t seen the need for a full command staff either, relying on an extremely small circle of nobles and knights to act as his lieutenants, instead of actual trained officers.


    He smiled at that thought. In other circumstances this would be a learning experience for the young commander, but Lykourgos highly doubted he would be leaving the field to ruminate on his mistakes.


    "Your Grace!"


    The voice of his young cupbearer cut through the stillness of the camp. The only activity aside from that of his cupbearer were the Lieutenants-at-Arms eating with the prince in the officers'' mess-tent, making polite chatter and generally shrugging off their drowsiness. Those amongst the twelve gathered quickly quelled their noise at the arrival of the newcomer, as their prince''s voice rose above their own.


    "Ilias! I see you''ve decided to join me at last!"


    The cupbearer''s face was beet-red. He''d looked so peaceful sleeping that the prince was loathe to wake him that morning... actually he just wanted to embarrass him a little at mess, but he didn''t need to know that.


    "I- Apologies your Grace. I fear I am not yet used to marching so far in such a short time. I shall endeavour to correct this flaw in the future."


    His voice became composed and cold, to an almost unsettling degree. The prince frowned. He hadn''t intended to actually hurt the boy''s feelings. He nodded once at the boy, smiling slightly to hopefully convey his intended playfulness. His cupbearer moved to sit beside him when the prince patted the bench and moved up, spearing a choice piece of ham on his dirk and grabbing a fresh roll for the young servant before depositing them on a plate in front of the lad.


    "Eat up, come on. We''ve got a long day ahead of us and you could do with a few more hot meals. The rolls are fresh, and damn good."


    The cupbearer nodded and dug in, breaking his fast, as the prince cut open another roll and spread butter throughout. It melted almost immediately and smelled heavenly. He broke from his actions when he heard the noise of contentment from his left, and saw the cupbearer frozen mid-bite, before a lazy grin appeared while he scarfed down the rest. Lykourgos placed the second roll on his plate with a conspiratorial wink and a grin, for which he received a happy smile. I think he accepts my apology for embarrassing him.


    The prince picked up a plum from the plate in front of him and dug in, enjoying the satisfying taste of the fresh fruit, letting the juice run down his chin before wiping it away. The men outside would not be enjoying such luxuries, though he supposed that very few of them would be awake this early, save the sentries and scouts. It was somewhere between the fifth and sixth hour of daybreak at the moment, and the men would be roused at the sixth. They''d only had a few scant hours of sleep, which may hamper their performance somewhat, but with any luck a full breakfast and morning preparations would wake them up. After all, nothing quite made one alert like the prospect of heading off to battle.


    Lykourgos made conversation with the men around him as Ilias ate, and listened in to other men''s conversations when he wasn''t.


    "The new provisioning system seems to be going well, your grace."


    Lykourgos nodded. Even if they''d only been on the march for a day, the men had still needed to eat in the weeks prior as they drilled at Aenirhen, and with summer behind them there were few who wished to see twelve-thousand men gorge themselves on the town''s winter stockpiles.


    "Indeed. My compliments to you Lieutenant Isen for the idea. The men may have grumbled at the increase in their kit''s weight, but I don''t think any of them will be complaining when they''re hungry and can''t find enough to forage."


    Another Lieutenant, older and more experienced, weighed in.


    "Aye, and its stops the green boys from seeing the veterans foraging and thinking they know how to do it. If I had a crow for each man I watched go paralysed eating what he thought was cow parsley, well, I wouldn''t need to be in the army anymore."


    Lykourgos and the younger Lieutenant laughed at the elder''s joke, and the prince turned himself back to his cupbearer.


    "So, how has everyone been keeping since I left for Anaria?"


    Ilias swallowed his food, and turned to look at the prince.


    "Your retinue, your grace? We''ve been keeping fine enough, Elikoidi was odd though."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "Oh, how so?"


    "Well, he kept asking me random questions about people in the company we travelled with to the Horndaal. Their names, ages, professions, skills and the like. I guess he must have been pleased with me, cause he ruffled my hair with his gloved hand and walked off."


    "He was testing you."


    Ilias blinked.


    "What?"


    The prince nodded once, to confirm his own statement.


    "Elikoidi wanted to see if you could be trusted, and more importantly, if you had the right skills to be permanently given the role of my cupbearer. Whether or not he thought you were good enough I would''ve kept you on anyway, but you''ve impressed the most dangerous man on our side as well, so good job!"


    Ilias was a whirlwind of thought, that much was clear just from how his facial expression kept shifting and changing.


    "I... I''ve done well enough to stay in your employ?"


    The prince smiled and nodded.


    "Definitely. Like it or not, you''re stuck with us now."


    Ilias smiled at that, and the two of them returned to comfortable silence. Lykourgos watched, bemused, as Ilias somehow managed to snag an entire block of cheese and devoured it all.


    "I suppose I had better ask if there was anything you needed to tell me, you know, any ravens find their way here, messengers on horseback, the like?"


    The boy shook his head as he finished eating, and moved to wash his hands in a washbasin.


    "So, there was nothing urgent you needed to tell me, Ilias?"


    The boy shook his head.


    "No, your Grace. Only a message from an Armsmen that he believes in you, but nothing official."


    There was a small spark of warmth in his words, and the prince continued smiling.


    "Well, let''s hope we do right by him, hmm?"


    There was a mischievous glint in Ilias'' eye.


    "I mean, I guess if you get lucky you could, but I think he''d have been happier if you offered him a raise."


    The prince grinned at him and ruffled his hair, much to the boy''s chagrin, but he smiled happily nonetheless.


    <hr>


    As the prince left the tent leaving his Lieutenants to finish their meals, he could already see the odd man awake, a few tending to the now burning cookfires and frying strips of bacon for their comrades. As this went on a few men poked their heads out of the ends of their tents, sniffing the air like dogs before heading to the latrine pits to relieve themselves. Some were sharpening billhooks and swords, others checking bowstrings and quivers. There was even a crew of artillerists putting the pieces of a ballista together to be drawn by the horses to the chosen battlefield. As he passed men bowed or hammered fists to their chests, some just nodding deferentially. There was to be a battle today, and the men knew it well.


    "Have you ever known battle before, Ilias?"


    The boy shook his head.


    "No, your Grace."


    "Have you ever seen a man die?"


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    There was silence between them as they continued walking around the camp for several minutes, telling the prince all he needed to know. When the cupbearer spoke up again, there was a hint of something in his voice that the prince wasn''t well versed enough in his emotions to identify.


    "... not to blade or bow, your Grace."


    The words cold and hunger went unspoken, but the prince knew them all the same. Ilias was so good at holding himself with composure befitting his status that it was easy to forget that he had been homeless for most of his life. Lykourgos rounded on Ilias, and knelt so they were at the same height. He pulled a dagger in its scabbard from his belt, and pressed the leather-covered blade into the boy''s hands.


    "I''m giving you this for self-defence. You might not know how to use it, but if you''re in a tight spot and need to flee, you''ll at least have something."


    The cupbearer stared at him intently, knowing that he wasn''t finished.


    "I do not expect this battle to go ill for us, not in the slightest. Every advantage is on our side."


    Ilias nodded unsurely, waiting for Lykourgos to continue.


    "But..."


    "But there is little order to these things, no matter how much it may look otherwise. All it takes is a stray arrow, a stumbling horse, a panicked run, and with no warning I could be gone. If things go ill, find Dreamwulf and stick with him, make your way to Aenirhen. You should be safe there, at least long enough to get into the service of my brother."


    Ilias blinked a few times.


    "King Rhema? Why would he-"


    "Trust me, I know my brother. Stick in a group with Dreamwulf, Nasos, and the rest of my retainers, and Rhema will take you in. I can''t promise you''ll find him pleasant all the time, but I know he still has a good heart. You''ll be mostly safe and out of the way so long as he sits the throne."


    "You talk as though you expect to die."


    The prince stopped and took a deep breath. Ilias was right. Be it well-preparedness or paranoia, he was being pessimistic whatever the cause.


    "I do not expect to die. Not for a long time yet. Nevertheless, there needs to be plans in place should I fall. You''ll be safe with a plan in place."


    Lykourgos stood, moving to continue walking around the camp through the early hours of the day. The skies were covered in light-grey clouds, the sun barely peeking through. It seemed that there would be some rain today, though hopefully nothing like the storms earlier that month. He shuddered as his mind went back to the downpour, as if to shake off the dampness he felt just thinking of the seemingly endless rains. He made it some ten paces from where he had been stood, before he realised his cupbearer wasn''t by his side. He looked behind him, only to find that Ilias had yet to move from where he was stood, a look of confusion and bitterness on his face.


    "Ilias?"


    "Why? Why do you care what becomes of me? I''m your cupbearer, your servant. Why should you care what happens to me?"


    Lykourgos turned back around, and stared. Stood before him was a young boy, draped in forest green robes far too big for him and a golden bracelet acting as a tiny crown atop his head. In his hands he held a shortsword, though with how small he was it may as well have been a broadsword. The boy gave him a toothy grin, dropped the sword, and threw open his arms for a hug.


    Then Lykourgos blinked and he was back in the military camp, standing in front of his cupbearer.


    He forced down the lump in his throat and turned back around.


    "You remind me of someone important to me."


    He couldn''t say more than that, no matter how hard he tried. He wasn''t sure why he was getting so emotional, stress perhaps? Or maybe, just maybe, it''s because I''m about to go to war with my younger brother. With the only family that matters to me.


    Maybe his brother was attempting to aid him, as he had alluded to in Anaria. Maybe this was simply a joke, though whether he was the build-up or the punchline he wasn''t sure. Maybe his brother had simply fallen back into madness, and was being puppeteered by their sister.


    Whatever the cause, none of it mattered right now.


    He closed his eyes for a moment to clear his head, but all he could see was open arms, and green robes.


    It had been one hell of an exhausting morning, and they hadn''t even left for the battle yet.


    Strange, he thought to himself as he swiped a padded sleeve across his eyes, I don''t recall shedding tears.


    <hr>


    By the time they reached the Roses'' Camp it was still morning, almost at the tenth hour of day. They had made good time thanks to the Coastroad making up most of their journey, and with well-trained and motivated men they were in tactically advantageous positions in front of the camp. When he had been told that the hill cresting the camp didn''t even have pickets or sentries on, he had suspected a trap. It wasn''t until he, himself, was stood atop the crescent shaped hill that he realised the scouts were right; more than there being no sentries atop the hill, somehow Marshal Harran and his men were encamped on possibly the single worst piece of terrain for miles, save only the river Einar itself.


    The camp was situated on the plains beneath the crescent shaped hill that the prince lay upon, perhaps a few-hundred metres away from the hill. Tents and temporary structures littered the surrounding area, the only ordered area being what must have been the noble quarter at the rear, with its gaudy, colourful tents, and proud banners.


    Directly to the left of the sprawling camp was a much more drab, orderly, and professional looking encampment atop a small hill, perhaps twenty or thirty metres tall with a medium incline. Surrounding the small camp there was a small palisade of sharpened stakes, and a rudimentary gate.


    "Found the Starling''s camp your grace?"


    Dreamwulf''s voice was hushed as they lay on their stomachs in the grass.


    "Yes, and they''re still competent. Seems Symon''s son might be worthy of his father after all."


    "I didn''t know Sellsword Companies were inherited, yer Grace. Always figured they picked the strongest to lead ''em."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Depends on the company. Even so, the Starlings did pick Symons''s son to lead them. By itself that speaks either to loyalty or competence."


    "Or both."


    Lykourgos grit his teeth. He really hoped it wasn''t that.


    "Yes, Dreamwulf. Or both."


    There was a mild silence only broken by the gentle sounds of nature, whilst Dreamwulf seemed to be racking his mind for something.


    "What... what is the name of Symon''s son, your Grace?"


    "Symon."


    Dreamwulf blinked.


    "So... Symon Symondson?"


    Lykourgos nodded, and Dreamwulf shook his head.


    "Angels above, the pride of some people."


    "Well, we''ll be facing off against him soon enough, so let us hope that he''s not quite the man his father was."


    The bodyguard shook his head again.


    "This is a proper strange situation."


    Lykourgos tilted his head to one side.


    "How so?"


    Dreamwulf took a deep breath, and let out a slow sigh.


    "Okay, so lemme know if I''m wrong here. The enemy is less a mile away from our army and blocked from vision by nought but a crescent hill. Despite the noise we must have made on the road, no one seems to have put out even the barest of early warning systems, and now you, the head of our army, are freely overlooking the enemy with only a blind man as a companion as they go about a very late morning routine."


    The prince nodded.


    "I think that about covers it, yes."


    He heard Dreamwulf let out a long exhale, before muttering into his hand.


    "Fucking hell, didn''t I use to be a farmer?"


    "And an Oblate."


    Dreamwulf turned to look at him with a deadpan expression, his dull eyes somehow conveying both exasperation and mirth despite not functioning. The prince watched as he shook his head in amusement and changed the subject.


    "Right, how d''you wanna do this then?"


    The prince pressed a hand to his chin and thought.


    "If we had our cavalry with us I''d send them in en masse to route the enemy before they could mount a defence, however seeing as I was expecting an actual battle I sent them the long way around to flank this force. As it stands, I want every man holding a bow to come to the hilltop, Longbowmen by regiment and others as a screening force. See if we can pull up some of the light artillery too, we might be able to start making holes in the palisade around the Starling camp while we''re at it. The more of them we can kill in our opening volleys the better, since we''ll be catching them unarmed and unarmoured. Ser Romanos should be here in a few hours, give or take, so they can deal with any stragglers if they''re not here on time for the actual battle."


    "Well, that makes sense enough to me, not that it needs to. Come on then, let''s get back to the column."


    Lykourgos held up a hand, before stopping Dreamwulf verbally instead.


    "Hold on, I see something. The Starling''s camp..."


    "What is it?"


    There were a small number of men overlooking the palisade, likely on raised platforms to act as sentries.


    "It seems that the Starlings heard us this morning. Why do they not tell their allies of a suspected attack?"


    "Probably did. But Symon is a lowborn and Marshal Harran is not. That means Symon must be wrong, according to the nobles."


    There was a beat before Dreamwulf realised what he had said, face reddening.


    "No ''ffence intended, yer Grace. Only meant the Roses."


    Lykourgos, for his part, was trying not to laugh at the bodyguard''s faux-pas, a hand covering his own mouth to prevent any laughter from alerting anyone in the camps of their location. When he did speak his words were warm with mirth.


    "Okay, okay, let''s make our way back now. There''s plenty to be sorted out with the Lieutenants before the battle begins and if we''re quick we can have the battle started before we even get halfway through the tenth hour."


    <hr>


    Some of the men were readying themselves by praying. Most were silent. Some, mostly the veterans who''d seen battle before, relieved themselves one last time before the battle. When the last few stragglers fell into place they marched to the top of the crescent hill overlooking the camps, planted their banners, and readied themselves. Lykourgos watched as the various levied bowmen arranged themselves on the slopes in front of the hill, screening the various blocks of Longbowmen-at-Arms whose Lieutenants ordered them to await the prince''s command. Dotted between the blocks of Longbowmen were various light artillery pieces, ranging from genuinely light, such as the scorpions a few of the levies had scrounged up or otherwise built themselves, to ''light'' by Armsmen standards, such as ballista and onagers. It was tempting to order a few trebuchets atop the hill, just for show, but even if they would have helped in this battle, there was no way to bring them up the hill pre-built, and constructing them atop the hill would take so long that the battle would be over well before they were finished.


    Lykourgos cleared his voice as the last of his men marched into position, hearing warning bells from the camps below. Too slow, far too slow. It''ll take you too long to get your men organised and armed. It''d take your knights a full hour to get into their armour alone. Such is the folly of pride, I suppose.


    Lykourgos raised his left hand high in the air, open palmed, and began to shout his orders.


    "Nock!"


    As one, two-thousand longbowmen slotted their arrows, each of them a deadly bodkin head. It rendered anything other than heavy plate useless, to say nothing of the padded jerkins and boiled leather the dull masses would be lucky to wear. Poor bastards.


    "Draw!"


    The sounds of tensing strings filled his ears, and he waited for the last of the noise to die down before clenching his raised hand into a fist and jerking it downwards.


    "LOOSE!"


    The twanging of bowstrings and whistling of the arrows seemed to last a lifetime, despite no arrow leaving a bow less than a few seconds after the first took flight.


    Before the arrows had even touched the ground he ordered them to nock, draw and loose again. And then again. And again. By the fifth he didn''t need to order the men to nock and loose; now knowing the speed at which the men could discharge their arrows and trusting the Lieutenants to maintain orderly firing rates he simply nodded towards the nearest of them and ordered him to continue loosing into the panicked enemy camp.


    A few moments later the much more powerful twanging of the ballistae were heard, their bolts tearing straight through tents a scant few hundred metres away, shredding leather and splintering wood.


    Panicked figures could be seen running between tents in the distance, and some men mounted the few horses in their makeshift stables to flee. Most of the horses reared or stumbled throwing their riders, though a few would certainly leave the field.


    Not that it would matter.


    The squall lasted for half an hour, before Lykourgos raised his hand in the air. Without speaking a single word, the men loosed their last shots before coming still. The Roses camp was in complete disarray, with wounded men crying out for help, for mercy, for death, for the Angels, their mothers, their lives, anything that may sooth them. Towards the rear Lykourgos could just make out the visage of a man who must have been Marshal Harran, or at least a highborn of some sort, doing his best to organise and arm his battered men. If he''s smart, he''s organising a withdrawal. The prince looked around at the disorganised camp, and the ridge his men stood upon. He looked back at the road they had travelled, completely uncontested.


    "Probably not."


    "What was that, yer Grace?"


    "Nothing, Dreamwulf. Come, let''s get the boys in there."


    "Aye, yer Grace.¡±

 Lore Chapter: The Brythonian Isles and Polaeros

    <u>Seventeenth Day, Forth Month, 870 AD.


    Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.


    Kingdom of Teleytaios.


    Aenirhen.


    The River Keep.</u>


    Dear Lyk,


    I remember those night well too. I remember once when we were eight some courtier mocked you relentlessly for your bastardry, and you were brought to tears by it that night. We made plans to steal away on a Brythonian Leviathan-Ship, do you remember? I wanted nothing more than to hold you and reassure you that we would be fine and happy there, but it turns out we needn''t have bothered with all our planning. Do you remember how red with anger Lord Brathaxe turned when you told him what the courtier had said to you? I do. I also remember how badly Lord Brathaxe beat him on the training ground that day, and the sound of cracking ribs. That man was strict, but I think in truth he was more of a father to the both of us than anyone else ever was.


    Do you remember your eleventh nameday? I barely do; that Tildan vintage we shared was our first true experience drinking. For our punishment Drytos made us go with the serving-boys to take stock of the wines in the cellars the next day, and neither of us could stomach the smell of the stuff in our hungover states for more than a few minutes. I only remember small parts of that night, but I hope they''re the same as you remember. If they''re not then we can compare notes and try and work out exactly what we got up to! It''s almost embarrassing; my tolerance for wines and ales has still barely improved since then, though neither has my tolerance for blood, I have found.


    In other news, I was recently able to sail on one of the Leviathan-Ships, and went whaling with them in the Ouroborisian Sea!


    I could have sworn I saw a man watching us from the rocks as we sailed past Wesvoy, but the strange thing is I looked back a moment later and saw only a seal. I asked one of the men next to me, a large Brythonian man with a seal pelt about his shoulders, but he just laughed and patted me on the back, telling me to keep watching in case it happened again. The funny thing is, I don''t believe he was mocking me.


    Angels above, how could I forget to mention this! Lyk, they''re real! Harridans, I mean! Fascinating, terrifying things, somewhere between the mythical harpy and seabirds! I watched as one with the look of a prion plucked a man who had boarded with me in Anaria clean off the deck in a storm, and as it ascended another harridan resembling a skua began fighting with it mid-air like dogs will over a bone.


    The display horrified me, and I''m not ashamed to admit I had a few nightmares over it, of being dragged screaming into the clouds then plummeting to the cold water, but I''m somewhat disgusted to say that for once my squeamishness was overruled by amazement. Harridans! And if the tales of harridans are real, then what else might be?


    That reminds me of something else. I have heard some word of your own ''project'' recently, but I feel that may be a conversation better had in person.


    I wish you could''ve come on this journey with me, but I understand your reluctance to leave behind your duties. Drytos browbeat that into you well, didn''t he? I miss him still, even though its been two years since he passed. You lost much that year, didn''t you? Your foster-father in Aenirhen, your innocence at Haestinghen and, in some ways, your brother and I after the rebellion. You have apologised a dozen times, but I feel I must say it myself. I forgive you, and I am sorry. The words you said were hurtful, that much is true, but I couldn''t understand how much your brother meant to you, nor did I understand that you hadn''t become emotionless when you took your first lives, but rather that you were still too angry to process it. When I left to go on my travels and you stayed behind to rule I never once considered that I would be leaving you alone to try and make sense of your emotions and grief. I am sorry, and I promise to meet with you soon and truly make amends.


    In the meantime, I have enclosed within the first drafts of the chapters on the Brythonic Isles and Polaeros. Originally I was intending to complete the draft for Owkrestos first, but seeing as I spent a month in the Brythonic Isles, it felt a waste to not spend the time writing of what I saw here.


    Oh Lyk, it will be so good to see you again! I have so much more to tell you of these islands than I could possibly fit in a dozen letters, but I hope that this may tide you over in the meantime.


    <u>The Brythonic Isles:</u>


    The Brythonic Isles can be found to the north-west of the continent of Kliskorios, and consists of five major islands, along with several other outlying islands. The coasts are almost entirely made of jagged rocks and sheer dark-grey cliff faces, with a few stretches of beach covered in pebbles or a light-grey sand. The seas surrounding the islands are almost always either covered in fog or dangerous storms, making travel to and from the islands an extremely difficult venture, and as such I have only recently managed to see this mysterious land for myself.


    The largest island is Brythonia, from which the archipelago gets its name. Located in the centre of the islands it is both the richest and most densely populated, through this is not particularly a feat when looking at their population compared to the mainland of the continent. Within its enigmatic shores are the Greystones, a circle of mysterious, huge grey stones, guarded fiercely by the islanders, as seen in the coming of Jaerl Isangrim and the First Pagan Greathost, who were beaten back from the Greystones and cast lifelessly into the sea. Some scholars have suggested that it acts as a giant calendar, charting the sun''s position in the sky. Given how often these islanders see the sun, you will forgive me if I am hesitant to prescribe to this theory.


    Second greatest of these islands is that of Aurinsay. Situated directly to the west of Brythonia, the people here fiercely resist any attempt to centralise their clans under whomever leads the island, which several have claimed would surely make them an easy target for the Scelopyrene, should ever they attempt another conquest of the islands. I disagree; although I may have only once made the odyssey to these shores, my research has led me to believe that this island may be one of the hardest for any invader to conquer. The Brythonic peoples, no matter their internal quarrels, always unite against an external threat, and far faster than any other peoples that I have seen or made light of through my studies.


    This fact, coupled with the intensified love of freedom held by these islanders and their fanatical, sometimes suicidal lust for its preserved embrace, shall surely make certain their status as the hardest to conquer, as even if an invader wins the war, these men and women shall ensure that they never win the peace.


    The third rock to be found upon this eternally stormy ocean is the island of Hedinskye, which for the last three centuries has been under the control of the Scelopyrene. When the Greathost of Jaerl ?inridi, son of Kveldulf, son of Isangrim, descended upon the island in 936 AD, he broke the force of Barrow-King Artan after slaying him in personal combat and, after Barrow-Chief Hoare, Artan''s heir and leader of Hedinskye, was killed in the melee, he conquered and consolidated the island for his own people.


    Now his descendants have interwoven themselves with the native population so much that they are one and the same, creating a hybrid of their cultures now known as the Hedyn. Owing oaths and allegiance to both the Barrow King of the Brythonic Isles and the Jaerl of the Scelopyrene has caused this island to become a point of much contention in the north, although a major conflict has never broken out, as each side knows that whomever invades the island, the Hedyn will certainly side with the other, leading to each realm attempting to goad the other into committing an act of war upon the island, though so far this has never yielded any effective results. Still, the islands geopolitical position puts it in a very strategic place; if someone were to lord over the Scelopyrene, then they would nominally control Hedinskye as well, which would be a particularly important staging post for influencing the other islands, or of course, directly intervening in their fates.


    Last of the main group of the islands, Seadhg is the second smallest of the five islands overall. Found in the northernmost reaches of the Brythonic isles, it is less a single island and more of an archipelago in and of itself. A microcosm of the islands as a whole, each of the small islands pays heed to the words of their representative, chosen by the heads of the clans of each of the islands of Seadhg. From my studies and brief stay here I have determined that the people are often regarded as ''Shieldmen''. At first I thought that perhaps they had discovered or created a unique defensive innovation, but then I discovered that the islands themselves are the shields; their fractured and rocky nature makes naval passage even more dangerous than the rest of the islands, with narrow passages betraying a watery grave to any who pass through, shielding the northern coasts of Brythonia and Hedinskye.


    Of course, the nesting Harridans watching from the rocks above likely dissuades several would-be voyagers as well. Halfway between a seabird and a harpy, these beasts descend from rocky outcrops and hidden alcoves whenever a damaged ship draws near. If they are hungry enough they may even attempt to attack intact vessels, a not uncommon occurrence given their insatiable appetites.


    Many a ship has been wrecked at sea here, and one need only imagine the face of a sailor clutching to driftwood, believing himself safe as he washes ashore, and seeing a dozen red eyes stare back from the darkness.


    A cruel jest by the Angels.


    Wesvoy is perhaps the strangest of these islands. Lying far to the west of even the relatively remote main archipelago, there is little to gain and plenty to lose in attempting to reach these shores. The islands of Wesvoy are rocky and relatively barren, save what hardy grass, lichen and moss can grow upon the sun-starved rocks. It is said that the men and women of Wesvoy can transform into seals upon entering the waters surrounding their island, and they are met with caution even by their Brythonian brothers.


    There is little to write about of these islands, save that one of the holy places of the northern religions lies in the island chain; the so-called Ouroborisian Tor, as stated by Chronicler Thisis in his book, A Treatise on Religions: Salvation and Savagery, is seen as a place of holy significance by the religions of the Brythonians, Scelopyrene and Skonisnomas, though the Brythonians and Skonisnomas seem to regard this place less as holy, and more unholy, neither race willing to speak of it. Even the Scelopyrene barbarians treat the small rocky outcrop with caution and reverence in mixed parts, though asking them why, I have found, elicits far more violent reactions than those of their Brythonian or Skonisnomas cousins.


    The Ouroborisian Tor itself is just that: a Tor. A small rock rising barely twelve meters out of the sea and only six meters across at its widest, and yet there is something undoubtedly odd about that place.


    I have seen it with my own eyes, and what''s more, I was even able to stand upon it! To do so nearly cost me my life, for the captain of the ship I was on refused to take me to it, and so I began to swim.


    I should have drowned in those frigid waters for my foolish decision, but something seemed to rush by me, and swept me upon the rock.


    No one aboard saw what did it, and neither did I, but as I lay panting upon the rocks I could have sworn I saw something in the distance. I thought it to be a hallucination, but when I told the captain of it his face was deathly stern. He turned around, abandoning the quarry he had been chasing, and made haste to Wesvoy. When I asked why, I received only a cryptic message that we had lingered in these waters too long, and needed to leave.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.There''s something out there that the northmen know of, or at least used to know of, and they want it to remain forgotten by the world.


    It is seemingly always either foggy or raining upon these harsh shores. When there is rain the great Fog Rivers are visible in all their bleak majesty, and are exactly what they sound like; great valleys naturally carved between hills through which the mists of the island seemingly move as water does to the sea.


    The land is permanently damp at best and soaked at worst, the grass always coated with dew and the sound of thunder never far from one''s ears. Those lands not covered by great, rolling hills mostly consist of forests or marshlands.


    In particular I would note the forests of Aurinsay and the marshlands of Hedinskye. The great forests of the second island are said to be filled with vengeful spirits, their incorporeal forms tinted a baleful green. They are said to take the form of whatever is most pleasing to those who find them, but with the mannerisms and airs of an unassailable sorrow about them, so much so that those who behold them are compelled to comfort them, following them into the deepest parts of the forests, never to be heard from again.


    The Crow-Marshes of Hedinskye are not supernatural so much as a testament to the brutality of war. Those who died in the Battle of Sorrows, sometimes referred to as the Field of the Fallen, and fell in that accursed fen were forever preserved: the wounds that killed them, the expressions they displayed, and even the colour of their eyes preserved by the eternal and uncaring cold waters of that land.


    The people that live on those islands are born with dark blue swirls and patterns on their skin, which is just as pale as that of the Scelopyrene. They are collectively known as the Brythonic people to outsiders, though ask anyone from one of the other islands and they will quickly set that notion to rest. Even still, they all follow the same customs, are of the same cloth, and face the same enemies and so all are united when an invader steps on any of their shores.


    They are one of the most fascinating people I have ever walked among.


    <u>The Kingdom of Polaeros:</u>


    The Kingdom of Polaeros one of the smallest kingdoms in the Heptarchy, its lands encompassing only a curved line along the northernmost reaches of Klironomea.


    Being the seat of wise men and scholars, Polaeros never fell to the inefficiency of petty or bastard feudalism, nor to the vileness of a kraterocracy like Triarios.


    Despite the kingdom''s relatively small size and population when compared to the other members of the Heptarchy, it maintains the single greatest levels of literacy and learnedness amongst the common folk of the lands. All who wish to do so are welcome in any of the fortress-libraries that dot the kingdom, so that they may learn their letters and numbers and teach their own families as well.


    No man in Polaeros is shackled by serfdom, nor are the lords of this land able to dish out arbitrary or cruel punishments. The laws of this land are clear on all such matters, and not even the King stands above them.


    In this regard, it can be argued that the systems in place for certain endeavours outstrip even those of the old Kingdom of Klironomea, since only the last of the Kings of Klironomea even thought to teach the lowborns to read and limit his own powers.


    It is a pity he did not survive to see that dream through.


    The Royal House of Polaeros is House Virgilos. According to common myth and corroborated by records, House Virgilos traces its descent from the philosopher Virgil, who was a renowned wise man and advisor at the court of the last King of Klironomea, Harald II.


    The common understanding is that Virgil won control of the local lordships through a game of Deicide, and then proclaimed that his knowledge should be passed down to his descendants, who''s ability to learn and to know would be the shield that guarded the civilised lands from the barbaroi beyond.


    The coat of arms of House Virgilos is that of a pale-yellow bolt of lightning against a purple field, representing the spark of knowledge illuminating the dark.


    Almost every member of this house has taken this sigil unmodified as their own.


    Myself, Prince Alekos Virgilos, as well as Lord Dankrest Virgilos, Lady Thekla Virgilos and Lady Aspa Virgilos all have taken this sigil unmodified as their own, and only Ser Kyria Virgilos has modified it in any way, swapping out the pale-yellow of the lightning for a bright gold.


    The words of the Royal House are as follows;


    "Knowledge Above All."


    Its meaning is simple and easy to comprehend. If there is something worth learning, you must learn it, and if there is no one to learn it from, you must work it out yourself.


    The ability to learn, and the rewards of knowing, are greater than any possible hardship you may face whilst seeking knowledge.


    The capital of Polaeros is Polaeriopolis, a city founded in the later days of the Kingdom of Klironomea by learned men, open-minded knights, and a large contingent of Skonisnomas barbarians, who had managed to free themselves from slavery at the hands of their own kin and sought refuge further south.


    These disparate groups coalesced around the chapterhouse of the small Order of the Seeker, whose numbers and importance swelled with the arrival of these newcomers. A small town sprang up around the keep, and eventually more and more worshippers of the Angel Polaris and his barbarian equivalent, the Owl, were drawn to this place by the promise of learning, tolerance and freedom.


    Polaeriopolis is not a particularly large city. As with the other great cities of the Heptarchy, save only Stratiopolis, the central district is palatial in nature.


    The seat of Royal Power is the illustrious Seeker''s Palace, which was built over the ruins of the old chapterhouse of the Knights of the Order of the Seeker when it burned down in 442 AD. It is equal parts palace and library, and the vast amounts of knowledge contained within the palace library are rivalled only by those great and ancient libraries in Tilda and Sothettar.


    The great road leading into the city, the Guardianroad, stretches from the great urban sprawls of Sygomidopolis some six-hundred miles to the south all the way to the markets and warehouses of Inksquare in the south of the city, where every noble from Anaria to Dathan come to find whatever book they require.


    In the east of the city lies Vellumtown. Its name comes from the old method of preparing parchment using animal skins, though with the rise of wood pulping the name is now simply a vestige of its old past. Still, with royal assistance the region still maintains its productive nature by swapping to these new methods of paper production, and it remains the single largest producer of paper in the Heptarchy to this day.


    The western district of the city is simply an urban sprawl containing the masses who shelter in the city¡¯s walls. Unlike the filth of other cities, the quality of life in Polaeriopolis is relatively high even for the lowborns; with well-built stone houses, a working sewage system and clean drinking water, the lower classes of Polaeriopolis live their lives comfortably and productively, thanks to generations of support from their kings in the Seeker''s Palace.


    Finally there is the northern district. Ostensibly it is a temple district, though if one were to compare it to any other there would be only minor similarities.


    The main places of note in the northern district are the Great Library of Polaeriopolis, the Temple of Stars, and the Royal Hospital.


    The Great Library is exactly what is sounds like. Where the Royal Library in the palace is for private use, most of the knowledge contained within can also be found in the Great Library, which is open to anyone, regardless of birth, for free. This makes it unique even amongst its counterparts in Tilda and Sothettar.


    The Royal Hospital is also exactly that; a place of healing for the sick funded mostly by royal expense. Other royal houses may call it a waste of money, seemingly forgetting that Polaeriopolis is the only one of the seven major cities in the Heptarchy to make it out of every Black Grave epidemic mostly unscathed.


    The Temple of Stars is a magnificent place, dedicated to the Angel Polaris, who resides over knowledge and shares rulership of the stars with Hydran. Murals of the night sky cover the walls, and the ceiling is a great glass dome through which the lights of Polaris can be seen at night.


    Donations for both the library and hospital are collected in the temple, and all three buildings are guarded fiercely by the Order of the Seeker.


    The borders of Polaeros encompass those lands between the much larger Kingdom of Licotemos to the south and the Skonisnomas barbarians to the north in the shape of a gentle crescent. There are few castles and fewer towns outside of Polaeriopolis itself, mostly thanks to constant raids from the northern barbaroi, and as a result a line of chapterhouses marks a rough border at the north of the kingdom, and indeed the border of the Heptarchy as a whole.


    The people of Polaeros mostly worship the Old Church, since the identity and even the very name of the kingdom stems from the Angel of Knowledge, Polaris.


    The New Church does not recognise the seven Angels as being real, and although the nobility of Polaeriopolis may agree with this statement, the rest of the nation certainly does not. This means that, whilst those large numbers of noblemen and women in the city itself may not pay tribute to Polaris, most of the knights, clergy, scholars, soldiers, and people do. No king of Polaeros has been foolish enough to deny Polaris when his entire kingdom is tied so firmly to his ideals, and so the Old Church still retains primacy over the northernmost lands of Klironomea.


    There are other, minor cults with followings however; the people of this kingdom have generally always been receptive to followers of Aenethar and the Silent Cult, and some number of The Cult of the Ampithere-Worship are known to reside around the Drakespine Mountains in the far eastern reaches of the kingdom. There are whispers of Umbra-Worshippers, the Church of the Ancients, residing in some rural communities, but even these groups are content to be left alone with their beliefs and carry on like any other subject of Polaris.


    Polaeros has one of the smallest militaries in the Heptarchy, but what forces it does maintain are mostly knightly in nature, with a growing number of armsmen. The armies of Polaeros rely not on massed numbers and levies, for it simply could not be sustained, but well-trained and well-armed soldiers.


    There are some three-thousand knights in Polaeros, around a thousand of which are sworn to the Order of the Seeker, and make up some of the greatest shock cavalry the Heptarchy has ever known.


    One-thousand men-at-arms can also be found in the armies of Polaeros, an almost equal split of billhooks and longbows amongst them, as well as two Scorpion-Engines; magnificent technological marvels allowing for a group of horses to carry a covered cart with a scorpion and veritable battery of crossbows into battle in the safety of the cart.


    In times of great need, Polaeros can call upon almost two-thousand levies to supplement these armies, though preferable to that are sellswords, since they have greater experience in warfare and effective equipment.


    Due to the small nature of Polaeros'' population there are no major sellsword bands formed from its inhabitants, since there simply aren''t enough bodies to fill the ranks of any major outfit.


    To surmise, whilst people may look at Polaeros as the forgotten youngest child of the Heptarchy, it must be remembered that it has the greatest literacy, greatest resistance to the black grave, and even the largest number of professional soldiers, proportionally speaking.


    If one recalls that the kingdom benefits from both the largest repository of knowledge in the Heptarchy and constant military experience from skirmishes with the northern barbaroi, Polaeros likely does not seem so weak when viewed with that lens.


    I have attempted to control my biases, though they should not be too blatant anyway since I spent most of my life in Teleytaios being fostered alongside Prince Lykourgos Sperakos. As a result I believe this to be mostly free of personal bias, though undoubtedly some residual love for the land of my birth remains.


    There, the first drafts of the chapters for both the Brythonic Isles and the Kingdom of Polaeros. I hesitate to ask you a favour, but do you think that your friend the Master of Silver could whisk me into Aenirhen unnoticed? Technically I was supposed to have returned to Polaeros months ago, and while I have notified them of my extended travels, I do not wish a spectacle to be made of my return from my voyage in your father''s kingdom. Perhaps soon you will be able to visit me in the Seeker''s Palace as well? If you''re worried about taking time away from your work just tell yourself it''s a diplomatic mission, that normally works when people ask me why im always travelling.


    Regardless of the manner of my arrival, be it public or private, I promise to meet with you either way and spend the week in Aenirhen, if you''ll have me. I don''t think I need ask seeing as I was raised in that keep with you, but I know you''ll appreciate me checking first. It''ll be nice to hear your advice on certain matters pertaining to the rulership of my home as well; though by ten and four I may have been one of the greatest scholars in the Heptarchy I was never quite your equal when it came to leading men. You took to ruling like a fish to water or a bird to flight. I''ll make a good Prince and King, of that I''ve no doubt, but you? You''ll be a great one.


    It will be good to see you again.


    Remain ever in my thoughts,


    Prince Alekos Virgilos.

 Lykourgos VI: The Battle of the Einarbrycge

    <u>Lykourgos VI: The Battle of the Einarbrycge


    </u>


    <u>The Twenty-Fourth Day of the Ninth Moon, 872AD


    Southern Einar, Central Teleytaios, Klironomea</u>


    Many of the Men-at-Arms were antsy, some chomping at the bit to get involved in the carnage. These men had been trained well, and Lykourgos was extremely proud of them.


    "Come on then! Let''s gut the bastards!"


    There had been a raucous cheer at that, and Lykourgos wondered if any of them understood the irony of him calling someone a bastard. If they did, none of them cared.


    The slow, almost thunderous march of the Armsmen as they took their turn to crest the hill seemed to shake the Rose forces out of their stupor, and small knots of men began to form around sergeants and knights. Bowmen armed with shortbows, used to poaching and hunting game now moved in front of the regiments of billhook wielding armsmen, searching for new quarry to bring down amidst the battle. Its use in screening and skirmishing forces was one of the only things that stopped the shortbow from being completely outclassed by the crossbow or longbow; its small size and light nature made it the perfect weapon to loose off a shot and then run like hell, which was useful if a man in armour with a sword or spear was annoyed at you.


    Lykourgos furrowed his brow. There was another noise now, faster, approaching rapidly. Lykourgos signalled the Men-at-Arms to halt.


    "Ready arms!"


    Dreamwulf stood beside him, no doubt grumbling at the prince''s insistence on leading the Men-at-Arms into the camp himself instead of letting a Lieutenant do it. He had to concede that point partially; he was putting himself in harms way for little more than pride. To be sure, he could justify it to himself as much as he liked, telling himself that it was to ensure that his orders could be given and followed instantly, or that the spirits of the men would be raised by his presence. In reality, he knew that he just didn''t want anyone to accuse him of cowardice.


    Some of the men must have been confused as to why they''d stopped halfway to the camp, but the prince wasn''t going to take any chances with this. If there was an enemy force on its way he would be ready.


    Some of the Roses were confused as well, and from this distance he could actually see some of them donning chainmail or grabbing weapons. The noise grew louder.


    At that moment there was an almighty crash and a great deal of screaming, as the first of thousands of horsemen burst onto the field, trampling men under their hooves and skewering them with spears and lances like one would spear an animal on a spit.


    The prince saw a glimpse of the glittering silvered armour and sword worn by Ser Romanos, who sat astride a huge crossbreed with the size of a Brythonian Draft and the temperament and skill of a Anatolikoian Destrier, and let out a small laugh. He couldn''t send his men forwards for fear of being trampled by their own cavalry, but the roses were now between a rock and a hard place. Only when the initial charge had stopped and the cavalry swept through the camp as individuals, not a stampede, did Lykourgos order his men forwards.


    Within the camp was a scene of carnage and death. Burned tents, maimed horses, dead men, and strewn supplies. In some areas cookfires still smouldered and smoked, giving some evidence as to how the aforementioned tents had burned, and never before had the prince heard so many people cry out for mercy. He had fought in battle before at Seastream and Haestinghen, but this wasn''t a battle: it was a massacre.


    He found Ser Romanos, who dismounted from his enormous horse, and knelt to greet him.


    "Your Grace. I give you the honour of victory."


    Lykourgos snorted, and pulled his friend to his feet.


    "You know as well as I do that this victory was won by your men."


    Romanos raised an eyebrow, and nodded at the violet armsmen dismantling the damaged camp.


    "Seems to me like you would have triumphed here with almost no losses anyway. This should even the odds somewhat in the war, should it not?"


    Lykourgos nodded at his friend, but then looked upon the hill which the Starlings had taken for their camp. Romanos followed his gaze and frowned.


    "Still need to dislodge those ruffians, hmm? Well, it seems as though your infantry might get a taste of battle after all. I''ll leave this to you, if it please you?"


    <hr>


    The weight of the longseaxe felt awkward in his left hand. With his right hand injured he was at a disadvantage in this fight, for whilst he knew he could fight with his off-hand, he was nowhere near as proficient as his brother was at it. It didn''t help that a light rain had started up a small while ago, leaving the pommel and handle slippery where its grip was worn. He would have been far better equipped with a longsword and kiteshield, but seeing as his longsword was far too unwieldy for him to use in his relatively untrained left hand he would have to rely on this smaller blade instead. The longseaxe was a useful weapon that had become synonymous with the Skraelings by the time the Klironomeans came; it was little more than a shortsword, truth be told, and Lykourgos had not wielded one in true combat since he was a child. Nevertheless, he always carried one on his belt for his own safety, along with a dagger sat next to it and a dirk in each boot. Rhema called him paranoid. Elikoidi called him smart. I''ll have to see about replacing the dagger though. He wasn''t quite certain how he''d ended up personally commanding the second wave up the hill, but after the first had been beaten back the prince needed his infantry to know that he was beside them. After all, if the cavalry and bowmen won the battle without the infantry bloodying their blades, he doubted they''d have quite the same ¨¦lan the next time they went into battle


    However it was that he''d managed it, he wound up trudging up the hill to command the second wave against the starlings. He wasn''t able to fight with his usual level of grace with his injured hand, but could grip his sword well enough and fight with some skill with his left hand. Small mercies, I suppose. He crossed through one of the holes that the onagers had made in the palisade, the wood crushed to splinters as the sellswords had attempted to ready their remaining defences in the previous hours. There were already groups of infantrymen fighting within the confines of the camp, and when the prince looked around he realised that the Starlings had spent their time dismantling their tents and structures to clear the floor for combat. Ah, they want the room to manoeuvre their own forces properly.


    All of a sudden he heard a bellowed challenge, and the prince saw a man making a beeline towards him, greatseaxe in hand. He readied himself to parry as best he could, though he never had to, for the sound of the man''s approach alerted his bodyguard. Dreamwulf wrenched a kiteshield away from a nearby Knight and moved to intercept the approaching sellsword.


    The sellsword broke into a run, hoping to bypass the large man and reach the prince, but Elikoidi had been right; Dreamwulf was deceptively agile, placing himself directly in the Starling''s path. The blind man let out a bellow of rage, and with the sound of an almighty thunderclap the Starling was sent sprawling down to the mud, his whole body being struck by the kiteshield. Whether he was dead or just knocked out the prince couldn''t tell, but either way something in Dreamwulf had changed in the heat of battle. He threw the shield to the side and bellowed at the man on the ground.


    "Tell me how the grass tastes, little man!"


    With that display concluded, he turned into something else entirely. The rain was coming down, though clearly not heavily enough to hamper the bodyguard''s capabilities, and in the heat of battle he seemed to transform into one of the most intimidating warriors the prince had ever seen. He remained in the prince''s line of sight throughout the fighting, his skill with his billhook making his movements seem less like a soldier''s strikes and more like a choreographed dance, such was the fluidity with which his every movement led into the next.


    Lykourgos turned about again, just in time to see a longaxe shear past his face. He didn''t even have time to think, his body seemingly moving of its own accord to parry and dodge the man''s strikes. The axe came down again, and the prince caught it off his blade, the impact sending jolts up his arm. He drew his blade back and slashed at the man''s stomach, but found his blade blocked by the longaxe. Feigning a strike to his left, Lykourgos changed the attack''s direction at the last moment, and placed all his force behind a blow aimed at the man''s right arm as the starling overcompensated into the feint. As his longaxe moved to cover the area the prince had seemed to target, castle-forged steel tore through the man''s padded leather and his axe fell to the ground, an arm still gripping the haft.


    The soldier stared in disbelief at his dismembered limb, before Lykourgos drew back his blade and thrust it into the man''s chest. He pushed as far as he could, and when he drew back his blade the man toppled forwards into the mud.


    Right, okay. Lykourgos thought to himself, trying to ignore the look in the man''s eyes. Where''s Dreamwulf?


    The prince watched on, commanding small knots of men that broke through the stakes that formed the perimeter, as Dreamwulf struck down man after man with contemptuous ease, leaving his shield arm free and instead stabbing and hacking with his billhook at anyone who dared to approach the prince.


    Oh yes, the Prince thought. Elikoidi was almost certainly right about him.


    He looked as a demon, his blank eyes and a ferocious snarl only accentuating his height and broad form. He was not the tallest man on the battlefield by any means, but Lykourgos couldn''t help but notice how he seemed to tower over anyone who stood against him.


    "Dreamwulf! Good killing out there!"


    The blind man snapped his body round, and let slip a borderline feral smile.


    "Well you ain''t exactly doin'' much are you? I''ve gotta kill for the both of us!"


    There was a glint in his eyes that wasn''t there before, and Lykourgos found himself letting the same feral smile that had overtaken Dreamwulf take him.


    "I may only have one good hand at the moment, but I''ll be damned if I lose to you!"


    He knew he couldn''t actually keep up, but a bit of competition never hurt anyone.


    The second to die was hardly a man grown, somewhere around the same age as the prince. The greatseaxe he had held seemed too big for him, and his strikes, while not clumsy, were predictable. His eyes and feet betrayed his every movement, and it hadn''t taken long for him to fall. The prince had held him as he died, but neither had said a word.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    As he stood back up there came a man dressed in a patchy hauberk, holding a buckler in his left hand and a hand-axe in his right. Lykourgos readied himself as best he could, but quickly found himself on the defensive for most of the fight, for this was no boy playing at war, but a seasoned fighter. He began steadily walking backwards as the man advanced with a flurry of overhead strikes and sideways swipes, and whenever the prince tried to retaliate he quickly found his blade turned aside by the man''s axe and shield. The man struck out again, a particularly forceful blow that the prince caught on his sword, sending a shooting pain up his left arm. As the man pressed downwards with all his might the prince found himself pushing back on the flat of his own blade with his injured right hand, trying to counter his force.


    As the axe inched closer and closer to him, he swiftly raised his right leg and stamped with as much force as possible on the side of the starling''s knee, breaking the deadlock, though the man righted himself faster than the prince and summarily bashed him with his shield. The buckler made contact with his upper chest and sent him sprawling backwards into the sodden earth behind him. As the man advanced on him and moved to finish him off, somehow Lykourgos found him gripping the haft of the man''s hand-axe as it fell, locking them in another deadlock, though luckily someone seemed to stumble into him in the conflict, sending the axe tumbling in the dirt. Both their weapons now lay aside, and so they sprawled in the mud, punching and kicking at each other, but the man was far, far larger than the prince. The impromptu melee lasted all of two minutes, until Lykourgos lay there as the man gripped his throat and began to choke the life out of him.


    Come on, come on...


    The prince, with a shaking right arm, reached for his boots, whilst his left hammered ineffectually at the chest of the man strangling him.


    Just a little more...


    Then he felt the slick pommel in his hand, and, gripping the dirk from his right boot in his injured hand, Lykourgos slammed the blade upwards into the man''s gut. Three more times he stabbed him before the man''s grip fell slack, blood bubbling up in a pink foam in his last breaths, covering the prince''s face as he lay in the mud. Lykourgos was too exhausted to even move the man off of him, let alone continue the fight. Black spots crept in from the corners of his vision, and at last he felt exhaustion catch up with him.


    Angels above, I hope we win. Otherwise I don''t think I''ll be waking up.


    <hr>


    When the prince next came to he was in a tent overlooking the battlefield. How did I...


    "Ah, your Grace!"


    Ilias moved to his bedside in a blur, asking him a million questions a minute. Was he alright? Did he want a drink? Water? Wine? No, Nasos said wine''s bad if you''ve just woken up. What about ale? Would ale be fine? Tea? He could find a cookfire and make nettle tea, and-


    "Ilias, please. I''m quite alright."


    His cupbearer stopped himself, his voice taking on an almost dejected tone, like that of a child caught stealing a sweet.


    "Sorry. Was just worried, is all."


    The prince smiled at him, before Ser Romanos entered the tent.


    "Ah, your Grace. I see you''ve awoken."


    "How did I end up here? I don''t recall being taken off the field."


    Ser Romanos raised an eyebrow, and looked at him with a genuinely surprised expression.


    "You... you honestly don''t remember?"


    The prince stared blankly.


    "Well, by all accounts you and your Personal Champion got into a competition of sorts, counting the number of men you killed. By the end of it you''d both fallen unconscious, likely from over-exertion."


    The prince took this in for a moment, before turning back to Romanos with a mischievous grin.


    "What did we score?"


    There was a look of resigned exasperation on Romanos'' face, before a Man-at-Arms poked his head in the tent from where he was guarding the door, a grin on his face.


    "You were at three, your grace."


    "And Dreamwulf? The Personal Champion?"


    "He was like a berserker your grace. Six and ten."


    Lykourgos laid back as his playful loss befitted.


    "It''s only because of my injured hand. I would certainly have won otherwise."


    The Armsman nodded, grinning all the while.


    "So you say, your grace. Shall I inform him you''d like a rematch?"


    The prince laughed with the Armsman.


    "Very good, dismissed."


    "Aye, your Grace."


    The head vanished back outside the tent.


    "There is someone who would like to speak with you, whenever you''re ready."


    "There is?"


    "Indeed. Symon, son of Symon, leader of Symon''s Starlings, would like to speak with you. He would not say what about, but I''d hazard that you may be able to win his forces over to our side by promising to fulfil his contract when we take the capital and royal treasury."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Ilias, help me dress as befits a Prince of the Realm. Ser Romanos, seeing as you''re the greatest knight in the land, you''ll be my honour guard; my own seems to need some rest."


    Romanos laughed.


    "Dreamwulf''s the next tent over. He''s out cold like you were, except he had to be dragged from the top of a pile of corpses, not beneath one."


    Lykourgos grumbled under his breath.


    "Look, my sword-hand is injured, let''s not forget that. Can we simply get on with preparing for this meeting?"


    The knight smiled at him, his face softening slightly.


    "Certainly, my Prince. I may not like sellswords, but I''d rather they were fighting with us rather than against us."


    Lykourgos nodded stiffly.


    "On that much we agree, old friend. Now, let''s get these scum on our side."


    <hr>


    "I swear to the Angels, do your men not know ''ow to sing anything apart from that poncey fockin love song? Derry''s Ten''ll be stuck in my head for weeks."


    The man entering the tent was very clearly an accomplished killer, with blood-stained scale armour, a scar running diagonally across his nose and the demeanour of a man who was confident that, at any time, he could fight his way through everyone else in the room.


    Lykourgos smiled at him, hoping to convey the same smarminess that the approaching sellsword did.


    "You are Symon?"


    "Aye, that''d be me. Now what''s this I hear about you offering a deal, because my men damn near beat me into accepting whatever you proposed."


    "They did, did they?"


    Symon shrugged.


    "Well, at least I think they were trying too. I landed three of them on their backsides and the rest went quiet real fast."


    The man continued.


    "Not that it really mattered. If they didn''t trust the decision I was gonna make then they would''ve just slit my throat and put forwards a new leader."


    "But they didn''t."


    Symon nodded, the expression conveying a type of cocky arrogance that, for once, Lykourgos didn''t think was misplaced.


    "Aye. They didn''t. And now I''m here, in front of you, and I haven''t even been offered a drink."


    He stared at Lykourgos expectantly, and the prince waved forwards a beaker of wine.


    "That''s a little better. Now then, business. You''re a bastard and want to usurp the throne from the rightful heir, your trueborn brother."


    Lykourgos refused to rise to the bait, instead sipping at his own wine. When Symon realised he wasn''t going to get a reaction he shrugged, seemingly in disappointment, and took a long swig of wine.


    "Now, I''ve got nothing against that. Far as I see the only reason you weren''t the heir was because a priest didn''t tell your daddy he could stick his cock in yer mother. If I thought that made for a bad leader I''d be out of a job, and all my kids would be as well."


    "You have children?"


    Symon shrugged, again.


    "Maybe. Never stuck in one place long enough to find out. I''ve seen a few kids who look like I did when passing back through villages we''d been to a few years back but none of the women said anything to me."


    Lykourgos bit his tongue to hold back a retort. How many children lived with the stain of bastardry all their lives, never knowing their true parentage because of this man?


    He closed his eyes briefly and let the tension leave his body.


    "Anyway, you want a throne. Your sister wants to keep your brother on the throne. Predictable results ensue, and my lads find ourselves with a lucrative contract; a gold raven for each officer, 5 silver crows for a man, and a bronze sparrow for every camp follower we had at the time of signing. You know what that makes in total? Somewhere around one-thousand two-hundred gold ravens, all for a war that should have been child''s play to win."


    Lykourgos gestured outside the tent at the devastated camps, half cleared by his own men and being scavenged for valuables. Symon laughed.


    "Yeah, I know. Funny how things turn out. Harran wouldn''t listen to me when I told him he''d made every mistake possible on campaign, the twat. Turns out when you highborns teach your kids how to fight and lead men, you only teach them the skills for the battlefield, not how to get your men there alive in the first place. Before your cavalry came I was content to watch Harran and all them poncey highborns die to your lads with the billhooks then strike my banners, but as soon as the cavalry came you forced our hands."


    "How so?"


    The sellsword smiled at him.


    "Because fancy highborns in fancy armour, if we''d struck our banners when they arrived, would''ve claimed the victory as theirs, and I''m not willing to let them have that. They''ll crow for years and years of how just the sight of their steeds and lances cowed us into submission. I''m tired of shit knights thinking they make good fighters because they got more money than the rest of us. Besides, the two-hundred you killed just means another thousand silver crows for the rest of the company."


    From his position next to his camp-throne Lykourgos could see as Ser Romanos, completely covered in his silvered plate armour, bristled at the lowborn man''s accusation and disregard for his men''s life. To his credit, he kept silent in the face of the insults. Lykourgos didn''t.


    "You are so eager to spend the lives of your men?"


    Symon frowned.


    "You really want to tell me I''m being calloused with life? How many of your men are gonna die to see you on the throne? If you cared, you''d have been the perfect advisor and supporter of your brother, keeping him out of the shit. But you don''t. You''re sat here, on a field overlooking four-thousand dead men, judging me because two-hundred of mine died and I''m trying to find an upside. Let''s keep the judgement to ourselves, hmm?"


    Lykourgos ground his teeth in frustration, not because the man was rude or crass, but because he was right. How could he take the moral high ground when thousands would die to see him sit a glorified chair?


    Symon raised a hand to his face in annoyance.


    "Saints ''elp me, you''re no fun. Look, are we gonna talk business or not?"


    Lykourgos sighed and nodded, eager to get this over with.


    "Take down the banners of my sister and brother and march with us. You''ve seen us draw first blood here and devastate a royalist army, and I''ve never known a sellsword fight for the losing side."


    Symon raised an eyebrow.


    "Oh? And have you known many sellswords, little Prince?"


    Lykourgos nodded, knowing that now the man was just testing him. He wants to know whether I can be reliable and not get his men butchered. Probably how much more he can extort from me as well, but that goes without saying.


    "Yes. Twilight Rebellion, Battle of Haestinghen. There were thousands on either side, but when it became clear that the lords were going to lose most of their sellswords defected to our side. You can''t pay a man enough to die for you."


    The sellsword smiled at him and nodded, seemingly satisfied with this answer.


    "Look, lets actually sort this business out, okay? You match the contract your sister made with us, that''s a good starting point, but I''m gonna need something if our reputation is gonna take a hit from switching sides."


    Lykourgos nodded. It wasn''t an unreasonable point by any means, and it was hardly like the prince didn''t have anything to offer.


    "Well whilst I may be unwilling to pay you any more than you are already promised, I can tell you this: after this war is over, if you stick around the capital you might not find yourself waiting long for new employment. In fact, stand by my side and I doubt you''ll lack for employment for a decade."


    That got Symon''s attention.


    "Ten further years of employment, eh? We''d have to switch over to a per-person, per year contract rather than a single promised payment for afterwards, but I know for a fact that the lads ''ll be happy with that. So long as you ain''t planning anything stupid, like targeting those Scelopyrene fucks. Like you said, there ain''t enough gold in the world to die for, and I know that none of the lads would disagree with me on that."


    The prince smiled.


    "So, we have an accord then? Full payment matching the contract you signed with my sister, with the promise of further employment in the years to come after."


    Symon nodded.


    "Deal. Just don''t forget the further employment, cause two-thousand well-armed sellswords can get a little bit frisky if they don''t get what''s promised to them."


    He held out a gloved hand for the prince to shake.


    "Deal?"


    Lykourgos smiled, and firmly shook the proffered hand.


    "Deal."

 Seventh I: Dark, Warmth, Dark

    <u>Seventh I: Dark, Warmth, Dark</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Eighth Day of the Ninth Moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    First there was darkness. They didn''t like dreams that began like this; despite the hardships they had already overcome, they were more than willing to admit that they found themselves scared by visions of darkness. Even with their eyes completely covered they could still see normally, but this was a different kind of darkness, one of absolute nothingness. To be clear, they didn''t fear the dark itself, or even what could be lurking within it, but a fear of being trapped in inky blackness for eternity, with no way out. It was a somewhat irrational fear, they knew, but it stuck with them all the same.


    Then there was light, as Solaria ignited before them.


    They could see Anamanesis, the planet resplendent in greens, blues, and greys, from their position astride the star at the heart of the heavens. It looked perfect. They had never stridden the cosmos before, but they imagined that if ever they did, it would look almost exactly like this.


    Almost.


    There was something wrong here. Their blindfolded eyes could see all laid bare before him as silhouettes and outlines, but when they tried to look at the moon... there was nothing. A hole in reality, where something had been before. Seventh removed the blindfold from their eyes to better take in the situation around them, and what they saw was sickening.


    Before them, in the place of the moon, was a... thing. It took the rough approximation of a human, but it was so far removed from humanity that it was hard to know what it was. It cracked open an eye and looked to Anamanesis.


    The creature, the God, for that is all it could have been, had empty pits where eyes should have been. Its limbs were wiry and thin, its body little more than skin pulled taught over bone. It looked ravenous.


    It moved to bite into the world, like one would an apple, and began to crush part of the planet between its jaws. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the planet''s surface gave way with a thunderous boom, and the God began to smile.


    Placing bony fingers into the crack, it began to prise open the shell of the planet, until half of the world shattered into a dozen pieces, leaving the other drifting in the void.


    When they gazed into the relatively intact half of the world, the Seer realised that it was not rock and water that ran throughout the world, but blood, marrow and rotting flesh.


    The creature sprung forwards and began to tear at the chunks of the world, devouring them with all the reckless abandon of a feral animal. The young Seer heaved and retched, expelling the contents of their stomach which proceeded to float away in the void.


    My Lord, My King, My God, protect me from thine enemies and thine evils, throw back this vision of darkest creation, I beseech thee, grant me-


    "Sev? Can you hear me? Sev?"


    Seventh shot awake, gripping the forearm of the prince in front of them. The prince''s eyes- Prince, not King, he was very insistent on that in private, were filled with concern, and they knew their own were likely panicked. No, no, no! He can''t see my eyes, not now, where is it!


    "Where- where is my blindfold! Please, I just need- I just need my blindfold!"


    Rhema nodded at the Seer''s chest, the silk tunic coated in bile and sick. True to his word, the blindfold was within the small puddle.


    "Yeah, I don''t think you''re gonna wanna put that on."


    Upon hearing this Seventh slammed their eyes shut, a rush of anxiety building.


    "Here, hang on, this should do for now."


    Seventh opened an eye just enough to see Rhema take a piece of green silk from around his arm and tie it around his eyes. It fit well, almost as good as his actual blindfold, and was somewhat more comfortable.


    "I did wonder why you always wore that arm-sash."


    Seventh could hear the almost excited smile in Rhema''s voice as he spoke.


    "I know how anxious you can get without a blindfold, so I made sure that there would always be one on-hand just in case! Well, not quite on hand so much as on arm, but still!"


    The knowledge that the excitable and hysterical prince cared enough to ensure they would not be so anxious caused a feeling of fondness to rise in their chest.


    Again.


    They quickly smothered it.


    Again.


    "Thank you."


    The words were filled with more emotion than they intended, a small amount of their suppressed gratitude slipping into their voice.


    Rhema waved it off, seemingly content to have simply helped.


    "Nah, it''s nothing. I like seeing you in my colours anyway."


    Seventh rolled his eyes behind the new blindfold. Rhema had the ability to suck the drama out of almost any situation, not with consolation or profound words, but with a healthy dose of casual flirting.


    "Will you still be there when I hold court today?"


    Seventh nodded.


    "I think so. I''m still a bit out of it, but it isn''t for a few hours yet, yes?"


    "That''s right! I''ll need to sort through some of the written petitions beforehand, but you can take the hours off. Rest for a while, I''ll have Crowe send someone to escort you to the throneroom later."


    Seventh smiled at the prince, and nodded his assent. Rhema stuck his head back in as he was leaving, and hurried out a quick sentence.


    "Just a heads up, it''ll probably be Ser Aenethar. Damn good knight, little bit odd. Best of luck."


    Seventh blinked behind the blindfold.


    Ser Aenethar? He knew that name from somewhere... from another time, another place... Aenethar... Aenethar...


    <hr>


    Knock, knock, knock.


    Three times an armoured fist hit the door, before it opened inwards to reveal the knight sent to escort them. Ser Aenethar, assuming this was him, didn''t look much different from an average knight; he wasn''t particularly short or tall, broad, or narrow, with neither the glamour of a famed figure or the wear of a hedge-knight. What did strike them as odd was the feeling of his soul. It was damaged, not in the usual, emotional ways that human souls were damaged, but in a strange, almost fractured way. As if it were a pot that had been smashed and reformed, and then smashed and reformed again, with more pieces missing each time. When they focused on the knight¡¯s physical body they found that his eyes were missing something... some spark of warmth, a sign of life something that made people whole. Aenethar... I know you...


    They shook their head and bowed to the knight.


    "You are to escort me?"


    No response came, save a single, stiff nod.


    They sighed to themselves.


    "Lead the way Ser, if you please?"


    The man nodded stiffly once more and set off down the hall, his pace never allowing Seventh to catch up or fall behind.


    He is a strange one. I suppose I can''t judge.


    "Seer, Ser."


    Marshal Crowe greeted them from an adjoining hall, and the knight immediately came to a stop.


    "You are attending court? His Grace was uncertain as to whether you''d attend or not."


    She must have seen Seventh staring at the back of Ser Aenethar, and continued speaking.


    "Ah, you have yet to be properly introduced to Ser Aenethar? He chooses not to speak most days, something to do with his patron angel. He worships the Angel of the Dead you see, and took their name for his own once he was granted his knighthood. He''s a damn good sparring partner, with a damn strong grip."


    She clapped the silent figure on an armoured shoulder as Seventh ruminated.


    Aenethar, the Klironomean name for the Angel of the Dead. That could be where I know the name... Their brow furrowed in confusion; something was still missing... it''s probably nothing.


    "OUTRAGEOUS!"


    The three came to an abrupt stop in the hall, before taking off at a sprint towards the throne room. When they arrived they found an apoplectic Patriarch before them, fist shaking in fury and spittle flying from his lips as the three made their way to Rhema''s sides.


    "Oh? Please, enlighten me. What is it I have done now to offend the ever-illustrious New Church?"


    The patriarch actually stumbled over his words, seemingly offended that the King had the gall to feign ignorance.


    "YOU VILE HELLSPAWN! YOU SPURN THE HOLY AT YOUR OWN CORONATION! YOU CONSORT WITH WOMEN AND PAGAN ADULTERERS!-"


    Adulterer? I may be a ''pagan'' by his standards, but adulterer? Really? Could he pick a more generic crime to accuse me of?


    "-AND NOW YOU WISH TO PREVENT US FROM WAGING WAR UPON THE FAITHLESS AND THE HERETICAL!"


    He took the first step up to the throne, and Ser Aenethar drew his sword. Rhema held up his left hand, his right still toying with his axe that leant against the throne, and Ser Aenethar stopped as though frozen. The priest continued up the steps until he stood nought but six paces from the King, his gaze filled with hatred and defiance. When Rhema spoke next his voice was as cold as Seventh had ever heard it in their life.


    "Raise your head another step, and as your King I promise you will leave this hall without it."


    The priest bellowed out another challenge, glaring at the King.


    "YOU ARE NO KING OF MINE!"


    Rhema wore his amusement as a smirk as he rose from his throne, moving in an unhurried manner to stand before the patriarch, further raising the priest''s hackles.


    "You denounce me as your King?"


    The priest glared at Rhema with venom in his eyes, and he spat his words more than he spoke them.


    "What is a King to a Saint?"


    Seventh watched on as Rhema just smiled, and sent the preacher sprawling to the floor with the haft of his axe.


    "Your Saint is far from here, little preacher. I rule in these lands. You say "What is a King to a Saint? I answer thusly: What is a Saint to a King?"


    The man never even had time to get up before the axe cleaved his head from his shoulders.


    Rhema moved to sit the throne once more, wordlessly. There was a muttered conversation in the room amongst the Roses, seemingly split between following their King and the New Church that they all held oh-so-dear. Princess Roma, for her part, looked mortified. The patriarch hadn''t been a pleasant man, but Seventh knew him to be one of her unpleasant men. And now he was headless. Rhema flicked a hand forward dismissively, and two guards in green liveries moved the body of the preacher out of the hall. As for the head, Seventh knew already where that was going; tar, spike, crows, in that order.


    Their Prince lounged on the throne, then leant forwards. From where he was stood Seventh could see the blood on his tunic, and face, transforming from a saturated crimson blotch on his chest to little more than flecks and spots up his neck and face. He gestured for the cowed herald to call forwards the next petitioner, who trembled where he stood.


    "Now then-" he started, "I trust you''ll be less accusatory than the last one. State your business."


    "I''m an envoy from Owkrestos, if it please your Grace. King Aleksandar bid me come with all haste, beseeching you to uphold the duties your father took in securing his grace against traitors in his Kingdom."


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    "King Aleksandar? This sounds more like the words of his regency council to me. What does a boy of five and ten, puppeted all his life, care whether it is a council of a dozen families or one man who puppets him. Does he not think Teleytaios too busy to aid him? I may be young, envoy, but I know a fool''s errand when I see one."


    The envoy spluttered and bowed, trying to plead his case without offending the unstable monarch.


    "A fool¡¯s errand? Preventing House Blackwood from seizing complete and uncontested control of Owkrestos has been Teleytaian policy for decades!"


    Seventh smiled fondly at Rhema as the King rolled his eyes dismissively.


    "Yes, a fool¡¯s errand. You Owkrestans never leave your forests and fens unless you need our help. Help against Triarios, a Tildan invasion, and now your own unruly vassal, Lord Aertax. Why would I risk the wrath of the most powerful man in Owkrestos? What gain would I have in supporting a foreign King, who has yet to support me, over the richest man in his realm?"


    Seventh could almost smell the fear in the room as the envoy trembled, Rhema staring impassively down at him, awaiting an answer that never came. After a minute of starts and abrupt pauses, Rhema seemingly lost his patience.


    "Princess, see that the envoy is given quarters befitting of his station. We shall host him here for three days, and he will plead his case without the pressure of an audience. Dismissed."


    The envoy bowed and scraped, thanking the King for his sudden generosity. Seventh found themselves puzzled by the situation before them. Why was Rhema hosting the diplomat? If it weren''t for the siblings'' hatred of each other blocking all chance of coded phrases being made, Seventh would''ve guessed that ''chambers befitting his station'' was a euphemism for the dungeons, but there was little to be gained from wondering about that at this time. Rhema locked eyes with them, seemingly feeling their stare, and they looked away quickly. The blood on his face should not have made him look as handsome as it did, but that probably spoke more about Seventh than it did Rhema''s actual features.


    My Lord, My King, My God, please let me have just a few days where I don''t have to watch someone die. It''s getting really old, at least spice it up somewhat?


    <hr>


    "Your grace, your highness, I come bearing grim tidings!"


    The messenger prostrated himself before the inner council, looking directly at the Princess and not the King as he did so.


    Could these people at least pretend Rhema has authority here?


    "Marshal Harran and his force have been scattered by a large violet force, but he reports that he leads a rearguard south and that he has taken minimal casualties."


    Seventh smirked. Minimal casualties? He''d heard of Prince Lykourgos and Ser Romanos before, of how they''d annihilated two armies across three battles in the Twilight Rebellion when the prince was but a child. Something told them that, even if Marshal Harran was telling the truth, then the hammer-blow that was sure to follow would fall long before this so-called ''rearguard'' made it within sixty miles of the capital.


    Assuming there actually was a rearguard worth chasing down.


    "Very good-" Princess Roma''s voice cut above the undignified din as the councillors called for various impossible or ineffectual actions to be taken. One man even suggested they "demand the return of the bastard Prince so he may be tried and executed". They shook their head and continued to take minutes as the Princess continued,


    "-though I take it there is more news?"


    "Yes, your Highness. The sellsword company, Symon''s Starlings, have gone over to the enemy."


    She rolled her eyes at that, and motioned for the messenger to leave.


    "So two-thousand peasants have gone over to my... half-brother''s side. There''s little more to be discussed on that front."


    She stared at the messenger, who had not moved towards the door.


    "Begging my pardon your Highness, but there''s more news."


    Seventh felt the irritation roiling off her in waves as she took a deep breath and composed herself.


    "Very well. Continue."


    "So it please you. I- your Grace, you- your Highness-"


    "Out with it, man!"


    The voice of a councillor bellowed towards the terrified messenger, who was clearly trying to find the most delicate way to word this subject.


    "Aye, my lord. Your Grace, your actions taken against Patriarch Damieth seems to have incited a riot in the eastern districts of the city. The city watch was able to disperse the crowds, but not without significant bloodshed."


    "How-"


    Roma cut her brother off mid-sentence, and even some of her own supporters in the council seemed taken aback by her blatant disregard for her brother''s authority.


    "Tell me the death toll."


    The messenger nodded quickly, and proffered the missive on a piece of parchment from one of the watch commanders.


    "Six and twenty guards, your Highness. Four and three-hundred citizens. Doubtless some were blameless and got caught up in the middle of the carnage."


    "OUT. ALL OF YOU."


    The councilmen and guards shuffled out of the room, and the messenger damn near sprinted to follow them. When they were gone it was only Roma, Rhema, and themselves. Roma turned to face Seventh.


    "I said, GET OUT."


    She stood over a full head taller than them, but they held their ground nonetheless.


    "I do not answer to you. I come and go by royal decree, not yours."


    "I am in charge in this city! Everyone understands that, so stop playing at being a man and accept that you''re just a little boy!"


    The terms ''man'' and ''boy'' stung, but doubtless not for the reasons she had intended.


    "You are not the Queen yet. God willing, you never will be."


    She snarled at them, and they turned to Rhema for support. They didn''t get any.


    Rhema was clearly too deep inside his own mind to pay any heed to the outside world at this time. When Roma noticed this, she smiled.


    "There are no Gods, pagan. Only the saints and the angels. Guards? Come escort our young Seer back to his chambers, he''s had a tiring day."


    Seventh looked around frantically, trying to find an out without getting themselves into trouble. As they were roughly taken from the room, they saw Roma take out a parchment and begin drafting a document, pulling the signet ring from Rhema''s finger.


    "Don''t worry, little Seer. I would never harm my own brother. I''m not a monster."


    And then the door closed behind them.


    <hr>


    "Seventh? Are you there?"


    "Yes, your Grace."


    Seventh might not have wanted to admit it, but hearing Rhema''s voice again was a nice reassurance that he was alright and hadn''t been harmed.


    "Good. Look, if I''m being honest the last few hours have been a blur, but when the messenger told us that Harran was defeated I knew we needed to speed up our plan. Do you think you can get to her council members?"


    They nodded, knowing from the tone in Rhema''s voice that this wasn''t the time to object to a shift in plans.


    "How soon does it need to be done?"


    "Today, if possible. I need to send my sister a message after she blatantly dismissed my authority. I mean, I know I''m not actually the King, I''m just warming the throne till he gets here, but she doesn''t know that!"


    Seventh sighed. If it was going to be today then he needed to find some nettles. Very specific nettles.


    "As you say, your Grace. Anything else."


    Rhema cringed at that, and made a hissing noise from between his teeth.


    "Angels, I told you not to call me that, please. And uh... afterwards you''ll need to leave the city. Fast. Like, really fast."


    Seventh knew their expression must have been filled with rising horror.


    "No, Rhema, I''m not leaving you in this viper¡¯s nest, why should-"


    "I had a dream, alright! I had that dream again, where you''re crucified in the throneroom. I''m not taking any chances. You''ll do this and then flee to my brother''s camp. He''ll know you''re coming, even if you won''t be with me to dreamwalk, I''ll give you a signed and sealed message to get you an audience with him and then you''ll stay by his side till you can come get me out of this shithole."


    Seventh took off their blindfold, and looked at Rhema. He visibly softened when he saw their black eyes, and Seventh could actually feel the blue sparks dancing across them. Rhema looked at them for less than a moment, and then the softness was gone.


    "Seventh, don''t make me order you to leave."


    "Rhema, please-"


    The monarch took a deep breath, and cut Seventh off.


    "Seventh, under royal decree I do hereby order you to commence with the next stage of our plan this instant, then leave the city to my brother''s camp. I know you will not refuse this honour."


    There was silence between them for ten seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Seventh spent that time trying to swallow the lump in their throat, and when their voice came out it was barely a whisper.


    "Your will be done, your Grace."


    They reattached the blindfold, and steeled their resolve.


    "I''ll do it. I don''t like it, but I''ll do it. Please just, promise me you''ll be okay?"


    Rhema sighed softly at him, and although they could see it coming Seventh still jumped at when the King gently laid a hand on their shoulder.


    "You know I can''t promise that, Sev. But I''ll try. It is likely that, after this talk, we won''t see each other for a little while."


    "Yeah."


    There was silence again, neither willing to move first. Their staring contest lasted minutes, but it was Rhema who blinked first.


    "I''ll see you soon, that much I can promise. Good luck."


    <hr>


    "Nettle Tea?"


    The heavy-set man, easily twice the size of the next largest person in the room, nodded stiffly at the servant, who poured out a steaming cup of the drink. He took a few appreciative sips.


    "It is not often I get visitors to my quarters, and I do not believe I''ve ever played host for this many at once. Not that I don''t appreciate it; it saves me quite a bit of work tracking all of you down."


    The raven-haired woman was briefly taken aback.


    "You wished to speak with us?"


    The Seer nodded.


    "Indeed. I had a matter of grave importance to speak of with you all, though with what''s happened recently its importance has fallen by the wayside. No matter. What is it you wished to speak with me about?"


    The apparent leader of the councillors, a stern, slight man, covered in scars from dozens of battles, approached.


    "We know of your abilities. We would have you use them to end this rebellion."


    Seventh kept as straight a face as possible. Know of his abilities? If they didn''t know most of them themselves, why did this man think he knew?


    They sighed softly and offered the rest of the guests some of the tea. All accepted, including the large man again, he assumed so that they would not appear rude as they asked- not ordered, asked them to help. That thought alone made them smirk. Roses, men and women who had never had to ask for anything in their lives thought their magic that valuable. Somewhere at the back of the crowd a man coughed.


    More''s the pity for them, I guess.


    "Very well, what is it you wish for? I fear my visions of the future have become clouded as of late, and dark are my dreams, though if that is what you wish, I will call upon my visions for you?"


    The leader of the dozen councillors nodded, and a man coughed again. Seventh smirked.


    "If I do this, you''ll do something for me in return."


    "Me specifically or Her Grace''s Council as a whole?"


    Her Grace? Now that''s a slip of the tongue if ever I''ve heard one.


    The Seer nodded as the man finished his sentence.


    "The latter."


    "As you wish. Whatever you levy upon us, within reason, we shall see it done."


    The king''s servant smiled.


    "Drink deep from your cups, for hearing of things yet to come can leave the mouth quite dry."


    There was the sound of hurried slurping and gulping as some of the people in the room took their advice a bit too far, not that they cared. As the councillors finished their cups a woman fell into a coughing fit, the man beside her patting her back to help her clear her throat.


    "I foresee a monarch, gilded in nature and in spirit. Pure of soul and beloved by those that lie beneath them. There can be no better future for the people of this land, for all those who would seek harm upon this Kingdom shall be swept away by the fury of the monarch''s wroth."


    He could make out a brief commotion as a man''s nose began to bleed, but he was quickly shushed by his enraptured colleagues.


    "A crown lies upon a brow, made of flowers cleared of thorns. Though free to fly upon the winds, it lies heavy upon the brow. I can see no brighter future than this. Without greed, without avarice, without cruelty their reign shall be, cut short only by times cruel barbs. For all the realm, this is to be our gilded future."


    When they finished, they knew all were staring in silence. They broke the silence with a polite cough.


    "More tea?"


    The Councillors ranged greatly in mannerism and politeness. None were outright hostile to them, at least not in person, and knew better than to refer to them incorrectly, but many still saw them as a heathen, or a daemon, or even a criminal, for their abilities.


    Ser Corbray was not one of those men.


    Named to the newly created position ''Master of Steel'', he was the man in charge of the various Knightly orders of the land, and the functioning of their Chapterhouses. He was a stern man, but not unpleasant, not brash or rude. Even now he was talking with them, when the other Councillors made polite conversation with each other so as to avoid speaking directly to them.


    Another man descended into a coughing fit.


    "I must thank you again for using your abilities to assist us. I understand the tensions between King Rhema and Princess Roma have long been high, and so you were likely hesitant, but you saw past it to assist us. Thank you."


    Seventh bowed his head respectfully.


    "If it assists my King, I will do anything."


    Ser Corbray smiled at him kindly and clapped him gently on the shoulder. A shame, he seems nice.


    "That''s the sort of attitude we need more of lad. You do his Grace proud. What was the task you wanted us to-"


    He was briefly cut off as he began coughing, reaching for his tea to clear his throat.


    "Apologies. What did you want us to do in return?"


    Seventh smiled at the man with what could be called a sickly sweetness.


    "Oh, don''t worry about that, you''ve already done it."


    Corbray coughed twice, and grinned.


    "Well, I''ll call that a job well done, and you''ve given us much to think on. Thank you, again."


    "No bother."


    "If I can be completely honest with you though" the man started, a joking smile on his face, "this pot of parsley tea smells awful."


    "Oh no it''s not parsley, it''s nettle tea."


    Confusion fell across the man''s face, and the hand on Seventh''s shoulder began to shake slightly.


    "Oh? If you do not mind me asking, if it was not parsley, what nettle was it?"


    Seventh took a moment to let their other senses paint a picture of the room. They could hear the coughing that racked half of the Councillors, could smell the blood from the noses of several, could practically feel their insides seizing up in rejection of their drinks.


    They turned back to Ser Corbray, blood dripping from his nose, and smiled a dangerously sweet smile. They answered his question in a childishly happy voice.


    "Hemlock."

 Rhema II: Anger, Apathy, Exhaustion

    <u>Rhema II:</u><u> Anger, Apathy, Exhaustion</u>


    <u>The Fourteenth Day of the Tenth Moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    His day began, as all days seemingly did now, with a sleepless night and a frustrating morning.


    Okay, maybe sending away one of the only friendly faces in the capital wasn''t quite as good an idea as it seemed at first, but could anyone blame him? The councillors needed to die, and there was no way Roma wouldn''t find out who committed the act. Where her anger went, retribution followed, this much he knew. Seventh knew it almost as well, and Rhema would be damned if his friend was hurt because of something he''d told them to do.


    Rhema had actually been second to come across the murder scene, just after Marshal Crowe had found it. To have seen her so shaken by Seventh''s handiwork...


    It was a damn funny sight, and the masterpiece in front of him was almost beautiful in its execution.


    Before them had been the image he had been dreaming of for years now. Vile men and women clinging to power like parasites, choking to death on their own hubris. Rhema didn''t know how Seventh had lured them all here. He didn''t care. Some of the worst people he''d ever interacted with lay dead before him. He''d cackled like he hadn''t in years.


    He moved to dress himself and looked out of the hollow window. The moon hung low in the sky, and in an hour or two the sun would crest the horizon and bathe the palace in light.


    It took more out of him than he was willing to admit to leave chambers. He was so tired of this act; he wanted to be at his brother¡¯s side, leading men into battle with him, drinking with him at his victory table and storming the walls of disloyal holdfasts alongside him.


    He wished he had taken his brother up on his offer when father died.


    No. He thought to himself. I made my choice. He had driven himself to destroy his brothers¡¯ enemies from within, and so that he would do.


    He''d done a damn good job of it so far, and his sister seemed to have accidentally helped by appointing her commanders based on loyalty and familiarity rather than competence.


    Now a third of his forces were dead or scattered, and most of the nobles in the inner council had choked to death. Hemlock, the physicians said.


    His brother''s army had, by all accounts, barely suffered a scratch at this point.


    He hoped beyond hope that his brother knew the act he was playing, that he wasn''t actually opposing him.


    If he didn''t, then Rhema was a dead man walking.


    He missed his brother, and Seventh. He hoped he hadn''t made a mistake entrusting Seventh''s care to Ser Aenethar. The man was a brilliant combatant, that much was true, but there was something weird about him, and when you looked him in the eyes something was... wrong. Missing. He shook his head. Ser Aenethar is a good knight. Crowe recommended him herself. If she thinks he was right, then he was the right man for the job. If anyone can get them to Lyk, it''ll be him.


    He stalked through the palace halls, empty at this hour save for the occasional cook-staff or guard.


    Eventually he reached his destination, and entered Marshal Crowe''s room without so much as knocking.


    "Your Grace."


    "Crowe. Im here to answer your questions at last. I have been hiding something from you."


    She raised an eyebrow.


    "What is it?"


    Rhema took a deep breath.


    "Okay, so I''m kind of actually supporting my brother by destroying my sister''s supporters from within. Lyk''s probably gonna march on the capital soon and I need to make sure it''s as bloodless as possible."


    Crowe scratched her chin in thought.


    "The gates are some of the only defences the capital has that''ll pose a threat to your brother. Three and a half inches of full-hard, cold-rolled steel. If you want to avoid either a siege or a bloody assault on the gatehouses, we''ll need to ensure that one of the gatehouses remains in control of troops loyal to you, and who will follow your orders."


    She thought for a second.


    "Hieromonk Auldwyrm and his thousand men are in the northern district, aren''t they? Have them occupy the North-Gate, while some of them hold the Inner-Gate leading from the northern district into the city."


    Rhema grinned, admittedly somewhat confused. He''d expected questions, or exclamations he was insane, or even just a disappointed glare. Not... this.


    "You''ve taken this... remarkably better than I thought you would."


    Crowe shrugged at him, and he could just about detect a hint of a smile on her face.


    "It explains a lot about how odd you''ve been acting. Besides. I promised I''d follow you wherever you''d lead, didn''t I?"


    He gave a tired smile at that.


    "Yeah. Yeah, you did."


    "I assume it was you that ordered Seventh to kill the councillors, then?"


    He flushed and looked away.


    "Yes. You don''t think less of me for that, do you?"


    She laid a hand on his shoulder.


    "Rhema, they''re parasites. They kidnapped you and tormented you four years ago to keep power, they rally behind your sister to keep power, and the second they think they can get away with it they''d depose you to gain power. I despise them."


    He blinked. It wasn''t often she gave a response that emotionally charged. Hell, she barely got emotional at all. She continued.


    "Oh, and they blocked me from being made a Marshal-at-Arms based on my gender for years. If it was legal I would''ve killed them myself."


    He gave a small snort of laughter. Not his manic, uncontrolled cackling, but a genuinely happy laugh. Crowe seemed to be able to tell the difference, and she smiled in response.


    "Let''s get back down to bronze tacks. Having those loyal to you manning the northern district would basically give your brother a clear access route to the city, bypassing most of its defences. By securing the north-gate and inner-gate we can control the flow of men in and out of the area."


    She pointed at the areas indicated on a map of the city that Rhema hadn''t even noticed was on the table. He moved to have a better look.


    "Our next priority after the gatehouses should be securing Last Stander''s Street. It''s got that name for a reason, and if the Roses hold it they''ll have the highest ground in the northern district with both flanks blocked by brick and stone. I don''t doubt the violets could beat them, but they''d lose half-a-hundred men for each dozen they killed."


    Rhema nodded, doing his best to take it all in. He wished he''d paid more attention to what Crowe and her Lieutenants had been trying to teach him down in Castelos; the place was practically the perfect example of a holdfast designed for siege warfare.


    "So gatehouses, then Last Stander''s Street. Anything else?"


    She nodded.


    "Ideally we''d have control over the whole northern district, but in case we don''t and only hold our main objectives then the next place to hold should be the Bastard''s Run."


    Rhema thought to himself a moment.


    "Bastard''s Run... is that the one avenue with all the ale-houses and breweries? You know, slopes uphill, cobbled road?"


    Crowe have what could only be a sigh of exasperation.


    "I don''t know whether to be happy that you know the area or concerned that you apparently are familiar with the drinking dens there."


    "Hey, it''s not their fault that the ale-houses are all that''s left! The northern district''s been so neglected that it''s practically all slums and shanty towns up there. The breweries and distilleries are about the only legitimate businesses left for them."


    Crowe smiled at him incredulously.


    "Hmm. Forgive me, I didn''t know you knew of the local industries."


    "Don''t worry, I''d be surprised as well. Me and Lyk used to sneak down there when he''d come back for the solstice. We''d go to the Last Avenue first in the western district, but the night would always end with us introducing ourselves drunkenly to each tavern and ale-house and proclaiming that drinks were on the crown for solstice."


    There was silence for a few moments before Crowe spoke. Her voice was rich with a warmth he had missed in the weeks since Seventh had left.


    "You were close to him. It sounds like you two got up to quite a bit of mischief."


    "Not just us two. Well, not always. Every now and again Lyk would bring his foster-brother with him, Prince Alekos. He was nice, but he couldn''t hold his drink for love nor coin."


    Crowe actually snorted at that.


    "Three little princelings, sneaking into a soldier¡¯s den and getting blind drunk with their people. Now that''s something I wish I''d been able to see."


    He smiled.


    "Actually, I think Alekos is a King now. There was speculation a year or two ago that his father- his birth father, not the Lord that fostered him- had died. That rumour was false, but there was a grain of truth to it, for he was weaker ever after. That rumour seems to have sparked up again, so I wouldn''t be surprised if Polaeros has a new king, if not now then soon."


    Crowe nodded at him, seemingly trying to get back on track.


    "I see. Shall we continue this line of conversation another time and get on with planning?"


    He schooled his own features as best he could.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions."Certainly. Remember, if anyone walks in, we''re planning the defence of the capital."


    She nodded and smiled.


    "You''ll survive this yet, your Grace."


    <hr>


    Dinner was something else entirely. Out of civility, he had taken his meals with his sister as of late, but that didn''t mean he enjoyed it.


    "Rhema, you need to eat."


    He pushed the food around his plate with his fork.


    "Rhema?"


    There was a measure of tenderness in her voice.


    He didn''t care if it was real or not at this point.


    "I''m not hungry."


    "Rhema, please eat something. When did you last eat more than a few mouthfuls?"


    He shook his head, mind swimming.


    "Can''t eat. It all just tastes like ash."


    She looked at him, confused.


    "What do you mean?"


    "I went out into the docks a few days back. I can''t- they were burning people. I- the New Church, they were dragging out members of the Hydran''s cult and torching them. I passed through the western district the next day. There were so many gallows. Gibbets too. Why are there so many dying out there? Why haven''t we stopped them from killing each other yet?"


    She set down her own cutlery and looked at him.


    "You wrote a royal decree stating that disloyal elements within the city need to be hunted."


    He shook his head at her, his own confusion rising.


    "I did not! They named me butcher in the capital for what happened! Did you know that? Hundreds have been executed for crimes that aren''t even really crimes, executed in my name! Why! What happened!"


    "As I said, you signed a royal decree stating that all those professing or showing support to rival claimants are to be hanged by the neck until dead. Those proffering heathenry or heretical beliefs are to be put to torch at the stake. Any who disrupt either such events are to be suspended in cages overlooking the execution sites until three days after their death."


    "I don''t- I didn''t sign that! I didn''t write that! I''m not even a follower of the New Church, why would I sentence those outside it''s jurisdiction to death? What do I care if the heart of the average citizen belongs to my brother? I don''t want to be the king of butchery!"


    I don''t want to be king at all. He barely stopped himself from blurting that out loud. She''d definitely noticed him acting strange enough recently, and letting that slip could tip her off as to his plan.


    Angels, but he was so tired.


    So tired.


    "I didn''t sign this, I can''t have!"


    "You don''t remember?"


    He shook his head. His words were sullen, almost defeated in tone.


    "No, I- I don''t understand, I can''t have ordered that many to die, we- I haven''t even held court enough times to see that many bodies when I look through the city. From every arch, from every gate and tree, there''s a body swinging. In every square there''s a pyre. It''s a nightmare out there! This can''t- I can''t have done this, I haven''t even seen that many people!"


    Roma shook her head, with what appeared to be sadness. Normally Rhema could read her like an open book, but after seeing that outside he couldn''t taste anything but ash. Was she lying to him? Was she telling the truth? If she was, why didn''t he remember? Was his condition worsening, was he truly being given over to insanity? Why can¡¯t I remember?


    He looked around at the sound of metal clattering to the floor, only to realise he had thrown his plate across the room. Roma sat, watching on quietly.


    "Fuck... I don''t- I don''t understand. Did I do it? Why would I do it?"


    "It''s okay, brother. You''re under a lot of stress as king. Sometimes you need to make tough decisions, and people get hurt. That doesn''t mean you did the wrong thing! If those people were innocent, then they wouldn''t have been killed. You''re under a lot of stress, I know. You and our... half-brother were close, but you need to accept that he''s betrayed you. Lykourgos doesn''t care about you anymore. He wants your throne."


    He shook his head violently.


    "No, no, no! He does care! I care as well! I don''t want this war; I hate fighting him! I don''t want him to hate me because of it!"


    Roma slammed her arms on the table to get his attention. He jumped at the noise and went quiet for a moment, giving her time to speak. Vitriol and malice oozed out of her words like blood from a wound.


    "Our brother doesn''t care about you! You were too young to remember when he left for Aenirhen with Lord Brathaxe, but the only brother he cared about was that... that Polaeran boy!"


    "Prince Alekos Virgilos."


    Roma nodded.


    "You aren''t Lykourgos'' brother, not in his eyes. His true brother is Alekos, and he''s been disappointed in the brother he''s been stuck with since that foreigner left."


    Bullshit. He thought to himself. Lyk fought a war for me. Killed for me. Maybe his foster-brother is as dear to him as I am. Maybe he isn''t. What does it matter to me? Alekos was nothing but polite when I met him, and Lyk likes him. That''s good enough, isn''t it?


    "If the choice was in our brother''s hands, do you really think he would choose us over him?"


    Rhema levelled a glare at her, and she flinched from the intensity in his eyes.


    "I will tolerate much from you, far more than I should, but do not attempt to tarnish the love I still bear my brother. If the choice were in his hands, he would do as duty demands."


    Roma nodded, unsure.


    "Perhaps. But he does not do his duty now."


    Yes, he does. He did before, and he does now. You know it. We both know it. And it scares you.


    "Doesn''t matter anymore. Anyway, the foreigner was never a brother to our own wayward blood. They were best friends and partners in crime, and I have no doubt that they''d''ve stood back-to-back with each other against anything, but brothers isn''t quite right."


    She rolled her eyes at him.


    "Not brothers? Okay, if that''s what you believe. It doesn''t change the fact that Lykourgos doesn''t care about you anymore. You''re against him now, and whoever stands against him he tries to kill."


    Rhema''s whole body shook as he spoke.


    "That''s not true! I won''t just stand here as you slander him endlessly, dripping poison in my ears! He''s our brother, our older brother, not just mine, but yours too! He wouldn''t hurt us and you know it!"


    Roma had clearly reached the end of her tether, and raised an arm as if to strike him. She stopped herself when she realised what she was about to do, but it still felt like she had hit him. Rhema shivered in place and raised his arms to protect himself, though nothing happened. Roma spoke again.


    "Saints above, you''re weak-willed. It''s a good thing I helped you with the decree."


    The implications of what she said sunk in fast, snapping him out of his funk, and his stomach felt as though it had turned to ice.


    "It was you! You signed it while I was disassociating."


    She smiled sweetly at him.


    "Of course not. I merely used the signet ring, I didn''t actually sign anything."


    He spluttered, trying to find the right words. What would Lyk do?


    "I want it stopped! The killings need to end, the people at least deserve trials before they''re killed on the spot. I demand this missive be rescinded."


    She smiled at him still, that damnable smug expression causing the taste of perfume and venom to rise in his mouth.


    "Do what you like. Call off the executions, end the purge of the disloyal. It won''t matter."


    "It will if I use my royal decree, then everyone will have to listen!"


    She cut him off before he could speak again, her hand dismissively waving his words away.


    "It will change nothing. Go ahead, lock the door if you must, but the horse has already bolted from the stable. You will be remembered as the second manic king, and the realm will need a suitable successor to rebuild after. The people will welcome me with open arms after our half-born brother is killed, someone who can curb your madness. You can end the purges, but you cannot bring the dead back to life."


    He stared at her, mouth agape. Had she truly just confessed to committing treason? A sad thought dawned on him.


    She wouldn''t admit it unless she knew she could get away with it. Even if I had the courage to find someone and tell them, who would believe me? I''m mad, she''s not, and that''s the end of it.


    "You do understand how bad our situation is, right? Because we are losing this war."


    She rolled her eyes again, but he could tell she was unnerved.


    "Of course not. We have nine thousand men in the capital and three thousand in the south-west. Marshal Harran leads several thousand more back in the rearguard-"


    "There is no rearguard! The survivors have gone home to tend their fields, and the country lies open! You need to understand how close we are to dying here!"


    She paled, but continued nonetheless.


    "We still have more men than him. Rally them all together, then march out and meet him in battle. You were always the better one in combat, you shouldn''t have that much trouble killing him."


    Something inside him snapped at that, at the implication that he should kill his brother. Even if he wanted too, she knew that Lyk was the better commander and leader! His brother would beat him every time in battle! She was still speaking, though what she was saying he couldn''t tell. White-hot rage coursed through him, and he slammed a knife into the table with so much force it drove straight through to the hilt.


    "SO THATS HOW YOU''D HAVE ME DEAL WITH THIS? FOR ME TO MARCH AROUND, ACT AS THOUGH EVERYTHING''S FINE, AS THOUGH WE''RE... FINE?"


    He stumbled over the last few words as he gestured wildly between the two of them. Rage coated his words and dripped from his tongue like a poison. They weren''t fine, she was actively fraying at the seams and his tired mind was so close to snapping. How could she even fucking suggest this? He wheeled back around and snapped at her again, continuing his tirade.


    "THAT''D BE CONVENIENT FOR YOU, WOULDN''T IT? FOR ME TO GO OUT THERE, FOR ME TO GO TO MY DOOM SO PROUD OF HOW I MANAGE TO KEEP MY HEAD HELD HIGH THAT I DON''T EVEN NOTICE WHEN MY FUCKING THROAT IS SLIT!"


    He took a deep breath to steady himself, and held up his hand as she made to speak.


    "Im not done. Do you know how long I wasted away in the most remote part of our kingdom because of you? Because of your greed, your selfishness, your arrogance. You''d have me back down there right now if you could, and I''d almost be tempted to go willingly just so I don''t have to associate myself with you anymore. You''ve dedicated your life to pushing me, and pushing me, and pushing me to see how far you can bend me before I break. Do you know-"


    He was cut off by a burst of laughter. Initially infuriated by his sister''s disrespect, he realised as he looked at her that it was coming from himself, not her.


    "Do you know how long I spent awake in bed each night, wondering what it was that I did wrong? If I''d only been a better son for father, a better brother to you, a better person for myself, never stopping to realise that what happened to me wasn''t my fault!"


    The last few words were bitten out rather than spoken, but he refused to stop, not now. Not with ten years of anger and inadequacy and despair rising from within.


    "Well, congratulations!" He gesticulated wildly again, and broken laughter pealed through the room. "You''ve won! You''ve beaten me! You''ve found out exactly how much I can take! I didn''t realise I had a limit, but here we are!"


    His vision stung, and tears streamed down his face.


    "You''ve won this game! I have nothing left to give!"


    He turned to leave the room as he finished his rant.


    "Sort this mess out yourself. I''m done. If I''m lucky then the violets will kill you first. I''m going to bed. Don''t ever tell me what to think of my brother again."


    Roma looked up, and even her careful veneer seemed to have cracked under his words. Her own tears were blinked back, and she sounded as though she was swallowing a lump in her throat as she spoke.


    "We... you are my brother, Rhema. We need to stick together here. You might hate me, but our rebelling bastard brother could take our heads for treason if he wins."


    She gripped his wrist as he moved to leave.


    "I want you to live, Rhema. Believe it or not, I do. You''re my brother. Surely you want to live? Surely you want your sister to live?"


    Rhema didn''t have the energy to turn around as he spoke, instead forcing as much of his flagging venom as possible into the final few words of their conversation.


    "You are not my sister, and I am not your brother. Those labels were lost to us long ago."


    <hr>


    He lay awake in bed. Again.


    He couldn''t sleep. Again.


    In a few hours the sun would crest the horizon and bath the palace in light. Again.


    Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he didn''t even have enough energy to wipe them away.


    He was so tired.


    He wished Seventh was with him. Or Lyk.


    They''d know what to do. He thought to himself. They always do.


    I''m tired.

 Lore Chapter: The Umbra and Sellswords

    Yes, yes, alright you fuckers. I''m the captain of this company, Symon Symondson, and you''re all prospective new recruits.


    Congratulations, you''re hired.


    Why are you still here?


    Fine, fine, I''ll give the bloody talk. Fuck off, Corbray.


    Right you lot, listen up. Corbray spiked my wine last night so I''m hungover as hell and can''t be arsed to answer questions today, so you''re gonna sit down, listen to me, and shut the fuck up. Take notes, this shits important. No, I don''t care if you can''t write.


    Okay, lesson one: if the man next to you has something that could improve your life kill him. It doesn''t matter if you get what made his life better or not, since he''s not around to enjoy it anymore, and that''s the important bit.


    Nah, I''m just fucking with you. Kind of. I mean, it is good advice, but it''s not really legal or useful right now so let''s move on with this... I don''t know, lecture? Calling it a lecture makes it sound like I can read which isn''t strictly true. I only know how to forge a couple of merchant''s and banker''s signatures. Yeah, I don''t actually know what the letters are but I memorised what they looked like. That came in handy when I was younger, lemme tell ya. All right, all right, I''ll get on with the actual talk, leave me be.


    Right, Umbra. Dangerous things those beasts, aye; a wolf the size of a house or a boar the size of a barn ain''t nothing to sneer at. I''ve seen the bastards cleave through ranks of armoured men without so much as breaking stride. Still, least they ain''t as bad as in me great-grandsire''s day. Back then they got much bigger, and took on far more dangerous forms; gigantic men, great winged lions and horses that made even Brythonian Drafts look like a fleck of shit on a boot. ''pparently the greatest of all of them took the form of a massive Drake, and when it died its bones turned to stone, creating the Drakespine Mountains. Yeah, exactly, be glad they ain''t what they used to be. Well, on land anyway. Them lot that still live in the sea... There''s a reason I stick to land; I ain''t taking any chances.


    Right, so the local lords got one of these buggers ravaging his lands. Couldn''t give a shit about the people on it, let them die he thinks, till he remembers that they''re the lot that pay him taxes. He doesn''t wanna risk losing his own men, after all, their equipment''s all fancy and expensive, and they''re more suited to looking pretty than killing monstrous folk. The local village usually tries to get the bastard themselves, but that goes about as well as you''d expect it to. So, they all turn to us. We''re cheaper than knights, and almost as good at killing, so they let us have a go at it. Course usually a few of us die as well, but you know why? It''s always the ones that think they know better than what the veterans, like me, have told ''em. The ones that think they''re a hero out of the stories, standing sword in hand against a giant monster. If any of ''em actually succeed and take one down themselves do yourself a favour and kill him yourself. You''ll never hear the end of it for weeks after otherwise, and it gets them an unbearable amount of attention from the women you run into. Or the men, if that''s what you''re more into. Point is, nothing riles up a couple of willing bed-warmers like someone who''s single-handedly killed a monster a dozen times their size.


    No, I see that look in some of your eyes. Some of you think it might be worth the risk now I''ve said that. Go ahead, try it yourself. I won''t stop you from getting yourself killed. Why?


    Because I love watching cunts like you fail.


    Of course, there''s a lot of different types of umbra. Direwolves are probably the most common, and some of the most dangerous. Why? Well, it''s true that they''re far from the largest type of umbra generally, but "small umbra" still means "grows to around the size of a house". But the real reason for their danger is that they''re pack hunters; if you can only see one direwolf, then I''ve got some absolutely shit news for you. Actually it''s more for your next of kin, since you won''t be around to hear it.


    Normally the packs range from six to twelve direwolves in size, but the largest I ''eard of was four-dozen strong. You''d need hundreds of men for a fight like that. A thousand, to be safe.


    Generally speaking, keep yourself in a tightly packed group and where possible, use your longbows to take down as many as you can before they get close. If you''re lucky they''ll see sense after you kill about a quarter of their pack.


    Annoyingly they can be found just about anywhere. The Heptarchy, Scelopyrea, Tilda, Dathan, they''re everywhere. Only place I know that''s got them on the run is one of the Brythonian islands, since their wildhounds are trained to rip ''em to shreds. You might laugh at that, but those dogs are worth their weight in gold on the mainland. Well, they would be if anyone here knew how to control them.


    I don''t even know why Im bothering to tell you about them, since you''ll have probably had to cower from one yourself at some point, but hey, maybe one or two of you have lived an extremely sheltered life before now. Any runaway lordlings or royals hiding in the company? No? Clever, keep your mouth shut if you''re out there. Most of the older members of this company don''t take too kindly to noble types.


    Anyway. Longbows, tight groups, and fire. They hate fire, more than any other animal I know. A little torch ain''t gonna scare any of ''em ''cept maybe a pup, but if you''re in a tight spot try setting a tree on fire, or a prepared bonfire if you somehow have the time. It won''t kill them, but some''ll linger at the edges of the light for some reason, staring into the flames. Make sure you kill those ones. Don''t let them live. I don''t care if you have to chase them for weeks to make sure they''re dead. You can''t let them live after they''ve stared into the flames.


    I... I don''t know why. It''s a gut feeling. Them that stay to look into the fires are... they''re wrong somehow. Ask anyone else who''s hid ''round a fire to buy some time. They''ll tell you the same thing. Make sure they don''t live. I don''t know why, but you have to. They''re smarter than you think, those wolves. They don''t make the same mistake twice, and I don''t want them learning.


    Next most common is probably the nester. Nesters are nasty bastards, and families are extremely territorial. You know them stories you were told as a kid to scare you into being good? The ones where naughty children get carried off by huge birds never to be seen again? Yeah... you shouldn''t need to think too hard to work out where those stories come from.


    I''ll give you a hint. It''s nesters. Man-sized corvids from the south of the Heptarchy.


    Generally they''re only found in deep forests, which means they aren''t seen much outside of Owkrestos and little bits of Kortheros and Triarios. Good. The hunters down there can take care of ''em. I don''t like having to fight the bastards since they can fly, and I can''t.


    A few make their way further north. More of them should is what I say. They get worshipped as manifestations of the gods by the northmen. If there was half a brain between all these fucking birds, they''d be flocking up there.


    Why yes, that pun was intended. Interrupt again and I''ll fockin'' use your guts to grease my armour.


    Even so, they''re not too difficult to kill. Unless you get lucky your longbow isn''t gonna be much use against them, which makes them the exception to the rule, but they go down proper easy to a mace or axe. Brought one down once and tried to find out why; turns out their bones are hollow, and brittle as you like. Strike em good once and chances are they won''t last.


    They''re dangerous all right, but fragile. Keep your wits about you and make sure you''ve got someone watching every direction.


    Including up. Especially up.


    Hmm, what else. I ''spose next most likely for you to face are Boarsow. See, now we get to the ones that are dangerous individually. They''re solitary, and thank fuck for that small mercy. When fully grown they''re the size of a barn, with tusks the size of a warhorse. If you wanna take one of these buggers down your handheld weapons ain''t gonna cut it. Literally; their hides are damn tough. You''ll need a scorpion or five to reliably kill one of the bastards, better still would be one of them ballista the Armsmen have, but it¡¯s definitely the most rewarding kill you''ll ever make.


    You can feed a hundred men for weeks on the carcass, and if you can boil that leather and work it into armour it''ll be damn hardy. Not as good as plate of course, but you''ll give standard chainmail a run for its money. Castle-forged chainmail will still be better, but then castle-forged anything is better. Fuckin'' rich bastards, hogging all the good steel.


    Uhm... any others you might fight... Oh, there''s rumours that some of the Jotun survived in the far north! But then again, if that''s true then they''re pretty much never seen anyways. Can''t say I blame ''em for hiding after what other intelligent creatures did to ''em last time. Say what you will about the tales of what happened in Jotunheim, of whether or not you believe in the tales. I do.


    They say that the last dragons put the city of the giant folk to the torch in jealousy, for the Jotun were the rising star to their setting sun. The dragons knew they were dying, and wanted to drag at someone else with them as they faded into the abyss. Good riddance to both of ''em, I says.


    Again, you might not believe it ever happened. It was centuries ago if e''re it did, so I don''t blame you. But one thing''s for certain: there''s still a city out there covered in snow, a city of charred timbers and the ruins of homes the size of castles.


    If there are any Jotun left, like the rumours say, maybe it''s best they stay far away. I doubt we''d treat them any better than the dragons did.


    Nah, the dragons weren''t umbra. To be honest I don''t know how a giant fire-breathing lizard is much different to a giant wolf or crow, but I don''t make the rules. Some fancy bloke I met said they weren''t and pointed at a book to tell me why. ''Course I couldn''t read it, but he seemed damn sure of himself on that matter. Dragons are probably the only thing im definitely sure are all dead. Why? Cause if any were still around they''d lord over us like kings and queens, and there ain''t many who could kill ''em.


    You wanna hear about them umbra in the seas? Why? You plan on growing fins and fighting them? Fucking hell, am I your commander or your wetnurse?


    Angels help me, I must be getting soft. Fine. So long as no one asks any more fucking questions, I''ll throw in what I know.


    I''m not a sailor. I don''t know much about ''em. All I do know is that we''ve done a damn good job at hunting the umbra on land, where we can chase them until they break. We''re endurance hunters, you see. You''ll never outrun a direwolf or boarsow in a sprint, but we can chase them for days until they collapse.


    We can''t do that with them lot beneath the waves.


    If any of you are from the Teleytaian coast you might even revere them as primordial evil deities or something. I don''t care much for that, but to each their own.


    What I do know is that they stay far out to sea, in the deepest places they can find.


    Most live in the freezing waters of the north, taking on the shapes of squids, whales and serpents, though I''ll be damned if there aren''t a few different ones hidden away in the south that no-ones seen since the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum collapsed.


    I don''t really know much more than that about the aquatic ones to be honest. Legends and stories say that two serpents vie for control of the Great Ocean, Jormungandr and Ouroboros, but they don''t cause much of a stir inland if they''re real. At hundreds of miles long you''d think someone would have noticed them by now if they do exist. Though the stories have to come from somewhere, I suppose.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    According to that one cult on the west coast- sorry, that''s a rude term? I don''t care. Apparently that cult- wait, isn''t it literally called "The Cult of the Deep Waves"? How the fuck can you be annoyed at me calling it a cult if it has "cult" in the name? Yeah, sit the fuck back down. Anyway, according to that one cult on the west coast it''s only the Angel of the Seas, Hydran, that keeps the oceanic umbra at bay.


    Though if I recall, they also say one day he''ll fail and the world will be plunged into the icy depths.


    Cheerful buggers, aren''t they?


    There are other legendary umbra, of course. Fenrir, Garmr, and Beowulf, the three hounds. Hildisvini, the great boar. There''s Ouroboros and Jormungandr, as mentioned, and Ymir, father of the giants. There''s tales of a great spider umbra in the jungles of Sothena, and a hundred more besides. You wanna learn about them? Ask a fucking nanny to tell you at bedtime. Or a priest, though there''s not much difference between the two, I find.


    Right then. So, being a Sellsword. What''s it like? The name should tell you enough. Sellsword. If you can''t work out what that means you''re beyond saving. I suppose the name''s meant to be an insult; someone who cares more for money than honour. Take it as an insult if you want, just make sure you take their coin with it. It''s them that want to pay for our services, which means it ain''t our fault that we''re the only ones with enough brains between our ears to get paid for it. You''ll have two best friends on the job: your blade and your bow. Fact of the matter is it may not be as ''honourable'' to kill a man from two-hundred metres away, but by the end of it you''ll still be alive and unharmed. If you do it properly, he won''t be. If you can''t use a longbow properly, here''s a bit of advice. Learn. Swordplay and axework might save you when we''re fighting bandits and other men, but the further away you can be from an angry Umbra the better. Trust me, and remember what I told you before; you don''t want any part of a pissed off Umbra. If one gets so close that you''re gonna need your blade, then the rest of your life is probably measured in seconds unless you remember your lessons.


    As for fighting other men, blades are the go-to choice, and the options you''ll probably be stuck between are a greatseaxe or longaxe. Some prefer to go for a one-handed weapon instead, like a longseaxe or hand axe, since it lets them take a buckler or roundshield in their off-hand, but I don''t like how bulky shields are, and a one-handed weapon doesn''t tend to have enough reach for me. Well, some one-handed weapons do, but unless you can prise the castle-forged steel from a dead knight then they''ll be way out your price range.


    You should''ve seen me father back in his day. Sired me on some bitch when the company passed through. Horrible cow, still got a scar on me cheek here, see? Got that from a red-hot poker when she didn''t like the fact I''d been fooled by a farmer at the market, brought some bad food. When he passed back through and found that she''d been beating me black and blue he struck her dead and took me with him, trained me to kill. Angels, he was a damn good man. Company used to be full of them, now I''m stuck with buggers like you.


    T'' Company wasn''t even really meant to form. Just him and a couple other lads hopped the border to Owkrestos one day and killed a few bandits raiding a village. To be honest they only really hoped to loot the bandit''s bodies, but then the village held a ''feast'' for them, and paid them what they could. Next day, hungover to shit, one of them goes, "We should do this more often."


    Unfortunately he slipped and fell backwards onto his knife two-dozen times before he could tell anyone else about the idea. Then me dad took his plan and founded the company.


    See, that''s the next lesson I gotta teach you whoresons. If the man stood next to you has an idea that could make you rich, fucking take it from him. Doesn''t matter what he is to you. Could be a stranger, a friend, a brother. Could be your fucking lover for all the good it''ll do. If you can use them to better your own position, do it.


    Yeah, I know. Sounds depressing. And stupid, given that you''ll normally be stood next to each other in a shield wall. But I don''t really give a fuck. Look, if you''re smart, then you''ll know when to apply that lesson and when not to. If you''re not, then the blokes around you will kill you back. Doesn''t make too much of a difference to me, but I imagine it''ll make a hell of a lot of difference to you.


    Right, I should probably get to the actual important bits of being a sellsword. Remember this next bit whether you stick with the company or not, since it''s probably the most important thing you''ll learn: DO NOT FIGHT THE BARBARIANS.


    No, I''m being serious.


    You think I''m joking? You got ideas in your head that they''re a bunch of mystics dancing naked to summon rain or backwards pagans? Go ahead, try and fight them yourself. Don''t say I didn''t warn you when you''re dead.


    Look, I know we look at the barbarians wearing almost nothing and fighting with shoddily forged weapons and think they''re easy targets, but there''s something you need to remember.


    When you get your first kill on the battlefield, it''ll be some destitute farmer drafted into a lord¡¯s army and sent out with a pitchfork beaten into a spear. You think that makes you a man?


    The barbarians, all three groups of ''em, train for combat before they can walk. I''m not exaggerating either.


    The Brythonians can cut down ranks of armoured knights from well over three-hundred meters away, and only the heaviest plate armour can hope to stop their arrows.


    I would say that if you find one of their longbows keep it for your own, since they''re a damn sight better than ours, but there''s no point. I doubt any of you could pull back the drawstring on the heavy buggers.


    Scelopyrene next. Oh boy, you ain''t got a hope in hell of beating one of those bastards. If a Scelopyrene hasn''t killed his sixth man by sixteen he''s written off as a lost cause by his tribe and cast out to die in the wild. If he survives then he''s accepted back in, since he''s gotta be a damn tough bastard to survive out in those wilds.


    Yeah, there''s a lot more umbra left north of the Aenir. Even without them, the winds and snows will kill most in a week.


    If they can survive up there, no matter their circumstances, then they can kill you easily.


    Worst of the lot are the Skonisnomas. They''re practically born in their saddles, and you''ll never catch their horses. Flighty buggers, they are. If they''re on the field they''ll have a hail of arrows constantly falling whether they''re going forwards or backwards. The only people I know who can reliably beat them are the Order of the Seeker in Polaeros, but if you have to fight them...


    Okay, so let''s assume that for whatever reason you''re fighting a northman. What should you do to try and stay alive?


    I''ll put aside the snarky bullshit for a moment, and believe me, I don''t do that often, and avoid making jokes about how you shouldn''t be on that field to begin with.


    If you''re fighting a Scelopyrene warrior, use your longbow. They''ve got very little ranged capabilities, save for their throwing axes and javelins. Your longbow will outrange the lot of them. If it''s one of their berserkers however, you''d best play it safe and fire as many arrows as possible, then hope for the best. I''ve seen them shrug off wounds that''d kill any other man a dozen times over when they go into their feral rages.


    For the Skonisnomas you wanna get behind a shield wall and fire as many volleys at them as possible. Their horses are fast but unarmoured, and there ain''t much meat on them either. That means that an arrow to their horse will almost certainly take them down. Course they can still fight on foot, and quite well to boot, but their mobility is their main advantage. Take that away, and the go down like any other.


    You''ll notice that the longbow is key in most of these scenarios. It''s why I respect the Armsmen over knights; they know what works. Now the chances you''ll fight Brythonians is almost nil, but not quite. It''s good that it''s so rare, cause I''ve got no advice to help you here.


    The longbow is key when fighting the barbarians, but there is one small problem when fighting Brythonians: you''ll never be able to out-draw them.


    I don''t care how much you train with a bow. I don''t care how much natural talent you''ve got. The Brythonians will win, every time. They''ve trained since they can talk. They''ve got you out-ranged, out-drawn, and out-skilled.


    Thank fuck they don''t leave their miserable islands. They''d put me out of a job.


    It shouldn''t matter too much anyway. I don''t take contracts against northmen unless I''ve no other choice. Normally there''s some war between different kingdoms in the Heptarchy, or some shit-toothed noble rising in rebellion against their monarch. These contracts are the best, since normally you''ll just be fighting peasant levies, who''ve only ever had to fight small groups of bandits on the road. They''re not harmless, per se, but if you do your job properly you should be fine.


    Otherwise you''ll be fighting knights or armsmen. Out of the two of them, go for the knight. There''s more glory, and more importantly, money to be had from killing a knight. They''re normally easier to kill as well. You wouldn''t think so, with how much knights prattle on about ''prowess'' and ''honour'', but it''s that honour that makes them vulnerable.


    Fight dirty. Use every trick you''ve got up your sleeve. Goad them, throw dirt in their eyes, tackle ''em to the floor and hope they drown in the mud. Use literally any means to kill them. Yep, I am biased, that''s right. I fucking hate pompous knights thinking they''re a better killer than me ''cause their armours shinier. Well they''re not. I''m the best damn killer there is, you know how I know that?


    Because the people that told me they were better are dead. And I''m still here.


    ''Course, that advice only applies to knights on foot. As much as I hate to admit it, mounted knights are still the most dangerous enemy to fight in melee combat on the field.


    Armsmen are a bit trickier. They''re good longbowmen, so that already makes them dangerous, but those billhooks are deadly. More so than you think at a glance.


    Sure, they look like farming tools stuck to broom handles, but those farming tools are normally used for cutting through wheat, and they go through flesh just as easily.


    Now I might not be the biggest fan of polearms, but if you can get your hands on a proper billhook, nab it. They''ve got good reach and are practically designed to hook knights off their horses and stab them in their armour''s joints. Any weapon designed to kill a knight is good in my book. They tend to be castle-forged as well, which puts them a grade above the swords and axes most of us use.


    If nothing else, you''ll be able to sell it to someone else in the company for a nice profit.


    If you see a lord, you might be tempted to take them in for a ransom.


    Don''t.


    This also applies to any family of a lord you might nab on the battlefield.


    Sure, you might be richer than you ever dreamed from the ransom money.


    But it won''t last.


    At some point you''ll run out of money again, and you''ll be no different than any other in the company again. Save that there''s now a target on your back.


    And if anyone''s desperate enough in the company, it''ll be you taken captive next, and sold to the lord you extorted for his revenge.


    Better just to kill them and be done with it. Trust me, highborns don''t forget slights against ''em. You might forget. They won''t. If they die without revenge, their children, their brothers, their second-cousin twice-removed will remember how you ''dishonoured'' their family.


    If you kill them, no-one ''ll know it was you that did it in the heat of the battle.


    So long as you remember to keep quiet about it.


    I may seem resentful of my lowborn position a little, and you might feel that way too, but remember, it can always be tempered by the fact that I know I can kill anyone above my station with enough work, one way or another. For some arrogant little whelps, a duel. A knight on a battlefield, a longbow. A fearsome duelling opponent? A knife at night. All else fails, then a uniform found on an unsuspecting servant, a misplaced vial here, an unattended drink there... its amazing much they put faith in armour. It''s also amazing how little armour does to protect you against your own protesting body.


    There''s no steel that''ll stop your stomach from burning itself from the inside, or slow a quickening pulse.


    No matter the method there''s one thing that''s constant:


    You should walk away fine, they shouldn''t.


    Of course I have more tips and tricks to stay alive and keep ahead of your peers. But I''m not gonna tell you. Come on, I need to keep a few things for my own advantage. Sorry boys, but there ain''t anything else I''ll be telling you today.


    So, that should suffice for your introduction to this life. If you think the company''s too rough for ya then I''m sure the Band of the Wren or the Rose-Tinted Company ''ll take you in, pompous cunts.


    But if you''re ready for a real soldier''s life, for never ending days of drink and sex and blood?


    Well, you''ve found your new home.


    Ah, what am I missing?


    Oh yeah, always sleep with your eyes open, and of course, murder''s okay if they''re a cunt.


    Right, I''m off to go vomit in a hedge somewhere. If anyone sees Corbray kill him for me would you?

 Lykourgos VII: Waking Dreams

    <u>Lykourgos VII: Waking Dreams</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Second Day of the Tenth Moon, 872 AD.


    Haestinghen, Eastern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    His muscles screamed at him as he picked himself up off the floor, crying out for a respite that he knew wouldn''t come. His lungs likewise burned with the need for air, the feeling only exacerbated by his continued exertion.


    Where am I? Why are we fighting?


    The space around the two of them was pitch black, though he could see just fine. His brother stood before him, axe and sword in hand, seeming only slightly less injured than Lykourgos himself felt.


    He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.


    Frustrated and confused, he picked his own sword back up and readied his shield.


    He took a wheezing breath as he braced himself against the kiteshield in his left hand, rolling his sword arm to try and release some of the tension in his muscles.


    Angels above, his brother could fight.


    For certain, Rhema had always had an aptitude for personal combat, but this?


    I guess he didn''t stop training when I left.


    He placed his left foot forwards, and readied himself yet again.


    How long had they been here?


    Did it matter?


    A ferocious overhead sweep was parried by his own blade as he allowed his instincts to guide his actions.


    Don''t think, just act.


    Three more strikes were parried with as much poise as he was able to muster in his exhausted state, before Rhema''s axe struck his shield with so much force that the head peeked through the other side of the wood.


    Rhema wrenched his arm back, and a small chunk of the bastard''s shield came away with the axe.


    Lykourgos was unwilling to simply react to his assailant''s attacks, instead moving himself forwards with steady, even steps.


    His own blade darted forwards, first stabbing at his assailant''s stomach, then a rightwards downstroke looking to bisect his brother diagonally. Rhema caught the blow on his axe, his left arm darting forwards to impale Lyk with his longsword.


    But for once, Lykourgos was faster.


    Putting as much weight as he could behind his damaged shield, he surged forwards.


    Rhema was knocked clean off his feet, but scrambled to right himself before the exhausted prince could press his advantage.


    His brother wiped the blood from his mouth, and the rook on his shoulder cawed.


    Wait... a rook? Was it... was it there the whole time? Why didn''t I see it before now?


    The young rook perched itself on his brother''s shoulder. Their tiny eyes were as captured constellations, their plumage night-black tipped with a deep indigo.


    They pressed themselves against Rhema''s ear, and cawed once again.


    Then the rook flew.


    Neither of the brothers moved to continue fighting, each enjoying a moment of respite and mesmerised by the bird''s flight. It was young, but it moved with such grace and skill that even the greatest of falcons and eagles would be put to shame.


    He sheathed his sword blade-down in the dirt, and ran a hand through his hair.


    His eyes were stinging with sweat, and the only reason his hair hadn''t covered them in the fight was because it was so matted with ichor that it moved like a single block rather than thousands of hairs.


    He tugged his fingers through to try and part the knotted mess and focused again on the bird''s flight.


    Eventually it settled once more, perching itself on the rim of Lyk''s shield. The bird''s head tilted, and the clusters of light in the black sclera seemed to crackle with energy. It nodded at him once, and moved to perch on his shoulder.


    There was a flash of blue light, and his body surged with radiant energy.


    His wounds did not close. There was no miraculous force that replenished his flagging vigour.


    But his resolve? His spirit?


    He found himself more determined to fight, to win, to live, than he ever had before.


    Another hour had passed, and finally he seemed to have the upper hand over his brother


    An hour of nothing but the monotony of endless duelling.


    Strike, parry, riposte, strike, parry, riposte.


    His shield was little more than an empty frame now, his armour twisted and bent. He was damn lucky his sword hadn''t shattered from the ferocity of their fighting.


    His brother''s strength seemed to be flagging, his blows becoming less and less powerful, his parries more and more frantic.


    Lykourgos threw the tattered remnants of his shield to the side as Rhema made another attempt to attack. When his brother''s axe drew near it was shattered at the haft by an almighty two-handed blow.


    The blade continued sailing forwards in its wide, swooping arc, drawing blood from the wide-eyed fighter''s arm.


    At that moment the rook let out another caw, somehow echoing through the darkness.


    There was a second flash of light, and the last of the fight left his brother.


    The bird swooped to his brother''s broken form, and pressed its head against the prince''s. Rhema closed his eyes and seemed to savour the contact while it lasted.


    For a few seconds there was an expression of bliss on his brother''s face, one he hadn''t seen since they were children.


    For a few seconds he knew his brother was happy.


    And then the rook took flight again, and moved themselves back to Lykourgos'' side.


    As the rook made to perch on his shoulder, Lykourgos saw how the tension left his brother''s body. Rhema collapsed to the floor, slumped in a heap and weapons clattering to the pitch-black ground.


    Rhema looked up at him and gave him a tired smile before lowering his head once more.


    Lykourgos raised his own sword, and-


    No, wait, what am I doing? No, I don''t want to-


    The blade fell, and his brother''s head rolled away into the dark.


    <hr>


    He shot awake with a strangled cry.


    "That dream again?"


    Nasos'' voice cut through the uncomfortable silence of his room. The prince took a breath to steady himself before speaking, as the memories of all the times he had had this dream in the last week came back to him.


    "Aye. It was different, though. I don''t understand why I never remember when it''s happening that I''ve dreamed it before. But it was different this time, definitely different."


    Nasos'' voice held a curious infliction as he moved around the room, tending to his chores.


    "Different? How so?"


    Lyk raised a clenched fist to his mouth as his actions washed over him.


    "I can remember for one thing, but that''s not the important part. I think I... Angels, I killed him. There was the rook again, but this time it moved to my shoulder rather than my brothers, then I..."


    He bolted out of his bed and to a basin, where he threw up what remained of last night''s dinner.


    He spat the remnants of bile out of his mouth, before taking the proffered water from Nasos.


    "Then you killed him?"


    He nodded, unable to voice such a notion. Nasos sensed his unease, and kept talking to fill the silence while patting him on the back.


    "It was only a dream, your Grace. For you, bad memories run through every brick and cobble of this town. It only makes sense you feel unease here."


    Dreams have meaning. You studied theology, you know that.


    But of course Nasos knew that. He was only trying to help, and Lykourgos knew that too.


    "Thank you, Nasos. Tell me, where is Ilias?"


    "Oh, he had to run an errand for Ser Romanos. I don''t know what it was about, but I hear that Ser Aethel is in quite a bit of trouble with the Grandmaster."


    A jolt of shock ran through him.


    "Ser Aethel? Is he here? No, that''s not possible he''s two-hundred miles away, isn''t he?"


    Nasos smiled kindly as he spoke.


    "Well, I heard that he came in last night with what he would only describe as ''valuable cargo'' and nine other knights."


    His voice took on a mildly joking tone as he continued.


    "I haven''t seen it myself, but I''m willing to bet that I know what that ''cargo'' entails."


    Lykourgos sprang back to his feet from his kneeling position, his priority immediately shifting.


    "You mean... he risked the life of the unconscious man by bringing him across two-hundred miles of open terrain, despite his specific orders to stay with him in Aenirhen where it was safe?"


    There was a dangerous tone to his words now, his ''sergeant voice'' breaking through.


    "That little... right, seeing as Ilias is indisposed you''ll be helping ready me for the day. Get me my robes and sword, then we''re going to Ser Romanos to sort out this mess."


    Nasos sighed, but smiled nonetheless.


    "As you command, your Grace. Will you be wanting your courtly clothes or armour?"


    "Armour. I don''t intend to wear those useless garments until this damnable conflict is over."


    "As you command, your Grace. Is your hand healing well?"


    He flexed the fingers of his right hand, curling them into a fist and then unfurling them once more. Some of the tension left his body as he did so.


    "I believe it to be healing well... yes, it''s healing fast. I have you to thank for that, Nasos."


    The young presbyter beamed at the praise.


    "It is no trouble, your Grace. I''ve had a lot of practice bandaging people up recently anyways."


    Lykourgos snorted at the young man''s remark.


    "Well, that much is true I guess. Still, it''s nice to know that when I next go into combat it won''t be with my off-hand, and I can bring my full prowess to bear. Now that should be good."


    Nasos'' smile turned to a grimace as the prince finished fastening his greaves.


    "I''m not sure I agree with that. I can''t really think of any situation where you go into battle as a good one."


    The prince rolled his eyes good-naturedly, to which Nasos gave an undignified splutter.


    "Come on! It''s not just me your grace, Ilias and Dreamwulf share the same misgivings. So do Eros and Ser Romanos, for that matter."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "Not Elikoidi?"


    He knew the answer already, but it was funnier to hear someone else say it.


    "He''s the most worried out of everyone. Did you know-"


    Nasos stopped himself and leaned closer so as to whisper, almost conspiratorially.


    "Did you know that he paces endlessly when you''re off at war? If anyone asks him he just says "The Prince is a big boy, he can take care of himself.", but the next moment his face turns to thunder and he starts ranting about how you need to stop being so careless and marching off to fight battles."


    The prince found himself scoffing again.


    "Careless? Does he not understand the amount of planning that goes into these marches? The amount of strategising and leadership required to move thousands of men from one town to another?"


    "I''m not sure that''s his main objection, your Grace."


    "Oh? Then what is?"


    Nasos gave a frustrated sigh as he helped the prince into his cuirass.


    "If I may be so bold as to speak freely, your Grace?"


    "Always. You needn''t ask, at least not in private."


    "Thank you, your Grace. You''re an idiot."


    Lykourgos spluttered, which quickly turned into a laugh. Have I ever heard Nasos insult someone before?


    "Thank you for that piece of insight, Nasos. And why would that be?"


    "For the same reason we all worry about you going off to battle. We''re friends!"


    Lykourgos froze for a moment. He knew that his new retinue were excellent companions, and he would have been extremely happy to be friends with each of them, but the fact that they might actually think of him as a friend?


    For some reason that had never even occurred to him. He smiled.


    He knew Elikoidi and Romanos were his friends. Alekos, far away in Polaeriopolis was another. Hell, he would even include his brother in that list, but the fact that his retinue were his friends?


    That was a pleasing thing to know.


    <hr>


    "Ser Romanos. Where is Ser Aethel?"


    Romanos turned to face him, having the decency to look at least a little embarrassed that one of his own knights had disobeyed his orders.


    "Your Grace. He is being escorted here as we speak. The nine who rode with him are still standing guard, though Dreamwulf insisted on taking eight Men-at-Arms and standing guard with them. I feel he does not entirely trust my knights now that ten of them have gone against your own orders."


    Lykourgos nodded stiffly as Ser Aethel was escorted into the room.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere."Good. At least someone here has sense."


    Ser Aethel made to bow, and Lykourgos let him kneel a moment longer than was strictly necessary.


    "Rise. I hope you have a very good explanation as to why you led an extremely valuable piece of cargo across two-hundred miles of dangerous terrain and didn''t leave it behind the stone walls and sheer towers of the River Keep?"


    Ser Aethel turned pink, and seemed unable to meet the prince''s eye as he mumbled out his answer.


    "Speak up man! Do not mumble in the presence of his Grace!"


    "I dreamt it, your Grace."


    Lykourgos made to speak, but Ser Romanos raised a hand to cut him off, his face contorting.


    "I... I also dreamt of their arrival last night. I thought nothing of it, but perhaps it means something?"


    Lykourgos thought of his own dreams, and nodded.


    "Aye, it might do. Fine, you shan''t be punished. Romanos, what do you advise?"


    His friend raised an eyebrow.


    "What I always advise. Pick out a few promising lads to act as your squires and help you with your duties."


    Lykourgos gritted his teeth. How many times had they had this conversation now?


    "This hardly matters at the moment. I don''t want squires; I lack privacy enough as is. I was asking what you would advise on the matter of the unconscious man found at the Horndaal."


    Ser Romanos ignored the latter half of his statement, instead continuing to press the matter of squires.


    "But why? You claim to lack privacy, but you already have a cupbearer."


    "I didn''t want a cupbearer! Don''t get me wrong, I''m glad Ilias is in my retinue, but I didn''t want a cupbearer anyway."


    Romanos gave an annoyed sigh.


    "And yet when Elikoidi presses on you to take one you do."


    The unspoken part of the statement was matched only by the pointed stare his old friend gave him, asking if he was really about to put one friend in front of another.


    Lykourgos felt a spike of anger at the insinuation, and barked out a harsh laugh.


    "Is this really what it means to be Crown Prince? To have my two longest, most trusted friends fighting to influence me? To fight for ownership of me like some child''s doll? I will not have it!"


    There was a stretch of silence in the room as Lykourgos rubbed his eyes and massaged his temples.


    "I''m sorry, Romanos. I know... I know that wasn''t your intention at all. Nor Elikoidi''s, for that matter. Im... It''s just been stressful recently, and I haven''t been sleeping well."


    His shoulders slumped in a mixture of fleeing adrenaline and embarrassment.


    "Sorry."


    He felt a weighty hand on his shoulder, grounding him.


    "I know. I apologise too; I shouldn''t have pressed or used Elikoidi''s name like that. I know you hate it when we fight."


    The Prince nodded weakly, and looked towards Romanos as he continued to speak.


    "Although you must admit, he makes it very hard not to fight him at times."


    Lykourgos laughed quietly, and took in a few deep breaths.


    "I can''t disagree with you there. Look, about the squires, I promise I''ll at least give it some thought, okay? Just... not right now. Not with the war on. After the war, maybe I''ll take one on then."


    "Just one? Not two?"


    There was a teasing nature to Romanos'' voice this time.


    "Don''t push your luck, Ser."


    Ser Aethel coughed politely, as if to remind them of his presence.


    "Uhm... Ser, your Grace, May I return to standing guard now?"


    Lykourgos rolled his eyes.


    "Sure. Oh! Take one of the Men-at-Arms with you! Otherwise Dreamwulf ''ll be annoyed he didn''t take nine with him."


    No sooner than Aethel left the tent did Ilias reappear, panting and red faced with his hands on his knees.


    "Your... your... Angels, give me a moment your Grace..."


    The prince looked on with Ser Romanos, mildly amused by the very out of breath cupbearer.


    "Apologies, your Grace. Two people; a knight and a young boy, looks about my age, appeared at the gates. Asking to speak to you, your Grace. Claim to be from-"


    He was cut off by his own panting breath for a moment.


    "Sorry, your Grace. They claim to have come from your brother''s court. Funny thing is..."


    "Funny thing? What is it that''s so funny, Ilias."


    The cupbearer shook his head.


    "Not funny, your Grace. Strange, really. The smaller of the two had a blindfold on, but... I think I''ve dreamed of the two of them before."


    Lykourgos and Romanos snapped to attention and looked to each other.


    "Angels above... me, you, Ser Aethel, and now you, Ilias?"


    The cupbearer looked on, slightly confused.


    "Your Grace? What do you-"


    Lykourgos cut his cupbearer off by swiftly striding across the room.


    "No time, Ilias. Get the two of them, meet us by the chambers we''re keeping the cargo in. Now!"


    The cupbearer, momentarily stunned, scrambled out of the door with his previous exhaustion seemingly forgotten. Lykourgos didn''t like having to raise his voice at all, let alone to someone who had been as loyal as Ilias, but this was far too important to be left for later.


    If he was right, then the next encounter was going to be extremely interesting.


    <hr>


    Well then, this certainly was a strange duo.


    Before him knelt a large knight wearing battered, scratched armour. He seemed fine enough at a glance, but there was something undeniably... odd... about him. Something that set Lyk''s teeth on edge and raised his hackles.


    Kneeling beside him was another, far different looking person. Where the knight was weathered and scarred, this one appeared to be far younger, wearing a green sash about their eyes and a loose-fitting robe on their person.


    "Rise. You claim to be of my brother''s court? Tell me, why should I trust those who come to me professing loyalty having just betrayed their king?"


    The knight made no move to speak, but the younger of the two smirked nonetheless.


    "Would it put you at ease if I told you I was sent to kill you, your Grace?"


    Ser Romanos let out a hearty chuckle, which he quickly disguised with a cough when Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at him.


    "No, I suppose not. Who would you be?"


    The younger of the two moved with a flourish.


    "This is Ser Aenethar, whom was assigned by your brother to see me safely to you. As for us, well, we''ve met before, haven''t we?"


    Lykourgos blinked a few times in confusion before his brother''s servant continued.


    "In fact, we met last night, did we not? I can''t say I agree with all your actions, but I suppose it needed to be done."


    The Prince''s eyes went wide as he realised exactly where he''d met this strange figure before.


    "You- of course! Rhema told me he had a Seer in his retinue! You''re the Rook, aren''t you? Did you manifest yourself in my dreams?"


    "Yes and no. I manifested within your dreamscape, that much is true, but I did not manifest myself there. That would have been your brother."


    "Rhema- how-"


    "Out of interest, your Grace, what other information did Rhema include within his little dream? I can''t see through your eyes, so I don''t know what you know and what you didn''t."


    Lykourgos thought long and hard as they walked through the large oaken doors of the central keep of Haestinghen.


    "Your eyes, that''s the first thing I remember. Your eyes are powerful, dangerous even, hence the blindfold I presume."


    "Anything else?"


    "Hmm. Ah, that is odd. Despite the fact you never spoke, not counting bird cries, I found myself consistently referring to you as a ''they'', not a ''he''. Is this coincidence or indicative of your gender?"


    A mildly flustered smile came over their face as Lykourgos finished speaking. Well, I guess I was right on that assumption.


    "Indeed, your Grace. That does not bother you?"


    Ser Romanos cut in with a chuckle.


    "I don''t imagine the prince much minds what you''d rather be referred to by. If nothing else, I bet he''s just glad he wasn''t wrong in that assessment. There''s little he hates more than embarrassing himself in these matters."


    "Oh, shut it, Ser."


    The Seer seemed to loosen up somewhat with their good-natured ribbing, some tension visibly leaving their shoulders.


    "Thank you, your Grace. Your sister was... less understanding."


    Lykourgos schooled himself as he found his face growing stormy at even the mention of his sister.


    "Somehow I remain unsurprised by her opinions."


    After an awkward moment of silence, the Seer spoke again.


    "Did Rhema perchance explain why I took the form of a corvid?"


    Lykourgos paused in though, and the Seer bumped into him when they kept walking with a soft "oof".


    "I don''t believe so, why?"


    The Seer tutted.


    "Of course. Trust your brother to hammer home my gender but not to explain the link between me and the Rook. Typical."


    There was no bite to the words, and a fond smile crossed the young Seer''s face.


    "Anyway your Grace, it is of no matter right now. Besides, you haven''t even asked for my name yet."


    "Seventh."


    All eyes turned to Ilias, who wore a triumphant, somewhat conspiratory smile.


    "That''s your name, isn''t it? I told the prince your name earlier, so he needn''t have asked."


    You told me no such thing you little trickster! Despite himself Lykourgos found himself grinning at his young cupbearer''s antics.


    "Ah, my apologies in that case your Grace. I was not counting on such a diligent young man being in your retinue."


    As Ilias spluttered in a mixture of embarrassment and indignity Seventh continued walking. Ser Romanos once again had to stifle his laughter, and Lykourgos ruffled Ilias'' hair.


    "Cheers for covering for me back there. You''re a credit to your role, Ilias. Come on, lets catch up before we get left behind."


    <hr>


    They''d only just reached the doors to the chamber when a familiar face bumped into the prince. Literally.


    "Elikoidi? When the fu-"


    "Ah, your Grace! So good to see you again! Here, let me just-"


    The prince barely had time to react as Elikoidi wrapped him in a bone crushing hug that lasted no more than ten seconds, as was his rule.


    "That worried this time?"


    His friend schooled himself, and nonchalantly checked his nails.


    "Who, me? Not in the slightest. No, I came to speak with you on a matter of urgency from the capital."


    Lykourgos shook his head.


    "It''ll have to wait. We''re in the middle of something at the moment."


    "I''m afraid it can''t."


    His friend pulled on his arm as he made to enter the chamber where the others were gathered. He turned to Seventh, Ilias and Ser Romanos.


    "You three, go on in. I''ll only be a moment."


    He waited for the others to leave before rounding on Elikoidi.


    "Well? What must you tell me?"


    "I believe I''ve gained a more solid idea of the amount of support you can count on in the capital."


    This caught the prince''s attention.


    "Oh? I assume that we''ll have supporters in the north and east, but you would''ve hardly rode here to tell me that. What other news?"


    "As you said, when you assault the capital we can count on some measure of support from locals in the eastern and northern districts, after all, support was always high for you there, and seems to have remained strong throughout the war. What you may not have known is that, due to relatively recent developments, it''s likely that the western district will support you as well."


    The prince''s found his face morphing into one of confusion. The west?


    "You believe I can count on support from the west? Why is that?"


    Elikoidi smirked, as he always did when he knew something Lykourgos didn''t.


    Angels he knows how to annoy me. Still, it''s what makes him perfect for this job I suppose.


    "Well, reports from within the city have been sporadic at best since the start of hostilities, but it seems either your sister or brother have taken to burning any prominent citizens who refuse to recognise the authority of the New Church."


    Lykourgos grunted in discontent.


    "Well, seeing as Rhema isn''t a follower of the New Church I''m going to assume it wasn''t his doing. I know his reputation as a bit of a sadist, but I''m willing to bet most of that has been slander spread by pompous nobles in the capital. Besides, this has my sister¡¯s handiwork written all over it."


    Elikoidi pursed his lips, the motion causing the dead skin on his face to go taught.


    "So you say, your Grace. He does have somewhat of a vicious streak though, that much you must admit."


    Lykourgos stared at his old friend, and deliberately changed the topic of conversation.


    "Anyways, what do you mean about the war being bad for your informants? Surely the chaos is good for your network, what with the chaos of war making it easier to slip in and out of the palace without much effort?"


    Elikoidi scoffed.


    "Oh my friend, chaos isn''t war''s doing! Wars are about the only time the highborns like you or I so much as look at the common folk. That''s not chaos. Chaos lives in the day to day! Chaos is the huddled masses, starving on the streets and in their hovels. Chaos is the untimely death of an heir, the scheming of a spurned lord, the dispossession of treasures and morals both. Chaos is not forged in war; chaos is found in peace!"


    The prince grimaced at his friend''s words, as Elikoidi gave a small, mocking flourish with his arms.


    "Angels, and the others call me cynical. We''ll talk later. I''ve got business of my own to attend to."


    "Certainly. Best of luck working out whatever''s going on with your unconscious man."


    With that his spymaster walked off, sauntering to the nearest bottle of wine, no doubt.


    "Angels above, grant me the strength to see this through."


    With that quick prayer on his lips, he entered the chamber.


    <hr>


    The man had yet to show any sign of waking, nor even of movement in his slumber. The only progress they seemed to have made was that he was breathing regularly now, unlike when they had found him a month and a half ago.


    "You wish to wake him?"


    The voice of the Seer took him out of his thoughts. Lykourgos made to answer, but his gaze remained glued to the unconscious man on the stone altar.


    "He will not wake, no matter what is tried. We do not wish to harm him, so we have yet to see how he responds to painful stimuli. If he does not wake soon, it would surely be worth attempting. Nothing extreme you understand, merely pricking his thumbs or some-such thing."


    Seventh nodded, seemingly happy that the figure was unharmed.


    "I know of him. I can wake him, if you will only grant me the chance."


    Lykourgos sucked in a breath, and nodded. What had he to lose? The young Seer took a knife out of their sleeve, and cut open the palm of their left hand. They walked over to the sleeping form of the strange man, before turning their hand and letting the blood fall over the man''s face. Next they removed their blindfold, but Lykourgos couldn''t see if their eyes were as star-filled as they had looked on the Rook in his dreams. Their mouth moved, and what seemed to the prince like a whispered prayer was said, before the Seer took seven backwards steps towards Ser Aenethar, never ceasing to look at the sleeping man even as they deftly tied their blindfold back in place.


    At first it was a twitching of his fingers, barely noticed by the members of the room. The droplets of the Seer''s blood trickled down exposed skin and worn cloth to the stone plinth, leaving thin, pink streaks behind. Suddenly a hand shot up, then fell, grasping frantically at the table. The long-buried man all-but launched himself to his feet, and took a few stumbling steps. He grasped at thin air with his right hand, and launched into a furious tirade of words aimed at men long-since dead.


    "HARALD! HARALD! TO YOUR KING, YOU FOOLS! DON''T LET THE KING FALL!"


    The man stumbled forwards further, and gripped at the shoulders of Ser Aethel.


    "DAMN YOU KORVANUS, DAMN YOU THROUGH ALL THE HELLS! PROTECT YOUR KING! HARALD!"


    Two more knights moved to restrain the man, but Lykourgos held up his hand, stopping them. The figure took a few more stumbling steps towards the door.


    "WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE IS MY SWORD! HARALD! Harald! Harald..."


    His voice grew weaker and weaker towards the end of his tirade, ending in little more than a whispered name as he slumped to the floor, and returned to unconsciousness. The prince looked at the young Seer, who''s face displayed a curious mix of elation and sorrow.


    "I have done as you commanded."


    Lykourgos started.


    "I have not ordered nor commanded you to do anything. To what do you refer?"


    The Seer turned to look at the prince. Despite the blindfold covering the young man''s eyes, Lykourgos knew the Seer could see him perfectly well.


    "I wasn''t speaking to you."


    Ser Aenethar''s eyes were wide, visible through the slit in his visor, but his gaze was not fixed on the awakened one, but rather the Seer. The expression he wore was not one of shock, that much Lykourgos could make out, but he wasn''t the best with emotions. If he had to guess it was something approaching... satisfaction? No that wasn''t right... understanding? It was the expression of someone who had just seen a belief proved true, but in a way they hadn''t expected. Lykourgos didn''t like that look, and he liked it even less on Aenethar.


    "Ser Aethel. Escort the Seer to their chambers. Double their guards. I have questions that need answers."

 Lykourgos VIII: Forwards March

    <u>Lykourgos VIII: Forwards March</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Seventh Day of the Tenth Moon, 872 AD.


    Haestinghen, Eastern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    He still couldn''t believe it. Angels above, it had worked! The same thoughts rattled through his mind some four days after the man had awoken, the monumental nature of the event not lost on him. He''d compiled so many questions he needed to ask when the man next woke, having been assured it would be no more than a few weeks now by the Seer.


    Surely it couldn''t hurt to wait here until he woke again, could it?


    He knew many of his advisors didn''t agree with that point. Ser Romanos was failing at hiding his rising impatience, and Elikoidi''s usually well-meaning barbs had been turned into insults born of frustration.


    It didn''t matter. Something was clearly going on here, and he didn''t intend to be left in the dark when it came to a head.


    He could afford another weeks wait.


    Dreamwulf was sat to his left as Lykourgos consulted his notes, Eros the next seat over. Nasos moved deftly around the edges of the room with Ilias, cleaning and sweeping with brooms so as to make themselves useful whilst the council was held.


    Well, was supposed to be being held. Romanos and Elikoidi were still yet to show themselves.


    Normally when the prince''s two closest advisors came to council meetings, each attempted to outpace the other, desperate to get the seat at the prince''s right hand only to deny it to the other. Not this time.


    When Elikoidi and Ser Romanos did stride into the room that was being used as a makeshift Inner Council chamber, they had their heads held high and were walking side-by-side with each other. Not only that, but they were ten minutes late.


    They were never late. Their pride wouldn''t allow it.


    Neither moved to take the seat to Lykourgos'' right. This time they sat side by side, opposite the prince.


    "You''re late. You''re never late."


    "We need to talk, your Grace."


    The words were obviously laced with as much forced politeness as Elikoidi could muster, his teeth grinding as he took a breath. Ser Romanos continued from where Elikoidi left off.


    "You need to move again. We can''t sit cooped up here forever, waiting for some mystic to wake up. He''s not going anywhere, your Grace, so why can''t we continue the fight?"


    He shook his head.


    "I understand your concerns, but this is just as important as the war, if not more so! Think of what this man could tell us, what he must know! The Seer seems to revere him, perhaps he''s also some sort of powerful magic-user! How can we abandon that?"


    Ser Romanos looked affronted.


    "Your Grace, you''d have us abandon the war? And for what, the potential that this man might be someone of importance from the past?"


    Lykourgos shook his head.


    "I don''t intend to abandon the war, merely wait another week. Just one more week, that''s all."


    Romanos slumped in his chair, and Elikoidi stared, mouth agape.


    "A week? A WEEK?"


    Elikoidi stood and strode around the table, jabbing an accusatory finger at the prince.


    "NO, NO, ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NOT! IF HE''S BEEN ASLEEP FOR CENTURIES THEN HE CAN WAIT A FEW MOONS MORE, BUT THE THRONE IS IN FRONT OF YOU! YOU HAVE A DUTY TO SEE TO, AND SO HELP US WE CAN''T JUST CARRY IT OUT FOR YOU!"


    "Eli, listen, I know-"


    "No, you don''t, and that''s the problem. You''ve got the upper hand and you''re willing to throw it away and wait here for nothing. Don''t you remember how much you wanted this? The kingdom, yours to rule, yours to save, yours to improve."


    Lykourgos looked away.


    "Look, I''m sorry if you aren''t happy with this. But it''s my decision to make."


    If anyone else looked at Elikoidi then, they would have seen scorn and malice in his eyes. Lykourgos knew better. When he looked to his friend there was confusion and sadness hidden beneath it as he shouted.


    "MAKE IT THEN. SEE WHERE IT GETS YOU, YOUR HIGHNESS."


    Elikoidi''s words seemed to shock himself more than anyone else. Lykourgos knew he didn''t mean it, not really. Eli had always struggled with his temper, and would sometimes say something Lykourgos knew he regretted, but it had never been anything like this. Even if it didn''t sound bad on a surface level, Eli had just insinuated that Lykourgos was not the heir to the throne, nor the rightful king. Let us be done with this, Eli.


    Before his friend could speak Dreamwulf moved to place himself between Lykourgos and his two friends, his empty gaze scornfully levelled at Elikoidi. No, he''s burnt his anger out. Don''t challenge him here, please.


    But his thoughts were lost on the others. Dreamwulf was doing as was expected of him, and the prince knew that Elikoidi''s anger would be stoked by such an action.


    "That''s quite enough, yer Lordships. I''ll not have you shout at his Grace. Not while I''m here."


    The spymaster''s own glare met the blind man''s, hackles raised at the challenge. Eros sat still, trying to make himself as small as possible, while Nasos shooed Ilias out the door, to the quiet protests of the young cupbearer.


    Elikoidi spat his words, his reason lost to choler.


    "Oh great! His blind fucking dog wants to protect him now!"


    "That is my job, Ser. I follow where the prince leads, not where others tell him to go. You''d do well to remember that."


    "Oh, oh you fucking CUR!"


    Elikoidi wheeled to face Lykourgos, still seated at the table. His taught skin was stretched into a sneering, angry visage, though his hurt was still visible beneath it.


    "Put your mongrel''s fucking leash back on, your Grace, and remember your DUTY!"


    Dreamwulf snarled in response, his hand reaching down to his belt.


    Lykourgos stood, putting a hand on his shoulder whilst Romanos did the same to Elikoidi.


    "Come on, we''re all on the same side here."


    The knight looked to Lykourgos, but Eros spoke before he could continue.


    "We really should be moving, your Grace. Leave behind a guard for the man and the Seer, but we need to continue this war. You said it yourself back in Aenirhen; if we stand by and merely observe our enemy''s movements, then we''ve already lost."


    Lykourgos braced his arms on the table. Before him stood his two options. He could either stay here and fulfil his private goal of the past two or three years, his occult interests at last bearing fruit, or he could set out immediately and win the throne.


    His duty was clear, no matter how much he''d rather sit and wait for the former.


    "Besides your Grace, perhaps by the time we pass back through he''ll have awoken for true."


    He looked around at the voice, surprised that it was Nasos who spoke.


    "You''re right. I''m sorry. I''ve allowed my personal obsessions to override my duty. We move out at noon tomorrow."


    "South to the two sieges, or west to the capital?"


    He rubbed his chin.


    "You''ll know come the morning. Ready the men to leave at daybreak either way. Dismissed."


    Romanos and Elikoidi bowed, a relieved smile on Romanos'' face and a forced one on Elikoidi''s. With his anger burning out, experience told the prince that his friend was soon to throw himself into his work to avoid melancholia. Eros moved to follow them, no doubt off to spar with Romanos again. The prince sighed.


    "Come on Dreamwulf. I need a drink."


    The two moved to leave the room as Nasos shook his head. They passed Ilias, who was aimlessly kicking his feet into the air from the chair he was sat on just outside the doors.


    "Attend us, Ilias."


    "Aye, your Grace."


    "Ale, if you please. We''ve an early start tomorrow."


    Dreamwulf nodded.


    "Aye, not a bad shout. Nothing worse than a headache from wine."


    "Cloves and cinnamon as well Ilias. Honey too."


    He turned his head at Dreamwulf''s confused grunt.


    "The days grow darker and the nights longer. I think it''ll be nice to have some mulled ale."


    "Can''t say I''ve had it before your Grace. Cloves and cinnamon aren''t exactly in my price range."


    Lykourgos smiled at him, knowing the gesture was lost on the man.


    "Well, they are now! Come on, let''s get a fire going and get comfortable. I fancy talking for a while with someone who..."


    He turned his face away as his cheeks began to flush.


    "With someone who isn''t either disappointed or angry with me at the moment."


    Dreamwulf patted his shoulder.


    "Well, I''m ''ere your Grace. Besides, it''ll pass. They want what''s best for you, they just don''t know how to word it all proper."


    "Yeah, I guess. Come on, we need to get a fire going in the hearth."


    The bigger man nodded.


    "Right then, let''s get too it."


    <hr>


    Lykourgos sipped from his cup of mulled ale, still hot to the touch but not overly so.


    "This is some sorta... comforting drink for you, yer Grace?"


    He nodded, his smile audible through the content noise he made.


    Dreamwulf smiled as well.


    "I like it. I ain''t used to fancy spices, but if this comes included in my job''s perks I don''t reckon I''ll be looking for other employment anytime soon."


    Lykourgos nodded back, his words leaving him momentarily. The argument today had shaken him more than he expected, but the warmth of the fire by his side and the familiarity of the drink in his cup soothed his nerves somewhat.


    "Thanks for standing up for me by the way. I know it''s your job but I still want to thank you. I know Elikoidi would never actually hurt me, but he''s always had trouble controlling his tongue and caustic remarks. Sorry for what he called you, as well. Please know that he isn''t usually like that, and I know he''ll apologise in his own way soon enough. He hates it when he loses his temper like that."


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    The blind man waved him off, smile still on his face.


    "I ain''t worried, yer Grace. It''s my job. Asides, even if it weren''t I''d still stick up for you. We''re friends after all, ain''t we?"


    Lykourgos blinked, then smiled. Angels, that''s gonna take some getting used to.


    "Of course we are. Nasos hammered that in not too long ago."


    His friend chuckled.


    "Course he did. If it''s any consolation he''s given almost everyone in the retinue that talk by now, sans I think Master Elikoidi and Ser Romanos. The two of ''em scare him somewhat, I think."


    This time it was Lykourgos who found himself chuckling.


    "The two of them? They might get a bit hot-headed at times, as you saw, but scary? They''re some of the biggest softies I know."


    "I think that only extends to you, if it please yer Grace. Neither of ''em are particularly... open, to newcomers."


    There was a comfortable silence as the two of them sipped from their cups, savouring in the rich flavours of the spices weaved together in the ale, sweetened by a generous helping of honey. It was one of Lykourgos'' guilty pleasures he had kept since he was younger; he put in far more honey than was strictly necessary in the drink, allowing himself the sweetness every once in a while if he was feeling particularly stressed.


    It felt nice to share it with someone for once.


    "How come you ended up agreeing with ''em in the end then?"


    "Other than to shut them up?"


    The blind man snorted.


    "Yeah, apart from that."


    "Quite simply, the two of them have been my most trusted advisors for half a decade now, but they agree on almost nothing. When I say almost nothing, you might think I''m exaggerating, but I can genuinely count the number of times they''ve unequivocally agreed on something on one hand. As you''ve no doubt noticed by now, they bicker like no-one else. That means that when they both walk in like they did, borderline arm-in-arm, ready for a drop-in drag-out meeting, they need to be listened to."


    Dreamwulf smiled at him again.


    "The three of you seem to run a pretty tight ship, your Grace."


    "Aye, we do. Romanos deals with the insufferable noble scions, Elikoidi keeps his ear to the ground, and I deal with legislative and administration issues."


    "And you all keep each other''s pride in check."


    Lykourgos choked on his mouthful of drink.


    "How da- Yeah, actually that sounds about right. To keeping pride in check!"


    He raised his cup and gently bumped it against Dreamwulf''s.


    "To keepin'' pride in check!"


    <hr>


    "Dreamwulf, if it isn''t too rude of me to ask, I don''t really know much about you from before we met. You''ve never mentioned your family other than they died of Black Grave. Would you like to tell me a bit about them?"


    The bodyguard shrugged. He didn''t seem apprehensive or affronted about the somewhat-tipsy prince''s subject choice, more just mildly melancholic. It was as though he had come to terms with what had happened.


    His stay in the monastery might have helped with that.


    "Used to ''ave a big family on the farm. Me da and ma, me four uncles and three aunts, me four brothers and four cousins. Then there was the Grave in ''58 and ''62, lost me aunts then. The rebellion came after. The outbreak in ''70 all but finished the last of us off."


    Lykourgos swallowed his mouthful of drink. That was a lot of death.


    "You had family in the Twilight Rebellion?"


    His mouth had moved before his brain had even registered the words he was speaking. His bodyguard just nodded stiffly.


    "Aye. They was closer to me dad than me, but me old man and his four brothers were drafted by Lord Porthan down in Seastream. Me oldest brother, too. Left me to look after me three younger brothers on the farm. I was... what, seventeen? Eighteen, maybe? I was old enough to go in any sense, but someone had to stay behind and raise the young ''uns with me da off to war. His brother''s sons and daughters as well. Six of ''em went off to the war, and eight of us stayed back home. Only me da came back in the end. Don''t know how me uncles died. Don''t really want to know neither. According to me old man, deep in his cups, me brother was the last of ''em that went to war to die. He watched me older brother, his eldest son, get his face staved in by a mace. Said that he couldn''t even find the body to bury after."


    Lykourgos moved to place his hand on Dreamwulf''s shoulder, but stopped himself.


    Dreamwulf doesn''t like it when people touch him. Not without announcing it, and I don''t think he wants to be interrupted right now.


    "Found me dad floating face down in the river one morning. Guess he couldn''t take it anymore. Then, a year and a half later, the Grave came back. I kept me sight just long enough to watch all three of me kid brothers die, and three o'' me cousins. Was only me and me and the second-youngest left after that. Tried to raise her as best as I could, killed more than one bandit tryin'' to nab her in the year or so we were left alone together."


    "What happened to her."


    Dreamwulf shrugged. The movement was gentle, filled with questioning and defeat, but not sadness.


    "I don''t know. I ask meself that question all the time. She was always the quietest out of the lot of ''em, but I don''t blame her. I didn''t exactly talk much either after everything that happened. She worked the fields with me, took the crops to market with me, hell, she even helped me bury the others. Her own brothers."


    Lykourgos shook his head, doing his best to empathise with his bodyguard, who just gave a tired laugh.


    "Then I woke up one mornin'' and the house was silent. It''s morbid but I even waited a few days to see if she was dead, you know, if her corpse started to smell and all that. Nothing. I hope she was able to leave the farm behind, leave our broken homestead and go somewhere filled with life and laughter and happiness. That''s the one thing I could never give her."


    Dreamwulf wiped at his blank eyes before chuckling again. There was surprisingly little sadness in it.


    "Then I left the farm. Nothing left for me there with her gone. Went to a monastery who took me in, did the menial work for them. More than once I killed bandits or wolves harrying ''em. Then you came by asking for holy people who could fight, and they put me forwards."


    He sighed, and there was a pause for a little while.


    "Not exactly the one-word answer you were hoping for I take it, your Grace?"


    His words were of light-hearted teasing, completely at odds with the gravitas of the previous subject matter.


    There was silence in the room, broken only by Dreamwulf finishing his current cup.


    "Your Grace?"


    "Thank you for sharing that with me Dreamwulf. For what it''s worth, I''m sorry for what happened, especially Seastream."


    Dreamwulf reached over and patted his shoulder.


    "Don''t worry none, your Grace. It was war, and we lived on the wrong plot of land when it kicked off. Lord Porthan was the one who wouldn''t lay down ''is arms and give in, so you had to fight him. Nothing wrong with that, it''s just the way of the world."


    Lykourgos smiled at the reassurance. He was so sure he''d see some hint of anger, of sadness or contempt in his friend''s pale eyes when he looked up, after all, he was the one who crushed the three lords at Seastream, but when he forced himself to look up he saw nothing but acceptance in Dreamwulf''s dull eyes. Maybe he didn''t need to be so burdened by that particular thread of thought. His friends would make sure of that, he knew.


    Friends. I like that thought.


    <hr>


    The morning approached with an air of caution. The townspeople here were still wary of him, no matter how much restraint he had exercised when dealing with the needs and wants of the soldiers under his command. Much of their trepidation stemmed from his previous stay here in the Twilight Rebellion; it may have been a single night, but every home had been forced into and every hiding place laid bare. Had he not been stopped by Romanos it was likely he would have razed the town to the ground in revenge when he realised his brother was still in the noble''s hands.


    The people here remembered that all too well.


    They were not hostile to him, but not friendly either. They would doubtless be glad to see the back of his army.


    His musings were interrupted by the arrival of his cupbearer on an Aleman Cob. He pulled on the reins of the small horse, bringing it to a walk. Ilias came up to him and Romanos, steadying himself with a message in hand.


    "Ser, your Grace, news from the south! Carthos has fallen, and the seven-hundred men that were besieging it are now moving to reinforce twice their number outside Ousdaal!"


    Romanos grimaced, and the prince did likewise. Not that moving out sooner would have solved anything, after all, it would take at least a week to march down to the two chapterhouses, and that was assuming perfect conditions. Even so, the prince knew his mind was made up.


    "That decides it then. Ser Romanos, tell the men to stow arms and have the Lieutenants ready to march them south. Ilias, tell Symon and his Starlings the same."


    Ilias looked mildly uneasy, but obeyed regardless.


    "Aye, your Grace."


    The dagger the prince had given him was still about his waist, and Lykourgos watched as he tapped the pommel twice and pulled it half out the scabbard before snapping it back in, testing it to make sure it would come out cleanly if needs be.


    Lykourgos knew it wouldn''t be needed, but he wasn''t about to tell his cupbearer to stop doing that. It was a damn good habit to get into.


    He looked at the empty space on his belt next to his longseaxe where the dagger used to be.


    I should see about replacing that before I next go into battle.


    When he had been fighting at the Einarbrycge he had a wounded hand and couldn''t wield his favoured weapon. This time he would be at the height of his abilities; It was only fitting he was fully armed as well.


    The men began to march out of the town in their thousands. Cavalry marched out in ordered ranks at a walk, followed by knights on foot close behind. They were resplendent with their colourful banners and glittering armour that caught the morning sun, dazzling the onlooking townspeople.


    The armsmen made a less opulent show, looking more regimented and disciplined than their glorious counterparts, but no less deadly for it.


    The prince had made sure to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the myriad forces under his command. The knights and armsmen were simple enough to understand, he''d trained with knights most of his life and led armsmen for years now, but the levies weren''t as clear cut. They came from all walks of life with a great deal of improvised or hastily-fashioned weaponry. Most of them would have been able to see some of the smiths with the armsmen and get their weapons properly fashioned, but they were still a far cry from the castle-forged steel the rest of his army had.


    The levies under his command could be roughly split into two groups, rural and urban. The urban levies were mostly frontline foot soldiers, coming from Seastream and Aenirhen, whilst the rural levies came from the breadth and width of his domain. The rural levies were almost exclusively skirmishers; the bowmen and javelineers amongst them were good troops, many of them having been ''gamekeepers'' in peacetime. Lykourgos knew the term ''gamekeeper'' to be a polite term for ''poacher'', and that these men were technically criminals, but seeing as they were fighting for him he wasn''t prepared to alienate them. Besides, it''s not like he ever had the time to go hunting in his woods anyway.


    The footmen and horsemen amongst the levies were less reliable. Where the skirmishing levies mostly came from the countryside these men were from the towns and cities under his control, usually Aenirhen, and had little to no combat experience. They could be relied on for little, but they were here nonetheless. He wasn''t thrilled about using them in battle, especially since they could break at the first sign of bloodshed, but he had little choice. It was either that or remain outnumbered on the frontlines and shieldwalls of the coming battles.


    The Starlings brought up the rear in their drab padded leather and chain hauberks. They were almost as disciplined as the armsmen, clearly surprising many who had come to know their raucous nature and rowdy dispositions over the last week and a half, but not Lykourgos. They were soldiers, and each man knew how to fight. Even if the younger or inexperienced amongst them wanted to walk out of lockstep as the levies did he knew that the veterans would beat them back into line.


    Bringing up the rear were the siege and baggage trains, slower than the rest of the army but not nearly as much as would have been expected a decade ago; the armsmen were expected to march with their own tents and provisions, and so they didn''t add to the train, nor did the Starling''s, for they distrusted the levies and knights who formed the bulk of the baggage.


    The siege and baggage trains were guarded on both flanks by wings of light cavalry, more to make sure bandits, raider, wolves and umbra kept their distance than to stop an army.


    Still, his gut told him the siege train would be important soon enough.


    Lykourgos knew what they would be facing when they did reach Ousdaal. The two-thousand men at the castle were an equal mix of levies and knights, and now that the smaller of the two castles had fallen he would not be surprised if the second had by the time they arrived as well. It had occurred to him that he had fought no armsmen belonging to his sister or brother yet. They must have been holding them back at the capital for the inevitable battle to come there. In that case I should preserve my own armsmen. They should operate the siege weapons, but I don''t think it''d be wise to commit them to storming a fortress and losing hundreds, not before the capital is taken anyway.


    In that case his options really revolved around the enemy¡¯s actions. If they marched out to meet him with a woefully outnumbered force then he would crush them, unless they surrendered of course. But if this force and its commander was smarter than the Marshal Harran then they''d no doubt take refuge behind the walls of the larger chapterhouse at Ousdaal, forcing him to either storm the walls or risk a lengthy siege himself. He didn''t particularly like either of those options, not with between nine and ten thousand Rose soldiers waiting behind him at the capital. Time was not something he wanted to waste any more of, the Angels knew he''d wasted enough.


    Although saying that, his Trebuchets had yet to make their debut in this war. Perhaps it was time for his sister''s forces to hear their song?

 Rhema III: To Man the Shattered Battlements

    <u>Rhema III: To Man the Shattered Battlements</u>


    <u>The First Day of the Eleventh Moon, 872 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    He sat by himself in an old alehouse next to an open window. The building had been abandoned for some time now; indeed, calling the window ''open'' implied that there was something that could close it, but any shutters here had long since been torn apart for firewood. It was a sad thing; he''d been here a few times before, back when it was still open, and he''d quite liked it then. Lyk and Alekos had come here as well, once upon a Summer Solstice. That was a good night. Well, if Alekos remembered any of it he''d probably disagree, seeing as he spent half the night hunched over in a hedgerow. Intelligent as Alekos may have been, he didn''t know how to hold his drink at all.


    Rhema watched with squinting eyes as the sun rose from the east, gentle birdsong filling his ears and drowning out the morning hubbub below. Crowe would either be preparing for the day downstairs or out meeting with a few of his lieutenants at the moment, having all but taken control of his supporters in his ''absence''. He was thankful for that; she was a better leader than him anyway. She''d had to be, given how rare women reaching her rank were.


    Of course, she wasn''t exactly thrilled at his withdrawal from public life after leaving the palace. Things were definitely getting more complicated as the days went on, and Crowe was running out of excuses to feed his sister on their refusal to return.


    He''d actually heard a woman spreading the fanciful rumour of his untimely death to a few other men as they''d walked down the Bastard''s Run, but he''d stayed quiet.


    Those rumours were pretty funny, no matter what Crowe said. She always ensured such talk was struck down anyway.


    It wasn''t difficult to work out how such rumours had come around, of course. He''d hardly been seen in the fortnight since he''d last spoken to his sister. She''d grown more paranoid and easily agitated in that time, and when she was paranoid and agitated she was dangerous.


    He''d watched as she sat the throne one day despite his presence in the room, oblivious to the collective shock at such a scandalous act. Even her staunchest supporters appeared to recoil at so brazen a disregard for his own royal authority.


    By itself that didn''t worry him. He hated the damn throne anyway, and the endless petitions it brought with it.


    But the fact that she seemed to genuinely not recognise what she''d done wrong?


    That was concerning.


    She was the ace when it came to playing with courtly games and niceties. The mere weeks he had been in the capital had drained his patience, but she was able to manoeuvre around court factions with all the grace of their departed mother for years, could read the room as well as their father and followed tradition and the unspoken rules of court better than either of their parents did.


    For her to genuinely not recognise the faux-pas she had made?


    He''d seen it in her then, not that he was suicidal enough to say it to her face.


    She was going the same way as him.


    Guess Lyk''s the only sane one left in our family now. So long as he didn''t react poorly to Seventh''s dream-magics.


    Not that he was worried about that possibility. Well, not much anyway. Lyk had been studying the occult and mystical for almost three years now, and had always held an interest in the subject to some degree. If Rhema was willing to bet on anyone having an immunity to direct magical contact, it was him.


    Well, either him or Master Elikoidi. You didn''t get far in the business of shadows and spies without learning a few things you shouldn''t.


    Thoughts of magic and the occult brought up memories of his own attempts at dream-walking to his brother without the presence of Seventh to guide him. Sure, he might not have gotten it perfect, what with them being thrust into combat and unable to speak to each other, but credit where it was due, he''d been able to get the message to his brother day after day and he knew when Seventh was safely in Lyk''s court.


    That last bit was more Seventh''s quick thinking, he surmised, but still.


    The fight in any other circumstances might have been considered fun, after all, it had been a long time since anyone had given him a challenge like that on the training field.


    In fact, no, they were still fun even given the circumstances they found themselves in.


    He''d won all but one of their bouts in that week, but they were challenging victories, and that was what made them fun.


    To train with the destitute sons of dispossessed minor lords and the ''best'' that small village levies could offer bored him.


    Where was the sport in such one-sided bouts?


    No, those duels were boring. That week of true fights?


    Angels above, that was fun. He needed to spar properly with his brother after the showing he''d been given the last week.


    But even so...


    He''d been beheaded by his own brother. That had taken some time to sink in; the emotions he''d felt spike through him as his brother stared down at him, face shrouded in darkness, and let his sword fall.


    He''d tried to play it off, both in his dream as his brother raised the blade, and in his waking life when the guards at his door questioned his screaming.


    He could play it off and ignore it all he liked, but it had messed with his head quite badly.


    Of course he didn''t hold his brother to blame for it; he was the one that wandered into his brother''s mind, and he was the one that continued to head back there night after night without changing methods purely so he might fight him again and again.


    Of course one day he was going to lose, even if Seventh'' hadn''t intervened when they did. Eventually his brother would learn his fighting style and beat him. That was what Lyk did, after all.


    He won.


    Maybe not straight away. Maybe not without sacrifice and an almost superhuman amount of effort that Rhema was only just starting to appreciate given the last few weeks, but he always won.


    Maybe his brother would fail a few times first. That didn''t matter, ''cause all that happened then was that he learned.


    And when he learned how to defeat someone, be it in a duel, a battle or even something more mundane and academic?


    His victory was that much more total.


    He shook his head to get back on track, again. Thinking on his brother''s talents wouldn''t do him much good until his army was actually at Anaria''s walls.


    The numbers in the capital had swelled to some ten-thousand fighting men and women in total, hunkered down behind stout walls and strong gatehouses. It would, on paper at least, prove a tough encounter for any attacker to have to force their way through.


    Conventional wisdom in sieges held that an attacking force would need to outnumber the defender by at least three-to-one, and while there were a great many sieges won with vastly different odds on either side, it was still held as common wisdom for a good reason. His brother had some twelve-thousand men in his army, and Rhema knew that he would be unwilling to simply turn the city to rubble with artillery, and so would need to storm the walls while only slightly outnumbering the defenders within.


    Luckily, the actual state of the defenders was far different than it first appeared. The reality of the situation was that some two-thousand men in the ranks of the ''defenders'' would be swapping sides, and of the remaining eight-thousand true defenders a quarter of them were the sellswords and mercenaries of the Band of the Wren, bound to his sister only by coin, not loyalty.


    As Symon''s Starlings had proven to her, loyalty can''t be purchased, only rented. As soon as it was no longer profitable to remain loyal to her, Symon had taken his men and swapped sides.


    Smart man. Wonder what he was offered to make that move. He snorted in amusement at his own thoughts. To be honest he probably didn''t need to be offered anything at all. A week with Harren would be enough to turn the loyalties of any man to ash.


    He''d brought every one of his loyalists into the northern district with him. He wasn''t taking any chances here, and would accept no failure in his plan, not now, not when the final act was so close. If his sister managed to realise what was going on in the midst of battle, and if she could spare the resources to assault his own positions, and if she wrest control of the district from him before his brother made it through the gates, then she could still win here.


    He was not going to let that happen. Not after all she''d done.


    Four-hundred armsmen and two-hundred knights made up the professional core of his supporters, bolstered to a total of two thousand by a motley assortment of levies from various religious minorities. Why the Drake-Church had remained so loyal to him was a mystery, especially given what his sister had done to Hydran''s Cult ''in his name'', but what was perhaps even more baffling was the fact that the Ichorian Cult, bearing the standards and banners of their long-dead king whom they believed to be the reincarnation of the First Saint, had sworn themselves to him as well. Perhaps they knew he was a member of the Silent Cult, and had seen in him a kindred spirit since he followed one of the minor denominations of the faith.


    Perhaps they simply wanted royal protection, where his sister couldn''t reach them.


    However they came to their decision, and for whatever reasons they had reached it, they were here and stood beside him now. That was the important thing.


    So, two thousand were loyal to him, and two thousand were loyal to coin.


    This meant that of all the soldiers in the capital only six-thousand bore any love for his sister. The real trouble was that of the two-thousand Armsmen who hadn''t sided with his brother only four-hundred were loyal to him, and the rest would doubtlessly fight to the bitter end for his sister.


    In fact the remaining six-hundred from Lieutenant Daniil''s thousand, of which Rhema''s own four-hundred supporters amongst the armsmen could be found, were stationed in the northern district with the young prince''s own supporters. Rhema knew that as soon as his brother''s army was in sight he''d need to make sure Daniil and the Roses amongst his unit were being trampled into the cobbles of the streets, lest they hold their defensive positions in the dilapidated, broken district and bleed them out here.


    Apart from that all his sister had left were some three-hundred knights, seeing as the other thousand were away dealing with the pockets of resistance in the south-east, another thousand armsmen, and somewhere approaching five-thousand levies.


    Split down like that the chances of her victory seemed slight at best, but Rhema knew better than to underestimate her.


    She''d find a way to do something to tip the scales in her favour again, even if it took a mountain of gold or a torrent of blood.


    It was what she did best, after all.


    Angels, thinking of so many numbers bored him to no end. He''d never much paid attention to his lessons in Castelos, preferring the training grounds and the sparring it promised. The physical activity soothed his mind most days, as a balm on his spirit. If it were possible, he''d have joined the armsmen when he came of age, but father had forbidden it.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.He was a prince, not some common gutter-rat or dispossessed noble. His place in life was to be found in aristocratic courts and palatial splendour, not muddy fields and dour barracks.


    He moved slightly, propping his head up with one of his arms as the other rolled a seaberry along what was left of the windowsill. They were about the only thing he''d been able to stomach the last few days, especially since even the thought of eating meat repulsed him. He wasn''t quite sure what had triggered this, but he had a few guesses. Most likely it was seeing all those people butchered in the streets when he''d left the palace last week.


    He shook his head to get his thoughts back on track. That was the long reason for his leaving.


    The short was that Roma had become so volatile after his outburst at her that he couldn''t even pretend to be working with her anymore, so he simply left. His supporters, what few remained anyway, had congregated in the northern district of the city, and as a result he now ruled from an abandoned alehouse in the most deprived area of the capital.


    Some king he''d turned out to be.


    He was broken from his musings by a pair of fieldfares, drawn to him by the small pile of seaberries on the windowsill. He held one in his hand, willing himself to stop shaking.


    If the birds were bothered by his trembling hands then they didn''t show it, one of them happily jumping on top and plucking the berry away from him as he stroked it''s head and neck with his thumb.


    He watched as the other moved to peck at the pile next to him, the other hopping off his hand and joining their friend.


    He liked birds. They didn''t ask him awkward questions, or expect him to do anything.


    Well, except feed them berries.


    He knew he had a few things to do today, but he was content in the knowledge that Crowe could handle them without him.


    Maybe he could just spend a little while enjoying some birdsong.


    That sounded nice.


    <hr>


    Hours passed, and the sun began to fall from view, passing over the alehouse. The direction of the wind changed, blowing smoke from the men''s cook fires beneath him.


    A few different groups of soldiers were encamped, armsmen and levies both, huddling together in the frigid autumn air around a spit with what looked like the bloodied remnants of a fully grown cow''s leg on it. How the score of men were intending to feed themselves with just that he didn''t know. There was hardly enough meat on it for a quarter of them.


    He''d used to love hunting, even for little birds like those he''d fed that morning, but nowadays he couldn''t stomach the sight of blood or meat, for all he could see when he looked to the cuts and steaks were the bodies of those who had died for a cause he didn''t believe in, and all he could feel as he chewed were the flies about their corpses buzzing in his mouth and the worms wriggling in his empty stomach.


    The wind and smoke carried the smell to his nose, and he turned away and retched.


    Angels, he couldn''t stomach it anymore. Literally.


    The joke came across as weak, even in his own mind, but he ignored that fact.


    The smell lingered even as he walked away, and he could taste the blood and meat on his tongue


    He could still smell the meat on the spit, even if he couldn''t see it anymore, could feel the flies grow more frantic and angry as he walked away.


    The worms wriggled and writhed amongst the rot in his empty stomach as he gagged.


    They might not have been real, but they certainly felt real.


    He swallowed. Hard.


    Crowe would likely be back soon, if she wasn''t waiting downstairs already. He could hold on until then. With any luck the cold air would ground him until he was away from the smell of the burning flesh.


    Meat. It''s not flesh, it''s meat. Flesh makes it sound like a person. I don''t need these thoughts to get any worse than they already are.


    His feet carried him to the ground floor of the alehouse without much thought. Crowe would likely be back by now, and with any luck she''d be able to cheer him up a bit. Swallowing once more and taking a ignore his rising nausea, he walked down the stairs.


    He coughed politely when he saw Crowe with her back turned to him. She was stooped over a pot on the hearth, clearly in the midst of cooking. He grimaced at the thought of eating.


    She turned to face him as the door was closed, smiling at him.


    "Your Grace-"


    "Your Highness, you mean."


    She put a hand on her hip.


    "Not unless I''m sure no one can hear me, your Grace. I need you to eat something tonight, even if it''s only a small meal. You''re... well, you''re starting to go gaunt."


    "I''m sorry Crowe, but I can''t eat that sort of thing anymore..."


    "My Prince..."


    She stopped herself, clearly thinking her words over. Crowe''s voice was uncharacteristically soft when she spoke. Well, uncharacteristic if she was speaking with anyone else. Over the last month she''d become much more caring towards him, more maternal, than she previously had.


    Well, that''s not entirely fair. She''s always cared for me, she''s just showing it more now.


    "Please Rhema. I know the last few weeks have been stressful, but I need you to eat something."


    "I ate a handful of seaberries earlier."


    "Rhema..."


    "Okay, some birds did. I had a few though."


    He saw the look she gave him, and turned away. He sighed deeply and rested his head in his hands, slightly muffling his words.


    "I can''t eat meat. I don''t like the feeling anymore."


    Crowe looked at him, before turning back to the cook-pot on the fire.


    "You don''t need to eat what you don''t want to, your Grace-"


    She looked around the room, satisfied that no-one was eavesdropping, then continued.


    "Sorry, your Highness. Here, try eating this instead. No meat has so much as touched it, nor has it been flavoured with its stock."


    He took a cautious spoonful of the mixture, gingerly placing it in his mouth and swallowing before his eyes went wide.


    Angels, it tasted amazing. Or he was just hungry for something he could stomach.


    He hadn''t realised how hungry he was until he''d eaten something that didn''t make him want to throw up.


    He ravenously devoured the contents of the bowl, clearing it in less than two minutes of the vegetable mixture. There were carrots, parsnips, turnips, peas and onion, with what must have been thyme and rosemary for seasoning. As soon as the solid food was gone he tipped the remaining vegetable broth into his mouth, gulping it down greedily.


    Manners be damned, this is too good.


    "I received an ''order'' from Roma today, actually. She''s summoned me to attend her, apparently."


    He wiped his mouth and looked at her, concerned.


    "You aren''t going to-"


    Crowe cut him off by hocking and spitting on the ground to her side.


    "There''s the only bit of me I intend to give her, and if she wants it that badly she can damn well come here and scrape it off the floor herself."


    Rhema smiled at her crassness.


    "Besides," she continued, "you need only command me to attend you instead and legally her order means less than nothing. You are still technically the reigning monarch, even if you''re only sitting the throne as a farce."


    He nodded, grinning.


    "Okay then, Marshal-at-Arms Crowe, I command you to attend me and provide wise and just council until you are released from this service. So, you know, basically just keep doing what you were already doing."


    Crowe smiled as his stomach rumbled again, and he moved to tip the last few mouthfuls of the watery broth down his throat. He took in a deep breath as he finished the broth, and even as he did so the bowl was removed from his hands and a small plate was thrust into its place. Looking down at it he could see shoots of sparrow-grass and slices of leek, both grilled.


    Rhema looked up at the Marshal, who smiled knowingly back at him.


    "I prepared for your diet to change as such. I wasn''t certain if it was actually just the meat you didn''t like, indeed this was more of a guess than anything, but I thought it couldn''t hurt to try having you eat something like this. At the very least I''m relieved to watch you eat something other than small handfuls of seaberries for a while. I didn''t like watching you starve yourself like that."


    Rhema nodded at her and smiled gratefully. He knew how lucky he was to have someone like Crowe looking out for him, even if he didn''t always show it.


    "Thank you. I now understand why Lyk kept telling me vegetables weren''t just peasant food."


    She shook her head.


    "It wasn''t difficult, no need to thank me. It''s surprising how many soldiers will give up vegetables for meats; I found plenty willing to trade while I was out. And I agree with your brother on that matter. I''ll never understand why the nobility treat all-meat diets as a status symbol, especially since they have to ignore the polaerans who will prove time and time again that it isn''t good for the body."


    He snorted a little. If the nobles wanted to keep themselves from common foods they were welcome too. As for himself? He was quite happy to eat this if it meant he wasn''t feeling constantly sick.


    "Thanks anyway. For looking after me."


    His voice came out somewhat weak from fatigue, but that didn''t really matter. He would fix that soon enough; having now eaten some real food he found himself growing drowsy, his lack of sleep catching up with him as his body was no longer worried about its more immediate concern of finding sustenance.


    He ate as much of the leek and sparrow-grass as he could, his appetite still too small to finish the whole thing, but Crowe didn''t seem to mind. She spoke to him of the more minute details of their plans, of who was stationed where, of which loyal soldiers truly knew of the plan and who was being left in the dark, expected to act purely on his order with no prior knowledge of their switching sides.


    At least, he thought she did. His eyelids were constantly fluttering open and shut, and he grew more and more aware that his consciousness was slipping gently away from him.


    This time he didn''t mind so much. He wasn''t in the castle by himself anymore, he wasn''t in his cold room, and he didn''t have an empty stomach. Even if he was sat rather than led down, he was quite comfortable. He could stay awake a little longer, after all, he needed to catch up on the minutia of the day he had missed. Crowe would fill him in, then he''d find somewhere to sleep for a bit.


    <hr>


    His eyes fluttered open once more. He hadn''t even realised he''d closed them. The fire was still burning in the hearth to his right, and Crowe was looking at him in an almost motherly fashion. He could hear a few men outside singing a rendition of ''The Two Corvids'', their voices carried softly on the autumn winds.


    "Go on your Highness. Go back to sleep. I''ll keep watch until dawn, just focus on getting some rest."


    "I can get back to work, we''ve got plans to make-"


    "Rhema," her voice was softer than he''d ever heard it, but it somehow carried more weight than her usual sternness did. She moved next to him and began to stroke his hair before continuing.


    "You''re allowed to let yourself rest. We''ll carry on in the morning, I promise, but I''d rather you got some rest. Go back to sleep."


    "Weren''t you the one telling me I needed to spend more time doing my work back at Castelos?"


    Crowe gave him an exaggerated sigh, smiling slightly.


    "Whilst you could stand to do a bit more work when it comes to the day-to-day, I would prefer it if you didn''t make it quite so large a part of your life as your brother did."


    "Diligence is a virtue." He snarked back.


    She ran her hand through his hair again, and he curled up a little more.


    "You''ve been through a lot recently. You can take a rest. Besides, you''ll be with your brother soon enough. There''s little left to stop him now. Roma''s played all her cards, there''s little more she can do."


    He scoffed weakly.


    "Out of cards? She''s never been out of cards in her life. No, she seems like she''s out, but that just means she''s drawing a few more from the deck."


    Crowe didn''t try and argue.


    "Maybe. She''s been seen meeting with some strange priests recently, mayhaps that''s something to do with it?"


    She cut herself off.


    "Ah, listen to me carry on when all you need to do is sleep. Go on, we''ll be able to talk about it in the morning. Get some more rest, Rhema. You''ll need it in the days to come."


    He didn''t really want to leave her to stay awake all night, after all, she''d be tired come the morning, but between the warmth of the hearth and the feeling of her hand playing with his hair, all that came of his attempted protests was a tired whine. He found that he couldn''t even move his mouth to utter the words, and he didn''t particularly mind. Instead his eyes gently shut once more, and he curled up in the armchair he was sat in.


    In a matter of seconds, he was back in the deepest sleep he''d had in weeks.

 Lore Chapter: The Church of the Saint

    Oh, hello! I don''t believe we''ve been introduced to each other properly.


    Yep, I''m the priest on our little outing. Well, presbyter actually, but most care little for the difference.


    Ah, so you wish for me to tell you of the church?


    The New Church specifically, or the Old as well?


    Both?


    That''s fine by me, of course!


    Well, where would you like me to start? Truly? As if you had never been...


    Ah, there is no shame in that! I understand that even for noble sons, the prospect of sitting through hours of lectures about faith in stuffy rooms is a boring one, let alone the one-sided nature of the lessons!


    Mayhaps a lighter conversation in the fresh mountain air will be better for your learning?


    Yes? Excellent! Well, no time like the present, right?


    Okay. The faith as a whole is known as the Agiathos in High-Klironomean, which serves as the official language of the church. It is the single largest religion in the known world, with followers ranging as far as the tundras and forests north of the Aenir and as far south as the Aleman Hinterlands. The origin of the church, which I''ll start our impromptu lesson with, is one of the only things every single one of the myriad branches of the church agree upon:


    The story goes that once, long ago, our world was sundered in an era of what seemed to be unending darkness. Great monsters preyed on the world of men, creatures the likes of which even the dragons and umbra paled in comparison to. The unrelenting tide of darkness threatened to topple the order of man, and return our kind to the dust.


    Fittingly, it is known as the Age of Silence, for there is little to nothing left from that time to inform us of what truly transpired then.


    But what we do know is that from this age of unremitting strife arose a figure of hope and salvation. He was no god, no false idol; he was a man, as pure and true as any who have lived. It was he who united the disparate pagan tribes and nations under the banner of mankind, sundering the darkness and bringing back the light.


    And for his most holy and pious actions, the pagans he had saved hanged him by the neck, for he is said to have rejected their gods and idols. When his mother spoke out in grief they crucified her, and even with her dying breath she begged her departed son to forgive them, so pure was her heart.


    The faithful did not forget. They revered their hero, and his blessed mother, and called him the First Saint. He ascended to the heavens upon his death, and whilst no god watched over mankind one was never needed, for there was now the greatest of all men to watch over the world.


    Of course, that is the New Church''s, or Alithini Agiathos'', view of events. Well, the New Church and the minor sects derived from it, I suppose.


    Oh, of course! I''ve been well educated in the beliefs of every sect of the faith, be it New or Old, major or minor.


    Why, certainly! I''d be most happy to tell you about all of them!


    You will tell me if you get bored of me talking, won''t you?


    The Old Church, or Ybridica Agiathos<u>,</u> shares much the same story as the New, but with a few key differences. The Old Church follows the belief that seven Angels granted the First Saint their blessings, and bore him to the heavens to rule as their sovereign for eternity.


    Now, for historical context, this retelling of events was first brought about in a mainstream fashion when Saint Arwald hybridised the faith of the old Klironomeans with the pagan religions of the Skraelings, though there are some records stating that loosely associated groups held a rough approximation of these beliefs for quite some time before it became an official branch of the faith.


    Of course, there are organisational differences between the two, as well as the practices they engage in, but for the most part the Old and New churches have become one and the same in Klironomea over the last thousand years.


    Yes, I must admit that such a retelling, with Angels and blessings and the like, captures the imagination of the listener far better than the New Church''s version does, though I also believe that the story of human cooperation, forgiveness, and overcoming the odds hold far greater moral value when pinned on the innate good within our fellow man, and not otherworldly creatures assisting us.


    Even so, I will not attempt to refute the Angel''s positions in the church, even if my kind do not believe in them. They have become so intertwined with Klironomean culture that even many here who purport to be followers of the New Church still pray to them and believe in their existence.


    So yes, in short the main difference between the Old and New churches are the inclusion of the Seven Angels in the Pantheon of Saints.


    It may seem a trifling thing, but within priestly-circles it is a huge difference.


    After all, if the First Saint needed to be helped by divine beings, then he was merely a normal man, as flawed as anyone else.


    If he did not require aid, then he must have been a truly infallible and mighty hero indeed.


    See where the disputes might come from now?


    The Seven Angels are actually derived from the old pagan faith known as the Corvid Pantheon.


    Within their pantheon there are seven deities, and each of our angels are rough analogies to them. In this way Agia Arwald was able to make the faith far less foreign and strange to the local Skraelings, and so they were far more receptive to his words.


    Mayhaps there is merit to what they say? Who am I to tell you which branch of the faith is true?


    Oh Saints no! I have no intention of swaying you one way or the other; I have my own beliefs, but you must decide yours on your own, otherwise it isn''t true belief, merely indoctrination.


    Sorry, it wasn''t my intention to begin a rant.


    The seven Angels are as follows:


    Aenethar, Angel of Death and Dreams.


    Anawroth, Angel of War and Honour.


    Arnka, Angel of the Hunt and the Wilds.


    Demea, Angel of the Harvest and Fertility.


    Hydran, Angel of the Seas and Stars.


    Morna, Angel of Smithing and Stone.


    Finally there is Polaris, Angel of Learning and the Stars.


    The seven Angels are no longer simply a religious facet; nowadays they are as intertwined in the culture of Klironomea as the First Saint himself.


    What else is there to speak of... hmm, I think that about covers the Old Church at a surface level... ah, I know, holy days!


    The other thing every branch has in common are the holy days celebrated across the breadth of the faith''s territories. Summer and winter solstice are both celebrated, though more as festivals than as truly religious ceremonies. Nonetheless, the church presides over such events all the same.


    All Hallow''s Eve is perhaps both the most sombre and celebratory of the holy days.


    The masses and rulers alike light candles and give food freely to any who may need it, as a way of ensuring that any wayward spirits of the departed know that they are still remembered and welcomed amongst the world of the living. It is a ceremony equal parts revelry and remembrance.


    Will you be in Anaria on the last day of the tenth moon? You will? Well, of course it depends on how long this expedition takes, silly, but you know what I mean!


    Splendid! I must insist you partake in the celebrations! To celebrate All Hallow''s Eve in the capital is an experience unlike any other!


    Ah, but I''m getting ahead of myself, sorry.


    The last of the four major holy days is that of the Day of Ascent. It marks the beginning of the Church Calendar, as well as the subsequent Klironomean Calendar that most of the civilised world uses to mark time now.


    Whether the collapse of Klironomea and Terranea can truly be said to have occurred on the Day of Ascent is unknown, but it is unlikely we will ever know.


    Still, assuming it did, it makes keeping track of dates easier on both calendars, since there is no difference in day or month, only the year.


    Anyway, back on track.


    The Day of Ascent is less of a celebration than the others days, and depending on your social status you are expected to attend between four and fourteen hours of prayer and sermons, for it is on the Day of Ascent that the First Saint was hanged by the neck by the pagans who rejected his message. The days preceding and following tend to be filled with cheer and mirth, though much of the actual Day of Ascent is spent in penance and prayer.


    Less cheerful, I know, but no less important for it. Indeed, it is arguably the most important of the church''s holy days.


    Would you still like me to tell you of the minor sects of the church? I understand if not, you''re probably bored after listening to-


    You would? That''s great, thanks! It isn''t often people willingly sit and listen to a glorified monologue like this.


    I''ll start with those derived from, or rather linked to, the New Church, if it pleases you. There are less of them than the Old Church has anyway, far less.


    There are only two minor sects of the New Church of note; the Aematus Agiathos and Agiathos Epithymounterus may not be large faiths anymore, but both of them predate the New Church by many centuries, and each has acted as the other''s bitter enemy for just as long.


    The Aematus Agiathos is known in low-klironomean as the Church of Bloodied Purity, a title its adherents bear with pride. It is on its proverbial last legs in the current age, thank the Saints, for there are few beliefs as vile and twisted as those they purport to hold.


    The Church of Bloodied Purity was one of the first distinct sects of the Church of the First Saint to appear, originating in the old Kingdom of Terranea in the fourth century BD. They held the fervent belief that only those of Terranean blood could truly reach the heavens as only they were truly ''human'' and had souls, and as a result keeping people of other races enslaved would not be sinful, as they were not ''human''. In the centuries since the War of the Sundering and the Coming of the Winged Ones it has lost much of its following, thank the Saints once more, for all worship in Ibaenea and Dathan has long since ended, and only the city-states of Tilda maintain a large body of worship.


    Distressingly however, large portions of the Tildan upper classes prescribe to its worship, keeping to the blessed purity of their noble, pure, slave-driving ancestors.


    On the other side of the coin lies the Agiathos Epithymounterus, the Church of those who Desire Freedom. A decentralised and often underground sect of the faith with, its origins can be found in the lowborn, the enslaved, and the oppressed.


    The Church of those who Desire Freedom is a sect that, whilst once major, has seen a significant drop in adherents in the last few centuries. This is not due to foreign missionaries or persecution, but simply because it is less needed; In the centuries since the War of the Sundering and the Sotenari Disaster slavery has gradually become rarer and rarer, as more and more of the world gives up the old ways and ensures that no man lives with a yoke about his neck.


    As mentioned it is a highly decentralised faith, with no single ''correct'' way to worship or pray.


    Even though much of the world has cast off the shackles of slavery, the same cannot be said of the Tildan Peninsula, where the majority of their petty realms and city-states still keep slaves.


    With their work unfinished, the Church of those who Desire Freedom endures in grassroots, underground movements, where its followers gather around secret firepits and groves at night to grasp at whatever messages of hope they can.


    The ''priests'' of this sect have often never read a holy book in their lives, and many are illiterate, so instead they recall the deeds of the pious and the righteous through a longstanding oral tradition. Tales of the Carpenter''s Son, the First Saint, have been passed down from generation to generation with the hopes that one day they will be able to show their faith in the light, rather than hide in the dark.


    Yes, their priests are often uneducated, that much is true, and many of the tales they tell are far removed from what we might consider ''orthodox''. But you know what? I think out of all the sects of the faith, they deserve respect more than any other; They do not lash out with violence at their oppressors, they do not attack simply to satiate anger. They fight only to protect each other, and meet only to kindle hope in one another.


    At the end of the day, is that not what faith is for?


    As previously mentioned, there are a great many more minor sects of the Old Church than the new. Many relate to the Angels, perhaps venerating one over the others, or even rejecting the Saints entirely.


    Others are... less simple. Or more simple, depending on your view of things, I guess.


    What do I mean? Well, how''s this for an example.


    One of the most... I hesitate to use the word blasphemous for I do not wish to claim to know which way of worshipping is true, but if the Silverian Church turns out to be correct then we''ve been doing this wrong the whole time. As in, about as wrong as possible.


    No, honestly, you''ll probably think I''m joking when I tell you of their worship.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.Alright, don''t say I didn''t warn you.


    Quick history quiz: what was King Arwald III famous for?


    Okay, ''being deposed by his military aristocracy'' wasn''t what I was going for, but you aren''t wrong.


    What I was referring to was the reason he was deposed, the straw that broke the camel''s back, so to speak: he subverted the church and created his own variant of the faith.


    What did it entail? Oh boy.


    The Silverian Church was a sect of the Agiathonic faith created by King Arwald III as an excuse to engage in limitless hedonism; he held nightly feasts whilst his people starved, orgies with anyone that took his fancy at court whilst raiding parties stole people away in the night, and tournaments and melees while foreign warbands razed towns to ash with impunity.


    Hedonism and indulgence were worship, to him. After all, he claimed, mankind was pure, and so did not have to fear their souls being lost for what he termed, ''simple pleasures''.


    Is it any wonder he is remembered less-than-fondly as the ''Manic King''?


    Whilst it may be actively persecuted on paper, many of its private adherents are either wealthy noblemen, prominent merchants or influential upper-clergymen, and so in reality its persecution is only lightly enforced.


    Thankfully they remain a fringe group at best.


    The Ichorian Cult are a far more palatable group than the Silverians. They do not deviate much from the scripture of the Old-Church, merely believing that the last King of Klironomea was the First Saint come again.


    The Aixop Agiathos venerates King Harald II as the reincarnation of the Carpenter''s Son. This cult is one of the only minor sects that the two major denominations, the Old and New Churches, considered an accepted deviation from theological and liturgical canon, and so small pockets of believers can be found across the entire Heptarchy. This acceptance is in part due to the fact that King Harald II is not only an Agia, or Saint, but also a common folk-hero and symbol of the old glories of the Klironomoi before the Old-Kingdom''s collapse.


    It also helps that one of the most feared knightly orders in the world make up their backbone; the Order of the Bloody Cross all but founded the religion after the disastrous Battle of the Broken King, when they bore Harald II back to Klironomea after fighting through an entire army to recover his corpse.


    A noble, just faith if ever there was one.


    Hmm, which one would you like to hear of next?


    The Dragon Cult? Certainly, though I recommend you not refer to them as such in front of any of their clergy. They''re a proud bunch, with a storied history. Though they may be minor now, with the dragons long gone from this world, they were at one time the single largest denomination of the faith, eclipsing even the Old and New churches.


    To its followers it is known as the Cult of the Ampithere-Worship, which, In High-Klironomean and theological circles, is the Drakotheous Agiathos.


    When dragons still stalked the world, butchering entire armies and torching cities on a whim, inevitably they inspired worship in those that beheld them. Over time these cults and faiths were stamped out as the last dragons left the world, but a few small bands of worshippers still remain to this day, awaiting the return of their masters. Many different faiths surrounding dragons sprang up whilst they still lived, but one of the only ones to survive to this day is that of the Ampithere-Worship, who hybridised their beliefs with those of the Old-Church.


    They believe that it was not seven Angels who granted holy powers to the First Saint, but seven Dragons, with hides thicker than any armour and breath of purifying flame to burn away the darkness of the Age of Silence.


    As the memory of these dark days fades away, so too does the Cult of the Ampithere-Worship, clinging on in only the most remote hamlets and farmsteads of Klironomea. Wherever the worship of these fire-breathing creatures is found, it is usually persecuted by the major sects of the church, who remember all too well when this minor denomination usurped their positions of power, and aren''t keen to risk it happening again.


    Yeah, I''m not a big fan of worshipping giant monsters either. These are the cults your tutors probably never told you about, am I right?


    Heh, thought so. I think they''re interesting, even if I don''t agree with their beliefs.


    I''m glad you do as well. You aren''t bored yet?


    No? I''m glad for that as well. Again, tell me if you do get bored, I won''t hold it against you.


    Thanks, that''s nice of you to say!


    Actually, speaking of giant monster worshipping faiths, what about the Archaearchonian Agiathos? If you found the Cult of Ampithere-Worship interesting you''ll definitely find this one fascinating, though perhaps even more of a morbid fascination than the last one.


    The Church of the Ancients have been around for a very long time. Longer than most denominations of the faith, anyway.


    As the dragon worshippers proved, despite the horrors they can unleash upon the world of man, there will always be those that look to monsters and see divinity rather than devilry.


    Can you guess where this is going? Can you guess what the Archaearchonian Agiathos, the Church of the Ancients, worships?


    Yep. No, I''m being serious. Yeah, they actually think it''s a good idea, or at least the best of a bunch of bad ideas.


    No, don''t worry, I had about the same reaction as you when I was taught about them.


    It makes sense in a certain light; the Umbra have existed for time immemorial, and have been enshrined in the myths and legends of almost every culture on the planet.


    Whilst I would never seek to discriminate based on belief alone, even I have a hard time reconciling their beliefs with my own.


    This denomination of the faith is viewed with distrust and often outright hatred by almost every other sect of the faith, even the Dragon-Worshippers, and as such they are commonly forced to operate underground, and are the targets of a huge portion of Holy-Inquisitorial work.


    I don''t understand why they worship monsters either, but then I suppose it must make sense to them.


    Okay, still with me after all that? Good. Next we''ve got the cults centred around individual Angels within the pantheon: the cults of Anawroth, Aenethar and Hydran are some of the largest minor sects of the faith, each carving out their own little niche amongst different parts of the Klironomean population.


    They are more mystic-focused branches of the faith than the others. There are three denominations or cults of note here: the Cult of Anawroth, the Silent Cult, and the Cult of the Deep Waves.


    I''ll start with the Cult of Anawroth, known amongst scholarly circles as the Agiathos Yperoxi Anawroth.


    Not that you''d find many scholars in its ranks.


    The Cult of Anawroth is not technically a separate faith from the mainstream Old-Church, after all, Anawroth is often taken as the personal deity of soldiers, bandits, brigands and knights. What can make it dangerous is its tendency to completely side-line the other members of the Angelic Pantheon.


    The Cult of Anawroth in its purest form rejects the other Angels as being weak and fickle, and elevates those who worship Anawroth above all others in society. Only professional soldiers and knights are permitted to worship Anawroth under the gaze of the extremists, resulting in highly militarised societies with a martial culture, though one that also tends to discriminate against large portions of its population in a might makes right, borderline survival of the fittest setting.


    Whilst the mainstream cult, that is to say those who have taken Anawroth as a personal deity, is both legal and a pillar of the faith, its extreme form tends to be looked down upon wherever it springs up, with the exception of the Kingdom of Triarios, where historically the state religion tends to shift back and forwards between the Ybridica Agiathos and the Agiathos Yperoxi Anawroth every few decades.


    Next comes Aenethar''s followers.


    The Silent Cult, or the Athorybe Agiathos Aenethar, is one of the oldest accepted sects of the Old-Church, worshipping the Angel of Death, Aenethar, before all others. Historically a rather minor sect, it tends to see large renewals every time the Black Grave sweeps through the world, leaving grieving families and traumatised survivors in its wake.


    These epidemics cause many to turn to the Angel of Death, praying to ensure that they may see their loved ones shepherded through to the afterlife peacefully.


    One belief held only by the most extreme and fervent wings of this sect is that that the other six Angels are dead, and having guided them to paradise only Aenethar remains to shepherd humanity through to the next life. These sects even claim to know how to work out the nature of the deaths of the other six Angels, though the only one is ''known'' to them; they say that Anawroth, Angel of War, fell in the Battle of the Broken King, the martial spirit of the Klironomoi dying with him. These sects tend to be treated less as members of the Silent Cult and more as individual groups of lunatics by the main churches, who wish them not to ever be associated with the most faithful of all the Angels.


    Finally, and perhaps most bizarrely, there is the Agiathos Kymatavathi; the Cult of the Deep Waves is a relatively minor cult residing mainly along the coastal regions of the Heptarchy and north-western Ibaenea, as well as being one of the only sects of the Church of the Saint to hold a presence on the northern banks of the river Aenir.


    Most of its followers are sailors and fishermen, seeing as his primary domain is the ocean, though a great many astronomers in the western kingdoms of the Heptarchy also worship him, seeing as the stars are split between him and the Angel Polaris.


    It is a strange faith that believes the aquatic Umbra to be cruel and capricious minor gods, with the Angel Hydran acting their bane and protector of the world.


    Along with the claim that the Angel Hydran and the Umbra are both forces of the divine, they say that when the oceanic Umbra are roused from their slumber great storms appear, reaching their climax whenever Hydran faces off with one of the wayward gods of the depths and finally ending when the monster is cast back down to the deepest parts of the sea.


    It is their belief that humanity must prepare itself for darkness, for one day Hydran shall flag and fail, and then the world will be engulphed in a storm that will never end, washing away the world of man in a tide of freezing waters and ancient nightmares.


    A strange but not malicious set of beliefs, would you not agree?


    Names? Oh, you mean the rumours around our taking new names?


    Nah, my name is the same as its always been. While it is true that some branches of the church require their clergy to take on new names, they are few and far between.


    The only sects I know of that actually do this are the Cult of Ampithere-Worship and the Cult of the Deep Waves. I''m unsure why, I think it''s just tradition.


    No, I get your confusion, don''t worry. If you haven''t spent much time around the low-Klironomoi many of their names certainly sound like they''re inspired by religious figures or myths, but no. Most times it''s simply because their names are remnants from the old Skraeling language, so when you or I who descend from a different culture, language-wise at least, hear them they sound very different to our own.


    Of course there are outliers and isolated cases, but a good rule of thumb within the church is if they''re a part of the Ampithere-Worshippers or Hydran''s Cult then their name is probably not the one they were born with, and if they aren''t from those two groups then their name is almost always what was given to them at birth.


    Hm? The Cult of the Choir? That''s just an old myth, a faetale to frighten children.


    Oh, sorry, I don''t mean to belittle you for wanting to know! It''s just that I don''t think there''s much for me to say.


    Alright, if we assume they existed at all in the first place, then associating them with the myriad of other cults is insulting to their followers. The cult is... was... would have been? I''m going to go with ''would have been''.


    The cult would have been known as the Ermetathos Theosarka, and if you believe the tales, then it was not ''worship'' that they offered the divine, and not only do they not worship the First Saint, he isn''t even mentioned in any of the Choir''s tales!


    The Cult of the Choir believed that there was only one Angel, Aenethar, who they said was the progenitor of the Umbra. They believed that, if they could kill enough of Aenethar''s supposed children, they could draw the deity into the physical world, whereupon they would be able to kill them and dine upon their flesh, learning all the secrets of the world and ascending to godhood.


    Most, aside from the Silent Cult and Church of the Ancients, regard them as little more than a faetale to frighten misbehaving children, or an ancient sect long since gone from Anamanesis if indeed it ever existed at all.


    Though if the rumours of their demise are unfounded and they truly still exist, who knows what sort of madness they would be willing to partake in to achieve godhood?


    Of course being someone of your profession you likely know all about the various holy orders of the church, but I feel it still bears mentioning a few of them.


    There are a hundred minor orders and bands sworn to the New Church, but there are none that truly stand out as some of their cousins in the other faiths.


    The two most famous holy orders are probably the Order of the Bloody Cross and Order of the Hanged Martyr.


    The Order of the Bloody Cross was formed, as I mentioned, in the wake of the Battle of the Broken King in the Year of Desolation, where the last king of Klironomea, Harald II, fell in battle.


    Klironomea shattered into what would become the Heptarchy, but a group of knights were able to reach their fallen king''s body and bore him back to his place of birth, where he is still venerated as the reincarnation of the First Saint to this day.


    Yep, that''s how the Ichorian Cult came about.


    As for the Order of the Hanged Martyr, they instead follow the Old Church, as you likely know. They focus less on ''traditional'' knightly skills and more on hunting in the deep wilds and tracking across rough terrain. Not common pastimes amongst knights, as I understand it.


    Ranged combat is rarely practiced by knights, let alone encouraged.


    Perhaps Ser Romanos could tell you more about the various knightly orders, if you are interested? The order he leads may be secular in nature, but he still should know a great deal about those orders and their traditions.


    On the topic of continuing these conversations, if you would like to know more about the Old Church and its denominations I heard we are to pick up a member of a nearby monastery soon. If you are still interested, perhaps it would be good to speak with whomever that turns out to be and get their point of view on the faith as well?


    Either way, it has been nice speaking with you properly, Ser.


    Oh, you aren''t a knight yet? A squire, you say?


    Well I for one look forwards to seeing you knighted. Hopefully you remember me when you recite your vows!


    Oh don''t be so humble Eros, you''ll be a knight in no time.


    My name? Oh, how rude of me! I do so apologise! I was so wrapped up in my explanations that I forgot to even properly introduce myself!


    I am Nasos; it is a pleasure to meet you.

 Lykourgos IX: By the Light of the Moon

    <u>Lykourgos IX: By the Light of the Moon</u>


    <u>The Third Day of the Eleventh Moon, 872 AD.


    </u><u>The Woodsroad, Southern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    The prince watched, amused, as the soldiers sang while they marched. The air was frigid, and the cold winds were starting to pick up. They would likely only grow stronger as the days grew shorter and the nights longer, but the armsmen marched along, caring little about ''cold'' and ''wind''.


    "And there he stood with sword in hand,


    above a hundred men.


    Red was the grass beneath his feet


    And red was the burning fen!"


    The soldiers'' voices were rough at best, but that didn''t seem to deter them as they sang.


    "Red was the bloodlust in his eyes


    And red was his memory of them,


    ''Come one, come all'' the young lord cried


    ''Come give me a proper end!''"


    Elikoidi rode up beside him, looking as regal as ever despite the scarring on his face.


    "At least they picked out a good song this time."


    Lykourgos snorted.


    "I think Symon might have been right; Derry''s Ten might be the only song they know. It''s all they seem to sing."


    Elikoidi shrugged.


    "To be honest you could have told me it was the Two Grey Hounds and I wouldn''t have been able to tell the difference. They''re some of the shittiest singers I''ve ever heard."


    Lykourgos chuckled mirthfully.


    "You should hear them when they''re drunk. Actually you''ll be in the war-camp with us tonight, you will hear them drunk!"


    "Dear Saints help me."


    Lykourgos burst out laughing at his friend''s deadpan statement, and Elikoidi soon joined him.


    "Angels, that''s good. You come here to tell me anything or are you just enjoying my company?"


    His friend snorted in mock derision.


    "As if. No, I do bring news I''m afraid."


    "News from whom?"


    "Well, from your dear sweet family."


    He grimaced and turned away, but nodded to show his attention was on his friend even as he watched the column of men continue onwards.


    "Roma sits the throne now, de-facto if not de-jure. Rhema''s gone missing somewhere. Best bet is the north of the city, since that''s where most of his loyalists lie at the moment."


    He nodded. He was concerned for his little brother, of course he was, but there was little to be gained dwelling on it here. Last time he went missing...


    Perhaps it was best not to think on that too much.


    "Anything else?"


    "Not much substantial. Apparently his court faction finally has a name that sticks in with the Roses and Violets."


    "Oh? Isn''t it normally either the Thorns or Hemlocks?"


    He saw Elikoidi nod from the corner of his vision.


    "Indeed, but nothing universally accepted. Now Hemlock seems to have stuck however."


    "Why''s that?"


    "Well... I''m not quite sure on the specifics; the rats in the castle couldn''t rustle up many more details than simply the entire inner council of your dear sweet sister was found dead. They say the physician''s note read they had all succumbed to paralysis of the lungs, which effectively means something they ingested stopped them from being able to breath."


    "Poison, then."


    "Yes. Hemlock, given the stench in the room apparently. Though given the number of corpses I''m not entirely sure how one would tell, but then it''s not my job I suppose."


    "Well, the death of the council would certainly explain why we''ve been allowed this rest with little more than disconnected skirmishes to challenge us. There''s likely paralysis at the capital with the power vacuum."


    Elikoidi nodded while grinning, the teeth on the scarred side of his face peeking past his lips like fangs.


    "Likely. There is some talk of strange people coming and going from the palace as of late, though the increase in guards has made it hard for my agents and rats to enter. She''s becoming paranoid. She think''s she''s always being watched."


    "How do you know that?"


    "Because I''m watching her, pay attention. I never said she was wrong to think she was being watched."


    They chuckled quietly between themselves for a moment, enjoying the levity in such a serious time.


    "I hope Rhema''s doing alright. Any details we do know on these ''strange men''?"


    "Not much, but a little. They''re almost always men of the cloth, at the very least purporting to be members of the New Church. Their leader seems to have had a seat on the Conclave of Patriarchs for a while now, but I have no details to know which Patriarch it is."


    His friend handed him a sheet of parchment nonchalantly as he spoke.


    It simply read "False Patriarch. Unsanctioned Cult. Rats Assigned. Rats Missing. No Further Knowledge. Dispose of Parchment."


    The words had been capitalised to make sure the meaning was clear even on a first reading. Lykourgos finished reading and nodded once at his friend, crushing the paper into a ball and soaking it in his waterskin. When he pulled it back out the paper was sodden and unreadable. He handed the wet mass back to Elikoidi.


    "Understood. Focus on making sure we''re not at risk of sparking a religious war if we try and prosecute this Patriarch. I may not like some of the Minor C-"


    "The New Church."


    "Of course, the New Church, but that does not mean we can just ignore their own religious laws. The last thing we need are fanatics descending on all from all over the civilised world for overstepping our boundaries."


    Elikoidi nodded. Judging by what Elikoidi had written this Patriarch was a member of one of the myriad minor cults simply pretending to be a member of the New Church, but he was right to correct Lykourgos when he did.


    It would be safer to pretend they didn''t know for now.


    That still begged the question: To which cult did this man belong?


    It couldn''t be a member of the Dragon or Ichorian Churches, as they were still sworn to his brother. The Cult of the Deep Waves had seen their worshippers burned alive in the docks by Roma in Rhema''s name, so it wouldn''t be them, and the Old-Church were unlikely to work with someone who had spent most of her life decrying their pagan syncretism. But who else was there? The Silent Cult? Even the thought of them getting involved in politics seemed laughable.


    A mystery for another time, he supposed.


    "Well, if that''s all then we should keep riding. We should reach the castle only a few hours now."


    His friend grinned at him.


    "Well then, my most gracious royal liege, please do lead the way!"


    Lykourgos rolled his eyes and playfully nudged his old friend.


    "Keep that up and my brother won''t be the only one that goes missing."


    <hr>


    There was a small commotion from the front of the column. He wasn''t too far back, and it didn''t take him long to make his way to the source.


    "Have them cut down for the Angels'' sakes! Bury them properly, his Grace shouldn''t have to see this."


    "See what, Lieutenant Isen?"


    The man, appearing shocked by his sudden appearance, jolted upright in his saddle.


    "Your Grace! My apologies, I did not mean to-"


    Whatever Isen said next was drowned out by the sight in front of him. As his horse continued to walk forwards he saw them as clearly as he possibly could. He passed a dozen men and women strung up from trees, each with a meal-sack covering their face and a thin red line stretched across their necks just above the ropes. Their life''s blood had mostly washed down the stream; what once must have been a torrent was now little more than stains on their clothes and the ground, its colour the brown of dried blood.


    At least two of them were knights, judging by what little was left of the fine cloth they wore, the others seemed to be squires and servants.


    The youngest wore a dirtied and bloodied uniform marking him as a chapterhouse menial. He was hardly even a child.


    "-your Grace?"


    The prince grimaced and came to a stop as he finished passing the display.


    "Cut them down and give them their proper rites, as you were going to before I interrupted. Apologies."


    Isen nodded.


    "Of course your Grace. We live to serve."


    He looked around to see who the closest member of his retinue was.


    "Eros?"


    "Your Grace?"


    The squire had a serious expression on his face, marred only slightly by his apparent queasiness. Lykourgos couldn''t hold it against him; to kill in combat was one thing, but this was little more than butchery.


    He swallowed.


    "Ride back to the rear of the column and get Nasos. He''s an ordained presbyter, he can perform the last rites for these people. While you''re doing that do you mind maybe talking with Ilias a bit? Try to keep him distracted for a while while this is sorted."


    Eros nodded.


    "Certainly, your Grace. Is that all?"


    The prince nodded.


    "Understood. By your leave, your Grace."


    The squire trotted back down the column.


    Men continued to march past the hanged dozen, tutting or shaking their heads. A few men prayed quietly as they walked past, and one small group even broke out into a rendition of "There''s No Need For Tears".


    Normally he''d hear it sung at a tavern, but he supposed the subject of the song was somewhat relevant here.


    Everyone has their own way to pay respect, I suppose.


    He turned back to the column as Nasos rode up to him, gasping softly at the sight. Dreamwulf was at the man''s right, though he of course could not see the scene at the trees.


    Better for him in that case.


    "You''re to perform the last rites on them, Nasos."


    The young man swallowed, and attempted to focus himself on the task and not the bodies.


    "The last rites are normally performed at their home, your Grace. Do we know-"


    "No, we do not. Anyone who knew are likely dead at Carthos or Ousdaal. We don''t even know which of the castles they were in."


    Nasos attempted a weak protest.


    "There''s likely someone out there who knows. If we can find someone who knew them we can-"


    "We don''t have time. That''ll have to be their home now."


    He nodded towards the graves being dug besides the tree. The words hurt to say, but they were the truth. These men and women could have come from anywhere in the kingdom, and there wasn''t much left to identify them with.


    Nasos sighed sadly and nodded.


    "Yes, your Grace. Oblate Dreamwulf, would you care to help prepare the rites with me? I could use the extra set of hands."


    "Of course. It would be my honour."


    Lykourgos locked eyes with Nasos, and tried to force as much of an unspoken apology in them as possible.


    The priest just sighed again, and nodded in acknowledgement before continuing.


    "Thank you, Dreamwulf. Have we any oil? There should be a haversack somewhere. Are there-"


    Nasos trotted off, speaking to the men working about the rites with Dreamwulf at his side.


    The prince took one last look at the hanged dozen, then recommenced his ride to the front of the line.


    This was why he was fighting. To stop things like this from happening.


    It was justice. Justice for what the nobles had done to his brother, justice for what they''d done to the common people, justice for how their politicking had torn his family apart.


    "Justice. That is as good a reason as any to fight."


    "Indeed, Ser."


    Lieutenant Isen was still at his side. Lykourgos hadn''t noticed him there, lost in thought.


    "Apologies, Lieutenant. I was unaware I was speaking aloud."


    The man nodded in understanding.


    "No need to worry, Ser. Things like that never quite sit right with anyone sane."


    They were both silent for a little while as Lykourgos ruminated on the man to his left. Lieutenant Isen had been a good soldier these last few years. Originally he''d been a member of the old nobility, back before the rebellion, but instead of moping and complaining about lost power or whatever it was the rest of the noble sons complained about, Isen had instead devoted himself to helping the prince in matters of conflict, making himself useful and through merit, not birth right, had retained some power.


    By being a competent and capable commander he had climbed through the ranks to command a thousand men in the royal army. Not bad for the son of a dispossessed traitor.


    He was a relatively quiet man as well. Not overly so; he was easy to get along with and was fully capable of holding a pleasant conversation, but he always seemed to prefer to avoid meaningless small talk, as the prince had been happy to find out.


    They both watched in silence as more men marched past, the sound of their boots on he road a continuous rhythm.


    Lykourgos liked the comfortable silence, but as it stretched into its third minute and he made to speak, Isen spoke up.


    "You know what I always admired about you, your Grace?"


    He blinked a few times at the Lieutenant, who stared out over the men and far into the distance.


    "Your tenacity. No matter what happens to you, you always get back up. No matter how much you need to struggle, you always pull through. That''s admirable."


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    The prince stammered as he spoke.


    "Well, I- that''s most kind of you, Lieutenant."


    A smile played at the corner of the man''s lips as he continued to stare far away.


    "It''s the truth, your Grace. I take it we are to arrive at the castle by nightfall?"


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Indeed."


    "Good, good."


    Isen shook his head, seeming to break himself out of whatever staring contest he was having with the horizon, and smiled at the prince.


    "I hope you know that if you need something done, your Grace, you can always ask me or the men under me. I know it''s our duty anyway, but the men would die for you, Ser. Kill for you, as well. If something needs doing, it would be our honour if you would let us know. We''ll see you on the throne you deserve."


    Lykourgos was filled with a strange sense of gratitude and anxiety at that statement; gratitude that Lieutenant Isen and his men were willing, not just obligated, to do whatever he asked, but anxious because Isen was right.


    Many of those men would die for him.


    He stopped that train of thought as the Lieutenant rode away.


    If he had a hundred men like that, he would surely sit atop the world.


    He didn''t have a hundred men like that, but he still had a good few.


    And that by itself was something special.


    <hr>


    He watched as the last of the siege engines was readied and loaded. They had arrived at Ousdaal four hours ago, and already the machines of war stood proud before him.


    Before him were eight trebuchets, each a little under twenty metres tall, and in front of them were three times as many Onagers, each standing over twice the height of a man at around four meters tall, though still paling in comparison to their larger cousins arrayed behind them.


    "Lieutenant Marren!"


    "Aye, your Grace?"


    "Hold fire on the siege engines for a moment and ensure that you''ve got a steady supply of ammunition for a constant bombardment. The men are tired and I would give them a day of rest before assaulting the castle, but that means your boys will be working in shifts through the night."


    "Aye Ser. We''ll likely need some extra hands to help if we''re splitting into shifts."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Lieutenant Wulfstan, Lieutenant Ingfred!"


    The two men trotted over on horseback, bowing as best they could in their saddles. Ingfred visibly struggled more, age finally starting to catch up with the old war-dog. The two of them chorused a deferential greeting.


    "Your Grace."


    "Your Grace."


    "Marren, how many shifts would your boys be split into if they also need to make your ''special shot''."


    Marren smiled, and the other two men grimaced. Almost every soldier despised what they would be making soon, but it was damn effective.


    "Four, your Grace. One to fire the weapons, one to work on shot, and another two at rest. We can rotate every four hours, give the men two four hour jobs and an eight hour rest period each."


    He nodded.


    "Wulfstan, Ingfred, you each have a thousand levies under your command, yes?"


    "Aye, your Grace," Ingfred nodded, "give or take a few stragglers we''ve a thousand each."


    Ingfred looked to Wulfstan, the younger Lieutenant clearly uncomfortable, then continued.


    "I''ll volunteer my men and I to be seconded under Lieutenant Marren, if it please your Grace. I presume we''re to split into four and pair with each of your shifts."


    Marren nodded.


    "If his Grace gives assent then this would be the most logical course of action."


    There was a second of silence as Lykourgos realised they were waiting for an answer.


    "Certainly, gentlemen. Wulfstan, ready your men to attack at dawn. You''ll be a part of the first wave if you''re not working on this."


    Wulfstan gave a sigh of relief, and moved to leave.


    "It says a lot about soldiers, I think."


    Symon rode up to the prince, smirking all the while.


    "They''d rather go over the top of those walls than make that foul shit."


    Lykourgos sniffed, and turned to the Sellsword.


    "I''d say it says more about the concoction itself."


    Symon scoffed.


    "Aye, you might be right on that one. Where''s the blind dog then? He''s barely left your side since we marched."


    Lykourgos shrugged.


    "Off tending to some of the retinue, I''d guess. That or training with the Men-at-Arms. Anyway, it''s good you''re here, I was going to come find you."


    Symon raised an eyebrow, and Lykourgos continued.


    "We''ll be bombarding them all night, as you no doubt heard, and a thousand levies are set to go into the breach. I''m not stupid, I know they can''t take it themselves. I''m sending in five-hundred knights on foot, led by Ser Romanos. I was wondering if an equal number of volunteers could be found amongst your ranks as well."


    "What, five-hundred? Easily. So long as you don''t try and stop battlefield looting there''ll be no issue with that."


    "Do you intend to go in?"


    The man laughed.


    "Fuck no. I''m not stupid. If you were fighting Marshal Harran then sure, but this bugger actually looks like he knows what he''s doing. I''m willing to bet the second your men cross half that field the four onagers on the wall will be responding, and when the assault starts in force the dozen scorpions ''ll be firing at us as well as any archers on the ramparts."


    "So you''re scared?"


    Lykourgos smirked at the man, who laughed heartily in response.


    "Tell you what pretty-boy, when you go in yourself, I''ll follow. Till you do, I''m quite content to watch from back ''ere."


    Lykourgos smiled and nodded.


    "Very good. There are some two-hundred riders amongst you, aren''t there?"


    "Yeah, why?"


    "I''d have them running patrols across our rear. I don''t expect any other Rose forces to approach, but I''d rather not be caught like Harran if they do."


    Symon laughed at the fate of his former ''superior'', eyes crinkling in mirth.


    "Angels help me, you might make it through this war yet your Grace. "


    <hr>


    The door-flaps of the tent rustled open in the dead of night.


    It was a good thing he was a light sleeper.


    A set of footsteps. Then another. Two more.


    It was a very good thing he was a light sleeper.


    It was better still that there was a dirk under his pillow.


    It was decidedly not a good thing he had sent Dreamwulf away so his uptight friend could ''blow off steam''.


    He lay still in bed. The four who had entered his tent didn''t seem to notice he was awake, so focused were they on staying silent.


    Surprise is my best weapon here.


    Moonlight from the opened tent-flaps glinted off their daggers, each of them holding a blade at least twice the length of the dirk gripped in his clammy palm.


    I need to time this right. Any second...


    Now!


    He twisted himself out of bed, rolling to the floor and landing on the balls of his feet. He sprang and launched himself at the first man, embedding the dirk in his throat as far as it would go.


    Their eyes are... missing something.


    In his moment of ill-timed musing two others closed on on him, slashing with their daggers at his body, though they were clearly unskilled in combat.


    Thank the Angels for small mercies.


    He stumbled backwards, nearly tripping on an empty beaker.


    For fuck''s sake, if I survive I''m sleeping in my fucking armour from now on.


    One of them slashed at his side, and as if on instinct he raised a hand to block the blade.


    He tried to block a steel blade. With his hand.


    As he realised what he was doing in his half-asleep mind, the blade seemed to pass just short of doing real damage, leaving a deep cut on his palm but nothing immediately serious.


    Fuck, that was lucky.


    "HELP! GUARDS!"


    He didn''t have time to see if anyone heard.


    Using his own cries for help as a distraction, he deftly manoeuvred himself to pick up the beaker and slammed it down as hard as he could on the skull of one of the remaining assassins, who dropped to the floor like a stone.


    Okay, two on one. I can do this. I just need my- my dirk!


    His mind and heart both were racing, but they went into overdrive when he realised that he, being the stupid fucking idiot he was, had left the dirk embedded in the first man''s throat. The remaining two continued to corner him, slashing and stabbing with reckless abandon.


    They may have been unskilled, but the fact of the matter was there were two of them and only one of him.


    And they had weapons.


    There was a noise from the door of the tent, somewhere between a scream and a warcry, and neither Lykourgos nor his assailants had time to address the newcomer before the small figure barrelled into the assassin on the prince''s left, pushing what seemed to be a dagger of his own into the mans leg.


    The man fell with a cry, cut short as the dagger was pulled out and shoved through his chest.


    "Your Grace!"


    Ilias'' voice cut through the sounds of the scuffle.


    Ilias? It''s Ilias! He''s here? He''s in danger!


    He turned back to the final assassin, just in time to watch as her blade arced upwards towards his face.


    He had no time for clever tricks or manoeuvres; all he had the time to even think to do was to physically throw himself backwards and out of the blade''s path.


    He got very, very lucky.


    It bit into the skin of his right cheek, carrying on upwards only slightly too shallow to hit his eye.


    Feeling and watching as the steel passed over the right of his face, he realised with a strange sense of clarity that had he been half an inch closer he would have almost certainly lost an eye.


    Or his life.


    He landed on his feet, the shallow wound to his hand stung, and it felt as though the tip of the blade had clipped his eyebrow on its way up his face.


    He was extremely fucking lucky.


    In two steps and a leap he tackled the woman to the floor, straddling her upper chest.


    Almost without thought he punched the hand that held the dagger, loosening her grip and sending it sprawling across the tent.


    His hands found their way to her throat, clenching as hard as they could.


    Her dagger knocked from her and her compatriots slain or unconscious, she could do little but claw at him feverishly as he choked her. A particularly nasty swipe led him to begin throttling her, shaking the woman as she was choked, throwing off her coordination.


    He didn''t realise when she''d started crying. Nor when she''d stopped breathing.


    He didn''t have the luxury of knowing when to stop at the moment.


    When he did come to from his adrenaline fuelled fight-or-flight, he felt almost boneless.


    He slid off the dead woman, and sprawled to the side.


    Blood ran into his eye, and his breathing was heavy from exertion.


    Ilias was borderline catatonic, looking down at the man he had killed, and Lykourgos himself didn''t feel much better. It was as though he was looking down at himself as he lay face-up on the hard ground, breathing in deep and heavy breaths.


    He closed his eyes, and waited for someone to find them all.


    <hr>


    It didn''t take long for friendly faces to arrive. A troop of guards had come to investigate the scream they had heard, and found the prince lying face up in a small puddle of blood around what appeared to be four corpses and a crying child.


    The alarm was raised. Elikoidi and Nasos arrived soon after.


    The presbyter had vomited into his hands, and ran to wash them before he began tending to the prince''s wounds.


    "Lyk, what happened?"


    He looked up at Elikoidi with bleary eyes. He was laying in his bed, having been moved back by a few of the guards at his friend''s behest.


    "Assassins. Fuck, Eli, they should have got me."


    His friend''s face turned even darker than it had been.


    "Don''t say that, for fuck''s sake!"


    "No, I don''t mean it like that! Not in a self-deprecating way! No, Eli, I got lucky. Very, very lucky. If that woman had got her strike in about two inches closer I''d be dead. Their eyes Eli, they''re... they''re weird."


    Panic flashed across Elikoidi''s face, fear in his eyes.


    "Fuck, it can''t be... I thought..."


    "Who are they?"


    "My Prince, I..."


    Lykourgos snapped, his fists slamming into the wooden bedframe.


    "By the Angels, they tried to fucking kill me Eli! More than that, Ilias could have been killed as well! If you know something, tell me!"


    His friend looked away, seeming almost uncomfortable with the conversation.


    "I know Lyk, but my beliefs would sound so outlandish without any physical evidence, it''s just- I think I know who these people are, but I just need a little time to prove it, even if it is a risk-"


    "Eli. Tell me."


    There was silence as his friend, never one to lack for words normally, was actually rendered speechless while looking at the bodies. He swallowed hard, and turned back to the prince.


    "Okay, your Grace. Tell me, what do you know of the Cult of the Choir?"


    The air was so thick with silence that Lykourgos felt he might suffocate.


    "That''s not possible, they''ve been dead for centuries."


    "No, they''ve evidently been playing dead for centuries. Given your fascination with the occult I wouldn''t be surprised if they''ve wanted to get their claws into you for quite some time."


    "And you think... the mysterious Patriarch, do you-"


    "Yes. Maybe. I don''t know. Maybe I''m jumping at shadows. Like I said, I need time to see if they''re-"


    "Fuckin'' hell, you''ve kept yourself busy."


    The newcomer swaggered into the room, unbothered by the four corpses or the bloodied prince.


    The crying child in the corner gave him some pause, but a quick nod at Nasos tending to him was all the acknowledgement he gave to the situation moving forwards.


    "What''s happened then? Apart from an assassination attempt, obviously."


    Symon moved to look at the bodies, recoiling at the sight of their eyes. His voice was


    uncharacteristically serious when he spoke.


    "Do you... does anyone else get headaches when looking at them?"


    "Where is his Grace? Is he alive, unharmed, injured? Your Grace!"


    "Here, Dreamwulf. I''m alright, took a cut across my face but nothing major or dangerous."


    His friend relaxed, shoulders slumping.


    "Thank the Angels. I knew I shouldn''t have moved away from my post, I should have-"


    "It''s fine. I ordered you to take a break, anyway. This is my own fault."


    The blind man nodded choppily.


    "Alright. Do we know who sent them? Who they are?"


    Elikoidi hissed through his teeth and nodded.


    "We think, let me stress, we think, they''re part of the Cult of the Choir."


    The two newcomers immediately dropped what they were doing. Lykourgos noted that, as if on instinct, Symon''s hand was already curled around the pommel of the sword at his belt.


    Dreamwulf wasn''t much different, seeming to vibrate in place, and the silence in the bivouac returned.


    It lasted a full minute before there was a clatter at the other side of the tent. Nasos had knocked a beaker off of a table whilst tending to Ilias, but the sound still made the men jump a mile.


    "Are you... sure."


    "No. It''s only a possibility, as I said."


    Symon swallowed.


    "But it is still a possibility."


    "Yes."


    "And it''s your best bet so far."


    Dreamwulf spoke up again, adding his voice to Symon''s. He sounded more distressed than Lykourgos had ever heard him.


    Do they know something I don''t? The Choir have been little more than a myth for centuries, haven''t they?


    Elikoidi was lost, deep in thought, and jumped a mile when both men scrambled out of the tent, all but screaming orders at the closest officers and commanders they could see. So loud and clear were their voices that Lykourgos could hear them clearly even in his bloodied bed.


    "I WANT THE GUARDS DOUBLED AT THE TENT OF EVERY COMMANDER. DOUBLED AGAIN FOR HIS GRACE!"


    "WAKE THE CAMP! SCREEN EVERY MAN IN THE FUCKING COMPANY! NO ONE LEAVES BEFORE WE RIP OUT THE FUCKING WEEDS BY THE ROOTS!"


    "I''LL NOT SEE A FUCKING THEOSARKA, A SEVEN TIMES DAMNED PRACTICER OF DEIPHAGY, THREATEN HIS GRACE."


    "ANY MAN FOUND IN THAT FUCKING CULT NEEDS TO BE STRUNG UP RIGHT FUCKING NOW."


    Elikoidi sighed, still shaken but regaining his composure.


    "A wild goose chase. If there are any others in the camp they''ll have fled as soon as the assassins entered the tent."


    "Dreamwulf and Symon, they speak as if they knew the Cult of the Choir was real the whole time, but they''ve been gone for centuries at least, if they truly did exist in the same form they appear to be in now."


    Elikoidi nodded.


    "I was thinking over some reports of this sort of thing I heard years ago. In hindsight it should have been brought to your attention, but I put the isolated reports down to sensationalism and confusion."


    "How could they know if we didn''t?"


    Nasos piped up, Ilias curled into them as a child would their parent.


    "Oh, that''s quite simple, I think. I didn''t know of them being real either, truly, before now. The elders at my monastery claimed they were a simple faetale, but now we know they aren''t. Maybe it''s simply because we''ve lived in a very different world to Dreamwulf and Symon. They''re lowborns, and have likely been exposed to the darker parts of the world far more than we have been."


    Lykourgos nodded. It made some sense at least.


    "I guess it''s like you said, Eli."


    His friend made a noise of confusion.


    "What did I say?"


    "The only time people like us look at the lives of the lowborn are times of war. Well, we''re at war now, and it seems what we dismissed as a folk superstition and they called truth has made itself known."


    Elikoidi sighed, and perched himself on an unbloodied corner of the prince''s bed.


    "Well, the world only seems to be getting stranger. At the very least this attempt failed, and even if any other would-be assassins are in the army then our resident hounds will sniff them out."


    The presbyter raised his voice pointedly at the spymaster.


    "I''d prefer it if you didn''t refer to Dreamwulf as a dog, Master Elikoidi. It''s impolite."


    Nasos'' objection seemed to surprise Elikoidi, but he quickly recovered.


    "I meant no offence by it, it''s simply a piece of flowery language, Presbyter."


    Nasos crossed his arms and glared at Elikoidi, the action seeming somewhat comical given that Nasos was a good foot shorter than the scarred man.


    "Last time you referred to him as such it wasn''t particularly meant with kind intentions."


    Elikoidi and Lykourgos both winced at the memory of that argument.


    "I understand your point. If it makes you feel any better I won''t refer to him as a dog, or a synonym thereof, unless he feels comfortable with being labelled as such. You know, since half of his name is ''Wolf''."


    Nasos seemed to relent at the compromise, and moved back to comforting Ilias. Elikoidi remained silent at the foot of the bed, leaving the prince alone with his thoughts.


    Something dangerous was afoot. More dangerous than arrows and swords. Old things were starting to re-emerge into the world, and it seemed what most of mankind had taken for the truth had been little more than a piece in the puzzle of the world.


    Angels aid me in this hour. Help me protect my friends, my brother and my kingdom. Hold us safe in all of your arms. Keep us in your hearts.


    He''d never much been one for prayer, but for once the words seemed to come to him as if he had learned it by rote.


    "The Seven who watch and aid the One and the Hundreds, in your minds may we rest once we pass through this world. Keep us safe and warm in this mortal world before asking us to join you. By your will may we continue our lives. We offer you prayer, that you may gaze upon us. We offer you devotion, that you may smile upon us. We offer you our souls, that you may wrap your wings around us for a moment more. We ask only that today is not our last.


    Protect us."

 Lykourgos X: To Shatter the Battlements

    <u>Lykourgos X: To Shatter the Battlements</u>


    <u>The Forth Day of the Eleventh Moon, 872 AD.


    </u><u>Ousdaal, Southern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    The camp was a flurry of activity, the chill of the morning air serving to do little other than wake the men from a night of fitful sleep.


    Already word had spread around the camp that there had been an attempt on the prince''s life, although in typical rumourmongering fashion the truth had been contorted in a hundred minute ways, one small detail changing from person to person.


    The attempt on his life could not be allowed to shake him. He could not let the men see him scared or timid. He had a duty to face the foe head on again, showing that he was as ready as ever to exact bloody justice over the enemy.


    The bombardment of Ousdaal had continued all throughout the night, and the efforts were bearing fruit.


    Though the onagers were limited in effectiveness to damaging the ramparts atop and buildings behind the stout walls, the trebuchets had been able to completely shatter a section large enough for a dozen men to walk through side by side.


    The breach was made. Now all that was left was to storm it.


    "Ilias. Find Dreamwulf and Romanos, then ready your horse and prepare my standard, if you please."


    The young boy scrambled to exact his commands.


    "Certainly, your Grace. It will take only a moment."


    "Lyk. How are you feeling after last night?"


    Romanos'' voice was steady, but his face betrayed concern.


    "Better. My hand doesn''t really hurt at all, in honesty, and the cut across my face was so shallow the blood stopped flowing hours ago."


    Romanos nodded, a slight smile gracing his features.


    "Good, good. If I may ask, why have you summoned us? Are our orders to be changed?"


    The prince shook his head.


    "Yourself and Lieutenant Wulfstan will lead some two-thousand men through the breach and try and force a surrender of enemy forces, as planned. However, you and I both know that we might be able to convince them to lay down their arms without risking a bloody fight, however unlikely that chance may be."


    Romanos nodded, and Dreamwulf smiled.


    "Aye, they probably won''t listen to calls for peace given what they did to the garrisons down here, but there''s no ''arm in trying anyway."


    "Quite so. Romanos, Dreamwulf, ready your mounts, mine as well. Ilias will arrive soon bearing my standard. Romanos, I would ask that you wave the flag of truce alongside it."


    "Is this purely a gesture of goodwill, or do you intend to negotiate?"


    "I doubt they''ll listen. Whoever''s in command here is clearly experienced and well versed in this kind of warfare, and that will give them leverage. I''d rather fight knowing I at least tried to avoid bloodshed than not."


    Romanos stroked his stubble.


    "I don''t expect the knights to accept surrender, and if they don''t then the levies won''t be able to either, but it might encourage more of them to throw down their arms during the assault. I''ll ready Ilona and ride behind you for the parley."


    The prince grinned.


    "Finally named that giant of a horse, have you?"


    "Indeed I have. He''s carried me into battle enough times to earn one, that much is sure."


    Dreamwulf spoke up.


    "Come on you two, if we want to get this over with it''d better be soon."


    Whoever was commanding here was a damn sight smarter than Marshal Harran, or at least the men beneath him were. To be sure, the prince had known that already, but upon a closer approach it became far more apparent; there were men with shortbows in windows and led on their bellies on the roofs of the various buildings in the walled compound, protected by the pitch of the roof from returning arrowfire and javelins.


    From here he could also see that there were menials and servants on the remaining patches of the broken roofs as well, no doubt instructed to throw roof tiles down on any attackers. Other men might scoff at such tactics, but Lykourgos did not. Neither did Ser Romanos. A roof tile dropped from height could split a skull or shatter limbs and ribs just as easily as a mace or sword wielded by a trained soldier.


    At the approach of the party of four there was some commotion on the walls, but a figure rode out and halted any movements with a flick of his hand. He was ageing and grey, but no less fierce for it. He was not large, far from it, but that didn''t really matter in siege warfare.


    If he could swing the sword at his hip as well as his cocksure gait implied, he could still give a good blow before falling.


    "Ser. I do not believe we have had the pleasure of meeting."


    "Indeed, Ser. I am Ser Nikolaus, head of his Grace''s forces in the south of Teleytaios."


    Lykourgos nodded. He had heard of Ser Nikolaus, but not in any official capacity.


    "I am here to demand the surrender of yourself and the thousand under your command. Lay down your arms and leave this place."


    The man chuckled.


    "Well, you''ve got bollocks on you, that''s for sure. I could wave my hand and your rebellion would end in a second."


    Half a hundred men stood on the battlements above them, bows ready. Looking further down the wall two of the scorpions were trained on his party as well.


    Lykourgos shifted his shield in his hand, and both Dreamwulf and Ser Romanos moved forwards almost imperceivably to better cover the prince.


    Ilias remained as still as possible, the prince''s purple flower on a blue field waving proudly in the wind. Ser Nikolaus continued.


    "But I won''t. The laws of Saints and men both would see me forever consigned to oblivion for such actions."


    "But you''re fine sending out assassins against his Grace."


    The man''s face scrunched up in confusion at Dreamwulf''s words.


    "Assassins? There has been an attempt on your life?"


    The prince nodded, and the man turned his head and cursed.


    "It was no man of mine, that much I can assure you. I''d be happy to kill you in battle, but I would never stoop to such dishonourable lows. I hear Ser Ingfred is in your host?"


    The prince nodded, and a small smile broke across the man''s face.


    "A pity we should end up on opposite sides. We fought together at Klandahar as our first battle, and when we met again fighting Triarios two decades later we placed bets on who would be the last survivor of Klandahar. We must be some of the only ones left now."


    Lykourgos coughed, and the man looked back at him.


    "Surrender your forces or prepare for battle. That will be all."


    The man frowned and turned away.


    "It will be battle, boy. It will be battle."


    The ride back to the camp was spent in silence, not quite comfortable but not tense either. Riding back past the pickets it was Elikoidi who greeted them, grin on his face.


    "So, no luck with doves then. Look on the bright side! The crows are gonna love you!"


    Romanos snapped tersely at him.


    "There is a time and a place for such jokes, Master Elikoidi. This is not it."


    Elikoidi opened his mouth, but Lykourgos spoke before any escalations took place.


    "We spoke briefly of the events of last night. It wasn''t any of his men, according to him."


    He snapped his fingers, an idea coming to him.


    "This talk of the assassins reminds me; Eli, make sure everyone knows my sister has taken up with the Choir. Maybe that will turn a few more heads our way."


    The stretched grin widened further, and for once there was genuine mirth behind the expression.


    "An excellent idea, your Grace."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "I did it hours ago."


    The smile left.


    "Little shit."


    <hr>


    The hours ticked by, crawling towards the time of the attack, and Lykourgos found he could not sit still. He needed to do something to keep himself occupied.


    Almost without thinking he found himself outside Romanos'' tent. The guards at the door saluted and parted ways, allowing him entry to the resplendent bivouac.


    He found Romanos inside talking animatedly with Lieutenant Isen, both men clearly trying to remain calm despite the nerves in the camp. Lykourgos spoke, and to both men''s credit, neither seemed perturbed or surprised by his appearance.


    "You are prepared to commit to the assault, Ser?"


    Romanos nodded stiffly, experience lowering but not muting his nerves.


    "Indeed your Grace. I hope to have the castle in your hands by sundown."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "I had meant to talk to you about that, your Grace."


    Lieutenant Isen''s voice cut through the frigid air, his disposition almost as nervous as Romanos''.


    "About what, Isen?"


    Lykourgos wasn''t sure when he''d become informal enough to use the Lieutenant''s name, but the man didn''t falter at the overfamiliarity of the young royal.


    "I mean no disrespect when I say this, Ser, but I believe that the first wave should be led by... well, you, your Grace."


    He pressed on before either of the others could speak, trying to press his case.


    "The men will be heading into a position that is well fortified and held by motivated defenders who are buoyed by their recent victories at Carthos and against the former garrison here. Our own men will need something to help us match their own level of morale, and that something is you, your Grace."


    The men would die to see you on the throne.


    The words played back in his mind as Romanos spoke. If those men would die for him, it was only fair he lead them as they deserved.


    "And what of me? If his Grace chooses to attack here then I will be by his side."


    Isen shook his head.


    "You hold real command in the absence of his Grace. You will be needed here to ensure cohesion amongst the men remaining in camp in case of a counterattack."


    "The chances of a counterattack are extremely low."


    "But not zero."


    "You speak as if you already have assent for this last minute change of plans?"


    Lykourgos blinked and looked at the two commanders, thinking over what had been said.


    "Lieutenant Isen does raise good points."


    "They are points that pander to your wish to lead from the front, that does not make them g-"


    "Thank you, your Grace. Myself and my men will be at your side to-"


    A stern look silenced him, not from fear but begrudging respect. The prince cut him off, raising his hand.


    "No, you won''t. The armsmen need to be conserved for the upcoming battle to take the capital, and you need to be alive to command them. You will remain here, with Ser Romanos, in the camp."


    Both men''s expressions became shocked, seemingly forgetting that they were not the only two men in the army genuinely wanting to see him survive. Why are they so worried? It''s not like im going in by myself.


    "There will be others around to see me through this. I''ll likely stick with Lieutenant Wulfstan anyway, not that I need protecting now that I have full use of both hands again."


    He flexed his hands in his gloves absentmindedly, as if his body was trying to prove his hand had already healed.


    "I''ll be in full plate and fully armed, surrounded by loyal men. I don''t see too much risk in leading the assault myself."


    "Your Grace, with all due respect, swords and spears are one thing, but you''ll be under constant arrowfire the whole way."


    Romanos nodded in agreement with the young Lieutenant.


    "Indeed. And lest we forget, there will be men throwing the rooftiles down at you as well. They might not seem fearsome to many, but they''ll shatter bone as readily as a mace if they make contact."


    Lykourgos nodded at the protests of his subjects.


    "Alright. I''ll make sure to keep my shield raised where possible."


    Romanos groaned, exasperated.


    "You know damn well that wasn''t what I-"


    "It is done. Romanos, I will lead the men and you will see to the camp and prepare for the potential of a counterattack. Isen, I want your men running drills constantly with the rest of the Longbowmen-at-Arms in the camp. Dismissed. Now where is my cupbearer?"


    "I am here, your Grace."


    Ilias knelt, but swiftly rose at a gesture from the prince. He wasn''t sure how the boy kept popping up, but then he supposed keeping track of and staying close to the prince was his job.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator."Summon Lieutenant Wulfstan, Squire Eros and my Personal Champion. Have them meet me outside the command tent, please."


    "Aye, your Grace."


    The young boy scampered off, and returned not three minutes later with the requested men in tow.


    "Your Grace."


    The words fell from their lips in a chorus.


    "Eros, Dreamwulf, you''re to stand at my side. Wulfstan, I''m leading the assault with you."


    If Dreamwulf was shocked it was well hidden. He looked as though he''d expected this since the initial orders to Ser Romanos had been given.


    Eros and Wulfstan seemed surprised, but not apprehensive. If anything they seemed excited to fight alongside him, smiles flitting across their faces before dissipating under careful professionalism.


    "I am honoured to fight at your side, your grace. I shall ensure my blade is sharp and shield ever ready."


    "Likewise."


    Dreamwulf''s voice was a low rumble, half teasing and half concern.


    "Angels, I wish you''d stop trying to get yourself killed. I can''t believe you were always like this."


    The prince smiled.


    "Have you been speaking to Elikoidi by chance?"


    "I have. You''re right, he did apologise in his own way."


    The prince nodded.


    "I''ll want to hear exactly what that entailed later. As for now, we have a breach to storm."


    <hr>


    There were a dozen men around him, almost all hefting a kiteshield in their left hand and a greatsword in their right. Dreamwulf and Eros were immediately behind him on his left and right, moving behind the shields of the other men.


    Dreamwulf had made his discontent at being behind the prince well known, claiming that he couldn''t protect him properly if he wasn''t in front of him. He was right, of course, but the prince would be damned if anyone else went through the breach first. Call it pride, call it arrogance, call it stupidity if you want, but Lykourgos would not shield himself behind another man and let them die for him.


    He would fight properly.


    As soon as the body of men began moving towards the castle the artillery of the defenders opened up. There was precious little in the arsenal of the smaller force to combat the trebuchets of the attackers, but the small scorpions on the wall would still punch through plate armour with impunity.


    The onagers on the wall were smaller than those in the attackers camp, but they were well placed. Large rocks fell on the men far behind, crushing bodies and limbs into nothing.


    One hundred metres to the wall.


    The scorpions opened fire.


    Men fell up and down the column; not many, for the men inside were peasants, not well versed in the use of such weapons. Even if they were, they were being used at the very limit of their range. Nonetheless, men fell.


    Sixty metres.


    He was closing in. He gripped his longsword tight in his hand and tried to keep himself hidden behind his shield without making it look as though he was hiding.


    Somewhere behind him Eros let out a shaky breath. His first battle, no doubt.


    The prince''s face contorted to something between a grimace and a smile.


    To play at war with duels and jousts was one thing, but to truly fight in one?


    It was something else entirely. Glorious and shameful.


    Forty metres.


    The first volley of arrowfire came as they crested the tiny hillock that marked forty metres to the walls. The shortbows of the men fell far from the front ranks; most arrows fell more than ten metres in front of their intended targets, the furthest planting itself at the princes feet. It seemed almost like a challenge.


    The prince nodded at the man directly to his right, and the men raised their shields in a tight, protective shell.


    They continued their advance at the head of the attacking force, and the arrows fell like rain.


    The prince felt the impact of two arrows falling in quick succession upon his shield over his head. More thunking noises could be heard to his left and right, and behind, but these were inconsequential.


    Twenty-five metres to the walls.


    The man three places to the princes left fell to the ground with a gurgling noise. An arrow had burrowed through his throat, its tip gory and visible through the back of his neck.


    Lykourgos turned his head from the dying man, and walked on. There was nothing to be done for him.


    Eros gasped as they passed the fallen man, but when the prince turned Dreamwulf had his hand on the squires shoulder.


    "Keep moving. Don''t look at him, just keep moving."


    "Stick with Dreamwulf, Eros."


    He didn''t wait to see if either had acknowledged his order, simply turning and keeping his place in line.


    On the last stretch their shields had been moved to cover their heads, leaving their fronts exposed.


    Lykourgos wasn''t a fan of his helmet, but he was glad for it at a time like this.


    Ten metres.


    The prince lowered his shield, and the men around him did the same.


    Any archers looking to target them would have to physically crane themselves over the walls and draw back their bowstrings. Not an easy feat, especially when the enemy''s own archers were returning fire.


    The prince raised his longsword high, bellowed out a war cry, and charged the breach.


    Chaos. Chaos and madness.


    The shieldwall had collided with the enemy''s as they ran across the ruined section of wall, resulting in a ruck that had lasted almost three quarters of an hour.


    It was as exhausting as it was deadly. The men in the front ranks pushed against their shields with all their strength, whilst those directly behind made opportunistic attacks with their weapons. Further back those with spears attempted to stab where the shields parted, but these all met with little success.


    Someone at the back of the defender''s formation ran. As did another. three more. It was only a trickle of men, but it meant his own forces were winning. Eventually they would break through and be overrun the foe.


    For ten more minutes the ruck had continued, men falling and being replaced by whoever stood behind. By the end of it entire sections of both sides were stood on the corpses of those who had been in front of them, raised a few inches and on uneven ground.


    Those men fell quicker, but not as quick as whoever was unlucky enough to find themselves without a shield at the front.


    The foe pulled back, not from the cowardice of those early runners, but because they knew they were beaten here. The prince should have felt relieved, after all, he had been first into the breach and had stood at the front as the enemies shieldwall broke. As always however, there was always more to do.


    The shieldwall had been sundered, but after that came the daunting task of facing the foe in the narrow alleys and streets of the castle, not to mention those in and on the buildings still standing.


    Dreamwulf and Eros were still fighting at the prince''s side, watching his flanks and covering his rear, but even so he was in danger. His crowned helm marked him as a target for his foes, and the knights of the enemy descended on him like baying hounds. They hurled and swung and battered with sword and shield and fist, but he stood firm. He had to. He fought with all he had against them, fighting with as much skill as he could muster.


    He caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Wulfstan a few dozen feet away, and carved his way through the men standing between himself and his Lieutenant.


    Levies were carved in twain with his longsword or else batted aside with his kiteshield, and the two knights that sought to intercept him were quickly dispatched by himself and Dreamwulf.


    Eros had not acquitted himself particularly well in battle, though that was to be expected; it was his first time surrounded by death, and it wasn''t even a gentle introduction like the prince had endured as a child in Seastream. This was bloodier, tougher, and far more chaotic.


    But none of that mattered. Eros had made himself far more useful in another way; Dreamwulf may have been an excellent fighter, but he was unsteady on the rough, unfamiliar ground. Eros negated this, calling out warnings for anything that might trip or impair the man. A large stone to his left, a wall four paces in front, a corpse just behind him. Eros called them out, and Dreamwulf moved around them as though he could see them with his own blank eyes.


    For all the prince''s efforts, and for all the good his regular sword and shield were doing him, he was tiring. The men were too, and arrowfire peppered them from windows and rooftops, forcing men to choose between shielding their front or up above. Another knight, this one wielding a greatsword, turned from Wulfstan to face him.


    Half a second later a Billhook emerged between his eyes, splitting his head in two. Eros puked off to the side as Wulfstan, tired and bloodstained, failed to wrench his bill free and stumbled forwards as the knight fell.


    Lykourgos gripped Wulfstan''s surcoat and hauled him to his feet. He had to shout at the top of his voice to make himself heard, but they flashed each other a bloodthirsty smile nonetheless. The prince poured as much of his flagging bravado into his words as possible, hoping his fatigue didn''t show.


    "Good killing Lieutenant! Come on, gut the bastards with me!"


    No sooner had he finished his sentence than a roof tile impacted against his comrade''s skull; a welter of gore sprayed across the prince, and Lieutenant Wulfstan was no more. What was left of the young man''s head lolled forwards, and Wulfstan''s corpse fell with it. The top of his skull had splintered like rotten wood, and grey matter was smeared across his surcoat in a fine film. The prince forced down a lump in his throat and let his fallen comrade drop to the floor.


    Angels, we''ll all be killed here. He looked around. Chaos and death everywhere. His heart sank as he looked back towards the breach


    Men were running back through the gap in the walls, and the prince realised if he didn''t go with them he''d be left behind here.


    "Orders, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos stared and grit his teeth. He was shaken out of his state by some levy with a shortspear, who he cut down with a single stroke.


    "Lyk, what do we do?"


    He forced the order out through his teeth, a grimace on his face.


    "Fall... fall back."


    He swallowed hard once more, and a few seconds later he made to join the retreating men.


    <hr>


    Lykourgos grimaced as the thousand surviving men retreated from the breaches in the castle. They''d given a good show, for sure, and the retreat was at least orderly, but they had failed nonetheless.


    The tired prince rode to the form of Ser Romanos before dismounting and removing his crowned helm.


    "I can only apologise for my failure, Ser."


    The prince stumbled forwards. He was tired. He should have let Romanos lead the men.


    He would have fared no better, a voice in his head cried, at least through doing this we made sure it was only us in danger, not our friends.


    Except Dreamwulf and Eros. The prince chastised himself for endangering his friends, his inner voice becoming more spiteful.


    He would have fared no better. Better me than him.


    Romanos nodded in acknowledgment, unaware of Lykourgos'' thoughts, then helped him rise.


    "Pay it no mind, your Grace. You gave it a good try. Where is Lieutenant Wulfstan?"


    Lykourgos looked away, unable to meet his friend in the eye. A small part of him wanted to joke that Wulfstan was all over his helmet, but he beat that instinct down as soon as he realised what he was about to say.


    "Dead. A roof tile was thrown down from one of the buildings, and cracked his skull. He died quickly."


    Romanos hauled him to his feet, and the Prince sighed to himself. He was right not to scoff at improvised weapons. Somehow he knew Romanos would be thinking along those same lines.


    "A shame, but there is nothing to be done for him now."


    Lykourgos nodded tiredly, then snapped to attention, startling Romanos.


    "Elikoidi, is that you?"


    The scarred face of his friend remained as smarmy as ever, though a deep well of concern was building behind his eyes.


    "Hah, I knew you were worried."


    A snarl crossed Eli''s lips, but it melted away in an instant. Instead he smiled, and called out loudly to the gathering men.


    "Hark! Last out of the breach, last to safety, yet he remains unbroken!"


    His voice carried across the camp, and a great many men turned to look at their prince.


    Lykourgos realised what his friend was doing, and moved to better stand on his own two feet. If Eli was going to try and turn this into more propaganda, then he''d better play his part well.


    He planted his feet as firmly as he could in the ground, and steadied himself by forcing his longsword point-down in the dirt, leaning on it as one would a hiking stick.


    "Assassins came for him in the night, and he remains unbroken! The enemies harry him through the breach, and yet the prince remains unbroken!"


    He tried to look as princely as he could, but in his current state he was unlikely to match the old songs. He was covered from head to foot in blood and gore, exhausted and dirty from fighting in the narrow streets of the castle, and yet he had to look unaffected by everything that had happened. Such was his duty to his men.


    "Hail to the Unbroken!"


    He wasn''t sure who had first let out the cry, but soon enough thousands of voices carried his new name on the wind:


    "Lykourgos the Unbroken! Unbroken! The Unbroken!"


    As epithets went, he''d heard a lot worse.


    <hr>


    "Marren!"


    The Lieutenant, having worked through the night with a short sleep, approached with a tired gait. Symon rode at his side.


    "Aye, your Grace."


    "Switch ammunition. Stagger the shots, fire continuously."


    He needn''t have added the last part, after all, Marren invented the substance, he knew how best to use it. To his credit, the Lieutenant took no offence.


    "Certainly, Ser!"


    Symon smiled at him, and Romanos grimaced.


    "Your Grace, is this necessary? The fires-"


    Symon''s voice rose above Ser Romanos'', drowning out the protests of the knight.


    "Will burn out the ones hiding in the houses and on the roofs. Don''t listen to the bleeding heart, your Grace. This is war. Men will die either way. At least you can make sure it''s mostly them that fall, not us."


    It was a common saying amongst soldiers that the man who invented carcass shot was destined for hell. Knowing Lieutenant Marren, Lykourgos wasn''t sure he disagreed. The man hid behind excuses designed to fool himself about his own creation; "I only learned the nature of the reactions, it''s not me that fires the weapons, it''s not my fault it kills people."


    Still, it was uncomfortably similar to Lykourgos'' own flimsy excuses that he wasn''t responsible for the deaths in this war.


    He shook his head and cleared his thoughts, watching as the sacks, reinforced by iron hoops were loaded onto the onagers. Larger sacks had been readied for the trebuchets that they may join in this infernal bombardment. Within the reinforced sacks was a terrible mixture of turpentine, tallow, saltpetre and pitch. On impact the sack would burst, and the resulting fires from their contents were nigh impossible to put out. It burned too strong for anything less than a constant stream of water to extinguish, and the sheer number of the sacks being launched in would render any effort to smother the fires impossible. It was only a matter of time before one of them caught a wooden beam, or stored hay by a stable or some-such thing, and then the whole castle would begin to burn from the inside out.


    The shot would burn until it expired of its own accord, and they did not expire easily.


    Then the second wave would be sent in, with considerably less resistance than before, and more importantly, less enemy cover.


    Assuming there was anyone left to take cover by the blaze''s end.


    He found Lieutenant Ingfred speaking with Marren overlooking the artillery.


    Ingfred was a good man, and an even better soldier. Ser Nikolaus was correct about his military life, at least. He''d seen four-and-sixty winters, and almost twice as many battles. The man had grown up a soldier, and it showed. He''d first tasted battle some fifty years ago at Klandahar at the age of ten-and-four while Teleytaios and Nordicos were engulphed in a war against the Al-Alema to the south.


    He''d never say it himself, but Lykourgos suspected what most agreed.


    Ingfred had left a piece of himself on every field he''d fought on.


    Back then armsmen were far rarer than they were now; wars were fought and won by knightly steel, and the dull conscripted masses trudged along behind.


    To hear him tell it he''d never seen a field so bitter or glorious as the battle at Klandahar. He wore his scars as a measure of pride, and refused to look on his war-filled life as anything but magnificent.


    But, as with Lykourgos himself at Seastream, he suspected that a part of the old soldier would always remain in Klandahar, his youth left to wander a desolate field as the man moved on.


    <hr>


    He needn''t have worried about a second assault. After less than two hours of bombardment with carcass shot white sheets were being flown from the walls, a stream of men trudging out of the gates and the very same breach the prince had retreated through some time earlier.


    Ser Nikolaus rode up to him, face contorted in fury. He spat bloody phlegm at the prince, and turned away, dropping his standard in the mud.


    Lykourgos smiled. The siege was over. The last chapter of this civil war was beginning, and when it ended he would sit atop the throne in Anaria.


    Assuming he didn''t find a way to get himself killed first.

 Lykourgos XI: The Woodsroad

    <u>Lykourgos XI: The Woodsroad</u>


    <u>The Forth Day of the Eleventh Moon, 872 AD.


    </u><u>The Woodsroad, Southern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Rainclouds were gathering in the skies above him. They were patchy at the moment, but as the hours rolled past they only grew to cover more of the heavens above. The winds were picking up too, the temperature dropping.


    Odd, the prince thought, it seems we''ve had a very short autumn.


    It didn''t bode particularly well for the harvest, that much he knew. Nothing major at the moment, but there were likely to be a more than a few gaunt faces come spring.


    Ah well, any problems that arose from that would have to be dealt with as they came.


    Either way, the war needed to be over before the worst of winter set in. There was still plenty of time, and so long as there was no disaster at the capital and there was little danger of the elements taking their toll on the kingdom.


    There was perhaps a month, two months, until the temperature became low enough to be dangerous.


    He shivered involuntarily.


    "Cold, your Grace?"


    The prince turned to his right, Ilias smiling cheekily at him.


    "Nothing of the sort, rascal. Nothing to worry yourself about."


    He ruffled his cupbearer''s hair as the smaller boy swatted at his hands ineffectually. He smiled a moment, before becoming pensive. He seemed to be trying to find the right words for a good while before gathering his thoughts. His voice was almost a whisper when he spoke, as though he were worried of speaking out of turn.


    "You''re thinking of how short autumn was, aren''t you?"


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow. Observant of him.


    "Such thoughts may have entered my mind. The temperature has dropped quite sharply in recent days."


    Ilias nodded.


    "I... do you think it will be bad this year?"


    He opened his mouth to respond, but then thought of the question. He was hardly one to know what a ''bad'' winter was, after all, he''d never be stuck in the cold, but for some reason the question had made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.


    Elikoidi would scoff at such superstition. Dreamwulf would call it a sixth sense. He gave a noncommittal shrug.


    "I don''t know. Tell me, do you remember the Sawdust Winter?"


    Ilias shuddered a moment, his face becoming dark.


    "All too well, your Grace. It was bad enough in the capital for the nobles while it was under siege from my understanding. But I''m not a noble. A drop or two of me might be, but that winter... the hunger didn''t care about any of that. I know we call it the Sawdust Winter but truth be told we couldn''t even get sawdust bread after the second month of winter siege. One of my friends, Haengen, used to smash apart every piece of wood he could find. He didn''t care about the cold, didn''t want to burn the wood for heat. We asked him why he was doing it one day, said he was looking for woodworms. Or woodlouse, or something, anything to eat. I watched a man snatch up a sparrow from a window and tear into it while it was still flapping it''s wings. You don''t exactly forget that. Ah, sorry, I''m woolgathering."


    Lykourgos nodded in acknowledgement. The Sawdust Winter had been hard. He''d not known its effects, not truly, despite the fact he was leading an army in the open elements. He was a prince, with all the luxury that entailed, even on the move. Besides, the sawdust winter had occurred at the end of the Twilight Rebellion, and he''d been so warmed by rage that his blood felt as though it had actually come to boil at times. But for the people left behind by the world, those left in the cold and blight...


    "Worry not, I''m always interested to hear of my friends'' lives. Haengen, do you know what became of him?"


    Ilias nodded.


    "Cold took him halfway through the second month of the siege. We... I... there was a pot-shop on Gin-Drinker''s Run. We... we told each other the stew was pork. We had to keep it down, or we''d starve."


    A hard look passed across his face, and suddenly he seemed many years older than he truly was.


    "It was pork. And we didn''t starve."


    Lykourgos nodded. He couldn''t say he wasn''t disgusted by what he''d heard, but he wouldn''t judge someone for surviving.


    Ilias'' friend had already died, after all.


    "Pork it was then. I hesitate to say this given what you''ve just told me, but I believe it may be as cold this year as it was then. No fear of starvation though; last year''s harvest was bountiful indeed, and this year''s may be as good even with all these men marching instead of reaping."


    Ilias gave a weak nod.


    "Good. Thank you, your Grace. Would you like me to fetch anything for you? I hear that Lieutenants Ingfred and Isen have been arguing, something to do with the aforementioned marching."


    The prince nodded. It seemed Ilias had a talent for knowing what others were up to. Useful.


    "I see. In that case please inform them I would like to speak with them here at their earliest convenience."


    The young boy gave a word of assent, then briskly walked off.


    Angels, it seemed he had a penchant for picking out those stuck by loss. Dreamwulf and his farm, Ilias and the cold, Elikoidi and... well, the less said about that the better.


    He shook his head and smiled. Now he was the one woolgathering.


    Well, he had some business to sort out with two of his Lieutenants, it would seem. Best get on with it as soon as they arrived.


    <hr>


    "Ah, gentlemen. Be seated."


    The men refused to look at each other, teeth gritted and faces tense. The prince resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They were supposed to be soldiers, not children.


    "I hear there is some disagreement between the two of you?"


    "He-"


    "That-"


    Lykourgos quite pointedly glared at them both, unamused.


    "Come now. One at a time, so please you. Ingfred, if you would."


    The older man nodded.


    "My thanks, your Grace. The quarrel between myself and Lieutenant Isen here boils down to a simple difference in opinion on when we should march."


    "Isen, is this the case?"


    The younger man nodded, teeth grinding together.


    "Well, in that case what are your opinions on it? I''m going to assume neither of you are suggesting we march through the night?"


    Both men shook their heads.


    "Of course not! A night march over such a distance..."


    Isen fell silent, and Ingfred took that as his invitation to continue.


    "He speaks the truth, your Grace. Our march to Harran''s Folly was well organised and disciplined, but we were lucky the distance was so short and well known to us. This will not be; the stretch of the Woodsroad that takes us to the capital exists as little more than a line on a map, so ill-maintained is it that in places it disappears completely before reappearing a mile later as patches of cobbles and paved stone."


    Isen nodded and Lykourgos suppressed a snort. Harran''s Folly. Now that''s a good name.


    "With road conditions as poor as they are, the gathering rainclouds above and the darkness around, it is almost certain that any attempted night march would end in mass confusion and paralysis."


    Lykourgos huffed out a breath and nodded.


    "I see. Thank you for your council, gentlemen. When would you next move out?"


    Isen made to speak, but the older Lieutenant cut him off.


    "Two days, your Grace. It will allow the men a moment of respite as well as allowing us to take better stock of what we have, and what we''ve lost, in the last few weeks. Not to mention we''ll get a better idea of whether those clouds ''ll spill or move over."


    "I do not agree."


    Lykourgos and Ingfred both looked to the younger of the two Lieutenants.


    "Your Grace, we need not wait too long. We might not be able to march tonight, but if we have the men get a few hours rest now they can be up before the sun to pack up the camp and march at first light. It''ll give us a full day''s march towards the capital. One day closer to victory."


    Ingfred shook his head, but said nothing.


    Lykourgos raised a hand to his chin, thinking. He knew that, realistically, the extra day of rest would be good for the men and their fighting strength, especially the levies, but the extra days march was appealing by itself.


    It was a day less the enemy could prepare. Besides, the Angels knew he''d wasted enough time already.


    He puffed out a sigh.


    "I''ll need a few hours to think on this matter. My thanks again for your honest council."


    The two men nodded, and Isen spoke as the prince turned to make for his tent.


    "I live to serve, your Grace."


    <hr>


    His head was swimming for some reason. He suspected- well, if he was honest, he knew why. In the last... what, thirty hours? That seemed right. In the last thirty odd hours he''d killed three assassins, six opponents in the storm of the breach, and had held a trusted subordinate as the man''s head had been shattered open.


    The adrenaline was wearing off and he was tired. Oh well.


    Romanos and Dreamwulf were waiting for him in his private quarters and he smiled a small smile. At least they could help him make decisions.


    "Lyk?"


    Ah, Romanos had said something to him.


    "Hm? Sorry, my thoughts ran away from me then. Would you remind repeating what you said?"


    "You are tired, your Grace."


    It was not a question, but a statement.


    "Very observant, Ser. I''ve had a busy few days. Weeks. Months, really."


    Dreamwulf snorted somewhere behind him.


    "Anyway, I was speaking of the plans for marching. You said there were two options?"


    "Indeed. I am between setting out overmorrow or setting out tomorrow. If we set out tomorrow it will be at first light, though overmorrow wouldn''t be soon after."


    "First light? You don''t even want to wait for sunrise?"


    Lykourgos shook his head.


    "As I have mentioned, I am between the ideas at the moment. Assuming that I did choose to march tomorrow, then it would be at first light, yes. It might not be exactly first light if we set out overmorrow, but still before a full sunrise."


    "So if we were to set out tomorrow then the men would, in actuality, have about... ten hours to rest before we leave?"


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    Lykourgos weighed the numbers in his head. He should have been able to do it in his sleep but he was damn tired.


    "I think so, yes."


    Dreamwulf shook his head.


    "I''m going to guess it was Lieutenant Isen that put that idea forwards?"


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Indeed. May I ask how you guessed? And why?"


    Dreamwulf shrugged, hands raised upwards.


    "Been speaking with the Lieutenants, I ''ave. Isen''s a good kid, but meaning no offense to you, your Grace, he''s only your age. He''s young, and has much to learn."


    Lykourgos ignored the unintended barb, and nodded.


    "I see. Romanos, what do you make of this?"


    The knight stroked his stubble with his hand. Before now his friend had always liked to keep his face clean shaven, but Lykourgos had to admit that the short stubble the knight had developed over the course of the conflict suited his face far more.


    "I think Lieutenant Isen''s proposition comes from a genuine wish to see us on the road to Anaria, but Dreamwulf is correct. I believe that his suggestion speaks of inexperience and emotion rather than true thoughtfulness. Still, he will learn. Your march south to Haestinghen in the Twilight Rebellion was fast, that much is true, but they were unique circumstances. We should not be risking your army to desertion and attrition thanks to a few poorly thought out suggestions given from a place of genuine good intentions."


    Lykourgos nodded again.


    "Thank you. If I were to select this idea..."


    Romanos sighed.


    "I would not recommend it. But, if you did... we would march behind you. Besides, it isn''t an extremely monumental choice: it''s simply a trade off between troop effectiveness and campaign length."


    Lykourgos nodded. When placed as simply as that he could deal with such choices easily.


    Why not let the men have another day of rest? There was two weeks of marching and a battle to look forwards to at the end of it; a fragile moment of peace was the least he could give the men who would be fighting it for him.


    "We''ll wait. I want the men ready to march at dawn overmorrow, but tomorrow they can rest."


    Romanos nodded and stood.


    "I will relay your orders to your Lieutenants, your Grace. Try to get some rest. Dreamwulf-"


    The man huffed, somewhere between amused and embarrassed.


    "Don''t you worry, I''m not going anywhere the next few nights."


    Lykourgos rolled his eyes.


    "It was a one-off thing. You don''t need to worry about me that much."


    He tried to ignore how much easier it was to fall asleep with a friend watching over him.


    <hr>


    The next day saw almost nothing of import happen. There was a war-council to discuss the taking of the capital, but outside of that the day was mostly clear.


    The council itself had only been in meeting for about a quarter of an hour before it came to a head. The men sat around the table consisted of Lykourgos and his trusted Lieutenants, as well as Ser Romanos and Symon Symondson. The mercenary was reclining in his chair, arms behind his back, completely at ease.


    He forced himself to listen to the end of Marren''s suggestion. The man might have tried to distance himself from the substance in his own mind, but he was still far too fond of his invention for anyone to consider his idea plausible.


    "A few hours of bombardment with carcass shot would see the city laid low before you, your Grace. Think how many lives we would save."


    Ingfred''s face had turned red somewhere around halfway through Marren''s suggestion, but by the end he had gone an interesting shade of purple.


    "Lives we could save? We''d save the lives of a few hundred of our own men undoubtedly, but at the cost of half of the city! Your Grace, we would need to capture one of the gatehouses or else storm the walls, either of which will be costly. For all the capital''s defences may be lacklustre when compared to the other great cities of the Heptarchy, they will nonetheless bleed us of thousands of fighting men, but it''s still better than an inferno!"


    From his raised position on the small dais Lykourgos watched as Symon rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner at Lieutenant Ingfred''s protests.


    "Thousands of men? If you''re worried about the civilians, this is what will happen; we bombard the city with stone, and hundreds will be crushed. We throw carcass shot and thousands will burn. If we assault the city ourselves?"


    He gestured at the men gathered around the table.


    "One of two things will happen: either we fail and our men are slaughtered at the gates like cattle afore a feast, or we succeed, and our men loot and pillage the city despite attempts to restore order."


    Lykourgos looked down at Symon.


    "You speak from experience?"


    The man nodded tersely.


    "Aye, three or four years ago. We took Stagspring from the deceased King''s widow for his bastard son. Despite what you may think it wasn''t my men that looted and burned, but the former King''s own royal guards and the levies with us. There''s no amount of discipline that''ll temper wild abandon."


    Ingfred''s face was sour, and he shook his head incredulously.


    "No amount of- listen to yourself. Discipline is the only thing that can stop a sack! Your Grace," He turned to face the prince, his voice icy and cold.


    "When we march on the capital, focus your efforts on a gatehouse, and have the Armsmen make up the first wave. They''ve been mostly kept in reserve, and as such are almost entirely unscathed by the war so far. They''re also some of the only men who can be trusted not to run rampant through the city."


    Lykourgos nodded at the old soldier, before turning to glare at Symon.


    "I made a promise to the people of the city that I would return as their liberator, not their executioner. I will not abide a sack."


    Symon grimaced. To hold back soldiers who had watched friends and comrades fall from committing misplaced retribution was never an easy task, especially not with undisciplined masses.


    That was why the Armsmen were to be key in the forthcoming battle. They would have to take the city without much support, save perhaps the knightly elements held within.


    "Alright then."


    Symon''s voice broke the prince''s trail of thought, his tone taking on a calculating but not cold edge.


    "I can pick out at least a few hundred men who can be counted on not to brutalise civilians, mostly the veterans. I can probably have half the company in support if I put some of the more even-headed youths under the veterans'' command."


    Lykourgos smiled at him, and nodded.


    "That would be most helpful, my thanks to you."


    A thought came to him.


    "Will you be joining the assault?"


    The man went back to reclining in his chair, hands behind his head and a smug grin on his face.


    "Well, I did say I''d join the assault on Ousdaal if you went in, but you didn''t give me the chance. Either way, I think it''s only fair I help you with this little escapade. After all, what else are you paying me for?"


    Lykourgos'' smile turned to a grin, and despite the last few days he found himself almost excited for the battle. This was what everything had been leading towards, all the sacrifices not just in the battles of the last few months, but those he had made in his own life to become the best ruler and leader he could be. This was what it was all leading towards.


    He snapped back to, and realised the assembled men were awaiting his orders.


    "We''ll march tomorrow, as planned. When we reach the capital I want the Order of the Violet, the Armsmen, and the trusted half of the Starlings to force a breach at one of the city''s gatehouses. We''ll decide which one as we reach the final approaches to the city. When we''re there have the remaining men busy themselves making storming equipment; we might not be planning to storm the walls but if we build siege ladders and battering rams they''ll be forced to keep soldiers along the breadth of the wall. We can deny them a concentrated force."


    The assembled men nodded or mumbled their assent. Marren raised his goblet.


    "To Prince Lykourgos the Unbroken!"


    The others raised their goblets and spoke the words, save Symon and Romanos.


    Symon looked around incredulously, before fixing the prince with a puzzled gaze. Lykourgos just shrugged in response.


    Romanos seemed almost uncomfortable with the new epithet the prince had earned, though of whatever thoughts he had he said nothing.


    Well, his friend had never particularly been one for epithets.


    Despite all that had happened over the last few days, the prince found that tomorrow couldn''t come quick enough.


    <hr>


    "Heave! Heave!"


    Lykourgos sighed. Ten days they''d been marching. Ten days of wind and rain and mud.


    The Woodsroad was in just as poor a condition as Ingfred had claimed. They had arrived at Haestinghen after only five days march, at the time it looked as if they would be at the capital in perhaps a week and a half, if the men were pressed hard enough.


    Now it looked like it''d be at least another two weeks.


    The rains had picked up as they''d left Haestinghen, and what was left of the poorly maintained road between Haestinghen and the capital turned to a morass of mud that sucked the boots from men''s feet, broken up only by the occasional patch of slippery cobbles or small stream of water passing across what had once been the main road from Teleytaios to Owkrestos.


    How did the road get this bad? When? Who let this happen?


    There was a cry from behind, and he realised in an exasperated second of thought that another carriage in the baggage train had had a wheel break off into the sodden earth.


    "Not the best conditions, your Grace."


    He turned to the newcomer.


    "No, they aren''t. What would you recommend?"


    Isen hummed.


    "I don''t rightly know, your Grace. I lack experience in these matters, as other have no doubt made you aware."


    There was an edge to that last part that Lykourgos elected to leave alone.


    "I see. Lieutenant Ingfred is-"


    "BANDITS!"


    There was a clamour from behind them, and perhaps a dozen longbowmen staggered back from the column in a daze.


    "Where? I see no bandits!"


    Isen''s face set, his expression hard.


    "With your leave your Grace, I''ll speak with those men who claimed to see them. Perhaps Ingfred would be able to lead a party to comb the woods? I''ll be happy to second some of my longbowmen to him, given his knowledge on these matters."


    Lykourgos nodded, and poked Ilias to his left, who was watching the small-scale chaos with rapt attention.


    "Ilias?"


    The boy jumped slightly, quickly settling back into his role.


    "Your Grace!"


    Lykourgos pointed further down the line at Ingfred''s thousand.


    "Find Lieutenant Ingfred, and command him to take a dozen of his men and two-dozen of Lieutenant Isen''s longbowmen and comb the woods. At once."


    Ilias nodded, and rode down the line.


    "He''s a good lad, your Grace."


    "Aye, he is. It took him less than a week to adapt to his role, all told. He''ll do well."


    The two men sat in their saddles in silence a while, before Ingfred rode up to them, Ilias in tow.


    "Your Grace, given the nature of those woods I''d be happier swapping the dozen men of my thousand with another twelve from Isen''s. If there are bowmen in the woods they''ll cut down my armsmen with little they can do in retaliation."


    Lykourgos turned to Lieutenant Isen.


    "Well, Lieutenant?"


    Isen smiled, seeming pleased at the praise given to his own men.


    "Of course Ser, your Grace! I''ll gather the best shots in the thousand and give them their orders, by your leave?"


    Lykourgos nodded once, and Lieutenant Isen trotted off on his charger. He turned to look back at the skies.


    Angels, this rain needs to stop soon, or else we''re at risk of drowning before we reach Anaria.


    <hr>


    It had been, by all accounts disastrous.


    There had been few deaths. Only one, actually.


    That wasn''t the issue.


    The issue was that the death had been that of Lieutenant Ingfred.


    He gritted his teeth and willed himself not to beat the weasel-faced Longbowmen into a red mist.


    "We couldn''t find anyone, your Grace. They must have been behind the trees, and as soon as Lieutenant Ingfred turned to face us his back was riddled with arrows."


    Lykourgos was incensed. Ingfred was dead. The man who had survived half-a-hundred wars stretching back to the Fourth Crusade was gone. One of the best commanders in the prince''s army riddled with arrows in some backwater forest.


    His jaw clenched as he forced out the words.


    "You couldn''t find anyone."


    Lieutenant Isen''s face displayed only a little less anger than the prince felt. The man had a dark glint in his eyes that spoke of malice and danger.


    The prince huffed, forcing himself to breath as he glanced over at his subordinate. If Isen wasn''t actually contemplating what the men''s heads would look like on spikes, then he was a very good actor.


    "I picked you out as the best three-dozen in the thousand. Worthy of standing at the side of such a man. Was I wrong?"


    The men shuffled, uneasily. Isen turned to the prince.


    "For what little it is worth, your Grace, I am sorry. Please, by your leave, allow me to take a few hundred of my thousand and a few hundred of your levied bowmen and screen the woods as we pass by them, to prevent something like this from happening again."


    Lykourgos nodded, fire rising in his chest. Choler.


    "Yes. Yes, and make sure this time your men do their jobs properly!"


    Lieutenant Isen nodded, the dark glint still there, and moved to his men.


    Isen may be a good commander, the prince thought, and his men may excel on the battlefield. But this is a blemish on his thousand that time won''t wash out.


    He closed his eyes as the men stalked back to their thousand, and tried to picture the body of the old man, lying in the woods.


    He opened them, and spat to the side.


    Good.


    They didn''t deserve to forget letting him die like that.


    <hr>


    Two days later they passed through the town of Haraldia.


    Here was where the former King Harald had been born, and just outside of the town his bones were still entombed in the keep that served as the headquarters of the Order of the Bloody Cross. He''d have loved to visit a place filled with so much history, but alas, duty called him to the capital.


    There was something that happened in that town though.


    As they''d passed through a representative of the order had rode to speak with him, flanked by ten of who might have been the most imposing and frankly terrifying people the prince had ever seen.


    Lykourgos opened his mouth to greet them, but the man at the fore spoke first. He was dressed in all black leather, with a longseaxe at his side.


    Ah, not an initiated knight, but rather some type of menial.


    The man''s voice was clipped and terse, as though he were unused to speaking.


    "My name is not important, for I no longer bear one. I am here from the Order of the Bloody Cross. Word has come to us of the foul religious misconducts of your sister, and so we are here to assist you with a token of our support. I will ride as interpreter for the men behind me, who will act as your honour guard, courtesy of the Order. Good day."


    And that had been that. The prince had not even had the chance to speak.


    "Saints, they''re scary fuckers."


    He turned to acknowledge Symon and nodded. The knights of the Order of the Bloody Cross were, as the sellsword had said, scary fuckers. Their plate armour was large, and heavier than anything Lykourgos had seen outside the order. In each left hand was a longsword, every one of them a masterpiece of craftsmanship by themselves, and in the right each knight held a huge shield.


    Well, to call them shields was a disservice. They were huge slabs of metal, with thorn-like teeth facing forwards around the rim. The most notable aspect of each shield was the carving of King Harald in the centre. Some showed him triumphant, sword raised high. Some showed him laid low or embattled.


    Lykourgos saw one of the shields even displayed the child King in his last moments, impaled on a Sotenari pike as his crown fell from his brow and his sword from his hand.


    Oh, and the men never talked.


    Sure, Lykourgos had read and heard of that before. But it wasn''t until you were next to them that you realised how odd the silence was. They could communicate with each other with glances and minute movements, but to anyone around them, Lykourgos included, the aura of silence that exuded from them was almost uncanny.


    He supposed that was why the interpreter was with them.


    "Well, I''m glad that they''re on our side."


    The prince nodded choppily at the mercenary.


    "Aye, on that much we agree."

 Lore Chapter: Owkrestos and Nordicos

    <u>Twenty-Sixth Day, Fourth Month, 870 AD.


    Alekos Virgilos, Prince.


    Kingdom of Polaeros.


    Polaeriopolis.


    The Seeker''s Palace.</u>


    Dear Alek,


    It was ever so nice to meet with you in person again last month! I must confess, your recounting of your journey to Brythonia has left me feeling an odd mix of wonder and bitterness; wonder at the questions and answers you found on those islands, and bitterness for I could not be by your side as you travelled there. No matter, hearing of your explorations is more than enough for me! Contained within this letter should be the information you asked me to send on those kingdoms of the Heptarchy neighbouring Teleytaios. In unofficial terms, I worry about our bordering kingdoms, especially Owkrestos. Towards the end of last year, as you are no doubt aware, the unpopular King Aered was killed in a coup leaving his only issue, a bastard of eleven, to take the throne. Whilst I am of course no stranger to bastards being given positions of power, I am worried as the regency council for the young king has just formed, and amongst its appointees there is not a single member of house Blackoak. The reason this worries me will become apparent when you read of just how influential, and vengeful, Lord Aertax Blackoak is.


    Owkrestos is a land of song and story. East of Teleytaios and south of Nordicos, it is a land covered in forests and fens with little in the way of conventional agricultural terrain. As a result the people that live here are predominantly hunters and gatherers, and the only thing that grows in abundance are orchards, berry bushes and mushrooms.


    To those from the other Klironomean kingdoms Owkrestos seems strange, almost foreign. In these lands the blood of the Skraelings runs deep, and in a great many places it never truly disappeared. The people call themselves Klironomean, they worship the Church and venerate the First Saint, but the fact remains that their customs are odd and their way of life different to the other six kingdoms.


    The royal family of Owkrestos has fallen on truly dire times. House Wyldlarch has ruled over Owkrestos almost as long as house Sperakos has ruled Teleytaios, having integrated the local lordships and defeated their rivals sometime towards the end of the first century. The house has ruled from the city of Stagspring for some eight-hundred years. There is a legend popular in Owkrestan folklore relating to the crowning of house Wyldlarch, which I shall now relay in an admittedly abbreviated form, so as to ensure brevity:


    Legend has it that the Royal House of Wyldlarch gets its origin not from some ancient nobleman, but from the son of a great hunter, who came across an injured white stag whilst out hunting. According to myth, it was said that whoever slew the white stag was to be the rightful King of Owkrestos as chosen by the Angel of the Wilds, Arnka. The great hunter did not disgrace himself by finishing off the wounded beast however, believing that there was little sport and even less honour in killing such a magnificent beast without having earned it through skill and cunning. Instead he bound its wounds and gathered for it food and water. When the great hunter left to fetch another pail of water for the stag that he may continue cleaning the beast''s wounds, he returned to find the Angel lying injured before him instead. The Angel claimed that he had been hunted for four generations by the lords of Owkrestos, and that only the great hunter had shown him kindness, honour and mercy.


    "In return for your mercy," the Angel said, "I decree that your firstborn, and their firstborn after them, shall be the Kings of this land for a thousand years."


    "Your Holiness," the great hunter replied, "I am honoured beyond all words, but if I may ask, why reward my son over me? I seek only to know, for I do not wish to sit the throne."


    "Well," the Angel smiled, "I find myself in need of a new Kennelmaster."


    And, so the legend goes, a mist of stardust the Angel returned to the heavens, his new huntsman beside him.


    A pretty tale, though doubtless one born of a desire to make the ruling family seem more just in their rule than any historical fact. It is far more likely this myth came about so that the defeated lords and petty kings that ruled the divided lands in the chaos of the first century could kneel without feeling humiliated.


    As I said above, the royal house itself stands on dire straits. The only issue of the late King Aered is his bastard son, King Aleksandar Wyldlarch, a boy of eleven with less power than the nobles around him.


    He has taken the coat of arms of his family, seeing as he is the last living member. His banners show a white stag rearing on a dancette line, forest green on a spring green field.


    In homage to the legend of their founding, which seems to have occurred sometime around 76 AD, their words are "Chosen of Arnka". Simple, if a bit on the nose.


    House Wyldlarch rules from the city of Stagspring, in the centre-north of their kingdom. It has fallen on hard times recently, much like the family whom it houses, and there is little to say about its constituent parts.


    In the centre-north backed against a mountain is a palatial district, at the centre of which lies the Huntsfort, the royal accommodation of the ruling family. It is an austere and stark palace, with walls of rough stone and floors of hard wood. It resembles a castle more than a palace, all told.


    Around the palace the city can be divided into roughly two halves. To the east of the palace lies the Silverquarter, a district of mines, smelters, refineries, jewellers and mints, all working the seam of silver that lies under and around the capital.


    It is true that Owkrestos has little mineral wealth, but the seam of silver which runs under the capital is one of the largest in the known world, and as a result a great many of the silver crows that pass through the economies of the Heptarchy are made in Owkrestos.


    To the west lies what can only be described as an overgrown slum. It is, charitably, an urban district for the housing of the workers in the local economy. Tens of thousands of starving lowborns are crammed into thousands of cramped, almost rudimentary, houses as unhygienic as they are unsafe.


    There is little to speak of in regards to this city, save that recent events have seen much of it gutted and burned. Upon the death of King Aered his late wife attempted to seize control of the throne, but a coalition of the former king''s noblemen and vassals led an army to ensure his bastard son was placed on the throne. Being a child, he would be easier to puppet than a woman well-versed in courtly politics and intrigue. When the battle was over and won the besieging army turned loose in the streets, sacking the outer districts of the city and leaving only the Huntsfort itself untouched.


    Owkrestos follows the Church of the Saint, though unlike the rest of the Heptarchy the New-Church has almost no presence here. The vast majority of the kingdom follow the Old-Church with an emphasis on Arnka, the Angel of the Wilds and the Hunt, though in places other, smaller cults still maintain a following; the Church of the Ancients and the Ichorian Cult both have small groups of followers scattered around Owkrestos, and there are even some parts of the kingdom that, according to common rumour, keep to the pagan ways of the old Corvid Pantheon, from before the Skraelings were conquered. The continued presence of ritual sites and archaic temples deep within the woods of the wild lands would seem to support this theory, or if nothing else prove that the Owkrestans are far more in touch with their past than the rest of the Heptarchy.


    Aside from the silver under Stagspring there is a second, smaller seam of precious metal in Owkrestos. Beneath the small mountains that dot the kingdom''s border with the Tildan Principalities, there lies seam of gold. Luckily for one of the noble houses of Owkrestos, house Brakow, that seam runs almost directly beneath the castle of Sunkeep, and as a result of the presence of these veins of silver and gold whilst there may not be a great deal of potential mining sites in Owkrestos, what few there are manage to be quite lucrative.


    Those two mineral deposits make up a large portion of the Owkrestan economy. Much of the arable land, and indeed around half of all the land in the kingdom, belongs to house Blackoak and its seven cadet branches, and as a result whoever sits the chair of Blacktree Hall would become, at a stroke, the single most powerful man in Owkrestos bar only the king. Even then, the king''s power exists only in name.


    Of the other noble houses in Owkrestos, a good portion of them lie in lands almost entirely covered in the bogs, marshes and fens of the east of the kingdom, meaning they are poor when compared to their peers of Blackoak and in other kingdoms. The houses Brookrill, Fengrove, Fenmarch and to an extent even Hawthorne reside over communities that live lives entirely revolving around hunting and fishing through these lands where little more than moss, lichen and hardy grass can grow. Some of the branches of house Blackoak reside in the fens as well, though these make up the weaker branches of the family.


    Owkrestos'' strength can be hard to measure. The land has little in the way of professional soldiers or ''true'' knights, indeed perhaps a total of two-thousand can be counted amongst the entire kingdom, with most of those belonging to house Blackoak. However, given the prevalence of hunting amongst the people of this kingdom, the levies they raise are often of a higher quality than their neighbours, and skilled in ambush warfare and ranged combat to boot, so long as they can keep their bowstrings dry.


    Entire armies have marched into Owkrestos from Triarios, the Tildan Principalities and on one occasion even Teleytaios, and not one of them have ever succeeded in conquering the kingdom. Indeed, the attempt by Teleytaios to conquer the kingdom some four-hundred years ago cost them fifteen-thousand men, a king and three princes, and for that price they gained little more than a few border keeps and perhaps twenty miles of land. Some historians and archivists say that the destruction of the Teleytaian force marked the end of the Centuries of Iron, as the nations of the Heptarchy withdrew from conflict to lick their wounds and forget their dreams of reunification.


    As a result, whilst Owkrestos may not seem particularly powerful, it must be remembered that whilst they may historically have been outmatched on the battlefield, they are rarely beaten on their own terrain.


    In terms of sheer numbers there are perhaps two thousand professional soldiers in the kingdom and fifteen thousand levies, though Lord Aertax Blackoak seems to be in the process of increasing the number of well-trained Armsmen in his employ, and has been since the other nobles launched their coup against King Aered.


    Perhaps he feared they would turn on his house next? After all, his power grabs and political machinations, whilst greatly increasing the prosperity of his house and those who live on their lands, have won him few friends amongst the other noblemen.


    Or maybe he seeks to go on the offensive? The other nobles have denied him, undeniably the most powerful man in the kingdom, a seat on the child-king''s regency council. Who can say?


    There are almost no sellsword companies from Owkrestos, save perhaps Symon''s Starlings, and even they are mostly Teleytaian in makeup. Owkrestans generally have no need to join sellsword companies, since any man skilled with a blade, spear or bow in this land will end up becoming a hunter or fisher, however a great many sellsword companies like to come here given the almost constant internal squabbling of the nobles of this land. For the sellswords that come here, employment is almost certainly guaranteed.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Nordicos is the northernmost kingdom in the western Heptarchy. It contains a people who, for the most part, live in clusters around the southern reaches of the Archic Mountains. As a result they have a far larger urban population, proportionally speaking, than most other kingdoms, but a smaller rural population.


    Nordicos, while lacking seams of particularly ''rich'' metals such as silver or gold, controls most of the copper and a large portion of the iron and coal in the heptarchy, so whilst they aren''t particularly rich, they''re certainly not poor either.


    A secondary factor of this abundance of copper is a demand for tin, which is needed to make bronze. Seeing as the only readily accessible tin mines are to be found on the Brythonic Isles, and Nordicos lacks access to the sea, they are forced to instead trade with Teleytaios, using the neighbouring kingdom as a middle-man for the acquisition of tin.


    This trade route is lucrative for both parties, and neither wish to see it ended and ruin a not-insignificant sector of their economies, so aside from minor border skirmishes there has never truly been a threat of war along the shared border of Nordicos and Teleytaios.


    The royal house of Nordicos is a large one. Whilst it may lack the gilded honours or storied histories of the other royal houses of the Heptarchy, house Petrinos contains dozens of members, a size beaten by only the vast houses of Licotemos in the east of Klironomea.


    The coat of arms of house Petrinos displays a silver hammer with white rays emanating from its head against a grey field. The house also seems to have a curious number of multiple-birth pregnancies, leading to a disproportionate number of the house being twins or somesuch thing.


    Given the size of the house I shall not list all of its members, merely those of note.


    The head of house Petrinos is King Andronik Petrinos, who has taken the sigil of his house unmodified as his own.


    His legacy will continue in the form of his twin sons, the Princes Ioseph and Stylianos Petrinos. Prince Ioseph has taken a pair of crossed white hammers against a grey field for his sigil, whilst the younger twin, Stylianos, has taken a pair of crossed black hammers against a grey field for his own personal sigil.


    Next, in order of descending age, are the king''s brothers.


    Lord Lykourgos Petrinos, who is the younger twin of the king, and Ser Aered Petrinos have followed the example of their brother and king, taking the unmodified sigil of their house for their own.


    Patriarch Emalios Petrinos, being a member of the clergy, has forsaken the use of his family''s heraldry, and as such lives under no colours.


    The last of the royal family of Nordicos worth mentioning are the triplets, Ser Stefra, Ser Stemros and Ser Stellan. These three brothers have taken up with the Grey Company, a sellsword band formed by house Petrinos as a business venture, since they take a large portion of the profit from any contract the Grey Company undertakes.


    These three knights fight under heraldry depicting three light-grey men striding with longswords in hand on a dark-grey field.


    The words of the royal house of Nordicos reflect the city they hold as their seat of power more than anything else; "Forever Hold the Dragon''s Rest". Given that Corthraxiopolis, their capital, is seated at the mouth of a mountain pass overlooked by the colossal fossilised remains of a great dragon, it should not be too hard to work out the meaning behind these words.


    The capital of Nordicos, as previously mentioned, is Corthraxiopolis. It is a city built into the mouth of a mountain pass in the southern Archic mountains, an excellent position in terms of defence, if somewhat restricted in its ability to grow.


    The palace of the Nordican kings is built on a raised position overlooking the centre of the city. It lies just beneath the skeleton of the dragon that resides upon the mountain. From most accounts it is a... middling palace, not as austere as the Huntsfort but far less grand than the royal palace of Anaria.


    Outside its walls there are two major sections of the city to note; Lower Fair and Upperhold.


    Lower Fair lies in the lowlands spilling out from the mouth of the mountain pass. It is a district very much centred around trade and commerce, having a large Orgilaan minority tending to their ranks of market stalls and cloth caravans, coming and going with their wares from all across Klironomea and beyond. It has no true defences, for the plan in event of invasion is for the people below to retreat behind the stout walls and towers of Upperhold, where the soldiers will hold back the foe whilst the population retreats past the Upperhold and into the sprawling networks of caves that have been internally reinforced and turned into shelters and storehouses. Should the foe manage to break through the walls of Upperhold and fight their way through to the mountain passes, they would still need to fight through some twenty miles of cavel and tunnels of which they know nothing and the inhabitants know everything. This makes Corthraxiopolis one of the best defended cities in all of Klironomea.


    As for the religious makeup of the land, its people predominantly worship the Old-Church branch of the Church of the Saint. There is a sizable group who worship the New-Church in the capital and other urban centres, but even in these places the more decentralised and open Old-Church tends to hold more sway over the common folk. There is also a sizable minority in the rural areas of the kingdom and the groups who permanently live in the mountains that instead follow the Cult of Ampithere-Worship, though as the years go by more and more of these people turn from the Dragon-Church and towards the mainstream branches of the faith.


    There are rumours that large portions of the nobility and even the royal family have sworn themselves to the Silverian Church, though this is vehemently denied by Patriarch Emalios.


    Nordicos has a relatively small military to call upon, limited not by the size of its population but rather its distribution; with such a disproportionate level of its population living in cramped urban centres such as Corthraxiopolis, Megalothiriopolis and Rochaven there are fewer people living in the countryside, and as such if too many men are pulled away from their farms in the rural parts of the kingdom it would surely mean famine. As a result, there are only some eight to ten-thousand levies that can be mustered by the Nordicans at any given time. It also maintains one of the smallest forces of Armsmen in the Heptarchy as well, numbering at only four-hundred Men-at-Arms and a hundred Longbowmen-at-Arms. These men are normally found garrisoning the royal palace and Upper Hold, acting as the honour guard of the royals and nobles, though they have been called away to war more than once.


    Aside from levies and Armsmen there are the knights of Nordicos. The majority of the Nordican knights, some thousand or so, are hedge-knights simply hired on to act as a part of the kingdom''s military, with another five-hundred belonging to various knightly orders. The most prominent of these Orders are the Axeknights of Morna, who fight with huge greataxes with hafts made of stone, acting as implacable walls of steel on the battlefield, working alongside their peers to ensure that, no matter what, the foe will not live to see the end of whatever conflict they may be fighting.


    When talking of the Nordican military, it would be remiss to ignore the number of sellswords that can be found in such a place. Whenever trouble is on the horizon and the urban poor lack for jobs or food, they often form sellsword bands and travel to conflicts abroad in the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy, the Tildan Principalities or even the myriad states of the Dathan peninsula. Some of the smaller groups of sellswords are hired by the Orgilaan merchants to act as caravan guards or outriders, fending off the bandits and raiders that line the roads of the sparsely populated rural lands of Nordicos.


    Most prominent amongst these sellsword companies however is the Grey Company. A company formed of loyal Nordicans and founded by the grandfather of the current king of Nordicos, the first king of house Petrinos, it is led by Ser Stellan, the youngest of the three triplets, whilst his brothers Stefra and Stemros act as loyal advisors, bodyguards, and lieutenants for their younger brother.


    There is my brief overview of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy neighbouring my own. I apologise if it lacks the prose of my previous entries about Klironomea or my own homeland, but then I have always had to look to Owkrestos and Nordicos through a more calculating lens. Where do you think you will visit next? You let slip whilst visiting that you intended to go south and visit the all but silent continent of Sothena, though whether you intended to visit Sothettar, the Nekhtoudum ruins, the last remaining nomads, or even the few remaining villages in what were once the client-kingdoms in the central band of the continent I know not. In any case, please make sure you write to me of your travels, it is almost as good as if I were there myself! How far afield have you travelled now? The Ouroborisian Tor in the west, the furthest points of Dathan in the east, the Sky-Barrows of the Skonisnomas in the north and now somewhere in Sothena further south? Soon enough you will have travelled the furthest of any man in the world, surely, and at a remarkably young age! I am certain that your book on the cultures and realms of the known world will be a success, after all, not only will you be the single most well-travelled person in the world, but also one with a repository of knowledge within his grasp at home.


    Perhaps one day you will be able to make your way east of the Drakespine mountains and see what has become of the eastern continent since all contact was lost in the Age of Silence? Now that would be a true achievement! The Amber Road in the north may have frozen over and there may be nowhere to resupply by sea on the southern route for thousands of miles, so getting there would be a challenge, but if anyone could work their way around these issues it would surely be you.


    I look forwards to reading your response, and even more so to seeing you once more, whenever that may be. Things are beginning to look dicey at home for me; my sister continues to exercise her control over my father and Rhema has written in that strange, almost rambling style of his to say there are almost constant raids from the Al-Alema to the south trying to cross the twenty-mile wall of Castelos, so I fear there will be little in the way of good news from me for some time. Given the unrest in Owkrestos across the border, the threat to the south and the ever-increasing gripes and grumbling of the dispossessed nobility, the affairs of state and the court are only growing more complicated and dangerous. I know things became far simpler when my father cut through the knot of feudal politics by revoking the lands and titles of all his vassals, but as ever I am the one remembered for dismantling the nobility in the Twilight Rebellion. Given the state of court in Anaria and my sister''s own enduring, irrational hatred of me, I do not think it will be safe for me to return to the capital anytime soon. I have begun increasing the size of my own professional forces in Aenirhen, as well as the pace of repairs on the Einarbrycge. I have also begun repairs and improvements on the stretch of the Coastroad leading to the bridge and the waystations along its route.


    It is cynical of me to say this, but there is another war coming. Romanos and Elikoidi agree, even if neither can work out why they think so. It may not be for quite some time yet, but I don''t intend to be caught off my guard. Elikoidi has found a man who can create a substance that burns like hell and can be safely launched by artillery, a man named Marren. I am to meet with him and determine whether he deserves a place in my forces within the next few days.


    I have started looking into common mythological themes and religious threads as I did when we were younger. I know not what the presence of these archaic symbols on ancient unmortared stone castles means, but I will work it out, this I swear.


    They''re fascinating, Alek! These ruins, I mean. I went to one near the southern Archic mountains, a small ruin known as the Tledaal, and the architecture pre-dates any known style from any known culture in the known world! You know what the most fascinating thing is though Alek?


    They match the strange markings and symbols found at the Aauta Pass in Tilda, well over a thousand miles away! We''re potentially looking at an ancient culture predating even the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum that no-one knows anything about! I will continue to look into these ruins and have the symbols copied to the best of the ability of the men under me, but I will likely need some more men and resources before I am able to safely continue.


    Unfortunately the needs of the kingdom must come before my own fancies, and as such I will likely not be able to go on my next expedition for some time, but there are three more such sites in my own lands I intend to look into for symbols and clues. There''s something going on here, Alek, something ancient and forgotten by man. There''s a place by the coast that I have heard may have something I''m looking for, another in the forests of the Farwald, and further afield there is another fort built on the foothills of a mountain in the southern Archic range, known as the Horndaal.


    No matter what I find or where you go, I hope to see you again soon, Alek.


    I miss you dearly.


    Your friend, now and always,


    Prince Lykourgos Sperakos.

 Seventh II: Blood and Mist

    <u>Seventh II: Blood and Mist</u>


    <u>The Fourteenth Day of the Eleventh Moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Haestinghen, Eastern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Something was happening here.


    Granted, they were in the middle of a kingdom in the midst of a civil war, so something was always happening, but this was different. For quite some time now they''d been kept under house arrest in Haestinghen, for their own protection of course, unable to leave their chambers unless under armed guard and they were certainly not allowed beyond the walls of the small keep they were in.


    There was a feeling of trepidation in the air. A sense that something, something, was going to happen soon, but no-one could quite tell what. The guards were getting more and more on edge as the days went by and rumours of the mystic powers Seventh possessed made their way to more and more people in the population of the town. It was only a matter of time before some pious fool or populist aristocrat tried to rile up a crowd and storm the keep.


    After all, the pagan magics under their possession were an affront to the Angels and the Saints, surely?


    They let out a deep sigh. Some of the guards were speaking of moving them further north, back towards Aenirhen. Ser Aethel had suggested an impoverished village called Suthenfordeinar near the site of Harran''s Folly, seeing as the more rural population would be more accepting of mystic abilities and unexplainable phenomena.


    Seventh didn''t buy that one bit. Rural types were just as closed off as their urban counterparts when they found something that didn''t fit their worldview. That was just a fact of life for someone like them.


    There were twenty-one men set to guard them in Haestinghen, all working in shifts. Ser Aethel himself and nine other knights of his Order made up the original guards, and the ten Armsmen the blind bodyguard had picked out formed the rest of the group. There were always two knights and two armsmen standing guard at the door, they presumed to prevent any arguments between the rival military groups. Ser Aenethar was there as well, but it was rare for him to take guard duties as the others did. Sometimes Seventh would feel his presence lingering outside the doorway to their temporary chambers, but not often. Not that the others wanted to stand guard with him; his silence seemed to creep them out, as did the absence of that spark in his eyes that made him seem... different to most people. In any other circumstance Seventh may have attributed it to him being a soldier who had seen too much, and who lived life with a vacant expression and hollow mind, but they knew it was not that.


    They''d seen too many people like that not to know what it looked like.


    Aenethar was an enigma to them.


    They shrugged to themselves, and sighed again. Their dreams had taken on shades of prophecy again recently, but they were unable to focus on the meanings behind the dreams from the inside of this grey room. They needed to hear wind blowing through the trees, to hear birdsong in the air, to hear all the sounds of nature at its most tranquil. It was hard enough to concentrate on such things in Anaria where they could freely roam the gardens of the palace or even go to the forests just outside the Anarian Marches, but stuck within the grey stone walls of the keep in Haestinghen?


    They felt like they were going mad with the need for nature and all things wild.


    They smirked. That was another reason the capital had not been as bad as expected on their more mystical senses; Rhema held more than a spark of the wild in his spirit. Much more than a spark. They shook their head again. It would do no good to think on Rhema now, not when the prince was in so precarious a situation. They would only drive themselves to worry more.


    Their dreams had been... odd, recently. There was... there was a great serpent made of seawater and fog, rising from a sea of grey waves. Then... then...


    They furrowed their brow in concentration. They''d never struggled with dreams this vague before, so why was it so difficult now?


    They sighed again. Things were changing in the world, even if it didn''t seem like it. The unearthing of their old kinsman was proof enough of that.


    At that thought the dream seemed to snap back into their memory, like the drawstring on a crossbow as the trigger was pulled.


    There was a great serpent made of seawater and fog, rising from a sea of grey waves. A lone figure stood on a rock before him as waves crashed and roiled around them, a crown of stone upon their brow and one of gold in their hands.


    The serpent bowed its head in submission or respect, Seventh couldn''t tell which, then descended back into the depths.


    Six wings unfolded from the back of the lone figure, made of the nothingness that lay between the stars, and antlers of multi-hued starlight tore through the figure''s head.


    The figure turned to look at Seventh, and smiled despite the blood flowing down his face.


    The scene changed, and suddenly there was... there was something. They didn''t know exactly what it was. There must have been half a hundred figures shrouded in unnatural shadows staring at them. What was perhaps more confusing was the fact that each and every one of them had the same misshapen souls as Ser Aenethar.


    Seventh turned, and a figure uncloaked smiled at them. The man was old, but did not look it. His robes were a fine scarlet, and must have once been resplendent, but now they were moth-eaten and tattered. His expression spoke of a genius unbound, but his eyes bore a disturbing look made from equal parts madness and true clarity.


    The man raised a finger and pointed at Seventh, and somehow they felt the shrouded congregation behind them make the same motion.


    For the first time in any of their scryings, something new happened.


    The man spoke. Only three words, but that was enough to shake them to their core.


    The man''s voice should have been little more than a whisper, but it carried across the whole room as clearly as a shouted proclamation. He smiled a gleeful smile as the words tumbled from his lips.


    "There you are."


    <hr>


    "Are you sure you''re alright... sorry, it''s occurred to me I''m uncertain as to the honorific I should use for you."


    They smiled at the knight.


    "My name is fine, Ser Aethel. I bear no titles in truth."


    The knight smiled slightly.


    "As you say, Seventh. I understand your frustration at being cooped up in this keep. Believe me, I feel the same way. My Grandmaster and my Prince are off fighting glorious battles and scaling the walls of enemy strongholds, and yet here I remain, a hundred miles from the army."


    Seventh sighed.


    "I suppose I am somewhat frustrated. I understand your orders and I know you mean well, but these abilities I possess... they''re... I''m uncertain how best to explain it. They do not necessarily require a natural, peaceful presence, but because that is what I find comforting that is what I need to better make use of my abilities. Without the ready presence of such an environment, like here,"


    they gestured at the room they were in,


    "I find it far more difficult, and therefore taxing, to make use of these abilities. It does not help that they need to be used, exercised, to remain strong."


    Ser Aethel rubbed his chin.


    "Like a muscle? If used properly and regularly it grows stronger, more controlled, but if allowed to go without that regular exercise it weakens?"


    The Seer smiled.


    "Yeah, that''s probably the closest analogy I could think of."


    A thought came to them.


    "A moment, please. You still refer to Lykourgos as ''your Prince''. Would he not be known as ''your King'' now, given his bid for the throne?"


    Aethel chuckled lightly.


    "I assumed as much at first, as did most of us, I think. Grandmaster Romanos told us that the prince would not take the title of king until he was coronated however, so a prince he shall remain for now."


    There was silence for a moment as Ser Aethel seemed to try and think of the right words to say.


    "I think perhaps we can see to allowing you outside into nature for a bit in a day or so. It will likely not be as pleasant as you hope, if for no other reason than you will remain guarded by about half of the personnel assigned to your care whilst the other half remain with the formerly entombed man, but surely that will be better than nothing?"


    Seventh smiled at the man again.


    "Thank you. I understand your orders, and therefore your reluctance to allow me out of this room and keep, but even guarded I feel, as you said, that it will be better than nothing. It would be no more than a few hours unless you began to feel more comfortable letting me outside without risk."


    Aethel smiled, and made to speak, but there was a hurried knock at the door.


    "Enter!"


    Grimwald, one of the Armsmen stationed at the door, hurried in.


    "Ser Aethel, Ser, according to a messenger there''s a riot brewing outside. The rest of the garrison are asking for your orders and the mob are asking to speak with you, seeing as you''re the commander."


    Aether''s face set in a grim yet anxious expression.


    "How many people? Who are they led by?"


    "More than fifty but less than a hundred, Ser. Some lower noble-type leads them, a Gentleman we think."


    Aethel''s face twisted in distaste.


    "That''ll be Gentleman Manfred no doubt. He holds the mayoral keys to this town, but people haven''t really been a fan of him since his defiance almost got them all killed in the Twilight Rebellion. There''ll be another ceremony to pass over the keys this year or the next, but he''ll be able to keep them if he gets enough people on his side."


    He looked down at Seventh.


    "And nothing gets a mob on your side like fearmongering against someone different."


    He looked at Seventh a moment, then back at Grimwald.


    "Are Wedekind and Ser Aenethar still standing guard with you?"


    "Aye, Ser."


    He nodded.


    "Good. Stay at your posts. I''ll go talk with the Gentleman of the town and see if we can''t work something out. Be ready to move the Seer out of the town should the worst come to pass. I''ll have a message sent to those guarding our other charge to do the same. Is that messenger still there?"


    "Aye, I think so Ser."


    "Tell them to wake those who are off-duty. If this does go south we''ll need all the hands we can get."


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.Grimwald nodded, and stepped back outside.


    "I won''t be long, I hope. Then we''ll work out the details of letting you out once this storm has passed.


    Seventh nodded, and smiled to show what they hoped was seen as confidence.


    "Good luck, Ser."


    <hr>


    When Aethel left there was a feeling of dread in the air. They had been expecting something to happen, and now it was happening. Seventh chastised themselves for being so anxious over what could be nothing.


    Aethel''s been gone less than two minutes. He''ll work out something with the mob and they''ll disperse.


    There was a commotion outside. A strangled cry, a clattering noise, a scream for help cut short. The door was kicked open, and Ser Aenethar looked around the room briefly before his eyes settled on them. The bodies of the two Armsmen that had been posted at the doors were in a sorry state; Wedekind had been run through, his guts splayed out across the hallway, face contorted in surprise and horror. Grimwald had been stood to his right, but the man was now strewn before the door having been cut into three neat pieces. He had been sliced across the torso, bisecting him, and it looked as though a follow-up swing had removed the top half of his head before he had hit the ground.


    Neither had even had the chance to raise their weapons.


    Seventh swallowed and backed up against the wall as Aenethar strode into the room. They felt for the dagger in their sleeve, waiting for the right moment to arrive. They didn''t know why Aenethar was acting like this, but they weren''t stupid enough to try and reason with a man who had just cut down two of his comrades. Bound leather straps slowly slipped into their hand, and they gripped the handle as hard as they could. The sensation of the cold steel on their arm sent a shiver through them, but that was nothing compared to the freezing cold emanating from the man in front of them.


    Aenethar closed the remaining distance, armour bloodied and sword back in its scabbard. He raised his hand and stretched out his arm to reach for Seventh.


    NOW.


    With all the strength their small frame could muster they struck forwards with the dagger. The first blow found no purchase on the man, blade ricocheting harmlessly off his plate armour. Seventh knew that to wait even a moment was to invite defeat, and so immediately struck again. Before the larger man had even registered the failed first strike the dagger was plunged to the hilt in his gut, a join in two pieces of armour providing exactly the right kind of weak spot for the young Seer to use.


    Aenethar stumbled back, his vacant eyes all that were visible of him thanks to the narrow slit in his visor, and even they were shrouded in darkness.


    A crashing fist slammed into Seventh''s stomach, and they dropped to the floor. Their abdomen felt as though it had been hit with a hammer rather than a fist. Adrenaline drove them back to their feet, and stumbled left and right a second before planting themselves firmly on the wooden floor. As Aenethar rose again they hastily made to undo their blindfold and clutched it in their right hand. There were so many questions in their mind. Why was Aenethar doing this? What was his aim? Was he going to kill them? No, he would have done so already. What was his goal? Did he have a goal? Was anyone else helping him? Why did he kill Grimwald and Wedekind? Would they have tried to stop him? Of course they would, it was their job.


    One question stuck at the fore of their mind. They''d thought it when they''d first met Aenethar, but for some reason, as out of place as the question was, it came back to them now.


    Why did I know your name?


    The blindfold slid free, and Seventh allowed their eyesight to gradually supplant their non-physical sight. There was little difference between the two types of sight in terms of effectiveness, but the finer details of the physical world went unseen by their more mystical senses.


    They didn''t want to do this. It was dangerous, it shattered minds, it ruined the lives of whoever happened to be nearby or catch a glimpse of what they were about to do, but they didn''t have much of a choice.


    They stood their ground again, feet planted firmly on the apart, and they readied themselves in a fighting stance, preparing to exercise their abilities to their full extent.


    It''s self defence. I can deal with the fallout after. What matters now is that I survive.


    With that thought a surge of power coursed through their body, making its way towards their eyes. Channelling the energy outwards and using their eyes as an outlet, they forced the dream-magic out into the room.


    There was a brilliant flare of light, mildly blue in hue, similar to when they were used as a vessel for a prophetic message to make itself known, only this time it was far more powerful.


    As the light receded they blinked a few times, their eyes trying to readjust to the comparative darkness in the room. It wasn''t actually dark, but compared to the flare that had just filled their vision it may as well have been nighttime.


    Aenethar stood still for a moment, dull eyes blinking slowly. With a terrifying moment of clarity, he slowly removed his helmet, letting it fall to the floor. His face was a mess of scars, messy brown hair looking as course as wire and ears... missing?


    None of that caught the Seer''s attention for more than a second.


    His eyes. They were blank. Not blank like the pale white of blindness, nor the almost solid blackness of their own eyes. This was something else, something strange and unnatural.


    The knight stepped forwards, and Seventh looked away, afraid.


    Aenethar tilted the young Seer''s chin upwards, forcing them to meet his gaze. Seventh watched, stomach sinking in horror as the man stared straight at them as the last dregs of the light subsided. The man stared into their eyes, abyssal eyes, eyes that sent men mad at a glance, let alone when they forced this much power into them. They felt ice creep up their spine as the man who bore the name of the Angel of Death tilted their chin upwards, the knife in his chest not seeming to faze him at all. The man stared into eyes that drove men mad.


    And he smiled.


    A crashing blow to the temple sent Seventh sprawling to the floor. The knight carefully picked them up and set them over his shoulder, knife still lodged in his gut, and strode out of the room. Seventh was barely conscious as Aenethar stepped past Wedekind''s corpse and over the parts of what used to be Grimwald without so much as pausing to glance at what was left of the men.


    He spoke no words, but even in their dazed, disoriented state, they knew that the man was trying to be quick.


    Seventh found themself being jostled around for a minute or two as Aenethar quickly strode down hallways and made turns, making sure to avoid the quarters of the other guards or those standing vigil at the side of the unconscious form of the strange man found at the Horndaal. Aenethar''s steps were even, measured, careful to be quick but not too loud.


    He needn''t have bothered.


    Ser Aethel rounded the corner looking mildly frenzied, greatsword in hand. He was helmetless and shieldless but then, Seventh reasoned, so was Ser Aenethar. Aethel took one look at the two of them, and immediately readied himself into a fighting stance.


    Good, thought Seventh, he isn''t taking any chances.


    "Unhand the Seer, Ser. You and I both know they are to remain with four guards within the keep."


    Aenethar was silent, and for a moment he made no move to let go of them.


    Another moment passed, and Aethel took a few steps forwards. There were still several metres between the two knights, but they knew there was to be a fight here.


    A grunt came from Ser Aenethar, and Seventh felt themselves be lowered to the floor with surprising gentleness. They tried to force themselves to their feet, but their body would not obey their commands.


    Their mind was wide awake, but their body felt just so tired.


    It was as though their form was made of lead.


    "Lower your sword and step away."


    Aenethar made no move to comply. Instead, with what Seventh could only describe as an extremely deliberate slowness, the larger knight took his greatsword out of its scabbard.


    Aethel blanched for a second, then steeled himself.


    "Very well then, Ser. In the name of Prince Lykourgos Sperakos, I accuse you of treason, murder, and attempted murder. Seeing as you have nothing to say in your defence I levy the sentence of death upon you. May the Angels and the Saints judge you."


    And with that the duel started.


    Bloody fool, Seventh thought, you didn''t even call for help.


    There was the ringing sound of steel on steel, and the first blow was struck. Aethel shed the next blow then moved forwards to strike once, twice, thrice, but each time the blow was turned aside by the stronger knight. Aenethar retaliated with a diagonal swing, but Ser Aethel was able to deflect the attack before twisting himself around and moving out of striking distance.


    The two knights moved into defensive stances, Aethel an ox guard and Aenethar a boar''s tooth. They circled each other for a moment, neither wanting to make the first move.


    It was Aenethar that broke first, bringing his sword up from its defensive position to sweep at the legs of his opponent. The younger knight was quick however, and was able to parry the blow expertly, leaving Ser Aenethar open and vulnerable to the riposte that followed.


    The greatsword arced towards Ser Aenethar at terrible speed, and for a brief second Seventh felt hope that maybe Aethel could win this by himself.


    A swift block and a backhanded blow from a mailed fist robbed them of that notion.


    Aethel stumbled backwards from where he had been punched, but at no point did he let down his guard. A great overhead blow fell towards him, and though he could block well enough it was clear that the older man''s strength would overcome his own soon enough.


    "HELP! SOMEONE-"


    His cries were cut short momentarily as he used both hands to brace his sword against a second monstrously powerful downswing. He gritted his teeth and pushed back against the attacker''s blade.


    "HELP! GET THE GUARDS! SOMEONE!"


    Seventh sighed to themselves, still disoriented and dizzy. Too little, too late. You''re alone here. It''s just you, me, and him.


    Aethel was giving a good fight and putting up a spirited resistance, that much was true, but he was clearly starting to flag and falter. His breathing was heavy and arms trembling. Whatever energy he had before the start of the duel, it was all but gone now. Seventh felt the fear that had been supressed this whole time begin to creep into their system as Aethel was pushed further and further back.


    Seventh watched, paralysed in fear and utterly helpless as the moment they dreaded arrived.


    Ser Aethel''s blade came up just too slow, and Aenethar''s sword swung in a wide arc at his neck. It seemed as though Ser Aethel realised the danger and was moving back, but it was far too late.


    The blow did not quite strike his head from his shoulders, but it was far from being merely a shallow cut.


    The sword had cleaved through the front half of his neck, and for a moment Seventh could actually see the intact vertebrae in the new gap before the torrent of blood poured down.


    Ser Aethel staggered on his feet, his sword clattering uselessly to the floor as he reached and clutched all around him, desperation in his eyes. He reached an arm out to support himself on the wall as the other held his opened throat. He staggered forwards, towards Ser Aenethar and Seventh, moving towards the young Seer.


    And then his legs gave way and he clattered to the floor, staring all the while.


    Blood, sticky and red, coated the floors of the keep at Haestinghen for the second time in half a decade. There was a gurgling noise from the ruined throat of Ser Aethel, still trying feverishly to claw his way towards them, but they didn''t need to look at his eyes to know that his desperation was fading.


    Aenethar lifted them back up, holding them under his arm.


    Seventh felt themself losing consciousness as the adrenaline of watching the fight wore off, but caught a brief glimpse of a blindfold made of the finest green silk discarded in the pooling blood of the knight who had tried to protect them. They must have dropped it at some point in the carnage.


    Tears filled their eyes as they left Ser Aethel alone in his last moments, the green stained red from his blood as the blindfold was covered under the crimson waves.


    Wait, they thought to themselves, I don''t want to lose that.


    Rhema gave me that.


    Please.


    <hr>


    When they came back to they were in a saddle. Their eyes fluttered open and shut a few times as they tried to will themselves to stay awake.


    Where are we?


    They were on a horse, that much was obvious, probably a large but common draft horse if they had to guess. A common roughspun cloak was about their shoulders, its hood protecting them from the worst of the rain. Behind him he could feel a much larger figure clad similarly upon the back of the horse. Their body tried to tense, recoiling at the notion of being so close to Ser Aenethar given what he had done, but they were just too tired. Their muscles wouldn''t move, and they found themselves slumping in the saddle.


    Aenethar held them upright, preventing them from slipping into the patchy cobbles and boggy morass that constituted the road.


    This is... this is the Woodsroad? But that would take us to the capital? Why...


    They wanted to work out why they were going to the capital. They wanted to get away from Aenethar.


    They wanted to be safe.


    But they were far too tired to move.


    I''ll escape soon. I just... I just need to rest for a little, that''s all. I''ll escape soon.


    I just have to rest a little.

 Lykourgos XII: Behind the Plate and Mail

    <u>Lykourgos XII: Behind the Plate and Mail</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Eighth Day of the Eleventh Month, 872 AD.


    </u><u>The Anarian Marches, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    The walls stood before him, defiant and resplendent, but the only thing was... well, the gates were open. As in, wide open. A green banner was flying from the battlements, but there was no sign of an opposing force anywhere save a scant few men atop the walls waving at Lykourgos'' own army below. It was almost surreal.


    "Do you suspect a trap, your Grace?"


    He shrugged.


    "It is too early to tell. Do you think it would be best if the armsmen-"


    "A rider, no, two, your Grace!"


    Lykourgos whipped round to see his cupbearer pointing back at the gates guarding the entrance of the Northern district. Well, he supposed guarding was a generous term seeing as they were wide open, but still.


    True to Ilias'' word, there was a pair of riders cantering towards them. The one further back bore his brother''s standard, a light-green flower on a dark-green field, as well as a longsword and mace with a six foot haft across her back. The one in front... well, Lykourgos knew exactly who that excitable face belonged too.


    He pushed his horse at full gallop, ignoring the protests of his friends behind him.


    Brother!


    He all but vaulted out of his fucking saddle as they got some twenty feet from each other, and Lykourgos watched as his brother pulled back so hard on the reins of his horse it reared up. His brother soon dismounted and, as Lykourgos himself did, launched himself in a running start towards his brother.


    They collided against each other and immediately were in a death grip of a hug.


    There were tears in his brother''s eyes, and Lykourgos had no idea he''d feel so relieved to see him unharmed.


    "Brother!"


    "Brother."


    They released each other and took a step back, smiles still on their faces. The woman who had borne his brother''s standard marched up to the two of them, and Ser Romanos did likewise from behind the prince.


    Both of them spoke at the exact same time, their voices exasperated yet fond.


    "I told you not to do that!"


    "Your Grace could you please stop running off without me!"


    The two companions seemed to stop and size each other up, the woman proffering an armoured wrist as Romanos did the same.


    "Crowe, it''s good to see you again."


    "Likewise. How is the north of the kingdom?"


    "Chilly, but safe. The south?"


    "Warm, but safe."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow and looked at his brother, who just shrugged.


    Guess they already know each other. Makes sense I suppose, they are two of the highest ranking military officials in the realm.


    "Brother, may I present Marshal Crowe, my trusted advisor and friend."


    The woman smiled and bowed deeply, but not so far as to scrape and grovel.


    "An honour, your Grace. Your brother has told me much about you."


    He smiled at her.


    "Well, may I present Ser Romanos, the Knight of Violets and Grandmaster of the Knights of the Order of the Violet."


    Romanos looked at him with a small smile on his face.


    "What, I don''t get the ''trusted advisor and friend'' bit added to my name?"


    Lykourgos groaned and shoved him playfully.


    "Oh, do shut up Ser."


    "Careful your Grace, you''re starting to sound like Elikoidi."


    There was a second of silence as the group slightly awkwardly looked at each other, trying to figure out what they were to do next.


    "Well," Rhema started with a sigh, "no point putting this off I guess. Crowe?"


    The woman nodded and handed Rhema his crown. He turned to his brother but continued to stare at the crown for a moment.


    Rhema drew his sword and stepped forwards. Slowly, carefully, as if trying to prove he was no threat.


    Lykourgos watched from the corner of his eye as Ser Romanos'' hand slowly and covertly went towards the pommel of his blade, as if expecting an attack.


    Lykourgos turned to the knight and shook his head. This was his brother. There would be no blood spilled between the two of them.


    His brother stopped five paces from where he was stood and knelt in the muddy road before the city gates. He flipped his sword and held it gently by its blade, proffering the handle towards Lykourgos. In his other hand he held forwards his crown, waiting for his brother to take it.


    He stared at the ground in front of Lykourgos as he spoke, his posture and actions ensuring that all knew he was deferential to his older brother.


    "I offer you my crown, for it is not mine but yours. I offer you my sword, for it has always been yours. I offer you my kingdom, for there are none amongst my people who would not call you ''King''."


    Lykourgos smiled, slightly choked up, and cleared his throat.


    "Rise, brother. I accept your oath of fealty to me, and swear I will not dishonour it. Stand at my side, as you always should have, and help me claim my throne."


    Rhema looked up at him and grinned.


    "Thank you, your Grace."


    Two more people rode up to them from Lykourgos'' camp. The interpreter from the Order of the Bloody Cross, Dreamwulf close behind with a grimace upon his face and a snarl aimed at the interpreter.


    "Tell me you do not intend to pardon the criminal, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos looked up in confusion.


    "Criminal?"


    The man nodded.


    "Your brother, the criminal. He who turned his back on the minor sects of the land and condemned their worshippers to an ignoble end."


    Lykourgos started, and Dreamwulf spoke while dismounting from his horse, still glaring daggers from his empty eyes at the interpreter.


    "I told him you wouldn''t like to hear such talk, your Grace, but some people refuse to be reasoned with."


    The interpreter trotted forwards a few more paces, hand resting upon the hilt of his longseaxe.


    "You would deny the Ichorian Cult its justice?"


    Lykourgos started at the implication he was not being just, made all the more galling by the fact that this man was asking him to put his beloved younger brother to the sword.


    "Your quarrel is not with my brother," he snarled, placing himself between the interpreter and his brother, sword drawn, "If you disagree, then I would be more than happy to explain why you are wrong. My sister did this. I know it to be true. Rhema has knelt, he is a king no longer. He will fight by my side to retake this city."


    He turned to Lieutenant Isen and Ser Romanos.


    "Make sure the men know not to fight Prince Rhema and his supporters. They''ll be easy to identify, just look for the green markings."


    The interpreter stepped forwards, face grim.


    "The false king has betrayed our trust. We swore ourselves to him even after he burned the followers of Hydran on the docks, and in return he consorts with vile heathens. He needs to pay."


    At the mention of the burnings something visibly changed in Rhema, his breath becoming shallow and fast. It was Dreamwulf, not Lykourgos, that comforted the prince with a hand on the shoulder, glaring at the interpreter all the while with his empty gaze.


    "His Grace has already spoken, Ser. I advise you listen to his verdict before any judgement needs to be passed upon you."


    Lykourgos stepped forwards and held up a hand.


    "Enough. My piece has been said. You wish for vengeance against those responsible for this? Then you will swallow your pride, and stand in line."


    There was silence from the interpreter for a moment as he seemed to try and reconcile whatever grudge the Order of the Bloody Cross had with his brother, but eventually he obeyed Lykourgos'' commands. It was the only logical course for the interpreter to take. After all, his faith had sworn itself to Rhema''s banners, and how could the order hope to deny its own faithful?


    "Very well, your Grace."


    The interpreter turned to Rhema, a barely contained snarl on his lips.


    "Perhaps what they say is true, and you are not to blame for all of this. For your sake, I hope it is so. Our order will may not strike you down, but only because of the protection his Grace has afforded you. Be very, very thankful I am not as rash as some of my comrades."


    Before Lykourgos could admonish the man or demand silence he continued.


    "Myself and the knights whom I serve will make our way to the Westcoast Church and protect it from any who may seek to loot or vandalise its sacred halls. Anyone. I trust your men will not throw away their lives fighting their own side in a fruitless attempt to plunder the sacred items held within such a place?"


    Lykourgos nodded stiffly.


    "I will do what I can to ensure such behaviour does not take place anywhere in the city, including at the Westcoast Church."


    "Good. I wish you luck."


    The interpreter and his knights moved out into the city, intent on reaching the church before anyone looked at its opulence and got any ideas.


    By coincidence, at that moment the bells started up again. Eight times the bell rang. Then a pause. It repeated this message three times, a warning shouted from the brass of the holiest place in the city.


    War Comes. War Comes. War Comes.


    There was a longer pause, and then the bell tolled only twice.


    Rhema turned to him, still somewhat shaken from the interpreter''s accusations but quickly recovering.


    "I guess the people know you''re back, then."


    Lykourgos furrowed his brow as he thought on his brother''s words, then smiled.


    Of course, two bells! That could mean only one thing.


    If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.Rejoice.


    <hr>


    The walk through Last Stander''s Street was brisk but rather uneventful. It seemed the fighting had already passed through here, and everywhere he looked armed men and women lined the streets and guarded narrow alleyways. Looking closer Lykourgos realised that each and every one of them had some article of green clothing upon them. It was a motley thing for the most part; a sash here, a scrap of cloth stitched to a shoulder pad there, some people had little more than what appeared to be roughspun cloaks or cowls stained with grass. The knights and armsmen were somewhat more organised; the armsmen of his brother wore green surcoats, and most of the admittedly small number of knights Lykourgos saw had kiteshields painted green or else ribbons of green silk twisted around their sword arms.


    They walked up the sloping street, all eyes moving to look at him and his brother as he passed, snippets of conversations being carried on the wind to his ears. Lykourgos did his best not to slip on the rain-slicked cobbled streets of the northern district whilst so many people were watching.


    "It''s the two princes-"


    "They''re here-"


    "Are... are we saved?"


    From his side Lykourgos heard Romanos take a deep breath, and he slowed his horse slightly so as not to be on the receiving end of one of the loudest sets of brass lungs he''d ever known a man could possess.


    "ALL HAIL PRINCE LYKOURGOS SPERAKOS!"


    The bellowed command from Ser Romanos quieted most of the conversations, a unified "HAIL" silencing all other topics for a moment.


    There was a quiet voice from somewhere to his left, little more than a whisper.


    "You came back."


    Lykourgos turned to face the source of the noise. A young levy sat on the floor amidst the death around him, vacantly staring forwards with nary a reaction.


    Lykourgos nodded, but the boy''s mind was already gone.


    "Saw him on the way down," his brother whispered as they walked, "got caught in an ambush with his band, and he just... well, in the middle of the fight he just sat down where he is now with an almost confused look on his face. I don''t think he''ll forget today anytime soon."


    Lykourgos nodded in acknowledgement, but not pity. He could still remember how he felt at Haestinghen, how numb he was when he took his first life.


    He hated how people pitied him back then. He would not pity anyone going through the same thing he did, but he did wish it had never had to happen this way.


    "Do you think I did the right thing, Rhema? Was I right to rebel against you?"


    His brother nodded without even a second of thought.


    "Rebelling against me and our sister is the single best thing you''ve done for the realm, and for our family, to date."


    The older prince snorted.


    "I find that hard to believe. Our father lies dead, your mother the same, and our sister... our sister will need to die before this is through."


    Rhema swallowed hard at that, but Lykourgos continued.


    "We''ll be all that''s left of our family, Rhema."


    "We have distant relatives in the Noble Sons Abroad."


    Lykourgos snorted.


    "Come on. Let''s not pretend those people have any ties to our house save only the name they bear."


    Rhema sighed as they crested the highest point of Last Stander''s Street and moved past a distillery that had been torn down in the fighting.


    "Does she need to die?"


    Rhema''s voice was soft and quiet, far removed from the boisterous and loud tone Lykourgos was used to.


    "Could we not send her to Anatolikoi? Mytenaeopolis, perhaps? There''s a reason Anatolikoi is known as the isle of exiles, and the marble city is Klironomean in nature. She could live there instead."


    Lykourgos sighed and wrestled with his own thoughts on the matter. Anatolikoi was an option, but the possibility of old connections finding their way to her, for her to amass a small army from the generations of nobles exiled to that island...


    It was too much of a risk.


    He shook his head.


    "Okay, what... what about... Angels, the mere thought makes me sick, but what about abacination. If her eyes were put out no-one would follow her."


    He stopped in his tracks at that. Abacination. Blinding. It was an archaic punishment for treason or other serious acts, used to leave someone politically dead in the water.


    But it was archaic for a reason.


    "I am not some Dathanian despot. I will not stoop to disfigurement of my own kin. Besides, she would not live long past the blinding."


    Rhema sighed, closing his eyes a moment.


    "True enough. Her life after being deposed would be dedicated to taking the throne, and if she was physically incapable of such a thing... yes, she would not let herself live long."


    They were both silent a moment as they continued on down the long avenue towards the Inner Gate. Lykourgos spoke up, emotion carefully smothered in his voice.


    "I wish there was another way, Rhema. But to allow her to live is to invite her revenge later on. There is no other option open to us."


    His brother nodded.


    "I trust you, Lyk. Just, please make sure there''s no other option first. I do not know of any alternatives myself, but if you can think of any before we take her captive-"


    "Then I will act accordingly, brother. Please believe me, I have no wish to be named ''kinslayer''."


    The Inner Gatehouse came into view, a knot of soldiers in red liveries holding fast despite the foe in front of them.


    "We''re here. Ready yourself, brother."


    He checked his longsword and kiteshield once more before setting off with the men. Usually one would fight with a greatsword if they could only use the one hand, after all, the added length of the longsword made it unwieldy unless used two-handed.


    Lykourgos had no such problems with such things, not anymore. Lord Brathaxe had been a big man, easily capable of wielding his great mace in one hand, and had expected his charge to do the same.


    Even ignoring the age difference, Lord Brathaxe was still many times the prince''s size, but in the mind of his foster-father that was no excuse. Lykourgos was young, he said, and if he learned to use a weapon such as the longsword one-handed now it would help him the rest of his life. And so it was.


    The longsword had taken him years to learn to use, it had taken him the better part of half a decade just to get his grip, stance and balance right, but Lykourgos had to admit that the ability to wield a sword almost a meter and a half in length in one hand made him damn good in battle.


    Almost as good as his brother.


    Rhema''s training, though Lykourgos hadn''t been there for the vast majority of it, seemed to have taken the natural ambidexterity his brother possessed and channelled it into combat. He could swing an axe to decapitate with one hand and stab a man through the chest in the same heartbeat.


    "So," his brother started, "I''m finally going to be fighting alongside you?"


    The words were filled with trepidation and hope. Lykourgos smiled down at his little brother.


    "Aye. It''s taken us long enough to get to this point, hasn''t it?"


    His brother nodded, then turned back to the Inner Gate.


    "Come on, your Grace. When we take that gate, the road to the palace will be all but open. The throne is nearly yours."


    He nodded back and turned himself to face the gate as well. He readied himself to sprint at his sister''s levies crowded before the dry stone of the oldest gatehouse in the city.


    "Rhema?"


    "Yeah?"


    He glanced over one last time before charging.


    "Never call me ''your Grace'' again. That''s a command."


    His brother grinned.


    "Now there''s a law I can get behind. Come on! Let''s kill the lickspittles!"


    The two brothers took off running towards the foe, loyal soldiers at their back and terrified faces in front.


    <hr>


    An axe split the head of some peasant in two as a shortsword impaled another. To the right a longsword cut down three men and bisected another in as many strokes.


    "Four!"


    "Already? Fuck!"


    The smaller figure shouldered a squire with as much force as he could muster, knocking him to the floor. The axe rose and fell on the same spot until the chainmail broke, metal rings being sent flying like shrapnel as the young man opened the squire''s stomach with a final blow.


    More men were joining the fray now, friends and foe. Lykourgos watched as a terrified young man, definitely younger than his brother, made to stand against him.


    Before the prince had even shifted his stance a billhook from the right tore through his leg, severing sinews and ripping the muscles in his thigh free. The boy fell to the ground with a scream before a follow up strike lodged the bill in his head.


    The boy fell silent. Whoever slew him the prince would never know; the soldier was already back in the melee.


    Lykourgos turned back to the fight and continued. No point wasting time bemoaning a slain foe.


    There would be time enough for that later.


    He parried the blow of a longseaxe and shattered his assailant''s shield on the riposte. A swift stabbing motion impaled the man, the prince turning to the next foe before the last had even hit the ground.


    "FIVE!"


    "SAME!


    He shouted over the din of battle, his brother doing likewise to make sure he could hear him. Lykourgos grinned at him and continued.


    "I WOULD BE ON SIX BUT ONE OF MY OPPONENTS WAS KILLED BY SOMEONE ELSE!"


    Rhema laughed.


    "SOUNDS LIKE AN EXCUSE! SPEND LESS TIME COMPLAINING AND-"


    There was a grunt and pause in his brother''s speech as he decapitated a woman armed with a shortspear.


    "-GET TO WORK! SEE! NOW I''M ON SIX! GET BACK TO IT!"


    Lykourgos shook his head and turned back to the melee. He wasn''t about to let his little brother beat him.


    "Come on then," he levelled his longsword at a small cluster of sellswords from the Band of the Wren before continuing with an almost excited, "who''s next?"


    Boar''s Tooth. Parry. Riposte. Strike. Strike. Stab. Kill. Step Back. Ox Guard. Parry. Parry. Riposte. Kill.


    He ran through his movements in his head as his body performed them almost automatically. A man ran at him with a greatseaxe raised above his head, screaming a high-pitched war cry. Lykourgos turned the blade aside then half-sworded his weapon to bring the steel pommel down upon the back of the man''s head.


    There was an almighty cracking noise, and his newest assailant fell slack to the floor.


    Twelve.


    He''d never taken so many lives in one day before. Not with his own hands, anyway. He was beginning to tire.


    There was a dull pain across his chest as a longaxe slammed into his cuirass. Thank the Angels for good plate armour. Winded but not injured he focused himself on his guard so as to deflect any follow up strike, but whoever had attacked him was lost in the melee.


    He took a breath to steady himself, and prepared to plunge himself back into the madness. There was no room for sympathies here.


    They were between him and his throne. Between his army and the palace. Between the realm and peace.


    And that was something he would not let go unpunished.


    <hr>


    When all was said and done at the Inner Gate he had slain fourteen of the enemy and taken six wounds. The injuries were superficial, being little more than deep bruising or shallow cuts, but he was exhausted nonetheless. The men around him were taking away those who had thrown down their weapons, and a handful of Longbowmen-at-Arms now stood sentry on the gatehouse and its surrounding walls.


    All things considered it had gone very smoothly so far, at least in the northern district. He was unaware of any happenings in the eastern portions of the city, but seeing as no urgent missive had been sent to him he felt little worry for those engaged in the street fighting there.


    Romanos and Dreamwulf had fought back-to-back with one another down Bastard''s Run, slaying scores of foes and taking a few slightly more serious bangs and cuts. He shook his head whilst smiling. Dreamwulf may not have joined the armsmen on paper, but nowadays he was almost becoming a de-facto figure of authority for the professional soldiers of the army, so great was their respect for him.


    As for Ser Romanos, well, his fame spoke for itself. Truth be told Lykourgos wasn''t sure if there was a single knight in the world better skilled in personal combat than his friend. Maybe Ser Ezekiel or Ser Thera in Aegos could best him, but that was a hefty maybe.


    Besides, they were almost the full length of the continent away.


    He shook his head to get his thoughts back in order.


    Maybe with the most respected armsman and knight in the kingdom fighting alongside one another the burgeoning rivalry developing between the different groups would quiet down somewhat, or at least become friendly in nature rather than truly competitive.


    There was little time to dwell on that now. There would be precious little time to regroup and continue into the heart of the city, and Lykourgos did not intend to waste it on bandying words or with idle thoughts. Not right now. He simply motioned for Romanos and Dreamwulf to fall in at his side, Rhema following likewise. A tall, muscular woman that Lykourgos recognised as Marshal Crowe nodded deferentially to him, and moved to stand by his side.


    He just nodded back and gave the order to move into the rest of the city. The Eastern and Western districts would fall under their wrath, then they would be free to move southwards, into the hills where the dispossessed nobility had carved out their new homes.


    Looting and sacking would be a threat, especially in the Southern district where all the wealth of dozens of former lords lay.


    He would not abide a sack, not even against those nobles who deserved to have everything stripped from them.


    Well, that last part was mostly so he could use their wealth to bolster the royal coffers. The rebuilding and renovations he would see to in this city once he was truly king would be expensive, after all.


    All that would remain after that was the palace itself. His home.


    They would isolate it and then decide how best to move forwards. If his sister was smart, or rather if those advising her were smart, then she would already be moving her fighting men and women back towards the Old Keep, perhaps covered by a cavalry charge or two down some of the wider avenues that gently sloped downwards from the outer walls of the palace.


    He smiled at the eclectic gathering at his sides. A collection of some of the best fighters and soldiers in the realm at his left and right, protecting him just as they trusted him to protect them. It was a nice thought. He''d have to speak with Marshal Crowe afterwards and introduce himself properly, but he suspected she was more interested in seeing the battle through to its end and ensuring his brother''s safety. By itself, that marked her as having a brain between her ears, which made her better than half of their shared opponents immediately.


    Here was a group with which he would take his throne. Here were a fraction of those that made all of this possible.


    For them, He thought to himself, for justice, for the realm, and for them.

 Lykourgos XIII: The Dream Held, Dauntless

    <u>Lykourgos XIII: The Dream Held, Dauntless</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Eighth day of the Eleventh moon, 872 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Thrice they had been harried by enemy parties on their way to the palace, and thrice had they beaten back their woefully outnumbered and outmatched opponents. Of his sister''s forces there was almost nothing left; her knights were scattered or slain, what few armsmen were left had seen the writing on the walls and thrown down their weapons, and the levies... well, they''d broken and fled back to the walls of the palace, only to find the gates closed to them.


    They''d surrendered quite quickly after that.


    The only missing link was the Band of the Wren; he''d heard reports that a huge portion of the entire sellsword company had been wiped out in the fighting that had engulfed the eastern district, with what was left withdrawing to the docks in the west. He wouldn''t be surprised if there was an increase in piracy along the Teleytaian coastline soon enough, after all, to homeless sellswords with nowhere left to turn the prospect of ''commandeering'' a few of the merchant vessels still in the docks and turning their skills towards raiding likely didn''t sound too bad.


    Either way, it was likely that the Company of the Wren was finished. Symon would be pleased at that; they''d been one of the main business rivals of the Starlings for quite some time, and with them gone he was left as the commander of the only major outfit in Teleytaios. As for Lykourgos, he was admittedly quite disappointed. He had hoped to strike a deal similar to that he had made with the Starlings with the Wrens, bolstering his forces after the war, but it seemed that it was not to be.


    No matter. It was inconsequential, all told. His sister had a scant one or two-hundred guards left in the palace, and that was it. Dreamwulf and Lieutenant Marren were in the south of the city, preventing a sack of the noble manses, and Lieutenant Isen was leading men into the western district to mop up what was left and take stock of the damages wrought by his sister''s overly-zealous piety.


    Though it seemed she had not even the loyalty of her guards. There had been no glorious final act to this war. No great storming of the breach, no battering down the gates, none of that. The guards had known which way the winds were blowing, and in return for not being killed by the host that vastly outnumbered them had elected instead to herd up the remaining nobility in the palace into the throneroom, confine his sister to her chambers, and then simply open the gates. It had been Lieutenant Daniil who opened the gates to him after ensuring the safety of his men, not wanting them to take on the shame of such an act. Lykourgos had raised an eyebrow at that. He had not seen Daniil in at least two years, but protecting the honour of his men didn''t exactly fit what he remembered. He stayed on his guard as he passed through the gatehouse leading to the palace complex, loyal knights and armsmen flanking him on either side, but there was no trap designed to ensnare or kill him. He looked back at the Lieutenant in his red livery, and motioned him to his side.


    "Your Grace."


    "Do not think I don''t realise you have served every party in this war now, Lieutenant. I have good reason to order your execution."


    Contrary to his expectations, the man just nodded.


    "You do, your Grace. Will the men be looked after?"


    "They will."


    Daniil nodded and took a deep breath, steeling himself for a moment. He exhaled, and knelt before the prince.


    "I am ready, your Grace. I trust you to keep your word."


    The men to either side of Lykourgos shuffled uncomfortably as Lykourgos stepped forwards. It was not a sword he laid on the Lieutenant''s head, but an armoured hand.


    "I pardon you."


    The Lieutenant looked up in shock.


    "Your Grace, I-"


    "You were willing to die for your men. You were willing to dishonour yourself and die in shame if it meant they were to survive. That marks you as being better than I remember, at least. Probably half of your thousand are still alive and amongst my own ranks. You will lead them again, taking these guards to bolster them. Needless to say, I expect total loyalty for my leniency here, no matter how much you may have earned it."


    The man looked up at him, tears of relief just pricking at the corners of his eyes, and nodded.


    "Whatever you ask of me, of my thousand, it will be done, your Grace."


    He nodded stiffly at the man, attempting to appear impassive rather than pleased.


    "Good. You can start by ensuring the Royal Barracks are prepared to receive some new guests for a night or two. Dismissed."


    With that the relieved but admittedly bewildered man rose and walked off to see to his new task. Lykourgos had to stop himself from chuckling at the confused expression on the man''s face. The Lieutenant had clearly expected to die just moments ago, and yet by what must have seemed a mere whim on the behalf of the prince had seen him spared and granted a pardon.


    Lykourgos settled on just smiling to himself as he walked into the palace proper. The war was over. He had won; there was no need for unnecessary bloodshed. Some people would have to die, but men like Daniil could be quite useful, if properly guided. No matter how much he may limit it however, some death remained in the immediate future no matter which way he looked at it; he had taken his home, now all that was left was to burn out the rot.


    <hr>


    He walked briskly through the winding corridors of the Old Keep in the palace that made up the long route he had taken to make his way to the throneroom. The palace had been the site of royal families and the centre of whatever kingdom held it since time immemorial, and it certainly showed in how large and sprawling it had become. The age of the palace could also be seen in its architecture, which was almost a patchwork of styles. Ancient Skraeling stonework gave way to Tildan brickwork and Dathanian marble, which in turn was supplanted by carved stone and granite tiles. The whole thing was only made more confusing by the centuries of renovations, rejuvenation and rebuilding that had occurred under various rulers depending on their favoured styles, and indeed what was seen as most prestigious whenever they let their pet architects run wild.


    All in all it was a maze, but despite having been raised in Aenirhen and refusing to set foot within the city for two years after the rebellion, he found he could still navigate the winding passageways as though he had never left.


    He was shaken from his thoughts when he heard a voice calling to him.


    "Your Grace! Your Grace!"


    A small figure barrelled down the corridor towards him, message in hand and panic on his face.


    "It''s from Haestinghen, your Grace! The Seer, he''s been taken! Two armsmen were slain outside and Ser Aethel was found dead in the corridor leading to the room they were being kept in."


    Lykourgos felt panic rise within, but he quelled it at once. He could not afford himself the luxury of impulse here.


    "Understood. The man we uncovered at the Horndaal?"


    Ilias swallowed.


    "Untouched. The remaining guards, whilst safe with their charge in the keep at Haestinghen, know they can''t stay there much longer. They report people in the town beginning to fearmonger about the unconscious man, and the Gentleman of the town is unable to control what seems to be his own mob any longer."


    He nodded.


    "Order them to make for the capital at once. It is safe here now, and we can keep a better eye on him if he remains close anyhow. Do we know the culprit behind this act?"


    Ilias looked away slightly, mumbling.


    "Would you mind speaking up?"


    The boy nodded.


    "We don''t know, but I have an idea. I don''t like it though."


    "What is it?"


    His cupbearer sucked in a hurried breath before blurting out his answer.


    "Ser Aenethar went missing that same day, and his body hasn''t been found. I think he abducted the Seer for the Cult of the Choir."


    Lykourgos rushed forwards and crouched down to Ilias'' height, shushing him.


    "Shh, most people here still think they''re a faetale. Tell me, quietly, why you think they''re involved, and why you think Aenethar is one of theirs?"


    Ilias swallowed again.


    "Well, Master Elikoidi said the Choir probably wanted to get their hands on you thanks to your fascinations with the esoteric, and Aenethar was in the room when Seventh roused the unconscious man from his slumber. He must have known then that Seventh was some form of mystic or magic user."


    Lykourgos nodded. It made sense so far.


    "And how do you reach the conclusion that Aenethar is a member of, or otherwise affiliated with, this cult? After all, your theory rests on that single fact."


    Ilias nodded.


    "That night outside Ousdaal, when you nearly... when people tried to kill you, did you get a weird feeling when you saw their eyes? Some felt like they were only half-conscious the whole time, and the others..."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "I did, yes. Symon commented on their eyes too, so I recall."


    Ilias looked into Lykourgos'' own eyes, with a determined glint.


    "And did you not get that same feeling from Ser Aenethar?"


    Lykourgos was silent a few seconds before standing abruptly.


    "ROMANOS! CROWE! GET HERE, NOW!"


    Ilias flinched at the volume of his voice, and soon enough the two armoured figures were racing down the hall in full armour.


    "Your Grace! What''s happened, are you alright?"


    Crowe had her hand on the pommel of her longsword, scanning the hallway as Romanos reached the two of them.


    "Ilias has shared with me some dire news, Sers. Crowe, Ser Aenethar has gone rogue and kidnapped Seventh. Romanos, this false knight is working for the Choir."


    In less than a heartbeat both Romanos and Crowe were a flurry of action.


    "I will inform his Highness of this immediately! He needs to know this!"


    Lykourgos nodded as she left and Romanos spoke.


    "I''ll alert the men. Do we know where they''re headed?"


    The prince shook his head, but then Ilias spoke.


    "According to the Gentleman of the town a large figure in armour was seen with a second person leaving the town by the Woodsroad west."


    Romanos rubbed his chin with an armoured hand.


    "There''s a few small towns and large villages along that road, but the only place of any real import that it runs would be here, to the capital. But then news like this takes time to travel. If we''ve only just received this message now..."


    Lykourgos found the beginnings of a smile begin to cross his face as a realisation dawned on him.


    "Then they''re likely already in the city. Perfect! Grandmaster, this task needs to be undertaken with great speed, care, and stealth. Pick out some of your most trusted and loyal knights who will follow you no matter what. Take great care with this, as you will not be able to explain what the mission is lest any of them are tied to this cult as Ser Aenethar was. I will attempt to find where in the city, if they are indeed in the city, the Seer is being held. Good luck, Ser."


    Romanos dipped into a bow.


    "Your will be done, your Grace."


    <hr>


    He met with his brother outside the doors that lead to the throneroom. Rhema''s face was contorted into a furious glare, and yet Lykourgos could tell that a considerable part of him was deeply concerned for his missing friend.


    "They were well protected, of that I assure you. Circumstances conspired against the guards, I think."


    Rhema looked up at him.


    "So what, it was luck that they were taken? Come on, I expected you to be better than to use that excuse with me."


    Lykourgos shrugged.


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation."It''s the truth. We left them with twenty men as a guard, and Ser Aenethar stayed with them. He waited until the situation was favourable for himself before he struck."


    His brother cursed under his breath before speaking.


    "So then it wasn''t luck. It was Aenethar, that seven-times-damned treasonous fucking turncoat, who I left my best friend with. It was my fault."


    Rhema punched a vase on a pedestal so hard it shattered into a dozen pieces. Lykourgos watched a brief moment, feeling sympathy for his brother''s plight, and laid a hand on his shoulder.


    "I know you want to leave right away to find them, and soon enough you will, but I need you here with me a moment longer. Please Rhema. Beyond those doors lie the throne, along with the majority of the men and women who would once have seen this land reduced to ruin for their own ambitions. If anyone knows where your friend is, it''s bound to be one of them. They''ll talk if we let them, but I need you by my side."


    He stepped away from his brother and moved towards the doors, hesitating a moment. Turning back to Rhema he extended his hand.


    "I need you, brother. Are you with me?"


    The gentle sincerity in his voice seemed to have shaken Rhema somewhat, and he moved to clasp the proffered hand.


    "Always, brother. Always."


    They nodded at each other once, then moved into the throneroom.


    Before them was a congregation of all Lykourgos hated in rulership. Nobles. Nobles. Self-aggrandising, pampered and disconnected from the world outside their own walls.


    Angels, he hated nobles.


    There were around four-score of the highborns in the throneroom before him, anxiety exuding from each of them like a miasma thanks to the grim-faced Men-at-Arms lining the sides of the vast chamber.


    Before Lykourgos could even speak his brother belted out his titles in a rather aggressive and... well, he supposed it could be called a ''unique'' manner.


    "Kneel before Lykourgos, the rightful King of Teleytaios! Kneel to the man who shattered your armies four years ago, and once again these last few months. Kneel to the man responsible for you losing your lands and castles."


    His brother sucked in a breath, his voice going to a more normal volume, but it was heard by no fewer people in the room for it.


    "Kneel to my brother. Kneel to the King. Or I''ll take your heads myself."


    There was a dangerous edge to his tone, especially for those last few words. It was a voice that promised murder to those who stepped out of line, to those who had run out of luck and cards to play.


    It was a tone that addressed those who had turned an excitable young boy into an unstable, half-mad princeling.


    Lykourgos'' mind darkened at that reminder. This was why he was fighting. One of the reasons, anyhow. So that these people couldn''t shatter the kingdom as they had once tried to, so they couldn''t hurt his brother anymore, and so they couldn''t hurt those beneath them as they once had. He cleared his throat.


    "I have reason to believe that one or more of you has been involved in a conspiracy to abduct the young Seer you have no doubt all come to know in your years at court. If any of you know their whereabouts at this time, I strongly advise you step forwards and make yourselves known."


    There was a deafening silence in the hall for ten seconds, but no-one stepped forwards. He nodded at one of the Men-at-Arms standing guard.


    "Take them to the Royal Barracks. There they will remain under armed guard until I decide what to do with them. Don''t worry yourself about their comfort."


    He turned his gaze back to the crowd. Some looked scared. Some defiant. Most were just anxious. He continued.


    "I don''t think they''ll be there long enough to worry about such things."


    The Man-at-Arms nodded back, and the others moved forwards. Lykourgos waved some more of his loyal men into the room, and directed them to assist with the arrest of the remaining nobility of Teleytaios.


    One man, who looked to have enjoyed a great many more meals than the average man, turned his head as best he could and shouted to the prince.


    "I know! Your Grace, I know!"


    Lykourgos held up a hand, and the men dragging the large nobleman unceremoniously dumped him at the feet of the two princes. Rhema ground his teeth next to him, practically vibrating with a need to find his friend, glaring daggers at the man. The nobleman''s jowls wobbled as he trembled, making him look less like a dignified nobleman and more like an overly-fed cockerel.


    Lykourgos added his own glare to his brother''s, and the man looked down at the floor.


    "You know? Know what, exactly."


    "I know! I know where the pagan is!"


    The man practically threw himself on the floor before the brothers, looking moments from pissing himself as Lykourgos stared down at him.


    "Then tell us. Now."


    The man swallowed, his chins wobbling as he did so.


    "I would need assurances of my own safety. I don''t want to die here, your Grace. Pardon me of my crimes, set me free, I beg of you, and I will tell you."


    Lykourgos turned to his brother, who looked torn between beating the man to death for his involvement in Seventh''s kidnapping and pardoning him on the spot to save his close friend. Lykourgos turned back to the man, steel in his voice and a glare in his eyes.


    "So you admit to your crimes? You even refer to them as such."


    He ground his teeth a moment before he spoke again.


    "Over the next few days a great many of your peers will find themselves shortened by a head, or else hanged as common criminals. I have yet to decide which of the two it shall be. If you do not wish to join them, I highly suggest you tell us where they are being kept. At the very least, I will promise you your life should you cooperate."


    Rhema stepped forwards, closing the gap between himself and the terrified nobleman.


    "Even if you will not tell my brother, you will tell me, one way or another. I do not care what I have to do to you to get a location out of you, so I highly suggest you listen to my brother when he says he will spare you. Because if you don''t, I can promise that I will not be so merciful."


    There was silence for a moment, and both brothers wrinkled their noses. Rhema turned and spoke.


    "Angels above man, have some dignity. Someone wash down the floor!"


    The prince watched, mildly amused, as his brother turned back to the man one last time before continuing.


    "And bring me my axe! He doesn''t seem to be talking fast enough for my liking!"


    The man panicked, almost shouting the words to save his skin.


    "Seaview Hill Manse! Seaview Hill Manse! The under-basement!"


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow. An under-basement wasn''t exactly uncommon, but he had no knowledge of such a floor existing under any of the manses. He made to speak, re-entering the conversation.


    "And how will we be able to find this under-basement?"


    The man gabbled a moment before Lykourgos very pointedly settled his hand on the hilt of his blade. That made him remember quite quickly.


    "There''s a wall of wine casks! Th- no, four from the left, bottom layer! It should read as a cask of Khipridonian 826! That''s all I know, I swear!"


    Lykourgos turned to Rhema and nodded once, before returning his impassive stare to the quivering nobleman beneath him.


    "Very well then. Thank you for your cooperation. In recognition of your willingness to uphold your end of the bargain, I will now uphold mine."


    Rhema turned to him, mildly angry. Lykourgos knew Rhema would rather see the man killed no matter what agreement he had made.


    But Lykourgos could not do that. His honour would not abide it. He could do this however...


    "You are to be stripped of all wealth, lands and properties, and exiled from the Kingdom of Teleytaios. You will find passage out of the country by the time the sun sets. If you are ever seen in Teleytaios past that date, you will be hanged as a traitor to the crown."


    The man blanched, the colour draining from his face.


    "But you promised!"


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "I promised you your life. That was our deal. Believe me, if you hadn''t told us of this, you would likely have been executed by the morning. Might I suggest Anatolikoi for your new home? Someone mad enough to form a covenant with the Choir would fit right in at the court of the Mad Count of Mytenaeopolis. Either way, I wish you good fortune in getting to that wretched island and a quick death once you arrive."


    He moved to walk past the man, through the throneroom up to the throne that he would sit once coronated. He turned back to the pale-faced man, who was still coming to terms with his exile, staring back at him with as gaunt an expression as his clearly well-fed face would allow. The prince gave him a self-satisfied smile as the man was picked up by the guards and taken out of the room.


    "Good day."


    <hr>


    The nobles had been led to the barracks to await their trail, so he had been told, and what was left of his sister''s forces had been disarmed or otherwise destroyed. The western district had welcomed his forces with open arms and handed over several more nobles who had tried to bribe their way to safety.


    Turns out sailors and dockhands were a lot less likely to make deals with you and help you escape no matter your wealth when you''d spent the last few moons burning their beloved family members and community leaders for their faith. Go figure.


    As for the south, he had been assured it was intact. Symon was as good as his word on the matter, ensuring that his men did not give themselves over to the madness of battle and spark a sack, though the prince was certain that a fair few valuable items would be ''missing'' upon closer inspection. He shrugged to himself. It wasn''t like the men hadn''t earned it.


    "So, what now?"


    Rhema''s voice shook him out of his stillness. He looked up at the throne again from the back of the hall. This was all he had ever wanted, all he had earned, and yet looking up at it now...


    He was scared. Scared he would lead his people to ruin, scared he would not be able to protect them, scared that he would become a tyrant no different than the one his sister would have been.


    He swallowed hard, and closed his eyes to clear his mind. He needed to think clearly if he wanted to-


    "Your Grace!"


    He opened his eyes in irritation, as-


    "GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME! I AM THE RIGHTFUL QUEEN OF THIS LAND! UNHAND ME!"


    Rhema shook his head and looked away as the one person he had hoped not to see, they had both hoped not to see, came into view, being none-too-carefully handled by a pair of frustrated armsmen. He raised his voice.


    "What is the meaning of this! She was to be confined to her chambers under my orders, under your Lieutenant''s orders!"


    The two soldiers looked at each other uneasily, and one of them tilted their head at him whilst looking at his comrade in a "You tell him" motion.


    "Your Grace, she-"


    "Peasant! He is not ''your Grace'', I am! He''s a bastard, a half-born raised in-"


    He shouted down at her, his voice as stern as a sergeant and glacier cold as his choler overtook him.


    "SILENCE! DO NOT THINK TO DEMEAN ME, YOU VILE HARPY!"


    She flinched, as did Rhema, at his volume and tone. He rubbed his temples with his hand, and motioned for the soldier to continue through his sister''s stunned silence.


    "We were standing guard, so it please your Grace, when we ''eard the scraping of stone inside. We looked in and she was trying to open some sort of passage or tunnel through a stone door, so we stopped her and brought her to you."


    He nodded, then turned his gaze back down at her.


    "I wanted to put this off. I knew what I''d have to do to you as soon as the assassins came after me, but I still found myself hesitant when I was looking upon the walls of the palace."


    Rhema snapped to look at him at the mention of assassins, shock and fury creeping its way upon his features. Ah, he did not know. Lykourgos continued.


    "I did not want to do this. I still don''t. But you''ve committed too many crimes to be set free, far too many, and you''re far too dangerous to be allowed to live."


    "So then you will kill me."


    He shook his head slowly.


    "I will not. You have already stuck the name ''Apostate'' to our family thanks to your madness on the docks. I will not see kinslayer added to that title. Marshal Crowe will swing the sword."


    He looked down at his sister, desperately trying to stifle any feelings of pity or remorse as he passed the sentence upon his wayward family member.


    "I wish I did not have to do this, but at the very least your death will be dignified. Most of your supporters amongst the nobility will be hanged as common criminals in a day or two, but at the very least you will be granted a death befitting a noble, a royal, of such status. I sentence you to death by beheading, to be carried out immediately. For what little it is worth, I am sorry."


    There was silence for a moment, broken by an almost maniacal laugh that sounded more like it should have come from their brother as she finally looked up at the two of them.


    "To call you ''Family'' implies I ever loved you to begin with. It implies that I cared for your weakness, or your madness. ''Apostate'' implies I believe the words of your false heresies. I am no apostate. I follow the true light, the light of the Alithini Agiathos, and as such your pagan and heretical beliefs will find no purchase on my soul. I despise you. Both of you. You, bastard, who have condemned my family to ruin, and you, brother, who were so weak and blinded by false love that you helped him. If you think your honeyed words or the witchcraft of your little pagan toy will addle my mind enough that I will place myself beyond saving, then you''re dead wrong. I do not need saving. I never have. You are beyond saving, both of you. When you kill me I know what will be waiting for me; my father and mother, with all the love they bore me in life, will welcome me into the heavens with open arms, and I will await those loyal to me who will serve me for all eternity. When my loyal friends kill you there will be nothing waiting for you but the cold dark. You will wander for an eternity, and you will curl into a ball and wait on the cold ground, wondering why your ''Angels'' chose this for you, even though you know now that you chose this yourselves.


    Kill me. You will cut my head from my shoulders, burn my body, destroy everything I ever had, but it won''t matter. Every time you stand in this room, every time you sit the throne or host a feast from the dais, you will see the stains of my blood on the floor and walls of this grand hall, and no matter how hard you clean it, no matter how thoroughly or how often you order it scrubbed clean, you will always see the stains of my blood. You will never forget how you ordered your own sister cut down here.


    You know I''m right, I can see it in your eyes. You''re afraid, bastard. That''s why you want me dead. You''re scared of me too, aren''t you little brother? Good. Though I shouldn''t take too much pride in that. You''re scared of everything. Maybe you won''t find yourself seeing me in everything you do, bastard. But I know you will, won''t you little brother? One last little piece of straw to shatter what''s left of your sanity, to leave you a thoroughly broken, rambling mess."


    She paused a brief moment, then smiled at them.


    "I hope you never experience joy again. I hope you wish you were dead. I do not pray for your demise; on the contrary I pray for the opposite.


    I pray you both live very, very long lives.


    And I hope you hate every second of it."


    Rhema was silent, and Lykourgos was almost shaking in rage at her words, at what she had the gall to accuse them of. He turned to Rhema.


    "Brother, you have a friend to save. Ser Romanos has likely already assembled a force by now, find him, tell him the location and then save your friend."


    Rhema turned to look at him as Crowe unsheathed her longsword.


    "Are you sure?"


    Lykourgos looked at him a short moment, shaking his head as he turned back to their sister.


    "I think you had better leave, Rhema. I would be happier if you did not have to watch."


    His little brother opened and closed his mouth a few times, questions and responses seemingly dying on his lips. After half a minute he eventually nodded, and spoke in a quiet, almost delicate voice.


    "Okay."


    And then he took off back through the palace halls.


    Lykourgos waited a brief moment, making sure his beloved brother would not be forced to bear witness, then nodded at Crowe. The two armsmen moved her to kneel over a wooden block they had found from somewhere whilst the prince had been occupied, and Crowe gave him one last look, a message written as clearly across her face as it would have been if she''d spoke it out loud. ''Are you sure?'', her face seemed to say.


    He did not know. In the half-second of thought he allowed himself, he could not shake the feeling that he would never know. But it was too late now.


    He nodded once, stiffly, and the blade was raised. Even if he''d changed his mind in this very moment, it would have been too late to stop.


    No. It would be better to stick with his decision and accept whatever came from it.


    The blade struck true, and in a single moment his brother was all that he had left of his family.

 Lore Chapter: The Kingdom of the Kikhepis

    <u>Twelfth Day, First Month, 871 AD.</u>


    <u>Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.</u>


    <u>Kingdom of Teleytaios.</u>


    <u>Aenirhen.</u>


    <u>The River Keep.</u>


    Dear Lyk,


    I apologise for the lateness of my response to your letter, for I realise by the time this reaches you it must have been months since you wrote to me, but then I am currently over six-thousand miles south of where you keep sending your letters. When I make my way back through to Polaeros I will attempt to make a stop through Aenirhen, but I feel that with your reports of increasing unrest and preparations for a civil war there may not be much time for us to catch up.


    And let us not kid ourselves here; it is a civil war you are preparing for. The formulae that you wrote to me of three months ago that you learned from Marren, who I understand now bears the rank Lieutenant in your forces, made my skin crawl.


    Yes, the mathematics are correct. The substance he purports to be able to create, as I''m sure you''ve seen at this point, should work very well indeed.


    That does not mean I like it, nor do I agree with it.


    To kill men in war is one thing Lyk, but to burn them alive?


    That is something else entirely.


    Still, I know you would not pursue such things unless you believed, whether consciously or not, that there was a war coming to your homeland. Said war must be civil in nature, since I have heard of no forces being amassed in Nordicos or Owkrestos, and when I was travelling south the Malikah of the Al-Alema spoke of nothing but peace. There are the raiders that your brother must deal with, of course, and I do not expect those groups to lay down their arms anytime soon, but there were no armies gathering there either.


    But that is enough on that topic for now. Lyk, I have sailed down the Kikhepis river and lived amongst the nomads that remain in this dead land for about two or three months now, and I must say their outlook on life and death is fascinating! I know our records of the original nomads down here are almost non-existent, with only fragments of records and artwork detailing the battles that the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum fought against them remaining, but these nomads that remain provide hints at that ancient group. They have heavily blended with the old Nekhtoudum, likely from the collapse of the kingdom when the survivors sought shelter and livelihoods with the relatively unaffected nomads, but hints of a different culture remain.


    Unfortunately there is not enough for one such as myself to piece together what remains, and the nomads have no written language to keep records in, and so all I know are the oral histories of this group and what is carved in stone on the silent cities of this land.


    And what a land! I have touched pyramids and walked in mastabas! I have rode upon camelback to the site of the long-gone city of vultures, Nrtkha, and worn the bronze helms of the old champions of this land, styled in the likeness of their jackal god. It has truly been a trip of wonder and learning, more so than perhaps any other I have embarked upon. I can only hope my trip to the old cities of the Sotenari Empire will bear just as much fruit!


    I must say I was elated to see those symbols you sent! I apologise that they will not make mention in the main body of this report I am sending back to you, but at the time of writing this letter I have only just received them. I have a theory relating to these symbols, more specifically how we can work out what they mean, but I will include that at the end of this letter. What I feel I must tell you beforehand is that these symbols you have sent match up with some I have seen here!


    Again, I will include more information on this below.


    I did stop briefly in Sothettar, the last city of the Sotenari people, in order to resupply and rest before our great journey south, but I must confess I am sorely looking forwards to heading back north and exploring the city properly once my trip across the great Nekhtou desert is finished.


    Enough talk from me; encased below is the information I have learned of the ancient Kingdom of the Kikhepis compiled into a kind of first draft for the book I am writing.


    The Kingdom of the Kikhepis:


    "Once, long before even the old kingdoms of Klironomea and Terranea, there were two great nations to the south. Both were rich beyond imagining, ancient beyond measure, and cruel beyond reckoning."


    The above is an excerpt from Chronicler Thesis'' work, On the Subject of the Southern Continent. Whilst perhaps an exaggeration, it can be hard to truly wrap one''s head around both the wealth of these two nations and the depths they were willing to sink to both internally and in their actions towards outsiders in order to gain the advantage against their foes, usually when facing each other for dominance of the trade routes and client kingdoms that formed a buffer area between the two nations.


    One of these nations, by most accounts the eldest civilisation in the known world, was the Kingdom of the Kikhepis. Whilst the splendour of the Sotenari Empire may have captured the imaginations of a dozen generations of nobility in Kliskorios in its heyday, I fervently believe that the civilisation that flourished to its south is far more interesting, despite the fact that almost all records of the civilisation were lost in the Age of Silence, with most of what little remained being held in the Sotenari Empire and as such likely is lost to us forever, having been destroyed in the Year of Desolation centuries later.


    Here below is a translation of the hieroglyphs lining what remains of the western gate of Tjenkha, the ancient capital of this long-gone kingdom.


    "I implore the Gods to look upon our creations and weep, for we have built eternity! Time shall kneel, and men shall turn unto dust, and still, for as long as the mighty Kikhepis flows towards the sea, the Nekhtoudum shall stand as the chosen heirs of all creation!


    So read the words of Djaf the Undying, the legendary first King of Kings of the Nekhtoudum."


    Far to the south of even the Apolean Jungle lies a vast and seemingly endless desert, broken only by small oases and the occasional river. This is the great Nekhtou desert, the lands of the Nekhtoudum, the desert dwellers, or at least they once were. Once, this great and mighty civilisation was united into a single Kingdom, but they found their strength utterly expended during the wars of the Age of Silence. Slowly this proud and ancient people have faded, their vast cities that once shone as beacons of civilisation in the desert lying empty and still. Great sandstone walls inscribed with hieroglyphs stand proud and tall, even though great statues depicting animal-headed soldiers and demigods are all that remain to stand watch over the desert expanse outside these walls. Great and mighty pyramids and monuments remain defiant against the passage of time, whilst entire cities of ports, houses, workshops, markets, courts, temples and barracks lie completely and utterly abandoned, save for the dead in their mastabas.


    These people once worshipped a myriad of gods, but during the Age of Silence, where strength and surety of the afterlife were needed above all, the priesthood of the jackal-headed God of Death, Warriors, and the Desert, Tskal, grew greatly in power and influence. The Priesthood of Tskal, after the war, sought to eliminate worship of the other gods, and appear to have been largely successful in this matter. As a result, the God Tskal is the only member of their pantheon of which the modern world knows anything about.


    Once the lands along the mighty river at the heart of this nation would have been lined with great plantations as far as the eye could see, growing a huge variety of goods. Of course the essential crops for this civilisation were grown en masse; wheat, flax, and papyrus reeds formed much of the backbone of Nekhtoudum agriculture due to the need for food, clothing, and primitive parchment in that order, but it was the variety of fruits that once grew down here that truly made this land a tapestry of colour and flavour unlike anything the northern continent would see until the mass cultivation of peaches and citrus fruits in Licotemos in the fifth century AD. Native date palms, fig trees and cactus-pears were grown in truly vast quantities along the banks of the river Kikhepis and its tributaries on great estates numbering hundreds, in some cases even a thousand acres.


    Whilst these native crops were being grown some enterprising nobles grew mighty plantations of more exotic fruits, such as mangos imported from the Apolean jungle to the north, pomegranates from the lands of Terranea, or plums from even further afield in Klironomea.


    This was supplemented primarily by the meat, milk and cheese of the goat, and by the commoners who were tasked with the upkeep of small plots of land which were used to grow common vegetables known to lower class citizens and lowborn peasants the world over.


    The Nekhtoudum were ruled by a royal who bore the title ''King of Kings''. The King of Kings typically had loose authority in internal matters, with a few known exceptions, but their word was law when dealing with outsiders. The King of Kings ruled from Tjenkha, and the Priest-Kings that ruled in every other city were sworn to him in life and death. Some claim that these ancient pacts involved magics the likes of which were known to no other culture on Anamanesis, so different was it to the sorceries of their Sotenari neighbours to the north. If, and it is a big if, these scholars are correct, then all that would be required for the pact to be fulfilled would be for the King of Kings to reawaken from death, and soon all of his subjects would follow.


    Personally I do not agree with this assessment, after all, the only tales of anything even approaching the raising of the dead came out of the mountain tribes of the eastern continent, but nothing has been heard of from those lands in a millennia.


    Besides, whilst it is claimed that the King of Kings need only reawaken for his kingdom to follow, we have no way of knowing which King of Kings would be needed to reawaken.


    This, of course, assumes that it is even possible to raise the dead. As previously mentioned there are tales from the mountains of the eastern continent, but those stories have gone through over a thousand years of retellings and even when they were still new and novel they would have passed through a hundred mouths across thousands of miles in a dozen languages, so I hesitate to believe them either.


    I must admit however that the wording of the oaths are, if not disturbing, strange. They swore their oaths upon sand and sun, on death and night, upon the sacred river that upheld their lands and upon the people that yet lived within it. Some of the symbols surrounding these tombs and cities are stranger still; they match none of the hieroglyphs in the Nekhtoudum language that we know of, and certainly nothing from any other culture that once existed in the region. They are strangely artistic and almost hypnotic, and of a completely different art style than the old hieroglyphics of the Nekhtoudum.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.The nomads with whom I have travelled revere these strange markings as waystones and landmarks, though they admittedly know little of their origins or meaning.


    Speaking of the nomads, the Nekhtoudum warred with the tribes of marauding nomads on and off for generations, with some royals choosing to attempt to integrate them as merchants and traders whilst others attempted to wipe them out completely.


    It was the Sotenari Empire, however, who proved the greatest adversary of the ancient kingdom. For time immemorial the two nations were locked in extremely frequent yet short wars over the trade routes and client-states that lay between them in the Apolean Jungle, with vast hosts and huge warfleets doing battle across the breadth and width of both the southern continent and the Synsett Ocean to the west.


    As well as human adversaries there are also tales that say their armed forces frequently needed to ward off raids from mysterious grey-skinned men from the darkest depths of the jungle, where few are foolish enough to enter. This seems to be backed up by what little surviving art we have found within the once-great city of Dimedjaykha, loosely transliterated from Nekhtoudum hieroglyphs and translated to mean the ''Northern Guard City'', depicting ranks of Nekhtou warriors opposing much larger club-wielding warriors with tusked mouths and great size.


    The nobles fought atop great wooden chariots with brass linings, whilst their infantry used bronze khopeshes and spears. They made great use of bows and slings, with bronze-tipped arrows and small bronze balls as ammunition. It is thanks to the prowess of the Nekhtoudum chariots, archers and slingers that the infantry of their rival, the Sotenari Empire, reformed to counter these deadly warriors, becoming the greatest infantry in the known world along the way. Indeed, without the constant warring between the Sotenari and Nekhtoudum the former would likely never have become famed for its lockstep legions with long, heavy spears and interlocking shields.


    It is said that their greatest warriors were handpicked to serve the ruling Priest-Kings of each of the great cities of the ancient Kingdom, and that these men each wore a bronze helmet in the shape of an animal. There are many different examples of these helmets that have been found, but towards the end of their people''s existence it seems the champions of the Kikhepis favoured jackal helmets, so as to show that they serve Tskal.


    Whilst the Nekhtoudum greatly predate the concept of knights, and thus knightly Orders, it seems that these champions formed a sort of Holy Order pledged to their gods and God-Kings, fighting to earn their favour.


    According to legend the greatest honour for these champions was to be chosen to be interred in a stone sarcophagus by the side of the far more opulent sarcophagus of their monarch, so that they may rise by their side again when commanded by the oaths mentioned earlier.


    The grand fleets of the Nekhtoudum, both merchant and militant in nature, lay moored in great cities along the coasts of southern Sothena, mostly the western coast of the kingdom where they could better project power northwards and against the marauding pirate fleets that infested the islands in the Synsett sea. Their ships were primarily oar-based, with large quinqueremes backed up by smaller biremes designed for combat in the green waters of the world. Given the size of the river Kikhepis and its tributaries I would not be surprised if the old biremes were capable of combat in the great river as well as the coastal seas.


    That is what was, but it is no longer so. The Kikhepis river, in the long centuries since the Nekhtoudum golden age, has long since given up most of its waters, the desert continuing to claim more and more of the continent whilst life gets harder and harder for those remaining nomads in the dunes. Some theorise that the nomads are actually the hybrid descendants of both the ancient nomads who warred with the Nekhtoudum and those Nekhtoudum who fled persecution when the rest of their pantheon of gods were cast down in favour of Tskal. This, however, is not the place to discuss such theories. Regardless of how much water it has given up, the river Kikhepis is still almost as wide as the mighty river Aenir, and including the lengths of its tributaries it is far, far longer. Indeed, judging by the size of the riverbanks the river Kikhepis was around three times wider than the Aenir at its widest point, though much of this is shallow and may be floodplains, and at several points there are actually sizeable islands on which there seem to have been settlements or palaces. Following these same channels, it seems that there were at least three tributary rivers the size of the river Aenir that flowed into the Kikhepis, perhaps as many as six, along with dozens of smaller rivers, though the majority of these rivers including the Aenir-sized tributaries have long since dried up to nothing more than sand, dust, and a forgotten dream of domination.


    Once there were many more towns and cities in the Kingdom of the Nekhtoudum, also called the Kingdom of the Kikhepis, so named for the mighty river that acted as its beating heart, but most were destroyed in the Age of Silence, and further destruction was wrought in the chaos afterwards, when the Priesthood of Tskal banished all other gods from their pantheon. There is one particular ruin that has been of great interest to scholars, myself included; the largest of the Kingdom''s cities, Tjenkha.


    Whilst the only surviving cities, if abandoned, are those great and mighty few that had the capabilities to rebuild from the chaos of the Age of Silence, Tjenkha is one that stands as an outlier. It seems to have been destroyed in the Age of Silence, and then as chaos engulfed the Nekhtoudum in the following years, according to the tales of the nomads, the survivors of the remaining cities embarked on a journey to their ruined capital, seeing it as the last hope for their people. Restoration of some areas of the city were completed, but even with the vast majority of the remaining Nekhtoudum living within its crumbling walls, they simply did not have the resources to survive. After multiple successive droughts and famines both the city and the last of the desert dwellers, save only the nomads, were claimed by the sands of the vast desert and the still silence of eternal rest.


    Tjenkha, despite being the largest city in the Kingdom of the Kikhepis and its apparent capital, has been greatly degraded even compared to its sister-cities across the desert. There is very little of it left now, but the ruins are all that remains of what was once one of the greatest cities in all the realms of man, smaller than only the capital of the Sotenari Empire, Zamettar itself, and even then it can have only been by a slight margin. Both Anaria and Tilda, the capitals of the Kingdoms of Klironomea and Terranea respectively, could comfortably fit side by side inside Tjenkha even at their height.


    And yet, all that remains now are a few pyramids, the remains of a hundred odd mastabas and houses where now only the dead remain, and the plinths and stumps where once dozens of statues of stone or pure bronze would have stood. There is this, as well as the single stretch of wall that still stands; a solitary gatehouse leading into the city from the west. As with other walls on the more intact ruins, there are hieroglyphics written all along it telling stories and recording the deeds of past heroes and armies, as well as prayers to Tskal. The hieroglyphs that stick out are those that were not carved neatly into the walls as all others were, but seem to have been chiselled in far later in the city''s life. These words, written below the words of Djaf the Undying which I recited near the start of this entry, read as an epitaph for one of the greatest and most ancient people to have ever lived:


    "To whoever who may be reading this, if anyone, know that we were here. Please, remember us. We did our best. We, the few survivors, who were doomed by our own mistakes, did our best. We were aware of the risks when we came here, and the price we would pay should we fail.


    We took our last chance.


    And we failed.


    May Tskal keep us, and may Djaf never look upon the ruins of his children.


    A line of tombs in desert sands; all that remains of once mighty dynasties and great armies.


    Six silent cities and a single message scratched into a wall; all that remains of the Nekhtoudum."


    So read the words of the last of the Nekhtoudum, sons and daughters of Djaf the Undying, and the chosen heirs of all creation.


    Angels, I was so excited to see the ruins down here, and they haven''t disappointed. I apologise if these notes and writings seem more scattered than usual, but there''s so much for me to write and so little paper to hand, so I''ve only written some of the basics alongside the bits that I think you will find most interesting, especially the oaths of the dead in their tombs and the symbols around them.


    In the writing of this piece an idea came to me, Lyk. Some of the areas in Tjenkha, Djafkha and Hrwkha have those symbols that, if I''m right, and I''m fairly certain I am, should match those you have found on your expeditions. Some of these areas, including those markings by what must be the sealed door of the pyramid of Djaf himself, have writing in Nekhtoudum hieroglyphs immediately below them. I think that both the Nekhtoudum and whoever made these symbols swore the same oaths here! If my theory is correct, then we might be able to start working out the language of whoever carved those symbols using the Nekhtoudum oaths as a starting point! Isn''t that exciting! I am glad to have received the images of the symbols you have found at the Tledaal and those caves on the coast you spoke of. I am grateful to be able to have these to work with.


    Forgive the messy handwriting, but I''m adding this on in a rush at a later time to the rest of this letter. They match almost perfectly with those found down here! Lyk, I know we were shocked when you realised that these symbols were found at the Tledaal and at the Aauta pass one-and-a-half thousand miles away, but this is something else! Lyk, the distance between the ones you found in those caves where the Aenir meets the sea and the ones down in Tjenkha... you''d be looking at a distance approaching eight-thousand miles, seven-thousand at least! I will make note of any further sites I encounter these symbols at, and mark their approximate location on a map for you. If there are symbols down here, then surely there must be some in the old ruins of northern Sothena as well?


    I''m not sure how you''ve been able to rope me in to your occult mysteries when I''m this far away and supposed to be cataloguing the cultures of the world, but then you''ve always had a way of remaining in my mind''s eye no matter how far the distance grows between us.


    I look forwards to meeting you again, though I fear it will not be for some time. I will be spending another week with the nomads down here, then it shall take me somewhere around three months to return to Sothettar, where I will likely spend another few weeks before seeking passage to explore the Sotenari cities along the northern coast of Sothena.


    Think about it, Lyk! Next time we meet I''ll have visited the ruins of both of the greatest cities in the known world! It''ll be likely take another two months on top of what I have already mentioned to visit the Sotenari ruins, perhaps four if there is something truly interesting and unexpected is found at one of the cities, or if I am able to find passage to Gorratar for that matter. I know people say it''s an accursed place but think of the lost knowledge such a bastion of learning must hold!


    I was going to say knowledge that men would die for, but then I remembered the number of doomed expeditions to recover the secrets of that city and realised a great many men have died for it.


    Regardless, though it may be quite some time before we are able to see each other again, I know we will not grow apart. I am so excited for the adventures before me, but more excited to see you again and share all I have found, all I have learned. I hope you will act likewise with your occult mysteries and strange symbols!


    Forgive my poor handwriting there, but I could not stifle a chuckle at a thought I had whilst writing that.


    Only you could find something that is more interesting than travelling across the known world by stumbling onto old records and strange symbols without going more than fifty miles from home.


    I will see you again perhaps not soon, but one day.


    Remain ever in my thoughts,


    Prince Alekos Virgilos.

 Seventh III: Of All Things Divine

    <u>Seventh III: Of All Things Divine</u>


    <u>??? ???, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Cold. Dark. Cold. Where were they? It was cold here.


    They tried to move. They were strapped down on what felt like a stone table. An altar, perhaps?


    "You are awake?"


    The voice was familiar, and yet foreign. It was... they didn''t know what it was. Human, definitely, but strange nonetheless. Perhaps it was all the stranger precisely because it was human?


    "I asked a question, your Divinity."


    The title jolted them into full coherency. Divinity? They''d never been referred to as that before. Others amongst their kind had been bestowed that title by men of ages past, that much they knew for certain, but no-one had ever called them divine before.


    There was a flash of green in their mind. Okay, that was technically untrue. No-one had ever referred to them as divine in this context before.


    "Who are you?"


    The words left their mouth without thought. The man seemed pleased by this.


    "I bear no name, your Divinity. I bear no title. The people here see me as a leader, and so that I am."


    Seventh lay in silence a moment, trying to judge the intentions of the man staring back at him, a vacant smile present on their captor''s face. Perhaps if they played nice they could bide their time? Perhaps it would be easier to drive them all mad?


    No, that wouldn''t work, they thought to themselves, his eyes are like Aenethar''s.


    They took a moment to register the fifty or so men and women sat watching on raised semi-circular benches, and suppressed a shudder.


    They''re all like Aenethar.


    Aenethar himself was in the room, though Seventh could not see him.


    Behind me, most likely. Playing the guard, as ever.


    Everyone here was watching them, waiting for them to step out of line. Playing nice it would have to be then.


    "There is no need for these bonds, leader. What is it you wish from me?"


    The man''s vacant smile only grew wider.


    "Oh, little Divine. How long has it been since your kind last walked the world? Does the eldest of your pantheon know what has become of his creation?"


    Seventh shook their head, already confused.


    "I don''t know. How do you know of my kind? I have yet to meet any others amongst my kind upon this world."


    The man''s smile curled somewhat.


    "A lie? Upon the word of your eldest? How very dishonourable of you."


    Lie? But I- How does he- Oh. Oh no. No, no, no. Of course, Aenethar was in the room when I woke Basileous. He knows. My Lord, my King, my God, I am so sorry.


    They did their best to maintain a clear head, the better to pander to the figure before them.


    "Apologies, leader. A lifetime of hiding myself has not prepared me well to share knowledge with others."


    They scrunched up their brow in mock thought.


    "Do you truly bear no name or title for me to refer to you by?"


    The smile returned.


    "I told you already, little Divine. The people here call me leader, and so that is who I am. What do you see me as?"


    A hundred derogatory titles flitted through the young Seer''s head, but none of them seemed particularly viable out loud. They were silent for a moment, trying to find the least offensive answer to give.


    The man still smiled.


    "A turnkey."


    He nodded.


    "Then Turnkey I am."


    "You mentioned one by the title of ''eldest'' earlier. May I ask to whom you refer?"


    The man grinned at him, unnaturally pale teeth catching the light of the brazier behind them.


    "The eldest of your kind still here."


    Seventh opened their mouth again, but was cut off before they could speak.


    "I would strongly advise against lying."


    They nodded, as if to try and assure the man they would attempt no deceit. If they already knew of Basileous then there was no harm in speaking of him, it was only the content of what they revealed that would be dangerous.


    So long as it was not revealed under that name, his true name. That name was old. There was strength in that name.


    But if I do not call him by his name they would know, however it is that they know of my lies, and catch me out. I don''t want to be caught out, not by these... cultists.


    Their brow furrowed again, this time in concentration.


    What do I do... Ah!


    "Hydran. He is Hydran."


    There. It was not a lie; Hydran was one of the many names Basileous had borne throughout his long life, at least to Seventh''s understanding, and seeing as Turnkey was from Klironomea, it was likely to be the one he was most familiar with.


    But given that it was not the name their kinsman had borne at their birth, there was little harm in revealing this. It would be as a thief having an alias discovered; inconvenient, certainly, but far from damning.


    The man smiled down at him, looking pleased and slightly confused. Perhaps he had not expected such openness from them?


    "I see. That is truly a wonderous thing, to have seen an Angel as majestic as him in the flesh. And who amongst our pantheon may you be, Divine?"


    They shook their head. This was good, all things considered. If they could reveal information that was little more than the harmless truth, they could build a rapport without compromising their kinsman.


    "I was not yet born when the seven took on their roles in the pantheon of Klironomea. I apologise, but whilst they may be my kind I have yet to truly walk amongst them. They are... I do not know where the others are."


    The man frowned. Somehow it looked happier than his smile.


    "They are... gone?"


    "I do not know, Turnkey."


    He snarled.


    "They can''t be... GONE!"


    He hurled something across the room, but what it was Seventh couldn''t see. It made a metallic clattering sound as it hit either a wall or the floor.


    "They aren''t lying. It matters not. Hydran is out there. You are in here. With us. We will have to learn from you instead."


    Seventh swallowed as the man gestured off to the side, where he had thrown the object, and there was the sound of hurried feet as some form of menial or servant-type picked the object back up.


    "Okay. I must remain calm. Please, think no less of me for this. It needs to be done. For the good of mankind. To help us save the world from destruction."


    There was a scalpel in his hand. Seventh''s eyes widened in horror, and they struggled against their bonds despite the futility of the action.


    "What do you- save the world? From what? Do you think cutting me open will give you the answers you seek?"


    The man smiled wider still. It was more of a rictus than a true smile, fear and excitement mixed into a truly grotesque expression.


    Turnkey stepped closer to the bound Seer, closing the distance between them and looking them in the eyes.


    "We know not what we save the world from. Only that we do. I do not believe vivisecting you will give us the answers we need, of course not. But it might allow us to find the right questions to ask."


    "You- You''re mad. You''re all mad. What destruction do you need to protect the world from? There is no destruction coming! Nothing has changed here for almost a millennia!"


    Turnkey stroked their hair, and spoke in what was almost a comforting manner.


    "Oh, little Divine. If only you knew how bad things really were."


    <hr>


    My Lord, My King, My God, save me, please. My Lord, My King, My God, My Lord, My King, My God-


    The words repeated as a broken mantra in their head, desperation long since giving way to a crushing sense of isolation and fear. Had their friends forgotten them already? Where was everyone? They would be here soon, surely, soon, please.


    They''d never known pain like this in their life. Their God would have, certainly, but Seventh was not their God. They were just Seventh. They were cold. They were scared.


    They were bound to the table before a hundred empty eyes, watching as their skin was carefully, oh so carefully pinned back on the table with tacks. There was skill to the man''s actions, and it was made sure that there was absolutely no chance they could fall prey to blood loss or shock whilst their insides were studied in a most cruel and vulgar fashion.


    Their insides weren''t supposed to be on display, they weren''t supposed to cry out at every breath of air that passed over them in a most unnatural fashion.


    And yet they did.


    Looking at this rationally, as if they were still capable of such a feat, they knew that they wouldn''t die here, not for a long while yet. The regenerative blood of their angelic ancestry coupled with the precise nature of the incisions dear fucking god My Lord My King My God please save me it hurts so much made sure that they were never at a true risk of dying. Well, so long as they didn''t try to escape again, that much had been made clear.


    They could still feel the wounds from the men-turned-hounds that had caught them last time.


    I can''t close those cuts, why can''t I close them? My Lord, My King, My God...


    The men were only interested in studying them, after all, what use was their capture if they died before anything of value could be learned from them? What was it that made them divine, rather than humanity? Was there some missing part in mankind, was humanity left unfinished? How could humanity reach the heights of godhood as the Angels did? There was so much more for mankind to learn from them, it really wasn''t anything personal.


    The scalpel came down again, this time along their left arm, to expose the muscles and sinew beneath. This time they cried out, their voice a croak more than a shout.


    "My Lord, My King, My God, save me, please!"


    "None of that, child. You know better than us that there are no gods, not anymore."


    They continued to scream and shout and beg until their throat was raw, the effort serving to do nothing more than agitate their already tattered vocal cords.


    "MY LORD, MY KING, MY GOD, SAVE ME PLEASE! MY LORD MY KING MY GOD MYLORDMYKINGMYGODMYLORDMYKINGMYGODSAVEMESAVEMEPLEASEITHURTS"


    "Hm. Disappointing. Note the complete lack of abnormalities within the internal musculature and organ layout of our guest."


    Seventh could barely register the words of the man, so focussed on trying to push past the pain and repair the damage done to really comprehend what was being said. They were exhausted, but still found the strength to knit the worst of the incisions back together when the gaze of the congregation fell elsewhere.


    "As you wish, leader. What are we to do with him now?"


    "Them, not him. Show some respect to our guest."


    "Of course, leader. I apologise. What are we to do with them now?"


    There was a few seconds of silence as Turnkey contemplated the question.


    "Stitch back together whatever they cannot heal, and make sure they continue their own healing process. After that we''ll settle them into their new quarters for now. And wash down the altar. I''ll try to think of a different angle to approach this problem from over the next few days."


    "As you wish, leader."


    They vaguely registered their bonds being removed, but pain and exhaustion rendered them immobile anyway. They were gently carried down a corridor to a dark stone room, and laid down in a corner at the back.


    They closed their eyes, and willed themselves to sleep, if for no other reason than to snatch a few precious hours away from this place.


    <hr>


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    The days grew shorter, not that they could tell physically from within their grey-black cell, but their visions were coming back in full force. They didn''t know if it was because of the expulsion of dream-magic from their system or something to do with the people around them, but in a faint flash of pale-blue light a prophetic message had let slip from their lips.


    When this was relayed to Turnkey, he was most excited. He had spent ten minutes trying to convince Seventh to repeat the words they had spoken, but they had tried to keep their mouth shut. They didn''t care that the information was likely useless, but how could they know that this cult would not see something they did not in the words?


    For ten minutes they had refused to budge, until Turnkey threatened to check if he had missed anything on his "First attempt."


    Seventh was ashamed to admit that they had cracked immediately at the application of that threat.


    "He stretches out his frostbitten hand, to feel the sands of time,


    they run between his fingertips, mocking his design.


    They fall into the darkness, to disappear forever,


    he can''t defeat time''s passing, his fire but an ember."


    There had been silence after that. Turnkey did not speak a word, merely staring at them with a vacant grin.


    "Do you know what this means, your Divinity?"


    They shook their head, words escaping them. The man frowned his paradoxically happy frown.


    "I suspected as much. Do let me know if you have any more, won''t you? I do not with to resort to threats again."


    They nodded quickly. They didn''t care what they told him anymore. It was survival.


    Nothing meant anything until they were out of here.


    They could handle the aftermath when they weren''t being held by this fucking doomsday cult.


    <hr>


    "Ex... excuse me, Ser?"


    Their voice was a dry croak, every word irritating their vocal cords.


    An armoured man moved to the front of the cell, irritation and reverence in their eyes.


    How the fuck can they justify cutting open someone who they believe to be divine?


    They smiled a little internally. If they were still able to make even weak quips like that in their head then they must have some spark left in them.


    The man tapped the bars of the cell, waiting for them to continue.


    "Could you... tell your leader I had another vision, please?"


    The man stepped back, shocked, but remained silent. Seventh winced.


    I need to tell him, for my own safety. I am sorry, my Lord, my King, my God, but you are not here, and I am. There''s probably nothing of value to be gleamed from these prophetic ramblings anyway.


    They blinked themselves back awake at the sound of the cell door opening, and they shuffled back against the wall as if they could get away from the man in front of them.


    As if they hadn''t just invited them into the cell.


    "I am told you had another vision, your Divinity?"


    They nodded choppily again.


    "You told me..."


    The man nodded as Seventh trailed off.


    "Indeed I did. Let us hear it, if you please?"


    Seventh took a shaky breath, and began.


    "The stars begin to fall, black becomes the sky,


    from all the wounds upon the world


    the unborn start to fly.


    The wolves grow strong and fat,


    gorged on the slaughter of men,


    they circle, waiting for their chance


    to leave their darkest of dens."


    Turnkey stroked his chin for a little while, lost in thought.


    "Dark portents. We may not understand your prophecy in its full, young Divine, but surely you can recognise as well as I that falling stars and emboldened wolves are hardly cause for celebration."


    There was silence for a moment before Seventh realised he was waiting for an answer.


    Their throat was dry, their words short.


    "Yes, Turnkey. Darkness coming."


    The man smiled. There was no happiness in the expression.


    "Then I was right. Something is coming. Faithful! Bring our guest some bread and water. They have behaved exceptionally well this day."


    He ruffled Seventh''s hair, and the Seer held back the urge to bite his fucking hand.


    The water was welcome though. Their parched throat was soothed by the cool liquid, and they didn''t realise how hungry they were until the bread was handed to them through the bars of the cell.


    Good. I just need to rest a little more. I just need to get some strength back. If I play along and give them what they want a little longer, surely an opportunity will present itself. Someone''s bound to find me soon, surely?


    <hr>


    It was quite some time before someone came for them again. They''d had another vision, and tried to call for someone, but no sound escaped their mouth. They hoped Turnkey would be reasonable.


    Because, you know, that seemed likely from the head of a doomsday cult with a penchant for cutting open his objects of worship.


    There was a flicker of light in the darkness. They shuffled further back into their dark cell, as if the light would burn them.


    Light brought coherency. Light brought consciousness. Light brought captors.


    Darkness was silent. Darkness was still. Darkness was safety.


    They forced back tears as the door was opened and light spilled into the room.


    They knew it would not be help. They''d stopped giving up on someone finding them a week or two ago.


    Or three.


    There was no way to tell the passing of time down here. It could have been hours. Could have been a month. They just... didn''t know anymore.


    "You hid it from me. I thought you were doing so well. I thought you were helping us."


    They croaked out a whispered response, as desperate as they were resigned.


    "...ied"


    Nothing came out at first. They tried again when Turnkey moved closer to hear them better.


    "Tried."


    There was confusion on the man''s face.


    "They aren''t lying. Get them some water. Enough that they can speak, not enough to reward them."


    There was silence for a minute before one of the menials returned, a small bowl half-filled with water in her hands.


    "Here, little Divine. Recite your vision."


    They drank quickly and feverishly, water dribbling down their chin and wetting the front of their rough-spun tunic.


    "When- when Solaria comes to its ending,


    an Angel''s death shall make man weary.


    The prince, he shall stand next... next in line;


    a sacrifice to keep man warm."


    "Good. Very good. Thank you for that. So the sun blinks out, an Angel dies, disheartening mankind, then a boy of royal blood shall die to rekindle hope in whomever is left. Well, I think we have finally found a message we can interpret!"


    Seventh moved to slump back against the wall, but before they could Turnkey patted them on the back.


    "See, if you continue to assist us-"


    There was a second of silence, and the man''s hand returned to their back, prodding around their shoulder blades. He had a confused look on his face, which all of a sudden turned into the largest grin Seventh had yet seen.


    "Oh, today truly is a great day! Faithful, attend me! Attend the Seer! We have work to do!"


    They woke to the sound of fingers clicking in their right ear. They blinked a few times to wake themselves, before ice settled in their gut.


    "No... I was good! I did as you asked! Please, I followed your rules!"


    The menial stepped backwards, and Seventh heard Turnkey enter the room from a door to their left.


    "And for that I am grateful, young Divine. Despite the complex nature of your visions, you nonetheless did your best to share them after only mild disagreement. That is commendable."


    He turned to face someone outside of Seventh''s field of vision.


    "Why are they face up?"


    "You wish them to be face down, leader? I apologise, I had no idea."


    The man scoffed, then seemed to take a moment to calm himself.


    "No harm done. It was simple, really. ''Of course!'', I thought, ''I claimed to be trying to find a different angle to approach this problem from, but I have yet to literally approach the problem from a different angle!''. Flip them, now."


    "At once, leader."


    They stifled their sobs as best they could as they were flipped over.


    It doesn''t matter in the end, I''ll survive. That''s important. It''ll hurt, but it won''t kill me. I can heal after for as long as it takes, a day or a century. It doesn''t matter.


    I. Am. Going. To. Live.


    They repeated that last thought like a mantra in their head. They''d undergone this once before. They could do it again.


    I will live.


    Turnkey felt around their shoulders once more, searching for the abnormality they had felt earlier.


    The man''s hand was cold as he settled a finger against the small lump he had found slightly below Seventh''s left shoulder, and he traced gently down their back for perhaps eight inches.


    His hand came away, and he shouted in excitement.


    "Quick, faithful, my scalpel! I have found something!"


    Seventh supposed they should have been thankful that this... whatever this was, this vivisection, was far shorter than the last. Turnkey was not interested in looking through everything within the Seer, only the bumps they had found.


    Someone placed a piece of cloth before the Seer, and they bit down hard to avoid biting through their own tongue. It was a miracle they hadn''t last time, come to think of it.


    The blade bit into their back, the cut precise and clean. Slowly, almost gingerly it glided down their skin. From the tip of their left shoulder to just below the spot Turnkey had removed his finger, an incision was opened in their back.


    They squeezed their eyes shut.


    Breath. Breath. Breath. Keep breathing. It''ll be over soon.


    A shuffle of movement, and a set of hands that Seventh assumed belonged to Turnkey held the cut open.


    Breath. Breath. Bre-


    There was a flash of blue as something inside him moved. It was... it was as though a part of them they didn''t know was there was being freed.


    "Yes! Yes! Here we are! Oh, young Divine, we are truly making history today!"


    The thing, the muscles, twitched again. There was a second flash of blue as Seventh vaguely registered their own control over their mystical senses unravelling in the face of pain and their body''s own unconscious focus on the new appendages striving to make themselves free.


    What''s happening to me?


    Turnkey''s right hand moved to physically, though gently, pull the mass free as his left continued to hold the incision open.


    There was a gasp from the man as the thing came free, fluttering to the side and attached to the young Seer by a small joint just below the shoulder.


    It was a wing.


    A sickly, anaemic wing.


    <hr>


    They curled into a ball in their cell. The second wing was now free, the two things clearly not finished forming.


    They weren''t... they weren''t in a bad state, per se. But they were so small. The little things weren''t supposed to be out in the open yet. They weren''t supposed to burst free for decades yet, maybe even a century.


    They curled up tighter.


    "How are you feeling, little Wingling?"


    They made to retreat further into their cell, then stopped. Wingling?


    That wasn''t a name Turnkey had for them.


    They looked up.


    "You- you''re-"


    The man made a quiet ''shush'' noise, placing a finger to his lips. Seventh nodded.


    "I am sorry for what has happened to you. If it is any consolation, I do not think you will need to wait much longer."


    They stared in disbelief.


    "What makes you say that, my Lord?"


    The man smirked his infuriating smirk.


    "Call it a hunch. You think you can hang on a little longer?"


    "Do I have a choice?"


    The man shrugged.


    "No, not really. You''re taking my appearance remarkably well for someone with almost no contact for however long you''ve been in here."


    The young Seer got halfway through a shrug before stopping abruptly, a quiet gasp escaping their lips as the action jostled their sore wings.


    "Because it isn''t really you. My God is sleeping far from this place."


    The man chuckled.


    "Maybe you''re right. Perhaps you''re wrong. What difference would it make if I was?"


    Seventh slumped a bit, having no real answer. There were footsteps down the corridor, and a dull headache began to make itself known.


    "I need to go now. I can help you with this, however."


    They gently placed a cool hand to Seventh''s forehead, and in a blink they were gone. Seconds later Turncoat rounded the corner just as a vision was forced from their mind, the flash of light somehow duller and longer-lasting than any that had erupted before.


    As it ended Seventh barely registered that the torches had gone out down the length of the hallway, the remaining sparks from their vision all that illuminated the room. They looked up at Turnkey, who stood before them, and despite being barely conscious or coherent they muttered a repeat of the vision. Vision might have been the wrong term, actually. It was less like they had been shown an image in the mind and more like they had looked to the heavens and listened to one side of a conversation they should not have overheard. Their voice should have been full of panic or fear, but was instead little more than a resentful, questioning whisper. It was... there had been a brief second of great clarity and understanding, but as the waves pulled back from the shore it was smothered by the weight of newly unanswered questions.


    Maybe it was just another thing seemingly designed to test their sanity in this godawful place.


    "The stars are falling, do you not see them?


    It hungers from its throne, this world is not yours.


    Why can''t you see what I can see, my Lord, my King, my God?


    The stars are falling, like drops of rain they fall to the ground.


    The stars are falling, my liege. Will you not act?


    No. You cannot, can you? You designed this.


    The avalanche has begun, the stones have no choice in the matter.


    The stars are falling. They sing to me. Do you not hear it?


    It is a song of pain and anguish, of vengeance against the already dead.


    Did you believe this was truly righteous?


    I suppose I cannot judge you, my God.


    You are just as fallible as the rest of us.


    It is a beautiful night to watch the stars."


    Turnkey swallowed, and turned away.


    Fuck, if I knew he would leave if I gave him bad premonitions I would have given out a lot more.


    Wait, I gave nothing but bad premonitions.


    What''s so different about this one?


    They sighed again, and closed their eyes. They were tired. Maybe their kinsman was right, and they would be free soon. Maybe not. Did it matter?


    The smirk stuck in their mind. It seemed to repeat the question back at them over and over again, a cruel repetition of the man''s question.


    What difference would it make?


    <hr>


    It didn''t take long, in the end. They didn''t think so, anyway. It was so hard to tell. There was noise outside the cell, shouted commands and clattering noises. Who was winning? Who made up the two sides?


    What difference would it make?


    They bit back the urge to scream at themself as the question entered their mind uninvited for the umpteenth time. They focussed themselves on simply trying to stay awake as the noises grew nearer.


    "FIND THEM! TAKE AS MANY OF THE BASTARDS ALIVE AS YOU CAN, WE NEED TO FIND THEM!"


    "Nothing here, your Highness!"


    "Neither!"


    "FUCK!"


    There was a clattering sound. They flinched, but did their best to inch their way to the bars. They knew that voice. That voice was warm, it had a wild heart, it was... it had to be...


    "Rhema"


    To call their voice a whisper was charitable. It was so quiet it would be a miracle if anyone heard.


    "Rhema..."


    Silence. For ten seconds there was a deafening, disheartening silence. Then,


    "Seventh?"


    Their prayer was answered.


    A gruff voice called out to the prince as one of the soldiers found their cell.


    "Down here, Ser!"


    A bloodied prince, resplendent in leather armour with green trimmings, sprinted into view.


    They smiled a tired, tired smile at him.


    "Rhema."


    With more force than Seventh had ever seen in a blow, Rhema brought his axe down upon the lock and slammed his body into the door of the cell. It gave way after three such impacts, smashing into the side wall as Rhema rushed over to them.


    "I''m here. I''m here now, don''t worry. You''re safe now, I promise."


    They stretched their arms out to him, and he picked them up, leaving an Armsman to pick up his discarded weapons as he cradled them gently in his arms.


    "Let''s get you out of here."


    They smiled at him, eyes fluttering open and closed as they attempted to remain awake.


    As they passed into the torchlight, for the first time since they had emerged Seventh was able to properly see their wings. They were small, as they had known from instinct rather than sight, but now they could see the colour, a grey so light it may have been mistaken for silver speckled with the occasional charcoal-black feather here and there.


    Rhema did not comment on them, out of respect or worry or some other thing they did not know, but it didn''t matter.


    They supposed they should have been elated to finally have their wings.


    But, Seventh thought, just like me, they are not yet ready to face the world.


    They curled into Rhema even more, focusing on their friend and the warmth that came from him over anything else.


    Rhema was here. It was over. That was the important thing. Their kind was always more resilient than humans. They would heal in time. They always did.


    But what difference would it make?

 Rhema IV: Tears Well from Blood

    <u>Rhema IV: Tears Well from Blood</u>


    <u>The Tenth day of the Twelfth Moon, 872 AD.


    Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    He was going to kill the people who''d done this. The people who had cut open his closest friend as if they were some... some fucking animal! Those vile butchers, he would... he would...


    Rhema looked down at his friend''s sleeping form, and exhaled, doing his best to keep his mind clear. He would do nothing for now, save keep vigil. He would control himself, for his friend.


    Besides, he thought with a chuckle that was only slightly mad, most of the people who did this are dead already.


    After the raid on Seaview Manse the knights under Ser Romanos had spent the majority of the night following both leads and the fleeing cultists, resulting in the majority of the other manses being broken into and searched thoroughly for any sign of cultist activity.


    He happened to know that his brother had used the knight''s hunt as a front to strip the manses bare, carting their wealth off to the royal coffers. That had made him smile more than a little bit. It still made the corners of his mouth twitch upwards even now. Guess my brother isn''t quite so afraid of dirtying his hands as some of those nobles thought.


    Seventh shifted in their sleep, and Rhema''s breath hitched ever so slightly as one of their wings peeked out at him from the top of the blanket. Angels, they were magnificent! They were small, far to small to actually lift them from the ground, surely, but nonetheless they looked stunning.


    If only it had not taken so much pain to break them free.


    Seventh had told him, albeit in a clipped and quiet manner, what had been done to them. Even thinking about such things roused such an anger in the young prince that he wanted to march out there and find every last one of those damnable cultists that had escaped before fucking shattering every rib they had, then he would watch and he would laugh as they choked on their own blood, pierced lungs flooding with their own hot ichor.


    But not their ringleader. No. He had much better plans for him.


    He sighed. As of right now those plans were useless and immaterial, because no matter how much he wanted to go out there and visit vengeance upon the people that did this, it was overshadowed by his desire to make sure his friend would be safe first, barely; it was a very fine thing, but his desire to ensure Seventh''s immediate safety just about triumphed over his want for bloodshed.


    Even so, the thoughts of what he''d do to that ''Turnkey'' bastard or whatever Seventh had called him still warmed his blood and sharpened his mind. After all, it was hard to sleep with such detailed plans running dancing across his thoughts.


    Ser Aenethar was still out there somewhere too. His plans for Turnkey may have been bad, worse than bad, but what he''d do to that treasonous fucking bastard when he got his hands on his fucking throat would make it seem like mercy by comparison.


    He was shaken from his darker thoughts at the sound of the door creaking open. He shot around, hand already on the axe by his side, but let himself relax when Marshal Crowe entered the room. There were dark rings under her eyes, a tiredness in her step that told him she was only being kept awake by her own stubbornness and professionalism. He wasn''t surprised, after all, she''d spent the last few weeks desperately trying to balance combat effectiveness and his sister''s suspicions.


    My sister...


    He shook his head and banished that trail of thought before it had a chance to truly begin. He''d said it himself, they''d not truly been siblings for quite some time; she''d bullied him and cast him aside time and time again, and had called not only for the deaths of so many innocents but also their own brother in her quest for power. She was dangerous, she was violent, and she was downright hateful.


    So why does it hurt so much?


    He did his best to rid himself of these thoughts, speaking with a dry yet humorous tone to his mentor and friend.


    "Crowe. You look like shit."


    She raised an amused eyebrow, and responded in kind.


    "Your Highness. You aren''t looking too princely yourself."


    He snorted and turned back to the bed, Crowe moving to sit in a chair next to him.


    "They will be alright?"


    Rhema nodded.


    "My brother damn near stripped the city bare of those well-versed in the medicinal arts at my behest, but out of every physician my brother called in as well as his own personal healer from his retinue, not a single one can make heads nor tails of how they''re managing to heal so quicky without any intervention. Indeed, my brother''s personal healer has said that they''ve somehow managed to heal themself of any physical damage in totality already."


    Crowe nodded, remaining as attentive as ever no matter her tiredness.


    "Good, that''s good," she hesitated a moment before continuing, "and mentally?"


    He sighed bitterly.


    "I don''t know. I hope they''ll be fine. If not, well..."


    He gestured weakly to himself.


    "We know how that story goes."


    Crowe sighed next to him.


    "You need to stop being so hard on yourself. I know you might not think it but these last few months you''ve showed remarkable resilience and loyalty, not to mention competence. There are few men alive who would have the courage and determination to do what you did. Very few. Your actions shortened the war by months no doubt, and saved thousands of lives."


    "Maybe. But I do not feel as though that was my doing, not truly."


    Crowe stood with a sigh, patting his shoulder before turning to exit the room.


    "Hopefully you will in time, your Highness. I''ll leave you to your vigil."


    <hr>


    It must have been hours the next time someone entered the room. The sun was beginning to set in the west, the autumn sky taking on a hint of green as blue gave way to black.


    "I thought you might be here still. Somehow I think you will be until you know they''re okay."


    He relaxed at the familiarity of the voice, his brother''s words lessening the tension he had been feeling somewhat.


    "Here, give me a moment."


    There was the sound of a few things being set down on the small table next to him, then pouring. He spoke without turning.


    "What is that, wine?"


    He was corrected by a tankard pressed into his hands, foaming with ale.


    "Nope. There are times when a man needs to quaff, and ale''s a damn sight better for that than wine. Come on."


    His brother raised his own wooden tankard, and clinked it to his own. There was silence for a moment, save only gulping noises, as the two of them drank deeply from their cups. His brother stopped when half of his tankard was empty, but Rhema kept going till his was empty. Angels, he hadn''t realised he was so thirsty.


    "Thanks for that, I needed it. You wouldn''t happen to have any food with you, would you?"


    His brother nudged his shoulder and gestured to the small table off to the side, where a small platter of honeycakes and plums was set. He nodded his thanks and picked a honeycake off of the platter, eating it in a dozen bites. Oh, he''d not had one in so long he''d almost forgotten how fucking good they were. He immediately reached for another, and his brother picked up a plum, raising an eyebrow at him.


    "What? I''m hungry, leave me be."


    A huffed laugh left his brother, and they sat in silence again for a moment, eating quietly. After a little while had passed, Rhema turned to face his company. There were questions he needed to ask. He hesitated a moment before speaking, his voice seeming to catch in his throat.


    "She''s dead. I know that much, but... is she yet buried? I hesitate to ask but what I mean is... no tar, no spikes, nothing like that?"


    His brother shook his head slowly.


    "No. Even if I''d wanted to, I don''t think I would have been able to bring myself to do it. No, she''s been given a quiet burial in the family crypts under the Westcoast Church. She''ll rest there with our ancestors forevermore, with the dignity and respect due to any member of our family. Which reminds me, have you given father his funeral yet? I have heard nothing of it all the time I have been here."


    This time Rhema nodded.


    "It was done quietly the day after you took off back to the north. Father hadn''t been seen in public since... well, for at least eight months. Maybe even a year. If there was no war between the three of us then I doubt anyone would have noticed his passing. But his body was taken to the Westcoast Church under armed guard. I take it you didn''t personally see our sister interred, else you''d have seen him yourself undoubtedly."


    His brother was silent again for a minute, nodding in acknowledgement of Rhema''s words. Rhema took this silence as his que to continue asking questions.


    "Assassins. You said you''d been attacked by assassins. And the Choir- did you know they were real this whole time? For how long? Why you as well? I don''t-"


    His brother held up a hand for quiet, then began answering his questions in a slow, almost staggered manner. It was as though he had been too busy to think through what had happened until recently, and was only now starting to come to terms with everything.


    "I don''t really know myself. I thought our sister sent assassins after me at Ousdaal, but thinking back on it now... it doesn''t really make sense. She would have needed to have friends, or at least supporters, within my camp who were unknown to both me and Elikoidi, and as you know it''s damn near impossible to keep a motive from him. I mean, those people would have had to be in the camp for weeks, maybe months, without once even talking about anything that could have given their allegiances away. Given some of the phenomenon surrounding their eyes, such as a sense of unease and how they caused mild headaches, Elikoidi thought they might be a part of the Cult of the Choir. After that-"


    His brother took a shuddering breath to calm himself, running a hand through his hair.


    "After that we set it to one side, mostly. There was too much to worry about, too little time. We needed to take the capital. So I led a breaching party later that same day. I was the first man through the breach."


    There were a few twitches to his brother''s lips that Rhema reckoned were the beginnings of a supressed yet proud smile.


    "The first wave failed, but that never mattered. The castle surrendered to us that same day anyway. Marren had his carcass shot smoke them out. After that we marched here and, well, you know the rest."


    He nodded, and they lapsed back into silence. His brother drained what was left of his ale and refilled both of their tankards, handing one back to Rhema who sipped it appreciatively. He took the time to think about him and his brother for a little while. He would be lying if he said he wasn''t scared for what the future held for them now; the two of them were all that was left of their house. Oh, there would doubtless be someone bearing their family name in the Noble Sons Abroad who would make an appearance if ever something happened to the two of them, but of the true members of house Sperakos it was just the two of them. That raised certain complications. He might have fooled around with a few different people in Castelos, but nothing serious and not for quite a long while now, half a year at least. As for his brother, well, there was only one person he had ever seen his brother show an interest in, and lets just say if there was even an heir that came about from that union then something passing odd was happening.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.He chuckled a little at that thought, strange as it may have been.


    As for himself at the moment, he''d been feeling strangely about such things as marriage and the like recently. He didn''t want to get married, but he wasn''t stupid. He was a prince, in fact as soon as his brother''s coronation finally came about Rhema would technically be his heir, and he needed to marry. Both of them did.


    He did his best to supress a groan at the thought, and let his head hit the frame of the bed in front of him.


    "Ugh."


    A mildly amused huff came from his brother next to him.


    "Well, what''s brought this on?"


    "Nope, not bringing it up. It''ll just give you ideas."


    "Heh, smart move."


    His brother''s tone lost some of its joviality, taking on a more serious aspect.


    "But truthfully. How are you holding up, given everything that''s happened? I''m not going to judge you regardless of the answer, I just... I don''t want to be left in the dark if I you''re going through something."


    He turned his head and flashed his brother an admittedly weak smile before responding, opting to just speak the truth rather than conceal anything. This was his older brother, after all. Lyk would never see his worth as being any less than it ever had been, regardless of how far Rhema felt himself falling.


    "I... I don''t rightly know. I''m angry and sad and melancholic for a hundred reasons, but then I''m happy and excited for a dozen others. Everything''s moving so fast, and now that we''ve been granted a reprieve it''s only giving me time to allow certain thoughts to linger in my mind."


    "Oh? Like what?"


    He was silent for a moment, uncertain how best to communicate his worries.


    "Rhema?"


    "Was this my fault?"


    He gestured weakly with an arm at Seventh, though he didn''t move his head from where it rested at the side of the bed. His brother started.


    "What? You saved them!"


    "Aye, I did. I also sent them away with Aenethar to you. Specifically with Aenethar. If I''d just picked someone else they wouldn''t have been through that."


    His brother''s expression softened.


    "Rhema, no. Aenethar''s actions are his own, you cannot be held accountable for what he did whilst almost two-hundred miles away from you. It was not your fault."


    There was another pause in their conversation before Rhema spoke again, vitriol and hate dripping from his words.


    "I fucking hate Aenethar. The man and the Angel. I fucking hate them both. I hate the man for what he did to my friend, my friend! And I hate the Angel for just... for just letting it fucking happen! I was devout enough! I said my prayers and saw to the rites! So why? I don''t understand! I don''t fucking understand!"


    There was stillness for some time after that as he blinked back tears and controlled his breathing. He wouldn''t give in to his anger now. Not yet.


    His brother was silent for a few moments after his outburst, letting him burn out the worst of his choler before speaking. When he did speak it was hesitant and bordering on regretful, as though he were both in mourning and also worried about how Rhema would take continuing such a conversation.


    "I... I have sent for the bones of Ser Aethel to be sent back to his place of birth, where he will receive the last rites before being laid to rest. He deserves that much for standing against that blackguard."


    Rhema nodded. That seemed the right thing to do. He had no idea who this ''Ser Aethel'' was, but he knew that the young man had died trying to protect Seventh.


    "Where was he from?"


    Lykourgos tilted his head ever so slightly in a mixture of thought and acknowledgement.


    "I spoke with Romanos about that to make sure I got it right. He was from a small village near Einarford, almost due southeast of Aenirhen. He''ll be laid to rest amongst the memories of his youth, as it ever should be."


    Rhema nodded again, still smarting at the thought of Aenethar. He''d worshipped the Angel of Death and Dreams faithfully for years, and yet here his loyal friend lay in front of him. Where was the justice in that? Where was the reward for his faith?


    The stopped himself from physically shaking his head to force his mind to go blank. There was a new source of justice in the realm now. A new source of faith. His brother would see those that did this punished, even if the Angels would not, and in turn Rhema would strike down those any who sought to stand in his brother''s way.


    "So. What comes next?"


    His brother turned to looked at him, Rhema''s own gaze still on the sleeping Seer in front of him.


    "What?"


    "I said what next? You expect me to believe that you''re content to just sit on your laurels the rest of your reign? No, not you. I may not have seen you anywhere near as much as I would have liked as we grew up, but I know you would never be content to simply let the world remain unchanged. You''ve got something planned. A great many somethings, I would wager."


    There was silence for a moment, and Rhema turned to look at his brother. His face was hard set at first, as though it had been carved from stone, but as he watched a smile crept ever-so-slowly across his brother''s features.


    "Angels, did you know you''re the first person to actually ask me that?"


    There was a moment''s pause, and Rhema took the opportunity to move himself into a slightly more comfortable position as he waited for his brother to start.


    "The first order of state has already been done; the last powers held by the nobility here have been stripped away. Their wealth is ours now, and as such it will be used to assist with the rest of my plans, or at the very least lower the burden of their costs. For a start a large sum will be reinvested into Anaria, you know, to try and get it out of the slump it''s been in for the last decade. Refurbishing the eastern district, expanding the docks in the west, tearing down the manses and rebuilding the city''s industrial heart, and finally a complete overhaul of the city''s defences complete with the restoration of the northern district."


    Lykourgos continued without pause. There was much on his mind, it seemed.


    "After that I want to start trying to increase the presence of the merchant class, both to increase the kingdom''s wealth and to act as a counterbalance to the church and the now defunct nobility. I''d start this by granting Aenirhen and Haestinghen city charters; they''re populous enough and in positions advantageous to trade, so it shouldn''t be too hard after that to start stimulating local industries, which primarily revolve around clothiers. Again, if this is done right we should be able to increase the kingdom''s wealth in the long run."


    He paused and turned to Rhema, abashed smile on his face.


    "Sorry, I''m probably boring you-"


    Rhema cut him off immediately, an idea of his own coming to him.


    "What about Brycgestow?"


    His brother blinked a few times, surprised, then smiled again, gesturing for him to continue.


    "Explain, please?"


    "Well, you want to increase the wealth you receive from Aenirhen and Haestinghen whilst also supporting merchants or somesuch thing, yes?"


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Well, what about adding Brycgestow to that list? It''s only slightly smaller than Haestinghen and it''s in the perfect position to act as a port of call for any ships travelling from the southern realms to Anaria. It''s got a few wharfs already, but I''d imagine that if you knew what you were doing and with the right amount of coin you could turn it into a true harbour. It''d also be useful to support the local maritime trades and industries, net-weaving and sail-making and the like."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow, amused and surprised.


    "I somehow forget that Brycgestow is the only real town you''d have been able to visit most days. Well, I trust your judgement on that matter. It would make a military wharf viable, which would be good for protecting against any raiders from the Al-Alema coming by sea rather than by land."


    Rhema nodded. The twenty-mile wall at Castelos was excellent for protecting Teleytaios from the landward side, but seeing as house Sperakos hadn''t held a naval force since they were hereditary fleetmasters there was little that could stop seaborne raiding parties at the moment. It would be good to change that.


    "Well, that''s that side of things worked out."


    His brother smiled at him.


    "Don''t worry, I know what you''re really asking about. The answer is Owkrestos. We''d need to allow a season or two to pass first to ensure that the next harvest is brought in, lest we face the beginnings of a famine, then we''d just need a casus belli of some sort, a reason for war. Preferable to anything would be for Lord Blackoak to finally have enough of King Aleksandar''s regency council spurning him and rise in rebellion. Not only would the two sides bleed each other out, we could march in to restore order and be genuine peace-bringers, not merely conquerors. After that, we''ll see. These things take time, normally at least."


    "No esoteric, mystical shit? I thought you were working on something relating to those symbol things or whatever?"


    Lykourgos started, and nudged Rhema gently in his side.


    "Okay, that one''s for me to know. My findings have been enlightening thus far but I''ve also been able to play my cards relatively close to my chest. Given the circumstances it may be better to wait until I have enough knowledge on this matter to give you some real answers, but for now just know that I''m keeping my eyes open for a few letters being sent my way."


    Rhema nodded. That sounded good to him. Seventh shifted, making a sort of whining noise in their sleep. Rhema looked at them almost automatically.


    Lykourgos looked at him, then at Seventh, and then back at him again. A smile crept across his face. No, not a smile, it was a fucking shit-eating grin.


    "Oh, you have no idea how hard it is to resist saying anything impolite right now."


    Rhema scoffed, affronted.


    "Come on, what did I do?"


    His brother chuckled.


    "Really? You''re asking me that question. Okay, let me jog your memory. Summer Solstice, eight-hundred and sixty-six."


    "What? You, me and Alekos celebrating. I don''t see your point."


    His brother continued, eyebrow raised, raising a finger with every date he brought up.


    "Winter Solstice, eight-hundred and sixty-six. Summer Solstice, eight-hundred and sixty-five. All Hallows Eve, eight-hundred and sixty-seven."


    Rhema turned away a little, getting the common theme now.


    "Okay, so maybe I hinted at your infatuation with Alekos a few times, but-"


    "Eight-hundred and sixty-seven. The Day of Ascension."


    Rhema blinked in surprise a few times at the tone of his brother''s voice. What had he done then?


    Was that the time I- Oh.


    He desperately tried to stop a smile from manifesting even as the blood drained from his face thanks to his nerves. He might have locked his brother and the Polaeran princeling in a confessional booth together during a particularly awkward stage of their development. The two had been completely red when they were finally let out, and he was just thankful for the head start Ser Romanos had let him have before releasing his brother as one would a raging bull. Alekos, as far as he remembered, had been far too anxious around him to act anything other than nervous anyway, so there was little change in his demeanour. His brother on the other hand... Angels above, he''d never felt such fear and humour at the same time before or since.


    On the one hand, Lyk had been furious at him and damn near beat him to a pulp on the training grounds the next morning.


    On the other hand, it had been really fucking funny.


    "Okay, so maybe I was a little bit of a dick from time to time."


    His brother nodded, smiling.


    "Indeed. And now here we stand, our positions swapped after all this time."


    Lykourgos pointedly looked at Seventh, and then back at him. There was an extremely teasing tone to his voice, and some small part of Rhema wondered if he had sounded that annoying back then.


    "On a completely, definitely unrelated note, I have yet to receive an apology for those long years of teasing. I do so wonder if I shall ever receive one. It would be a shame if not, after all, I never know what I might say in the midst of choler."


    The shit eating grin was back, and Rhema gritted his teeth in a mixture of mock anger and real annoyance. Fine. If you wanna play this game, then play it we shall.


    "I am... ugh, damn you. Fine. I apologise for insinuating that you and Alekos wanted to neck each other but lacked the courage for year after insufferable year. I thought you''d appreciate some alone time in a small candlelit room with plenty of altar wine and incense smoke. Happy now?"


    Lykourgos turned away, a dusting of pink colouring his cheeks, and cursed. He stood and made to leave the room, an embarrassed and yet fond smile on his face.


    "Fuck you."


    Rhema smiled warmly.


    "Fuck you too."


    <hr>


    He woke to the sound of a panicked gasp. Immediately he shot up, and firmly clasped the flailing hand of his now awake friend, who without registering his presence shouted out whatever words were rattling through their head.


    "He''s awake! My Lord, My King, My God, you''re awake! He''s awake!"


    Rhema blinked once. Twice. Who was awake? He shook his head. Whoever else was awake didn''t matter for now, because Seventh was here in front of him!


    "Sev?"


    "... Rhema?"


    Rhema shot forwards and wrapped them in what he hoped was a gentle hug, but given his worry might have actually been a vice grip. His hand brushed against one of the small wings, and a strangled gasp came from his friend. He immediately let go and held his hands up in a gesture displaying he meant no harm, concern across his face and in his mind. Seventh''s hand found his own again, and they sat, enjoying the quiet for a moment.


    "Sorry, bad memories with... with people feeling the wings. My wings. God, that feels odd to say."


    "I''ll bet. How do you feel?"


    They looked at him, eyes fluttering open and closed a few times.


    "Better now. It is just you? No need for a blindfold at the moment?"


    He nodded.


    "Just me, friend. No worries there."


    "Good, good. How goes the war?"


    Rhema felt his smile grow wider.


    "Over. We lost quite soundly. Lyk is to be crowned in a few weeks, if all goes according to schedule. I think he wants his coronation to be held on the Day of Ascension, symbolism and all that, but I''m not sure. I''m just glad it''s over."


    Seventh smiled at that.


    "That''s good. Your... other sibling?"


    Rhema''s smile fell and he went silent. Seventh must have known what this meant, but they said nothing. Instead they just squeezed his hand gently and changed the subject with a slight smile.


    "Well, like you said, it''s over now. Now you can rest. Me too, I hope."


    Rhema snorted before his brows furrowed in mild confusion.


    "You claimed someone was awake as you awoke. It sounded quite intense. Who is it that woke up?"


    Seventh lay there in quiet contemplation before a lazy smile crept slowly across their face.


    "Oh. Oh, I did, didn''t I? Oh, I can hardly wait!"


    "Who? Who is it?"


    They smiled coyly at him.


    "Ask your brother. It''ll be funnier if you tell him what I said without context; he''ll jump a mile and start barking orders immediately. Besides, you''ll meet who I''m talking about soon enough. He''s awake, and he''s on his way to the capital. Oh, I can hardly wait to finally meet with him properly."


    Rhema swallowed hard, thinking on what his friend had just said, before sighing in resignation and banging his head quite deliberately on the bedframe once more.


    "Rhema?"


    He looked over at Seventh, an annoyed smile on his face.


    "Has anyone ever told you that you can be really fucking cryptic sometimes?"


    Seventh laughed a gentle, genuine laugh, and the sound made Rhema smile. For once, everything seemed like it was going well. For once, the future seemed bright for all of them. That made all of this worth it.


    Everything.

 Lykourgos XIV: Destinys Bitter Sound

    <u>Lykourgos XIV: Destiny''s Bitter Sound</u>


    <u>The First Day of the First Moon, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    "So, your Grace, what now?"


    Lykourgos turned to face his old friend, a genuine smile on both their faces.


    "Now? Well, we''ve had a month to clean house in the bureaucracy and knightly orders of the realm, as well as to make a start on seeing to the rebuilding of areas ravaged by war, but all things considered that should not take long."


    "How many died overall in the final counts? Eight-thousand, maybe ten-thousand people?"


    Lykourgos nodded, lips pursing.


    "It is a cruel thing for me to say but... it could have been far worse. It was worth it. Eight-thousand men to see my sister kept from the throne... to see me on the throne..."


    There was silence for a moment as Elikoidi moved to place a gloved hand on Lykourgos'' shoulder.


    "It was worth it. Her reign would have brought about so much more strife than anything this war has caused. For ten-thousand to have died we are lucky; I was expecting far, far more bloodshed."


    Lykourgos smiled wanly.


    "We have my brother to thank for that, do we not Eli?"


    Elikoidi smiled back. His smile was less tired and more relieved.


    "Indeed. He played us all expertly. Even my rats had no indication of his plans before you arrived at the walls of the city, and although my suspicions were aroused by the Seer and the death of the Inner Council I was still surprised to find that he had truly been on your side from day one."


    "I told you, Eli. He''s my little brother. I once fought a war to get him back. I guess he felt the need to repay that debt, not that he ever needed too."


    Elikoidi shook his head.


    "I can guarantee that there were no thoughts of repaying you in his mind when he set out to dismantle his own forces, and your sister''s, from within. I have had to reappraise my assessment of Prince Rhema this past month, especially in this last week, and the words of your cupbearer rings true. He looks up to you, almost idolises you. As his older brother you feel the need to protect him, especially since you were not able for most of your childhood since you were fostered over a hundred miles away, but what you do not count on is that he feels much the same."


    "You believe so?"


    His friend pulled a thoughtful face.


    "Hmm. Perhaps not exactly the same, but close enough. Where you feel protective of him, he feels complete loyalty towards you. You''re his older brother, the one person in the world who, for his whole life, treated him like a normal person no matter how bad his condition became. He admires you a great deal, Lyk. He may not exactly be a model prince or ruler, but the thoughts I had of him previously have been proven thoroughly incorrect. No matter how loyal myself or Romanos are, I do not believe that you will find a single person more singularly loyal to you. Not to the crown, or the realm, or even the law. Only you."


    Lykourgos smiled sadly.


    "I... I am glad of that. I only wish my sister could have felt the same."


    Elikoidi shrugged.


    "Your sister grew up with everything she''d ever wanted being handed to her by either her zealot of a mother or, when she passed away, your father, who saw in her the same spark her mother had. I do not believe your sister was capable of accepting that things would not go her way. Not in a self-centred, vain way, but simply because it was all she''d ever known."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "She... I will not miss her. But I will miss who she could have been."


    "She is gone now, Lyk. It is for the best. If she''d been allowed to live-"


    "Then retribution would have been swift and deadly. I am aware."


    Elikoidi nodded, seeming to understand how tired this conversation was making the prince.


    "I do not wish to dredge up old wounds. I apologise. But she is gone, and you''re still here. That''s what matters to me."


    Lykourgos sighed before smiling again.


    "Aye, I''m still here. So are you, so is my brother, and so are the rest of my friends. We''ve got Seventh back, most of the Cult of the Choir within Teleytaios has been smoked out like rats from a burning building, and the civil war is over. Things should start really looking up for us now."


    Elikoidi smiled and nudged his shoulder in a teasing manner.


    "Careful your Grace," his friend said, "you''re starting to sound like you aren''t a pessimist."


    "I mean it though! Things seem to be looking up for us now. We''re on the rise, Eli! It''s time for Teleytaios to spread its wings once more, and look outwards at the world."


    His friend smiled at him.


    "Be careful once more, your Grace. My networks are far patchier outside of Teleytaios, especially in Owkrestos and Triarios, so you''ll be going in blind for the most part."


    He nodded.


    "Well, that''s a risk we''ll have to take. Anyways, I have other duties to attend at the moment."


    "Oh? And what would they entail?"


    "There are a great many brave men and women who fought and bled to see me on the throne, and I have yet to speak with many of them. The living need to be rewarded, and the dead honoured. After that we can begin to think of my coronation."


    Elikoidi nodded at him, smiling kindly.


    "Well, there''s no time like the present I suppose. It might take a few days to get through all those still alive who deserve rewarding."


    "Undoubtedly, but it is a duty that should be performed nonetheless. I''d like to meet with the Lieutenants and Marshals who ensured my victory first, after all, they''re the highest ranking military officials in the realm."


    "Certainly. Who would you like to speak with first?"


    "Marshal Crowe. I still need to thank her for keeping my brother safe during the war."


    Elikoidi nodded.


    "Makes sense. After that I''m presuming it''ll be Marren and Isen?"


    "Yep. Not sure what order, not that it really matters, but yeah. Marshal Crowe and then the two of them."


    "All together or, I''m presuming, one at a time?"


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "One at a time. It''ll be good to speak with them candidly in private, see what they make of recent events and future plans. They all did so much to win the battle here; Marren took half a dozen arrows holding the Inner Gate, and apparently Lieutenant Isen single-handedly slew a score of Roses when they counter attacked his men on Last Stander''s Street. Heroics like that need to be recognised."


    Elikoidi sniffed dismissively.


    "I see. Could I-"


    "No, you may not have rats watch my confidential conversations with loyal subjects."


    Elikoidi rolled his eyes.


    "Fine, but only if you agree to tell me any blackmail you learn from them!"


    He laughed at his friend''s mock-pout.


    "Fine, fine, I will. Anyways, I''d better get started. There''s much to do, after all."


    <hr>


    "Marshal Crowe!"


    "Your Grace."


    The muscular woman bowed formally, with a small smile on her face.


    "Come, walk with me."


    "Certainly, your Grace."


    They walked through the hallways of the royal barracks and out into the palace gardens, a comfortable silence between them. Lykourgos leant against a low stone wall, elbows propping him up as he enjoyed the sunshine on his face.


    "I meant to thank you, Marshal."


    Her face scrunched up in confusion.


    "Thank me?"


    He nodded.


    "For keeping my brother safe. For keeping him out of her reach. In his own words, were it not for you he would almost certainly be dead or broken by now. You kept him... you made sure he did not falter and fall into ill health and greater hardships."


    There was silence for a moment, and Lykourgos noticed the violet he had planted some months ago, blooming out of season. He smiled.


    "I only did my duty, your Grace. I was sworn to your brother. Whilst I remain sworn to him I will not abide any harm to his person. He has suffered enough as is."


    Lykourgos looked back to her, doing his best to convey his gratitude to the woman whether she believed she''d earned it or not.


    "Agreed. Be that as it may, I wish to thank you nonetheless. Your services to my family will not be forgotten, this I swear."


    She nodded stiffly.


    "My thanks, your Grace. If I may ask... word of the Seer''s condition has been kept secret from most, or at least remains unknown. May I ask their condition at the moment?"


    Ah, it seems she worries for them as well. Unsurprising, given how close Rhema seems to them.


    "They are recovering rapidly. Almost too rapidly, all told. No physician, healer, or man of faith has been able to determine how they survived what was done to them. Still less are those who can even begin to explain how the wings sprouted upon their back."


    She looked back at him in confusion.


    "Wings?"


    He raised an eyebrow.


    "You do not know?"


    "I know not of what you speak, your Grace."


    He nodded.


    "A conversation for another time. If you''d like I can allow you admission to see them yourself so you can gauge their recovery and look at their new wings, it''d probably be easier than me trying to explain it to you."


    She nodded again, but still wore an expression of confusion on her face.


    "I have visited them once already, but I remember seeing no such thing."


    Lykourgos shrugged.


    "Well, according to my brother you were tired, run ragged, and focused on him. Maybe you just didn''t look, as vexing as it may sound?"


    She smiled at him and shook her head, the notion that she had somehow missed such a thing seeming to amuse her.


    "Very well. If I may see them, your Grace, it would assuage a great many of my troubled thoughts. I hear your brother has yet to leave their side?"


    He nodded.


    "Correct. Rhema cares very deeply for his Seer, it would seem. Not that I expected anything else from him, with how protective he can get, but still. In less grave circumstances I would be teasing him as revenge for all the comments he made about me and Alekos growing up, but there''s a time and a place for such levity."


    Crowe snorted and looked away.


    "Aye, on that much you''re right, your Grace. Was their anything else?"


    He nodded.


    "If you would consent to such a thing, I would be honoured to have you on my council as my Master of Iron. Well, I suppose ''Mistress of Iron'' would be the correct term."


    She gawped at him, then knelt formally.


    "Your Grace, I would be most honoured, but this would break with centuries of unwritten rules about women in combat!"


    He cocked an eyebrow again.


    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement."Are you seriously telling me that you of all people care for such conventions?"


    She chuckled from where she knelt.


    "No, I suppose not. I would be honoured to stand at your side, your Grace."


    He nodded while smiling.


    "Rise, Mistress Crowe. I cannot promise you that you keep this rank forever, since these titles tend to be bickered over by the influential and no matter how much I may despise courtly politicking I may need to engage in it and trade away council positions for loyalty, but I do promise that you will never be anything less than the first Marshal of the kingdom."


    She rose, smiling at him.


    "I am glad you are truthful with me, and shall endeavor to do the best job I can to prove I have earned this place."


    Lykourgos beamed at her.


    "I''m certain you will."


    "What of Grandmaster Romanos? I think most were under the impression that he would become the Master of Iron."


    Lykourgos kicked himself for forgetting to bring this up earlier.


    "Ah, I forgot to mention that. I spoke with Romanos some days ago about a position on the council my sister created. I must say that for all the mistakes my sister made, increasing the size of the Inner Council was not one of them. Romanos will be named the Master of Steel, responsible for overseeing the Knights of the Realm, with knightly forces answering to him. This means that your position will not hold jurisdiction over knights, allowing you to better focus on the armsmen and levies of the realm."


    She nodded.


    "Clever. I take it more decentralisation within the council is to take place?"


    He nodded.


    "Eventually, yes. There is nothing immediate at the moment that needs to be done, but moving forwards old positions will be split and new created to better administrate the realm."


    She nodded again.


    "That will be all, Mistress Crowe. Thank you for looking after my brother. It means more to me than you know."


    She smiled at him.


    "I''ve got a good idea of how much it means to you, your Grace. I will meet with you in the council meeting tomorrow, I take it?"


    He nodded.


    "Very well. I shall see you then."


    The newly raised Mistress then turned on her heel, and swiftly marched back towards the barracks.


    Right, thought the prince, who do I need to speak with next?


    <hr>


    "I must thank you again for your service, Lieutenant. You will go far, that much I promise you."


    The man flashed him a smirk.


    "Well thank you, your Grace. I hope it doesn''t come across as too arrogant if I say I already knew that?"


    Lykourgos laughed heartily. At least Isen didn''t bow and scrape at his compliments. It was refreshing, given how some people had acted.


    "Very droll, Lieutenant."


    "Can you blame me, your Grace?"


    "Not in the slightest, Isen."


    The two fell into a comfortable silence as they looked out over the walls of the Old Keep, high above the bustling city below. It was a nice reprieve from his duties, if a short one, and Lykourgos was content to let it last just a few moments longer.


    "There are some who claim you must be unbreakable, your Grace. Given the assassins and then the Storming of Ousdaal there are even those who claim you must be invincible."


    He snorted.


    "And what do you make of those rumours, Lieutenant?"


    When Isen spoke there was... something, though Lykourgos was not sure what, in his voice that marked him as being unhappy.


    No, no quite unhappy. Annoyed.


    "I think what they call ''invincibility'' I would call luck."


    Lykourgos looked back at him, slightly thrown off by Isen''s tone but smiled at the words nonetheless.


    "Fate does seem to protect me, that much is certain."


    He paused a moment, then laughed.


    "I wouldn''t be surprised if I''d used up all of my luck by now."


    "Is that so, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos nodded, then shook his head whilst smiling.


    "Ah, it doesn''t matter. I''m here to congratulate you and thank you for your service, not mope and wax about luck or fate."


    He turned to look back out over the walls of Anaria before continuing.


    "At the very least we''re not at war anymore. There will be more conflict to come, of course. Even now there are doubtless small groups of rebels, and of course there will most likely be a spike in bandit activity with the demobilisation of the levies. But even when these are dealt with, the conflict will have to continue. Klironomea must be unified under a single king once more."


    Isen was silent to his left, so he carried on.


    "We can change so much, if only we reach out and grasp the opportunity as it comes to us."


    His gaze remained on the horizon, overlooking the Anarian Marches. He used to hate this city and all the lands attached to it, but now?


    Things might actually be looking up for this place.


    The prince turned to face his companion, before a sharp pain flared in his chest.


    His world blanked with a flare of pain, and cold steel scraped against his ribs.


    A strangled gasp left his chest as he fell forwards into Lieutenant Isen, who held him upright with his free hand and stared down at the prince''s hunched form with more malice in his eyes than Lykourgos had ever thought possible for one man to possess.


    "Wha-"


    "I hate you. I''ve hated you for so long. Saints, I''ve waited a long, long time to say that. You''ve always been so lucky in your life. It was enough to drive me mad. You might not remember me. In fact, the day we met again and you looked at me I was sure you''d kill me on the spot. But you didn''t. You didn''t even recognise me, I don''t think. If you did then you certainly put far too much trust in a man who''s family you''d seen scattered and dispossessed."


    "I don''t-"


    The knife twisted, and his chest felt as though it had been set on fire.


    "I had to watch as you fumbled again and again, throwing away lives with your indecisiveness and obsessions. Not peasant lives either. Good lives, noble lives, and I could do nothing other than blindly follow you, keeping my thoughts to myself. I couldn''t even speak my distaste for you out loud in case one of your pet cripples caught wind, nor could I indulge in drink in case I divulged my hatred for you while deep in my cups. You took everything from my family. We had a castle, lands, power, wealth. You took that from us. All of us. The rightful nobility of your father''s kingdom, tossed aside like unwanted dregs."


    Lykourgos reached to his belt with a shaking hand, looking for his dagger, but of course, it wasn''t there. His blades were with his regular garb in his room.


    I fucking hate courtly clothes.


    If he could just reach down to his boots-


    His legs shook with the exertion of just trying to hold himself up, let alone when he tried to reach his arms down.


    Okay, that''s not happening.


    "Years I waited to inherit those lands, but with one letter your father thought to strip it all away. And you, you, who were so eager to bring about destruction, gleefully set about enacting his misbegotten will. Saints, I hate you."


    The prince raised his hands in a weak attempt to throttle his assailant, but found he could barely raise his arms with the pain in his chest. A hissed breath rattled out between his teeth, every inhale sending profuse pain through his body, white-hot and clouding his mind. He could barely register the words coming out of Isen''s mouth, his every focus on the knife in his chest and on trying to fend off the darkness in the corners of his vision.


    This isn''t happening. This can''t be happening. I''m trapped in a nightmare, someone wake me up, please, I can''t be-


    A pained groan forced it''s way out of his throat, derailing his thoughts.


    "You know, there''s something about you that you, yourself, haven''t realised yet. Every time you get knocked down, every time you''re unable to reach your goal, you have an epiphany and get back up. You keep fighting for reasons I can''t hope to understand. Not given your peasant blood, anyway. Still, the matter of your birth aside, I at least can say I genuinely always did admire your tenacity."


    The man squeezed the prince''s shoulder in a death grip, so thoroughly that Lykourgos'' arm went limp at his side.


    "You get back up every time, knowing for certain that this time, surely, surely you''ll succeed. Then you fail again. But I think there''s something you''ve failed to realise. Actually, I think you know deep down what it is, but you don''t want to admit it to yourself. Your dreams were never unachievable, and the problem was never with your attitude or effort or even your skills."


    There was a brief pause, and for two seconds there was a deafening silence on the palace battlements.


    "The only thing that ever stopped you from reaching your dreams, was that the person having them was you."


    Isen was silent again for a few moments, the only sound on the battlements that of Lykourgos'' hyperventilating, shallow breaths.


    The blade twisted again, and for a brief moment the prince''s world went white.


    Isen''s other hand maintained its death grip on his shoulder, at this point the only thing keeping the prince on his feet.


    "I don''t know who they''ll name king after this. I don''t think it''ll matter either. Between you and me, I do have a little secret I might have forgotten to bring up to anyone."


    Lykourgos forced himself to keep breathing, his struggles forgotten as he gripped at the traitor''s shirt to keep himself somewhat upright. One last time the knife twisted, and another strangled gasp left his throat.


    Isen leant in close, his voice a stage-whisper.


    "I might have made a few friends in Owkrestos. The regency council of King Aleksandar might not have cared much for my plans, but when Lord Aertax Blackoak caught wind of them, he was much more receptive. The most powerful man in Owkrestos, forced away from the king''s regency council by jealous nobles, denied his right, just as I was denied my inheritance. So we made a deal."


    The knife was ripped from his chest, and the prince collapsed into the Lieutenant.


    "There will be chaos here, now that you''re all but dead. Everyone will think your brother ordered you killed in your hour of victory. Few will support him now. That means the remaining nobility will squabble and fight amongst themselves. When this land is at its weakest Lord Blackoak will strike with all the armies under his command, and conquer this kingdom for his own. With his newfound power he can turn on his erstwhile liege, and dethrone his king. Two bastard kings dethroned in one fell swoop."


    The knife found its way further down, this time plunging into his torso, and the prince jolted in the traitor''s arms.


    "Of course, he''ll need someone native to Teleytaios to oversee the vast expanses of his new lands, won''t he? Someone willing to do what needs to be done in his name? Someone who knows Teleytaios, how she acts, how she feels. He''ll need me in the years to come."


    The man''s voice was halfway between fury and satisfaction as he spoke, clearly torn between killing the prince as fast as he could and taking his time, relishing the moment.


    For better or worse, it seemed that the latter argument was winning out in his mind.


    "You know I always did hate you for the same reasons I admired you; too tenacious, too bloody-minded, too... lucky. Yes, that''s the word: lucky. It all just fell into your lap, didn''t it? Never mind that you were born to someone not of royal blood, never mind that you upended every noble tradition and expectation you were supposed to uphold, never mind-"


    The man stopped himself for a moment, took a deep breath, and then seemed to compose himself. In but a moment that smug, self-satisfied grin was back on his face and the knife was twisted once more.


    "Never mind any of that. Never mind it. It''s all in the past now, after all. With your death this nightmare will finally be over, and legitimate rule can pass on to those better suited to the task at hand. Those who rely on skill and pedigree rather than luck and the blunders of others.


    "You will not be missed, Prince Lykourgos Sperakos. Perhaps by your brother, perhaps by those few who call you friend, but few else will remain to mourn you. Those who do will get the chance to join you soon enough."


    That almost sent Lykourgos into a panic, the knowledge that his friends and last remaining family member might be in danger making him desperately try to move just a little to escape his fate.


    "Now now, none of that. They aren''t in any immediate danger, not at the moment anyway. Their deaths will not be by the hands of me and mine as yours is to be, that much I can assure you. I care not for the deaths of commoners and lowborns, nor for any who fall under the twin categories of insanity: madness and chivalry.


    "No, their deaths will not be at the hands of my men. Not unless it happens to be on the battlefield of course, but even one as stupid as you can surely understand that."


    He attempted to clutch at the wound, but his arms strained to do so much as tremble in response to his commands.


    "I don''t- I don''t understand."


    The Lieutenant smiled sardonically at him.


    "Of course you don''t. You''re a bastard. A half-formed, mongrel bred, falsely-royal bastard. You can''t understand the mind of a nobleman. You struggle to understand royalty, so what hope could you have of understanding me? Of understanding what you''ve put me through.


    "But you were lucky, Lykourgos. Even if you never thought so, you were very lucky indeed. The battles of Haestinghen, of the Einarbrycge, the Anarian Marches, of Anaria itself, you always clawed your way to a victory despite all the odds being against you.


    "Of course, it was very nearly different at the Siege of Ousdaal. Twice you nearly died, by my understanding. It was only through chance that you ordered me to remain at the camp instead of entering the breach with you, else I would have put an arrow between your eyes myself. But no. Dumb luck won out once again.


    "Do you know the amount of favours I had to call in, the amount of blackmail I had to gather, to get the Choir to support your sister? Then I heard your friend mention something about a ''strange patriarch'' to you, and I knew that with just one stroke of luck all of that would come to nothing."


    The traitor''s teeth gritted at the last few words, and he forced the knife deeper into the prince''s chest.


    "So I acted as fast as I could, and got a few little friends set up to kill you in your sleep. I hated having to improvise like that, always so messy and unpredictable, though I admit that I did get my hopes up when I started seeing their agents embedded around the camp. But then, then-"


    The man cut himself off with a breathless laugh.


    "By sheer chance, your little whore of a cupbearer stumbled onto the scene and clumsily helped you fend them off."


    The knife left him once more, and Lykourgos could do naught but watch on with bleary eyes as it was raised to his own throat.


    "But none of that matters now. Because then you asked to speak with me in private for my ''bravery'' in storming this city. Because your luck has finally run out. Your tenacity, your will to survive, will come to nothing here and be both know it. All those things that I despised and admired are done with, empty, and hollow. I realised something on the way here; why didn''t Master Elikoidi know about the assassins? Then it came to me. Of course! Lieutenant Ingfred let it out in conversation with me, but for some reason it slipped my mind after I had him killed by my archers on the road here.


    "Now that was stupidity on your part; you didn''t even question the fact he''d led a bunch of longbowmen into the woods then turned up riddled with arrows without a culprit ever being found? But I digress, let us return back to you and your little spymaster friend; that was your deal with him, wasn''t it? He gets free reign outside the law, so long as no one watches you.


    "So I came here, and I got to do this myself. I would have preferred to keep my hands clean of this, to alleviate any suspicions and watch the chaos unfold up close, but at least I can take solace in the knowledge that I get to watch you die."


    Ichor bubbled out from between the prince''s teeth, a tiny trickle of blood running down his chin from the corner of his mouth as his assailant smiled down at him.


    "This is how I''ve wanted too see you for so long, Lykourgos. Powerless. Completely at my mercy. I always did admire your tenacity."


    Saliva fell freely from Lykourgos'' mouth as he panted in exertion, the spittle mixing with the blood and miniscule shavings of bone on the floor between them.


    "I hated you for so long. I could slit your throat right now. But I won''t. You''ve taken everything from me. I''ve dreamed of this moment for years, I think it''s only right that I savour it while it lasts."


    Lieutenant Isen leaned in close to Lykourgos, his breath hot and heavy, a sadistic smile plastered across his face. They locked eyes, and for the first time Lykourgos truly saw how deep hatred could run.


    "Forgive me for speaking in cliches, ''your Grace'', but I''m very much going to enjoy watching the light leave your eyes for true this time."


    The man wore a humourless smile as he let go of the prince, and without his support Lykourgos fell unceremoniously to the floor.


    "I heard that your mother was little more than a whore whom your father bedded on campaign. I have heard that your siblings were mad in different ways. I know that your father possessed an insanity all of its own to try and deny the nobility their rights."


    The man knelt down to whisper in Lykourgos'' ear as he writhed weakly on the ground, his voice mocking in tone.


    "Your peasant blood was the only stain people knew of, Lykourgos. But I know better. I know what you really are, and you do not impress me.


    "You''re no hero, no conqueror, no bringer of justice. You''re just a boy who thought he could change the way the world worked, and nothing more.


    Isen stood, and raised a hob-nailed boot. The traitor brought it crashing down upon the prince''s head, leaving his mind swimming in a morass of tar as his assailant turned to walk away. Lykourgos lay slack on the floor. He was tired.


    "Goodbye, your Grace."


    The last thing Lykourgos could make out was the blurred sight of someone in distress, and a commotion somewhere in the area around him, but he couldn''t concentrate on that for long.


    His head was swimming in blackness, and his chest felt so hot. He was so tired.


    The last thing he heard was his own rasping, strangled breaths, before everything went black.


    Tired.

 The Field Rats Banquet - Epilogue:

    <u>Epilogue</u>


    <u>The Second Day of the First Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    It hadn''t taken him long to make his way to Anaria, maybe three days? Truth be told he could probably have walked the route in his sleep from anywhere in the world, let alone a town with an admittedly shoddy road leading straight there. There was a mixed feeling of relief and panic, he sensed in the air. Relief at the end of a war, but panic over the attempted assassination of the new sovereign.


    He rolled his eyes. Sovereigns were a copper a dozen in this age. Kings, princes, cardinals, counts, dukes, and a hundred other ranks of ''leaders'' and ''divine appointees''.


    As if the divine had ever chosen a sovereign to rule.


    Well, there had been that one time a few centuries back. And there were the ones from back in the old times, when they were more involved in the world. Not the ''old days'' that the men he had spoke to from this period recognised, from less than nine centuries ago. No, the true old days. How long had it been since then? He suspected that his mind had degraded to far to truly know.


    But no. There had been no divinely selected ruler in this world for quite some time, no matter how much those who sat their thrones and seats of power wished to think otherwise. He had learned to his cost not to attempt to see some particular, ''special'', mortal rule over other mortals. There were too many horror stories from this world''s past to think otherwise. He thought a brief moment of the most soft spoken of his old friends, who had ranged deep to the south when madness and terror was in the midst of overrunning the world. He had rallied the southernmost peoples of the world against the threats they had faced, but all he had done was thrust them into a different crisis as soon as the immediate threat had abated. He knew that his old friend despised himself through all of his remaining years for causing the collapse, the wholesale destruction, of such a promising people through nothing more than good intentions.


    He should have learned from that lesson himself. It wasn''t like he hadn''t made that mistake before. But no, he just had to get involved when a promising young princeling chanced upon him some nine centuries ago.


    The world could use people like that young prince now. Maybe this new one Seventh seemed to be aiding would be similar? He doubted it. There were very few men who could match the young King Harald in his mind.


    Speaking of Seventh, they had survived their nasty encounter with that cult as well. More importantly, it seemed the young wingling had already made a full recovery. Even by the standards of their kind that was a fast healing process, and for that much he was deeply relieved.


    Of course the mental scars of the incident would linger on the poor thing for some time, but given the speed by which their physical form had healed and their knowledge of dream-magics, he didn''t think he needed to be overly worried about that.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    He looked around the throne room, a sense of indifference filling him. This place had lost much in recent centuries, it would seem. Little of old Anaria''s splendour remained to be marvelled at; it was little more than an overgrown, walled sty at the moment.


    Then there was the matter of the ''Heptarchy'', as it seemed to be known. Gods, how far mankind had fallen since last he had walked amongst them.


    He could still picture Harald sitting the throne in his mind. That brilliant, inquisitive boy that should have shaped mankind''s future.


    He supposed he had, in a sense. Just not how he was supposed too.


    He took a series of deep breaths and cleared his mind. His friend had been dead for centuries, almost a millennia, his body immortalised in a sarcophagus baring his likeness. When he had first demanded to see it he had received a great many confused looks, and a statement that only the Knights of the Order of the Bloody Cross were worthy look upon his visage. He had had to control himself greatly in that moment to stop himself from bringing the entire Keep housing him down upon their heads. Did they not realise that he had fucking trained the founder of their Order? That he had helped him recover the body of the King they now so revered? What right did they think they had in denying him-


    He took a deep, stuttering breath. It didn''t matter anymore. There was a new Prince here now, apparently just as hungry for knowledge and ablaze with ambition as the last had been.


    This one would need his guidance, just as the last had. And so, he would watch, and wait, and make his plans. The world would be whole again, he knew it.


    If their little prince made it through the next few days.


    At the very least he knew he would not be alone this time. Seventh was with him, still treating him just as reverentially as they had in their short meeting all those centuries ago.


    Gods, they''re still but a child. As they begin to grow...


    A smile formed on his face as he imagined how the young ''Seer'' would grow into their powers. A mastery of Dream-Magic was one thing, but his Angelic-Magic? That they had yet to unfurl.


    Oh how they despaired, how they all fretted. Their little prince had taken a nasty wound, it was all anyone would talk about. None yet knew how or why, or even by whom, but nonetheless he was out cold for the time being.


    It was the Cult of the Choir! The Alemans! Prince Rhema! A parting gift from Princess Roma!


    He wasn''t impressed, to say the least. Harald had at least gone down fighting, even if he was a heroic fool.


    He wouldn''t allow himself to get attached to another would-be great monarch again.


    Better that this one dies quickly, he thought.


    Perhaps he was being needlessly cruel. Seventh seemed to like this one, and liked his brother even more, so maybe he would suspend his judgement until he could truly get a grasp on the situation and his surroundings.


    Maybe.


    There was some melancholy mood brewing inside him. He supposed being here just brought back bad memories.


    A great many bad memories.


    How was it that mankind could have become so... so... fractured?


    When last he had stood here there were four nations in the civilised world; Klironomea, Terranea, the Sotenari and the Kikhepis. Now there were dozens, each of them little more than a fragment of what was.


    Much has changed in the last few centuries, he thought to himself, there is little that remains same here, now, as it was back then.


    But looking around at the same chaos and despair he had seen in this very hall almost nine centuries ago, he couldn''t help but feel that nothing had changed at all.

 A Promise Fulfilled: The Jay and the Jackdaw

    <u>A Promise Fulfilled: The Jay and the Jackdaw</u>


    <u>Gr¨¢igdeireadh, Eastern Aurinsay, the Brythonic Isles.


    The Twelfth Day of the Second Moon, 600 AD.</u>


    Gr¨¢inne didn''t understand why the other kids were acting like the newcomer was weird. He seemed relatively normal to her. His voice sounded different to the rest of the villagers, but it wasn''t like she couldn''t understand him. Arwen, she''d heard him called. He seemed relatively quiet, though she supposed that the boys he was training with would make a direwolf seem quiet. They had a particular talent for making a lot of noise when doing very little.


    Arwen was nice, by her estimation. He was different to the rest of the village, except Old Kerwyn, since he was... what was the word the grown-ups had used? Oh yeah, foreign. He was from somewhere else, basically. She thought it was silly that grown-ups had a fancy word for that, but then most of the things adults did were odd. He''d been living in the village for a week or two now, and whilst he was always polite to everyone he seemed to keep his distance from most of the other children in the village, and they from him. Something to do with him being from Brythonia.


    Which was stupid. Brythonia was just across the water from Aurinsay. Why did it matter that he''d come here by boat instead of being born here?


    Arwen might not have been Aurinsian as she was, but that didn''t matter to her. She didn''t understand why the men in the village shunned him for that. He kept the same gods as them, didn''t he? He spoke the same language, if in a slightly weird way, and was already a better shot than the other boys in the village.


    That last point didn''t seem to be making him any friends, which was quite evident when it came to swordplay. He wasn''t a particularly bad swordsman compared to the other boys, but it was clear that he was more at home with his bow than any blade. She watched from the side as two of the other boys ganged up on him again and he was sent back into the dirt almost as soon as he''d gotten up, and she resisted the urge to go down their and fight them herself.


    As the huntsman called the bout and walked away, Arwen remained on his back in the dirt looking somewhat dazed. She couldn''t make out exactly what was being said to him, but she thought it might be best to make sure nothing bad happened.


    "Oi, you three, the bout''s been called. You can bugger off now."


    The two boys on their feet looked at her, somewhat surprised by the language coming out of her mouth, as she marched her way towards them.


    "You got rocks between your ears or something? Scram, go!"


    They might not have looked like they enjoyed being ordered around by her, but eventually one of them tugged on the sleeve of the other''s tunic and motioned for them to leave. She watched them go with a feeling of satisfaction as she turned and offered her hand to the Brythonian boy.


    "Thanks," he started, his voice somewhat hesitant, "my name''s Arwen."


    She scoffed a little before responding, pulling him to his feet.


    "I know that; you''ve been here for a little while now. I''m Gr¨¢inne."


    He smiled at her.


    "Thanks for that. I still think they aren''t used to me being here yet."


    "Used to you being here? Arwen, they''ve had what, two weeks to get used to you by now? They''ve had time enough to know better. Do they do that often?"


    He blinked at her.


    "Do what?"


    She rolled her eyes.


    "Pick on you."


    He shook his head hurriedly.


    "No, of course not! They don''t pick on me, I just... I just need a bit more training in swordplay, that''s all!"


    She raised an eyebrow at him, and he looked away with reddening cheeks.


    "I don''t believe that, and neither do you. Come on, dust yourself off then lets go play something. We''re friends now."


    He blinked a few times in surprise.


    "Huh? Oh, okay! That sounds nice to me!"


    She smiled at him, and he smiled back.


    <hr>


    Summer came and summer went, and the two of them became inseparable. It was rare for them to be seen apart for more than a day, and the two of them seemed to be growing around each other like intertwined branches. She very much enjoyed spending time with him, even more so whenever she got to thump someone giving him shit for being born somewhere different to everyone else. She thought it was stupid. Arwen had lived amongst the village for quite some time now, and had become well-liked by most of the parents for "keeping his nose clean", whatever that meant. She''d also become quite the terror to the boys in the village for her ability to seemingly show up whenever one of them was about to do something that might get them in trouble.


    A bit like right now.


    There was no real reason she''d decided to walk out to the fields between Gr¨¢igdeireadh and Grywhendaigh, especially not this late in the night, or should that be this early in the morning? Either way, it seemed her intuition when it came to catching people in the midst of trouble was still sharp. What she hadn''t expected was to find Arwen lying down in the middle of one of the fields, arms behind his head as he looked up at the stars above. Normally she''d call one of the adults to report someone breaking the rules, but then this was Arwen, the boy who never broke the rules, and besides the adults were probably all asleep now anyway and he was only breaking curfew so it wasn''t like he was hurting anyone-


    She took a deep breath to slow her mind.


    "Hey."


    She stepped forwards and sat down next to him, his eyes never leaving the night sky.


    "Hey."


    The two of them were silent for a long time, neither making any real move to talk or even really acknowledge the other. It was... nice, she thought, to have someone she didn''t need to do anything around. She could just... well, she could relax for a bit. There was a distant howl from somewhere to the north, answered by another to the south. She turned her head both times as though she would be able to see the hounds if she looked hard enough, and only stopped when she realised Arwen had turned to look at her as she did so, smiling at her.


    "The hour of the hound. It''s my favourite hour of the day."


    She turned back to look at him, an unreadable emotion on his face.


    "Why''s that?"


    "Well... you promise you won''t laugh?"


    She blinked a few times, a little taken aback by the vulnerability in his voice.


    "Of course. If it''s important to you I''d not make fun of it. Never."


    He smiled up at her again, and something in her chest skipped a little at the expression.


    "I''m still... I''m still an outsider to the other boys in the village. It doesn''t matter what I do, they never see me as one of them. So I like to come out here for an hour or two most nights, usually at the hour of the hound. No-one''s awake, just me. No-one''s around to bother me, or belittle me. I like to come here to just... be alone for a little while."


    She nodded at his words, the skip in her chest becoming a dull ache, and she resolved to beat some sense into the other boys until they treated Arwen better. But first, she should leave him be.


    "I''m sorry for barging in on your alone time. I''ll leave you be."


    But as she made to rise from where she was sat, a hand gently tugged on her arm. She looked down at Arwen, the dark doing little to conceal the flush of red on his cheeks as he spoke.


    "No, you can stay if you''d like."


    The next words he spoke were almost a whisper, but she heard them nonetheless.


    "I like being alone better when it''s with you."


    There was another howl in the distance as she slid down on the grass next to him, both of them staring up at the night sky.


    "Why are there so many wild dogs on this island? There are some on Brythonia but nowhere near as many as here. The ones here are much bigger as well, but thinner. Why is that?"


    "Well, they''re the descendants of the greyhounds of Jain¨¦ ¨® Braidislaigh of course!"


    He blinked at her in confusion a few times, clearly trying to make sense of what she''d said and jog his memory.


    "Isn''t there a song about that?"


    "Yes there is, but are you telling me in all the time you''ve lived here you haven''t heard the story of Jain¨¦ ¨® Braidislaigh yet?"


    He shook his head


    "Gods, how? I love that story. Here, listen, it goes something like this..."


    He turned to her and paid seemingly absolute attention as she regaled him with a tale of a huntress and her two faithful hounds, of how they caught a hart that had evaded all other hunters before them, and of how she had her two faithful greyhounds gorge themselves on the flesh and blood of the hart before they whelped, and fell asleep with her against a tree.


    His attention never faltered as she told the tale, and he rolled onto his front so as to look at her as she continued, telling him of how seven other hunters happened upon her and, infuriated that Jain¨¦ had succeeded where all of them had failed, resolved to kill her. She told him of how, despite arrows finding their mark below her breast and above one of her knees, she still managed to kill six of her assailants and gravely injure the last, who rode back home with great difficulty as a result.


    There was a mixture of tears and wonder in his eyes as she finished the tale, telling of how at the end there was nowt but a slain huntress, a broken longbow, two dead dogs, and eight greyhound pups left alone in the forest.


    "And as they grew in their wild homes, with neither mother nor father nor kennelmaster to nurture them, the eight hounds would become the first of the wildhounds of Aurinsay."


    "Woah..."


    She turned to look back at him, realising with a little start that she''d gotten so invested in the telling of the story that she''d nearly forgotten that she was telling it to someone.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon."Sorry, I got carried away a little bit. Would you like me to-"


    "Are there any more stories?"


    She dragged her gaze away from the waves crashing on the rocks of the breakwater somewhere off the coast, and turned to look back at him. There was a look of wonder and almost a star struck glaze over his eyes as he looked at her. How could she say no to him when he looked at her like that?


    "Well, I can think of one or two, if you can remember any of your own from back home?"


    He nodded fervently.


    "Yeah! I remember loads of stories! There''s the ones about the Jay and the Jackdaw, then there''s all the ones about the Greystones, and there''s even a few about the faerie circles on the ground in the woods."


    "Tell me the one about the faerie circles and I''ll tell you another."


    He nodded again and sat up, his hands accentuating his words as he spoke excitedly.


    "Okay, so it goes something like this..."


    <hr>


    "... and so that''s why we venerate the Greystones so much! It''s... things from Brythonia, and the rest of the islands come to that, have a connection with the mystical forces of the world that the mainlanders lack, or have forgot. There might not be any man or woman alive that can truly harness magic, but that doesn''t mean it isn''t affecting the world around us!"


    She looked at him as he spoke, sure in the knowledge that the wonder in his eyes must surely be matched by her own.


    "So magic lives in the Greystones? There isn''t any magic here, so that would explain why."


    He shook his head in an almost excited manner.


    "No, silly! Magic has always been here!"


    He grabbed her hand and lifted it up, as though it were necessary to make his point.


    "Magic is in brambles and bird''s nests, under the tongue and in the palm. Magic is in everything around us, we just need to look for it!"


    He said the words with such assurance, such intensity, that she couldn''t help but believe him. She barely stifled a yawn, but her efforts proved fruitless as Arwen yawned anyway, setting her off as well. To be fair they must have been led out here for hours now, and she was quite tired. He looked it as well. They really should think about heading back soon.


    But it was surprisingly comfortable here. Maybe just five minutes to rest a little...


    "Hey, Arwen?"


    "Hm? What is it, Gr¨¢inne?"


    "Do you think you could tell me another story?"


    "Sure, if you''d like! Give me a moment to think of one though, I''m starting to get a little tired."


    He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and gave a little chuckle at his own words. She only realised then that he was still holding her hand, which made her smile a little too. She felt her eyelids start to droop ever so slowly as he thought, the gentle sounds of waves in the distance lulling her to sleep.


    "Okay, I think I''ve got one..."


    But whatever he said next was drowned out by the embrace of sleep, becoming little more than white noise in her tired mind.


    <hr>


    They''d woken up the next day in a tangle of limbs from where they''d curled up with each other in their sleep, then had been subjected to what should have been quite an extensive telling off, but by her reckoning it had seemed half-hearted at best. Most of the adults seemed to either coo or snicker good-naturedly at them when they''d been found, so the two of them were let off with just a warning to "Make sure you bloody well come home next time."


    Nights like that only became more common over time. If any of the adults noticed them sneaking out, they never mentioned it again.


    Quite some time had passed since then. Well, the adults wouldn''t have thought so, but to her two years was quite a long time. Arwen still might not have been fully accepted by the other youths in the village, but at least he wasn''t being picked on any more. The last time someone had tried to pick on him she''d given them a glare that dared them not to burst into flames and uttered some very choice words that some of the adults would be mortified if they knew that she knew what they meant.


    She was quite proud to say she''d grown up to be every bit as formidable as her mother, if mildly more uncouth in the language she used. But then that by itself was quite funny at times. She had a talent for running a household and making tough decisions, which meant she was already being taken in consideration for helping with the running the tribe in a few years when she grew a little older, since those skills were invaluable in a small village such as this.


    As for him, well, today was to be special for him. It marked ten-and-four winters since his birth, and as such today he would be undergoing the ceremony that would turn him from a boy into a man. Almost everyone in the village would be in attendance, and apparently Old Kerwyn would be overseeing the ritual himself. It wasn''t often the old druid led ceremonies nowadays, but he''d always had a soft spot for the only other Brythonian in the village. Arwen had been about as excited as she''d ever seen him earlier that day, and even now he was practically buzzing with a want to complete the ceremony right away.


    "Eager, are we?"


    He nodded earnestly.


    "Yeah! I''ll be a man! I''ll be able to go out on hunts and track umbra with the other hunters in the village, after all, I''m good enough with my longbow, aren''t I?"


    She nodded at that. He might have been good with his bow a few years back, but time and practice had certainly lent itself well to his skills. He was a true marksman if ever she''d seen one. Time and exercise had also put more muscle on his body; nothing bulky like some of the warriors she''d seen, but certainly enough to make a difference when it came to the drawing of his bowstring or when helping with the autumn harvests.


    He was still the least skilled swordsman out of all the boys in the village, but then no-one was perfect.


    Truth be told, she was almost as excited as he was for this ceremony. She''d not been able to attend one since she was eight winters old, before Arwen had even arrived at the village, and as a result she was looking forwards to observing the ceremony once more. Last time she had bore witness to the ritual it seemed almost magical, or at the very least mystical in nature. It bound the boy undergoing it to the soil and trees and waters of the Brythonic Isles, imbuing them with the spirit of whatever animal they had caught earlier that day for the ceremony.


    Six-hundred and four winters had gone by since everything had collapsed on the continent. She still wasn''t sure why the people of the Brythonic Isles measured the passing of time from an event they had no part in involving some fallen king thousands of miles away, but who was she to question that decision? After all, it wasn''t like she knew of any other ways to keep track of the years. Six-hundred and four winters. It was odd, she thought, that so much time had passed since everything fell apart for the men of the south, and yet still their kings and princes still bickered on.


    If it had been her down there she would have knocked their heads together and got them to stop their bloody fighting before they managed to collapse everything again.


    She shook her head and broke her own musings. The mainlanders were strange, and always would be strange. Not much she could do about that. Besides, it was time for her to start helping with the preparations.


    Around an hour before twilight she found herself with Old Kerwyn on the ritual grounds helping him to prepare what little remained to be done.


    "Has he come in with his kill yet?"


    "Aye," came the gruff reply, "not long ago neither. Jackdaw, he brought. Makes sense."


    She briefly looked over to the old man before she returned to cleaning out the oaken bowl.


    "How so?"


    "God of the hunt and wild. He always did worship that one more fervently."


    She looked over at him in comprehension.


    "He means to bind himself with the blood of the god he worships?"


    Old Kerwyn smiled at her.


    "Aye, he does. Good on him for that, that''s what I say. Them other blockheads all went out and killed wildhounds, something about being ''pack''. It''s a nice sentiment, if a bit overdone. Here, listen to this: one daft bugger from when I was younger tried to get a direwolf for his coming of age ceremony. Stupid bastard. Only found one of his shins, rest of him was long gone. But still, even if he''d succeeded, it wouldn''t have gone well. After all, who''d want to be close to someone who tied their soul to a monster?"


    She grunted a noise of agreement at that. Any man who wanted a piece of an umbra inside them was wrong.


    "Is the bowl ready?"


    "Yep. Here you go."


    She placed the bowl gently upon the stump before the old Druid, and took a step back.


    "Thanks. Grab that beaker while you''re waiting."


    She nodded and moved to follow his instructions as he quarter-filled the bowl with water and seven sprigs of mistletoe whilst mumbling a prayer under his breath. She did not know to which, of the seven corvids he was calling to, nor even how many of those gods he was calling to, but she trusted him to know what he was doing. He was approaching his eighth decade after all, and he''d performed this ceremony hundreds of times.


    With a bronze knife he slit the body of the jackdaw open and let it''s blood blossom in the water, careful not to allow anything but the blood fall into the mixture. When it was drained he gently wrapped it in a piece of cloth to the side, and motioned for the beaker. He added the unwatered wine held within the beaker into the bowl with the other liquids, using his bronze knife to stir the mix. Old Kerwyn looked over at her with a smile, and noticing the slightly confused expression on her face he began to explain what this ritual mix represented.


    "Blessed water, that he may enjoy the protection of the gods. The blood of a fresh-slain animal, brought down by his own hand to tie his spirit to that of the animal, though that bit I think you knew already. Mistletoe for a oneness with the land, a promise that he will not take more than he needs from the world of the Corvid Gods."


    "And the unwatered wine?"


    Old Kerwyn smiled while chuckling.


    "It''s supposed to represent purity and strength. In reality I use it because everyone who undergoes their name-day ritual is nervous, no matter how much they say they aren''t, and a stiff drink helps settle them somewhat."


    She nodded, smiling mischievously. At that he rounded on her and poked her side, a stern yet amused tone to his voice.


    "And no, you may not use the ritual wine to try and get him drunk, young lady."


    She gave him an exaggerated sigh, to which he threw his head back and laughed.


    "Oh, gods help the man you marry. You''ll run roughshod all over him."


    She laughed with him, ignoring how the thought of marriage made her stomach feel odd.


    "I''ll run roughshod over the village anyway."


    "Heh, that much is true. Run along and get yourself ready, little ''un. Be back before the hour''s up."


    She nodded and took off back to the village.


    <hr>


    It was twilight. Most of the village were gathered in the small clearing just within the bounds of the forest, watching the ceremony. In front of the semi-circular crowd stood only Old Kerwyn the Druid and of course, Arwen. Between the two of them was the ritual drink in the small oaken bowl on a tree stump. All hushed whispers came to a stop as the old Druid raised a weathered hand, and for a moment the only sounds in the clearing were those made by the crackling of the animal fat as it burned atop the torches lining the ritual grounds.


    Old Kerwyn lowered his hand and used his bronze knife to make a cut along Arwen''s hand with just enough force to break skin and draw blood, and bid the boy hold his hand over the bowl, adding a few drops of his own life''s blood to the ritual mixture.


    "You are one with the gods in that drink, boy."


    The old man let go of the boy''s hand and nodded at him in a gesture of reassurance.


    "Who stands before the gods today, and for what reason are they beseeched?"


    "I am Arwen. I come to be raised to manhood under the eyes of the pantheon."


    There was an ever-so-slight stutter to Arwen''s voice that most people didn''t notice, but she did. He was nervous, like Old Kerwyn said he''d be. She was glad that the old Druid had chosen to personally oversee Arwen''s coming-of-age; not only were they from the same island but the old man had a wealth of experience at his beck and call, so she knew her friend''s ascension to manhood would be seamless.


    Old Kerwyn cleared his throat to speak, Arwen letting out what seemed to be a shaky breath as he readied his responses. She knew he''d been rehearsing what he''d say for days, maybe weeks. She knew that he really wanted to get this right.


    "To which land does your soul belong?"


    "I swear on soil and earth, I am born anew of this land."


    "To those who would seek to harm those behind you, what course do you give?"


    "I swear on wind and wave, no invader shall find my hand open in supplication. I shall face them, alongside my brothers or alone. I shall face them."


    The atmosphere was somewhere between happiness and solemn. The adults were happy that there would soon be another trusted set of hands to help on hunts and tracks, but there was also the knowledge that this oath was binding. Of course she did not doubt his words for a second, she knew he would stand by the village that had become his home whether or not he had spoken a few serious words, but there was still an undercurrent that, no matter what, this was to be his life now. There was no recourse from this; a man who broke his name-day oath would never find either hearth or home open to him across any of the isles.


    She saw Old Kerwyn nod and smile kindly at Arwen before continuing, a look in his eyes that seemed to be trying to convey that he was doing well.


    "When you one day fall, where shall you lie?"


    "I swear by moss, by stone, and by bronze, when I fall I shall remain a part of this land. I swear it."


    "Do you have any other oaths you would swear?"


    "I swear by soil and earth, by wind and wave, by moss and bronze and stone, I will forever stand by my new brothers in the protection of my home, and of the people who live within it.


    I swear by all the gods, known and unknown, that I will strive to uphold that which they represent and believe in. I will never let them find me wanting."


    "Then drink, Arwen. Drink, and rise a man."


    Old Kerwyn handed the boy the small oak bowl containing the ritual drink, and he drunk deeply. When he at last removed the bowl from his lips he was a boy no longer. Old Kerwyn scooped some dirt from the forest floor and mixed it with what was left of the drink before swiping his thumb across Arwen''s forehead and cheeks, leaving a thin trail of the dirtied liquid smeared where his thumb had passed.


    Arwen turned around, crimson-brown beads dripping down his forehead, and when he looked at her his smile beamed so bright she thought she might go blind.

 A Promise Fulfilled: A Lonely Light

    <u>A Promise Fulfilled: A Lonely Light</u>


    <u>Gr¨¢igdeireadh, Eastern Aurinsay, the Brythonic Isles.


    The Forth Day of the Eighth Moon, 606 AD.</u>


    She wasn''t sure exactly when, but things had changed between the two of them these last few years. It was odd. It wasn''t bad, or good, it was just... it was different. The two of them seemed to trip over their own feet and stumble over words when around each other, which seemed strange by itself since neither of them had particularly worried about that before. They still maintained their normal routines, laughing over their mistakes and blunders with an increasing regularity, they still met one another almost every night at the hour of the hound, and they still did their best to stay around one another as often as possible, like it had been when they were children, but there was undeniably something different about... well about the two of them, she supposed. There was a strange pull in her chest when he laughed, an almost melancholic look in his eyes when she smiled at him during their nighttime escapades, a sense that everything was the same but... Gods, she didn''t really know how to frame it. It was definitely still the same, and yet somehow it was different. Old Kerwyn kept looking between the two of them and smiling whilst shaking his head and muttering to himself. That confused her as well.


    She was dragged from her thoughts by the cause of her confusion, cresting the hill and walking towards her with a smile playing about his lips.


    "Gr¨¢inne!"


    She smiled back.


    "Arwen. Is the harvest going well?"


    He nodded at her, smile still fixed in place.


    "Aye, not too bad by half! We''re looking at one of the best harvests we''ve had in decades, at least according to some of the older farmers out there. We must have gathered eight tons per hectare on the spring barley, similar for the spring wheat if the other lads are to be believed."


    She nodded back and took some mental notes. Eight tons a hectare? That was a damned good yield indeed!


    "Well, let us hope the Jay keeps us in her embrace a while longer. The orchards?"


    "Flourishing. Probably around one-thousand two-hundred bushels a hectare."


    She stopped and blinked.


    "But that''s... that''s almost twice last year''s yield."


    She motioned for him to walk alongside her as they made their way back to the village.


    "I take it the younger trees started bearing fruit this year?"


    "Aye, they did. We won''t lack for apples nor pears anytime soon, that''s for sure. No word on the livestock yet, I can run down and ask for you if you''d like?"


    She huffed a little and shook her head. He''d become something of her informant when it came to harvest seasons, giving her on-the-ground measurements of their yields in between his harvest-work. It was damn useful for keeping track of how much of each foodstuff the village would have in the coming months and years. It also meant he was run ragged some days.


    "You''ve just got back. Come on, wash yourself off and get changed into some cleaner clothes, there''s bound to be a small celebration tonight when I tell the rest of the village council."


    He chuckled under his breath whilst looking down at the road.


    "Yeah, that sounds good to me. Any chance of-"


    "I''m going to stop you there."


    She stopped walking in her tracks and turned to face him, hands on her hips.


    "Were you seriously going to bring up that one time I asked if there was to be alcohol at a festival?"


    He smiled sheepishly at her and scratched the back of his neck.


    "... maybe?"


    She huffed and carried on walking, trying her best to keep the smile off of her face.


    "Look, you have to admit it was a stupid question, and also really funny."


    "I already agreed with that. Why do you still bring it up?"


    Though he was a few steps behind her she knew he had an almost giddy smile on his face given his tone of voice.


    "Because I always ask stupid questions and you don''t, so I need to try and cling to the few you do ask."


    "... touch¨¦."


    "Touch¨¦? Never heard anyone say that before."


    She shrugged.


    "Heard it said by some fancy captain, a noble-type from the continent. Apparently they say it to mean ''fair enough'' or ''I can''t argue with that''."


    "Well that''s stupid. Why don''t they just say ''fair enough''?"


    She slowed slightly, letting him fall back alongside her, before shooting him an exasperated expression.


    "Arwen, my dearest friend, please do not tell me you forgot that the continent speak different languages to us."


    "..."


    "Arwen?"


    "You said not to tell you!"


    She rubbed the bridge of her nose with her right hand in a gesture of mock frustration.


    "Gods preserve me."


    He looked down at her, smiling but with that almost melancholic glint in his eyes she had noted the last few nights.


    "Hey, there''s a reason you''re gonna be the one running the village and I won''t. You''re the smart one."


    She chuckled at that and carried on down the lane.


    "Come on, let''s get back before they all start making japes at us for ''disappearing'' again."


    He laughed back at her.


    "Yeah, that''s probably for the best. Let''s get moving."


    <hr>


    "Cheers!"


    The great hall in the centre of the village was packed, with everyone but the sentries drinking and feasting the night away. For once there was a lull in the din as half the hall quaffed their drink of choice. She, having a goblet of apple wine in front of her, elected not to partake, instead looking around the room and at the other attendees. There was a glut of food on the table, mostly pork-based, though there was a truly huge game pie in the middle as well as a few fish along the length of the tables. Beers, ciders, apple wines, and even perrys were available by the hogshead. She supposed with the astounding harvest this year there wasn''t much need to be conservative with what they already had, but she would be lying if she said such excess didn''t make the part of her dedicated to helping run the village cry out in offence.


    Still, this was a festival, a celebration, and they had all earned it.


    She took another sip of her drink as the majority of the assembled merrymakers lowered their tankards. She watched as Old Kerwyn laughed while patting the back of one of the youngest attendees who was allowed an alcoholic drink, the poor boy coughing violently after his first quaff. A few men raised their own tankards at him as soon as they were refilled, saluting the boy''s achievement and, she suspected, remembering their own first quaff. She would never be sure why men treated their first time downing a drink like a hunter remembered his first quarry, as a milestone in their young lives, but then she never did understand half of what they did.


    Bloody fools, the lot of them.


    Even so, she couldn''t help but smile at the gesture. They meant well, and that counted for something.


    "Not enjoying the festivities?"


    She turned as Arwen sidled up alongside her.


    "I am, I''m just peoplewatching at the moment."


    He snorted.


    "Then stop. Come on, if you can batter down half the village on the training ground then I''ll bet you can out-drink half of them too."


    She shook her head whilst laughing.


    "Well, now I know you certainly have been drinking."


    "Of course I have! No point letting it all go to waste after all, is there?"


    She shook her head at him whilst smiling.


    "Well, what''s your poison of choice this time then?"


    "A bit of this, a bit of that. Mostly strong perry, but I''ve tried pretty much every drink in the room at this point."


    She feigned a wince as she looked at him, hissing between her teeth for a moment before speaking.


    "You''re gonna have a hell of a hangover come the morning, you know that right?"


    He threw his head back and laughed.


    "Yep! Anyway, I was-"


    "Oi, Arwen! Get over ''ere!"


    Old Kerwyn''s voice cut through the din in the hall, and Arwen smiled sheepishly at her.


    "It seems I''m needed. Will though accompany me, oh fair maid?"


    He spoke in what was quite possibly the worst mainlander impression she had ever heard and accentuated his words with a flourish, stretching out an arm to her.


    Despite the roll of her eyes and the scoff that left her throat, she took his arm all the same.


    "Kerwyn, you old bastard! What''s the shouting for?"


    The old man smiled up at Arwen and nodded at the empty seat opposite. The younger man sat down, and she found an empty chair and moved to bring herself around the table. When Arwen was sat the old man produced two empty tankards and kicked a hogshead next to him. By the way the large barrel didn''t so much as move, it must have been full.


    "Get a spigot in that and we''ll be off. Come on, boy."


    She rolled her eyes. Men. No matter if they''d lived a decade and a half or over eighty winters, they never grew up. Arwen wore an even giddier smile than normal and Old Kerwyn was already ruddy-faced, so the two of them had clearly had more than a few drinks already, but that wouldn''t stop them. She didn''t even blink at Arwen being called ''boy''. He didn''t like it from anyone else, even her, but Old Kerwyn was different. Not because he was more than twice the age of anyone else in the village, but because he was a true friend of Arwen, almost a father figure, having helped raise him since he was a young boy fresh off a boat from Brythonia.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    "What''s in the barrel?"


    The old Druid shrugged.


    "Fucked if I know, but it''s probably strong."


    A few men and women from nearby tables had worked out what was about to transpire, and were gathering to watch. One produced a spigot and righted the barrel, and another took on the task of pouring the drinks levelly. Well, roughly level. She didn''t think there were many sober people left in the room. Someone took a small glass from the barrel and drank it before coughing.


    "Bugger me, that''s strong. Cider, definitely though. Probably one of the stronger ones we''ve had. It''s... I reckon that''s a vintage, ''cause I ain''t tasting a mix."


    Old Kerwyn grunted his affirmation when being given a sample, and Arwen did likewise. When both had gotten acquainted with the taste and smell someone spoke aloud the rules, taking on the role of umpire.


    "Right then, pint for pint, you''re both to match each other. First man to throw up, fall unconscious, or back down is the loser."


    "Aye."


    The two men seated at the table nodded at each other as the drinks were poured. Some seventy years may have separated them, but the two were still fast friends.


    The mugs were pushed into their hands and they clinked them together before quaffing long and mightily.


    "Ahh..."


    Old Kerwyn lowered his mug to the table, followed a few seconds later by Arwen, who wiped his mouth on his sleeve.


    "That is strong, ain''t it?"


    That roused a few chuckles from the table.


    "What, you considering backing out?"


    Arwen scoffed.


    "What, me? And here I thought you new me better than that!"


    A second round was placed into their hands, and Gr¨¢inne resisted the urge to roll her eyes so hard that they would surely disappear inside her head.


    Two rounds, three rounds, four, five, six. The young man and the old sat and quaffed tankard after tankard of the drink until she was sure they would surely both collapse.


    A man called out to them from the side as a rendition of The Selkie''s Shepard was being belted out elsewhere in the hall.


    "How are you liking the drink?"


    Arwen turned, bleary eyed and slightly slurring his words.


    "Haven''t made me mind up yet, give me another and I''ll work it out."


    That earned a true round of laughter from the attending men and women, some of whom patted him on the back in encouragement whilst Kerwyn chuckled.


    "Come on Arwen!"


    She looked around, cheeks dusted red, as she realised it had been her that shouted that out. She took a long swig from her own drink to hide her embarrassment as her best friend smiled at her. The seventh round was passed into their hands. Arwen grasped with two hands, shaking slightly, whilst Kerwyn lounged in his chair.


    "One more, eh?"


    Arwen raised his tankard to cheers, a small amount slopping over the side and onto the table. Seeming not to notice, he raised the mug to his lips and drank.


    He gulped and gulped and gulped before slamming his mug on the table and standing suddenly. The world seemed to slow for a few moments as his eyes seemed to roll back in his head and he fell forwards into the table. Kerwyn raised his own drink in salute then quaffed what was left before walking around the table and raising Arwen''s unconscious form up.


    "A noble second place!"


    There was a round of truly raucous cheering at that as attending men and women congratulated both the victor and the vanquished, before Arwen came too whilst still hoisted.


    "Whoa, hang on, how''d I get up here?"


    The cheering and laugher continued until he was released, whereupon he walked over to her with his legs shaking like a foal.


    "Well, I ''ppear to have lost."


    She smiled at him, her own drink going to her head.


    "Aye, that you did."


    "A noble attempt though?"


    She rolled her eyes at him through chortled laughter.


    "Shut up, idiot. Come on, let''s see if the drink has improved your dancing!"


    There was a flush of red on his cheeks as she downed a goblet someone had left off to the side and all but dragged him to the cleared floor in front of the minstrels, pointedly ignoring the glares that some of the other boys his age sent them. Children, honestly. They still couldn''t get over the fact that he''d come from Brythonia. A fiddler in the hall started up a rendition of a continental song, Cyderwood Fair, taking it from half speed to full in but a verse. The two of them stumbled and tripped and laughed as they danced with each other. Oh, how they laughed! The song was over far too quickly for her liking, and as it drew to a close she looked over and locked eyes with the fiddler. The middle-aged woman winked at her and looked over to the other musicians, before nodding his head sideways at the two of them. A few grins came onto the faces of the players, and as the first rendition of the song came to a close she realised why.


    As the first ended they seamlessly blended it into the start of a second rendition, though as they approached the first verse it was clear what they were doing.


    "They''re playing double-speed!"


    Arwen grinned at that and spun her around, and though he barely caught her she couldn''t help but laugh until tears came to her eyes. Around the hall they danced and spun as fast as they possibly could, doing their absolute best in their drunken states to keep pace with the music. Though they might not have succeeded, they were certainly having the time of their lives.


    As the second rendition came to a close he dipped her low before pulling her back up.


    The two of them were breathless, exhausted, and somewhat flustered. Alcohol overpowering her sense, she did the only thing she could think to do in that moment, pulling him close and kissing him with as much strength as she could muster. His mouth tasted of perry and strong cider, but then she supposed hers probably wasn''t much better. After a few long seconds she realised what she''d done, her cheeks going almost as red as Arwen''s own.


    As she made to pull away in embarrassment, he swooped down and pressed a second, far more tender kiss to her own lips. Their breaths mixed in between them, the stench of alcohol in the air and the sound of the older adults around them cheering louder than she had heard in her life, and yet for all of that she could not care less.


    All suddenly felt very right in the world.


    <hr>


    After that night the two of them knew exactly what had changed between them, and the two of them shied away from it no longer. They''d always been close, and now they were closer still. His sixteenth nameday had just been and gone, and he was to be off with the other boys his age as part of a band of Waryouths. According to one of the more veteran huntsmen in the village there was a pack of direwolves and a couple of nesters in the woods outside the village, and they were to find and bring down at least one of the bastards before returning. The mothers and fathers of the village had said their goodbyes to their children, knowing that there was a very real chance one or two might not return. Arwen had already said his goodbyes to Old Kerwyn, who was the closest thing to a parent the young man had, and if she were to guess the old man spent less time worrying and more time giving sage advice in the time they were given. After all, he was a Druid, and you didn''t live to his age as a Druid without spending a lot of time in the deep woods outsmarting the predators within. As for her, well, they''d said their goodbyes in breathless voices the night before.


    Nonetheless she made sure to seek him out just as he was going.


    "Gr¨¢inne, I should have known you''d find a way to bump into me before leaving."


    She smirked.


    "Why, are you disappointed?"


    He laughed with her, before becoming pensive and if she had to guess, anxious.


    "Are you worried about the hunt? You and I both know that, out of all the blockheads you''re going with, you''re the best shot."


    He shook his head.


    "Don''t worry, I know that. It''s... it''s something else?"


    "And what would that be?"


    He spent a moment seemingly attempting to gather himself as she smiled at him, before taking one last deep breath with closed eyes, opening them again, and looking straight at her.


    "Will you allow us to be married?"


    She blinked at him a few time, trying to comprehend what he''d just said, before bursting out in laughter and pulling him into a hug that could probably crack ribs.


    "Of course! Not much time for a ceremony now though, is there?"


    He laughed with her at that, ignoring the annoyed comments from the rest of his hunting group that he should "bloody well get on with it".


    "I suppose not. But when I get back, you will marry me?"


    "Aye, you will marry me. That''s not up for debate."


    He laughed and ran a hand through his hair in mock frustration, though she noted the way his hands still shook from adrenaline.


    "Dear gods, what have I got myself into?"


    She laughed heartily, elated to have finally been asked.


    "You know when you got back I probably would have asked you if you hadn''t asked me just then?"


    He opened his mouth to speak, but shut it before any sound came out.


    "You know what? I can imagine that, yeah."


    "Well, you might have left it to the last minute, but at least you got to ask!"


    He laughed again, and she couldn''t help but join in. He stopped and seemed to sober himself after a little while.


    "I''ll likely be gone a week or two."


    "Aye, that you will. And when you return..."


    They shared a breathless kiss, equal parts passionate and casual, before parting.


    "We''ll be wed. We''re old enough, and no-one can stop us if it''s what we both want. Do you want that?"


    She nodded frantically, not wanting this moment to end.


    "Gods, yes. It''s been all I''ve wanted for so long."


    His smile was filled with relief as he looked at her.


    "Then as soon as I''m back we''ll ask Old Kerwyn to wed us together. He''s always been kind to us, and he''s still technically a Druid, if getting on a bit."


    She nodded again, and smirked at him.


    "It sounds perfect. I expect you to bring me an impressive wedding gift back from your hunt."


    He laughed his perfect laugh at that, head tilted towards the sky.


    "As you asked so nicely, that I will do."


    She launched herself at him in a hug, and they held each other in a death-grip.


    "Arwen, stop flirting, you coming on the hunt or not?"


    He released her and smiled sheepishly.


    "That''s my cue to leave, I think. Wait for my return?"


    It was a question more than a request, as though he was afraid of saying the wrong thing now they were to be wed.


    She thought it only made him more endearing, to be honest.


    "Of course. I''ll wait for you every day, and when we next meet we''ll be wed together."


    She couldn''t stop herself from saying those words again and again. She''d wanted to hear them for so long that she was worried she''d wake from whatever dream this was and return to her boring, normal life as his friend and nothing more. It was a foolish fear; she reckoned he felt much the same.


    "I promise I''ll wait for you."


    He nodded at her, smiling all the while, and kissed her one last time before turning and walking away.


    After all, he was a waryouth now, and he was needed in his band.


    <hr>


    He never did come back.


    No one was quite sure what had become of him, not even the waryouths who were out with him.


    One day he was there, and the next he was not. Attempts to work out how and why he died were fruitless. Some of the others seemed shaken up by the incident, and a few couldn''t look her in the eye when they returned.


    It seemed he might have let slip their engagement to them after all, not that they were ever discreet about their attraction to each other.


    Some of them were less than respectful.


    "Perhaps an umbra fancied him for dinner?" One of them had said.


    "He always preferred a bow, didn''t he? Maybe he tripped and fell on his sword?" Joked another.


    She''d knocked that one out in a single punch, then kicked him in the gut for good measure. Hard. The jokes stopped after that.


    When she was around, at least.


    They were his warmates! His companions! They should have been with him, should have been shadowing each other constantly!


    Fifteen of them had set out, but he was the only one who never came back.


    It wasn''t fair.


    None of them treated his disappearance with anything even approaching respect! The adults in the village, even the ones who used to avoid him for being ''strange'' and ''foreign'', were at least pretending to mourn.


    His true friends in the village, her included, spent months looking through the dense forests of the island.


    Nothing.


    Old Kerwyn hadn''t been the same since Arwen disappeared. The druid had liked the company of the younger man, seeing as he was the only other Brythonian in a village that was otherwise entirely Aurinsian.


    She''d kept him company as best she could, but she had her own jobs to attend to even in the throes of her grief. Even if she could spare the time, his accent reminded her of what her lover would have sounded like when they''d grown old together.


    If only she could hear him, that was.


    She''d been given her mourning period, and now she needed to continue working.


    Not that time changed anything. Healed anything.


    Sometimes she would have to travel to Grywhendaigh, and every single time she did something inside her would break as she passed by that field where they had spent countless treasured hours looking up at the night sky, no matter how cloudy or rainy a night it was.


    Those memories were bittersweet things now. They were all she had left to cling to.


    Every night, at the hour of the hound, she''d go to the forest line and light the candle she''d placed in a small cairn for him. Maybe he was cold out there. Maybe the light would help him find his way home to her.


    Then they would be wed, and live happily together for the rest of their days.


    She''d lied to herself about that for six months now. For six months she''d waited patiently for him, spent every night alert, watching the forests for his return.


    Every night she lit the candle for him, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would be reunited with him again.


    She just needed to cling on to her hope a little while longer.

 A Promise Fulfilled: Cairn Mist

    <u>A Promise Fulfilled: Cairn Mist</u>


    <u>Gr¨¢igdeireadh, Eastern Aurinsay, the Brythonic Isles.


    The Seventeenth Day of the Ninth Moon, 610 AD.</u>


    Months turned into years. Memories faded. People moved on.


    She didn''t. Couldn''t.


    He should have been hers. He would be hers, as soon as he returned.


    She''d stopped questioning the other boys about what had happened that night almost a year ago. They''d never answered her questions anyway.


    Boys. They were still boys, even after all the happened. Not men. They were far too immature for that, no matter what the coming-of-age ceremony said. And of course, being boys, they were stupid.


    The forest itself was rarely travelled now. The strange happenings made few hunters care to tread its paths, and any foolish enough to try wouldn''t have found it worth their while; what had once been a wealth of wildlife had been depleted, and the few animals still lived amongst those trees were anaemic and sickly, with hardly enough meat on their bones to feed a bairn.


    It was as though the life was being sucked out of the forest.


    The harvests suffered too; a few years ago they had been blessed by the Jay, that most magnanimous of fertility goddesses, for their devotion to love and to live, but now the crops had begun to wither in their fields. How fitting, she thought, that a goddess of love would turn her back on us after one of the most kind-hearted people in the village was abandoned by his brothers in the woods.


    And it was abandonment, of that she had little doubt. The other boys were supposed to be a part of his Waryouth band, a brotherhood that would be forged in hunting and battle. If they had stuck to their oaths to their band, they would have at the very least brought his body back with them.


    But no. Nothing. Not even his bones to bury.


    The poachers and woodsmen that came from other villages were the only people who she could glean anything from these days, but they all said the same thing.


    There was a Siabhne in the woods.


    She''d been warned about these creatures in fae-tales when she was a child; they were spirits doomed to linger beyond death, not of this world but tethered just enough to be able to watch as the world continued on without them. Unable to walk amongst the living, and yet unable to truly pass on.


    As was the norm for such legends, the stories and myths were so splintered that they agreed on very little regarding these creatures. Some legends claimed they glowed a baleful green in the moonlight, others said their skin turned the blue and black of rot and decay, more still claimed a deathly pallor would colour them.


    There was one common thread to the tales, however. All the stories she knew agreed on one thing: the tether.


    The tether of a Siabhne was always yearning. Yearning of another for the spirit, the yearning of the spirit for another, both, it mattered not. It bound them here.


    She wasn''t stupid. She could put two and two together.


    They had yearned for each other for so long, yearned for the life they would share together, yearned for fate to change the hands they were dealt.


    Maybe the fates had listened for once?


    Despite the absurdity of the situation she allowed herself a moment of hope, and an almost conspiratorial smile. The Brythonian isles remembered much of what the rest of the world had forgotten, and though no human could hope to harness the mystical energies that saturated the isles in any meaningful capacity everyone who lived within the embrace of the Corvids knew the truth well; these isles were moulded by magic, and the effects still lingered. Oh, for sure, no one knew who had dragged these isles from the sea, nor who had erected the Greystones at their heart. They did not know who, or what, or when, or even just why. But even so, the effects lingered. Mystical phenomena would occasionally sprout up across the isles, and to her understanding it was much like... how best to explain...


    She pondered for a moment, thinking back to the tales she''d been told as a child, some by Old Kerwyn, others by Arwen himself.


    The Greystones acted as a sort of metaphorical bowl, and magic like water. As with a bowl, if one dripped in water gradually but never emptied it, it would fill. So too with the Greystones. Over time the bowl had grown completely full, and with no-one alive who knew how to drink from the vitae contained within it would occasionally spill, like droplets of water slowly falling to stain the earth momentarily before evaporating into nothing.


    Magical phenomena worked much the same.


    Strange weather here, strange activity from an Umbra there, the possibilities were... well, wide, to say the least.


    And yet even so, the thought of a shade lingering past death really felt like something she should have been more concerned about. She shrugged. Far be it from her to deny her one chance at answers, at moving on. If that meant accepting that Siabhne was tethered to her and able to be seen in the flesh then that was fine by her.


    Old Kerwyn was on his last legs, but despite both that and the fatherly love he had borne Arwen, he still cautioned her against seeing his shade. She hadn''t lied to him; she refuted his warnings to his face. For the wisdom and care he had shown her over the years, the old Druid deserved at the very least her honesty.


    "Be careful at least. It''s fickle, magic. It ain''t predictable. If these things are true, then you''re in danger."


    She scoffed.


    "Do you really think I care about danger at this point?"


    "Gr¨¢inne, please. It''s been four years since he went missing. Don''t throw your life away chasing ghosts."


    The old man looked at her with such intensity that she thought he meant to pierce right through her with his gaze. She turned away, any rebuttal or response dying on her lips. Instead she simply shook her head and moved to exit the old Druid''s home. As she left she heard him sigh heavily to himself and tut, and she caught a glimpse of him shaking his head. Even so, he did not make any attempt to stop her. He would respect whatever decision she made as her own, this much she knew, only so long as she was aware of the potential danger.


    <hr>


    She''d gone that day and made a small cairn by the forest''s border. Originally she had planned to make it in the field between Gr¨¢igdeireadh and Grywhendaigh that they had spent so many treasured nights in as children, but it seemed a fools errand to make her offerings each night so far from home. Instead she elected to have it within eyesight of her small home, whereupon she could watch over the shrine whatever the hour. A small bowl of food and a warm drink was left for him each night. He must be cold out there.


    The hounds were silent in the woods nowadays. They hadn''t suffered a direwolf attack in years. Any huntsman questioned said the same thing; "They''re all dead. There''s neither umbra nor wild dogs left in the copse."


    On the one hand, people were happy. There wasn''t a threat in the wild forests to them anymore, or at the very least not one they recognised. She wasn''t stupid enough to think it was purely his shade, this rumoured Siabhne. No; the harvest was failing, the game was depleted, and their livestock were underfed, malnourished things. The last few years had been tough, and there was simply nothing left for the wildhounds and direwolves in the forest to fight over.


    Even still, she had some faith he was keeping to his oath out there. He once said he''d protect the village with his life, that he''d been reborn anew of it''s soil. That much, she thought, he seems to have taken rather more literally than most people do.


    Despite her situation, she still managed a small smile at her own half-joke.


    He was one of them, one of the village, and even if everyone else forgot that she knew that he wouldn''t. She swore that she wouldn''t either, even if it meant she was the only one who made the effort to let his memory live on, to let that tattered thread of his life that was left behind know that he was still loved. If she could do nothing else, then at least she could do that.


    She stopped as she went to leave her house to put a small drink out by his shrine, her eyes being drawn to the small collection of trinkets he had once treasured. She had held onto them this long but... but they weren''t hers. She was being selfish with them. She moved over to the shelf, but found herself unable to part with all of the objects. Instead she picked out a few that she knew once meant the world to him and pocketed them, before picking up the two mugs of nettle-tea on the table and walking up the gentle hill towards the woods, towards the shrine.


    "Hey. I know you probably can''t hear me, since your shade is still in the woods out there, but if somehow you can, know that I''ll leave these here for you. You once loved them, and I thought it wrong that I keep them with me when they should be with you. I... I also thought I would share a drink with you, here, even if you aren''t actually here to drink it. I''ll... I''ll drink mine then leave you to yours."


    She took a sip of the scalding liquid, the heat banishing the chill of the night.


    "I never thought you''d fall out there. You were always so... so good with your bow. I don''t understand how anything could have touched you out there. I don''t understand how no-one knows what''s happened to you. How could-"


    Her breath hitched, and she wiped away the moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes.


    "How could every single one of your own sworn brothers not have noticed your disappearance? Your death? I should have gone with you instead, I''m ten times the man any of them will ever be."


    She took a moment to calm herself before letting out a shaky laugh.


    "Heh, not that it really matters anymore. The harvests have failed, again. That makes for three in a row now. The stockpiles have run dry and we haven''t the coin to buy any more from the other villages. Half our number have left for greener pastures. A few have even left Aurinsay entirely, making for Brythonia. Heh, you''d probably laugh at the irony of that if you were here, wouldn''t you?"


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    She waited for a moment to hear the sound of his soft laughter, echoing through her mind like that wonderous night four years ago, but no sound stirred the stillness of the night save only the stiff autumn breeze.


    She took another swig from her mug and stood.


    "Goodnight, Arwen."


    And then she walked back home.


    <hr>


    It couldn''t have been more than a few nights later that something truly extraordinary happened. She actually saw him. She would say "in the flesh", but she didn''t know if that was strictly true anymore. He had a sort of... otherworldly glow about him now, a pale light that seemed to seep from the space he occupied. It was as if the magics that sustained him were roiling from his half-living form, or the very laws of nature were bending around the creature he had become, the creature that according to those same laws should not be.


    Not that that seemed to stop him.


    She couldn''t go to him, not yet. No matter how close she tried to get he would match however far she ran, only in the opposite direction. He wasn''t ready to be truly seen yet, and she would have to respect that a little longer. Even so, with the right tokens of appreciation, the right level of patience, even something so simple as setting aside the hour of the hound each night, all of this would surely bring him closer to her.


    The first time she truly saw him, saw his whole form and not some small glimpse, she couldn''t be sure she wasn''t imagining things. Actually, the first few times she truly saw him she thought grief had finally driven her mad.


    He would appear at the treeline, near her shrine to him, and watch her, or rather the house that should have been theirs, not just hers, as the days whiled away and she awaited the fall of night. No-one else in the village believed her in truth, and whenever anyone looked where he was standing there would never be anything there. She suspected Kerwyn knew more than he claimed before he passed away, given his advice on this subject he''d previously given, but there was little she could do to confirm that now. That was a sad day, she thought to herself. The old man had lived a good, honourable life. A full life. There was little to be sad for, but nonetheless he was mourned. He was a well-loved member of the community, and she would have liked to have him buried here, but the younger Druids claimed he was to be sent to the Greystones. It was the highest honour any Druid could be afforded, and even if he hadn''t been the Druid of a particularly influential place for the last few decades of his life it was clear that he had served in many places and for many years. He deserved that honour. The only other place holy enough for him would have been the Ouroborisian Tor out to the far west, but that path was closed to them all now. It had been closed to them since that... that madness almost a millennium ago, during the darkest hours of the Days of Silence.


    She shook her head and cleared her mind. None of that mattered at the moment. Arwen''s ghost, his shade, his Siabhne, was ever-so-slowly growing nearer to her. It was hard to notice in the day-to-day, but there were slight tells that meant only one thing; he was growing nearer.


    Gr¨¢inne was practically buzzing with a need to rush out there and see him again, but it was tempered by the iron will she had developed in her time as an assistant to the village council.


    To think, that once seemed to be a shining future for her. A member of the village council in a time of unparalleled plenty, her childhood best friend by her side as her husband and lover, and Old Kerwyn there to give out his kernels of advice wherever needed.


    Where was that glittering future now? Where were the fruits of her labour?


    They had turned to sand that slipped through the cracks in her hands, and ashes in her mouth.


    But there was still a chance to salvage something. Arwen was here. She may have been acting in desperation, aye, but it wasn''t like there was any other path open to her. He was nothing at first; faint glow out of the corner of her eye, a shadow cast against the oaks and firs, a single loose thread of the tapestry that had been his life.


    But he was persistent, and so was she. She was learning.


    She learned not to look directly at him, not while he was so skittish. She learned that the food she left out at night remained untouched come the morning, save whenever a few starving animals found it, but the things that mattered to them were taken.


    A bronze bracelet she had made for him, a small wood carving of a dog he had loved as a child, a silver brooch in the shape of the Jackdaw he had once worn religiously; they all were placed at the shrine, and all were gone the next day. In their place had been a small antler-bone hairpin, one he had stolen from her and wore in his hair constantly when they were younger. Now it seems she had it back.


    Her offerings seemed to give him some sense of courage, or at least he now understood she would not abandon him to half-formed memories as everyone else had.


    If ever she approached he fled, but at least she could look upon him in the treeline now.


    It was strange at first. She withdrew from public life more and more, not that she''d cared much for that across the last two years, and instead filled her days longingly gazing at the treeline, waiting for her lover''s visage to appear.


    Whether or not he did she would head to the shrine every night at the hour of the hound and relight the candle, replacing it as needed with a new one. There was a small puddle of hardened tallow now, having dripped slowly down the rocks and staining the ground.


    She was certain she could fix this, change the cards fate had dealt, if only she remained persistent.


    That was the key; she had to keep trying, keep extending her hand to him as one would a battered hound to earn its trust.


    She could fix this.


    I have to fix this.


    Every night as the hour of the hound came she would sit and wait by the lit candle, and she''d not move until the hour of the crow was nigh, giving him time to decide if he would join her.


    He''d yet to come to her side, or to let her to his, but he came slightly closer over time. It was simply a matter of patience, and the reward was to be reunion.


    She''d seen his face last night as she''d lit the candle. He''d hung back, deeper in the forest than usual, but she surmised it was only because she was closer to him than normal as well.


    His eyes were so filled with sorrow and unshed tears he looked as though he was in actual pain, his strangled gasps and gurgled cries carried on the wind to her ears.


    She chastised herself; of course he was in pain, he''d waited alone in the cold for two years now.


    She had as well.


    Fate had given her a second chance here. It wasn''t perfect, but few things ever are.


    She had her second chance, and she wasn''t going to squander it.


    He was waiting for her out there, in the wild domain of the Jackdaw-God he so loved.


    She wouldn''t make him wait much longer.


    Two nights later she made a different sort of offering. She''d managed to find something from a trader from Brythonia; a shard of one of the Greystones. Now, such material was extremely illegal. It didn''t matter which island you were from, even the borderline savages of Wesvoy knew this to be true; you did not take chippings from the Greystones. If you found any, you bloody well returned them.


    Of course, that didn''t stop people hoping to make a small fortune from taking tiny pieces of rock from those strange, ominous stones. She flipped the small fragment in the palm of her hand. It was odd. Cool to the touch with strange blue veins running through the grey stone, she could only imagine what the actual Greystones themselves looked like. With it''s power, she had been assured, she would be as one with the magics that coursed through it. Unpredictable, sure, but maybe, just maybe, it would also make her more approachable to him. She wasn''t going to pretend to know how it worked, something about levels of energy needing to reach an average or something.


    But even if she didn''t know how or why, it worked. She let out a small gasp as she approached him.


    From so close a distance she could finally make out every little detail of his agony; the tear marks down his cheeks, the unnatural pallor of his skin, even the erratic twitching of his oxygen-starved muscles.


    It was not any of that which truly horrified her, though. Not in the slightest.


    What horrified her was that the cut at his throat was not the mangling of a wild animal, nor the marking of an unfortunate accident.


    It was a clean cut, deep and wide.


    The bastards had slit his throat in the woods and left him to die.


    Why? WHY? What had he ever done to them? He was different than them, and in their childish, pathetic minds, that had made him deserving of death. How many in the village knew? Did they tell anyone? Was anyone in on it?


    Would anyone care?


    Of course not. All the people who cared about him were either dead or gone.


    Except for her.


    She would end this. One way or another, she would end it.


    No, I can''t.


    It wasn''t that she couldn''t kill them. It wasn''t that she didn''t want to kill them. Quite simply, she knew that killing them wouldn''t bring him back.


    But he was already back, wasn''t he?


    She could be with him. Not now, but tonight. The hour of the hound, as ever they''d meet. Once more they''d spend a night in the wilds with each other.


    After that? They would have eternity to figure it out.


    <hr>


    They said this wasn''t him, not how she would remember him anyway.


    They were fucking liars.


    So what? He''d been rendered a shard of what he once was, the pain of his final moments etched into eternity with the form he''d taken. Did that mean he wasn''t actually him?


    Even if they were right, it didn''t matter. He might not have been whole, but it was still at least a part of him.


    It was all that was left of him. It was all she had left of him.


    She steeled herself and closed the remaining distance between them. Now she was but a step away from him. That''s all it would take. One more step and they''d be together, as they always had been.


    Something in the back of her mind protested. Some small part of her knew that she wouldn''t be coming back if she walked with him. She had other friends, family members who she''d be leaving behind. Could she do that to them?


    She looked at the pained expression on his face, the throat slit open and the dark blood staining his porcelain skin. He was so pale, more than he had ever been in life.


    A guttural attempt at speech gurgled from his bloodied mouth, and any thoughts of leaving him here fled her. How could she even think of leaving him in this state? They were meant to be together, no matter what. Isn''t that what they''d promised each other? What she''d promised him? To wait for his return? How could she renege when a second chance had been given to them?


    He''d waited to be with her long enough. Just as she''d waited for him.


    She leaned forwards and hugged him.


    His own arms came around her, trembling as they did so.


    He was so cold.


    She looked up to meet his eyes.


    They were still pained, of that there was no doubt, but there was now a spark of warmth in there as well.


    He smiled down at her, that same sweet smile he''d given her when they''d first met, the smile he''d had when he was made a man grown, the smile she''d kept as hers the day he''d left to hunt.


    She was never leaving him again.


    She moved out of the hug, fear in Arwen''s eyes as she moved. She gave him an apologetic smile as she slipped one of his hands into her own.


    "Don''t worry. We''re to be wed, aren''t we?"


    Ghostly tears slipped down his cheeks as he nodded.


    "They say that in Wesvoy a man and woman are wed when they make a life for themselves together."


    She wiped a tear from his face with her free hand, and he shuddered at the warmth on his pallid skin.


    "We''ve been wed for a very long time. Come on. Do you know where we''ll go now?"


    He shook his head, another word garbled through his ruined throat.


    "It doesn''t matter. Wherever we go, we''ll go together, won''t we?"


    He nodded and garbled out a noise that vaguely resembled a mixture of gratitude and pining. She smiled in response and squeezed his hand.


    They stepped forwards together, hand in hand, and dissipated in the wind.


    The breeze blew the candle out, and all that was left of the two of them was a single rock stained with wax.


    A tragic disappearance, a lonely girl, and a half-melted candle atop a solitary stone that was soon to be forgotten; the only evidence they had ever lived at all.

 Child, God, Dust: The Pure

    Child, God, Dust: The Pure


    <u>Tjenkha, Central Nekhtou, the Kikhepis.


    </u><u>The Third Day of the First Moon, 2400 BD.</u>


    "Your Magnificence? Please, I apologise for rousing you at such an hour."


    Amerys rose, bleary eyed and tired. Why had he been awoken? Was it morning already?


    "What? What''s happened?"


    The servant who roused him was his father''s spymaster, responsible for knowing what everyone was doing all the time. Amerys didn''t really understand what was happening, nor did he really know the man''s name, but that wasn''t really important. The man was a servant, a ''functionary'', or whatever he called himself. Amerys didn''t need to know him properly for many years yet. The man stayed silent, looking at the young boy with pity, and so Amerys tried again.


    "It''s not my name-day for a few days yet. Why have you woken me up?"


    "Come with me, your Magnificence. I''ll explain on the way."


    The child nodded and made to follow the man, who walked him to a chamber a few rooms down where several slaves were preparing what seemed to be a smaller version of his father''s courtly clothes. The spymaster spoke.


    "Are they ready yet?


    One of the slaves, who seemed to be in charge of his wardrobe, gave a deferential nod.


    "Almost, master. A few more moments, I beseech you."


    The spymaster nodded and turned to Amerys.


    "I am sorry, my young Magnificence. Your mother and father... bad men came in the night. Your divine father ascended to take his place alongside Djaf the Undying after attempting to protect your divine mother. She joined him an hour ago. I am sorry."


    Amerys blinked in confusion.


    "But... how can father be by Djaf''s side if he''s the King-of-Kings? He can''t be in both places at once, can he?"


    The spymaster ran a hand through his black hair, and closed his eyes for a moment. The slaves in the room had gone deathly still, each seemingly too afraid to break the tension in the room. Amerys took a moment to look over the outfit that had been made for him. There were a pair of purple baggy sleeves connected by a length of gold fabric running just under where his neck would be, a pure silver usekh, and a purple linen kilt. To the side was a selection of fine jewellery; bracelets of precious metal, golden earrings, amulets and necklaces of precious stones. His favourite was a pectoral to be attached to a necklace, which was little more than an uncut fist-sized sapphire. He gazed into the sapphire as he was want to do, seeing his reflection cast back at him from its polished surface.


    Then the realisation of what the spymaster meant this whole time hit him.


    "Wait, mother and father are-"


    The spymaster cut him off with a curt word and a nod.


    "Yes."


    Something about the way he said it, the thing that he said, the fact that his parents were no longer here...


    Amerys sniffled, and wiped at his eyes with the sleeves of his nightclothes. The spymaster started, and rushed forwards. He knelt to be able to look Amerys in the eyes, a steely glint in his gaze.


    "No your Magnificence, you must not weep. Weeping is most unbecoming for one as divine as yourself."


    "But father-"


    "IS DEAD. There, I have said it. I tried to keep my words gentle, but if that is the only way you will understand then it is how I shall speak to you. Your father is dead, and I am taking you to sit the throne before one of your cousins tries something stupid. Come."


    The walk to the throneroom was conducted in silence. Every now and again they would pass a pair of guards wearing animal-faced helmets who would fall in line behind them, the sounds of their marching feet all that could be heard in the night. Amerys had always enjoyed the artistry in the great corridor leading to the throneroom; he might have been five, almost six, but even he could somewhat appreciate the artwork on the walls and ceiling of the room. Great battles in which Nekhtoudum armies clashed with southern rebels or northern legions, of nomadic bands kneeling before Amenrut the Breaker, of the great monsters slain by Harakhty Dune-Tamer in the days before Djaf had united their people. It was truly a magnificent sight that would captivate him on any other day.


    But today was not any other day. Today his mother and father had been killed, and he was to sit the throne before they had even gone cold. It wasn''t fair, why wasn''t he allowed to cry?


    Because I am divine. I am of the gods, not mortal ken. I am above such displays.


    He repeated the words as a mantra in his head, trying to stave off tears. He looked to the walls once more to try and distract himself, but all he could see were bad men where the triumphant were, and father dead at their feet.


    He felt fury rising within him.


    "Who did it."


    The spymaster smiled.


    "I knew it would not take long for one as just as yourself to ask that question, your Magnificence. I believe it was a group of nomads whom your father had been feuding with over a proposed plan of his."


    Amerys scrunched up his face in confusion.


    "What plan?"


    "Your father wished to build a monument greater than any other to honour Djaf the Undying, an undertaking the likes of which have never been attempted. He wished to make a statue of one of the mountains that line the Valley of the Gods. Do you know where the Valley of the Gods is, my young Magnificence?"


    Amerys shook his head, and the spymaster continued.


    "Ah, it is no matter. It seems such a plan is not meant to be anymore."


    Amerys started, turning to face the spymaster.


    "NO! No! Father died because the bad men didn''t want him to build it, so I''ll build it for him! To spite them!"


    This seemed to give the spymaster pause.


    "You... you wish to undertake your father''s ambition?"


    "Yes. Wait, no. He didn''t go far enough. He put Djaf above the other gods, but that was my divine father''s only mistake. I will not just build his monument to Djaf; I would build monuments to Abuskhau, Abayomi, Ini-Herit, Tskal, and all the other gods beside them. This valley will live up to its name, by my will. I will not let my father die for nothing."


    The spymaster sighed and continued walking.


    "If that is your will, your Magnificence. Come, the throne awaits."


    If the corridor leading to the throneroom was beautiful, then the throneroom itself was beyond words. The entire chamber was a masterpiece of art; carved statues of great heroes were draped with fine linen robes and jewellery of precious metals and stones, the walls were covered by tapestries and almost divine-looking works of artistry, and the ceiling above him was engraved in scenes of death and rebirth. He loved the throneroom. But now he was to sit the throne, and far too soon at that.


    The spymaster bade him sit, and so he took his place upon the raised throne. When he was seated comfortably his spymaster nodded at the captain of the palace guards, and stepped forwards.


    "Your Magnificence, I strongly urge you to send your illustrious guardians out to find your cousins, so as to bring them here."


    "Why? Can they not await the morning to see me seated on my father''s throne?"


    The man sighed gently.


    "It is your throne now, your Magnificence. But no, they can not. I fear their reaction to you taking your rightful place as your father''s heir. Many of them likely believe they are better suited to rulership, seeing as they have lived longer than you. Your eldest cousin I especially fear. He is popular enough that many may choose to follow him over you, in what I can only describe as foolishness of the highest order."


    Amerys nodded, and stifled a yawn. Even as he did he felt himself grow nervous. Cousin Khypra would never hurt him, would he? His older cousin was his friend, and would oft play games with him throughout the palace.


    "Khypra is dangerous?"


    The spymaster nodded.


    "Yes, your Magnificence. He is friendly towards you not from a place of genuine love, but from some twisted desire to see you laid low whilst he ascends. He seeks power. I will not let him harm you, you have my word."


    Khypra had always been kind. He had always made time for Amerys, and as such Amerys had no need to fear him. But nonetheless, he felt fear. Maybe it was that he had just learned of his parent''s deaths. Maybe it was being roused at such an early hour. Maybe it was because the man telling him this was his father''s spymaster- no, not father''s anymore, my spymaster. Perhaps it was a mix of all three. Whatever the reason, he was as malleable as clay in the hands of the experienced spymaster.


    "Bring them here, but do not harm them."


    The captain of the guard slammed the butt of his halberd on the tiled floor of the throneroom, the bronze blade glinting as it seemed to catch a beam of moonlight that peered through an open balcony. Two dozen men wearing bronze animal-headed helmets mimicked the motion before falling in line behind him. They then filed out into the palace, and Amerys yawned so wide he heard a crack in his jaw.


    "A most just commandment, your Magnificence."


    Amerys smiled at the spymaster, pleased at the praise. He might have been young, but if he could do well enough then surely that wouldn''t matter, would it? If even his late-father''s spymaster was pleased with him, then that must have meant he was doing relatively well, right?


    It didn''t take long for his cousins to be escorted into the room. There might have been a dozen of them in total, and all seemed confused.


    All except Khypra.


    "Your Magnificence. It is good to see you sit the throne, though I truly wish the circumstances of your ascent were better. May I ask as to our summons?"


    Khypra''s voice was as smooth as ever, though there was a hint of strain behind it when he caught sight of the spymaster.


    The spymaster just smiled at him.


    "You cannot trust him, cousin. He drips poison in people''s ears."


    Amerys felt somewhat confused at the expression, and none too anxious at being in the same room as his cousins, whom he had been told would be happy to watch him fall. Some of that fear must have shown on his face, for Khypra''s reaction was immediate. He seemed almost shocked, as though he had been physically struck.


    "Oh, cousin, what has he told you?"


    "You mean to seize the throne from me. Is it true?"


    The shocked look remained on Khypra''s face.


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident."Of course not! Your father was the King-of-Kings, not mine. I am your cousin, Amerys. I would never seek to harm you."


    Amerys felt himself grow more relaxed as the words were spoken, but then the spymaster stepped forwards.


    "If that is true, do you deny that you wish to be named his Magnificence''s regent?"


    Khypra steeled himself and turned back to Amerys.


    "That much is true. You are young, cousin, and the burden of rule should not have been thrust upon you so early in your life. Allow me to pass judgement in your name for a few years whilst you enjoy all your young life has to offer, and when the time is right you will take up your mantle for true."


    Amerys swallowed as his spymaster turned to him.


    "See, your Magnificence. He wants power, as I said. He claims to serve you with one phrase, and demands power with the next. How can you trust him?"


    Another cousin, Atem, stepped forwards towards the spymaster, an affronted and angry aspect to her movements.


    "How dare you accuse-"


    She was cut off soundly by a backhanded blow from the guard standing next to the spymaster, and reeled backwards into the gathered group of her cousins.


    "YOU SWINE!"


    There was the sound of bronze blades being drawn from their scabbards as a few of his cousins, Khypra included, brandished their weapons at both the spymaster and the offending guard. The guards in the chamber readied their own halberds, lowering them at Amerys'' cousins.


    "STOP, PLEASE!"


    All movement in the room stopped, no matter which party it was that was moving. It took Amerys a second to realise it had been him that had shouted for peace.


    "Please, peace. I don''t want anyone to be hurt."


    "Your Magnificence, do you see now? He demands power, then he and his followers draw their blades in your own throne room. That is treason, your Magnificence, and there is only one punishment for treason."


    "Cousin, please, you must understand that already he is poisoning your reign! He is trying to turn you against your family, to isolate you and make you his to control! Please, heed my words!"


    Amerys swallowed hard, forcing down the lump that had formed in his throat. when he spoke his voice was hoarse, and he had to almost force the words out.


    "I will not hurt my family, but what you have done is treason."


    "Amerys-"


    There was a look of deep hurt on his beloved cousin''s face as he spoke, and it only intensified when Amerys cut him off.


    "I hereby banish you all from the Kingdom of the Kikhepis, never to return on pain of... on pain of death. You will be allowed to take all of your wealth, your slaves, your belongings with you, and any who wish to travel with you may do so. I''m sorry, Khypra, but I hope your exile will at least be comfortable."


    There was a look somewhere between hurt and anger on his cousin''s face, and Amerys had to stop himself from flinching away. He didn''t like someone he loved giving him that look, but what else was he to do? He was King-of-Kings now, and he had to act like this, didn''t he?


    "Very well, cousin. I wish you good fortune in the years to come, your Magnificence. If he remains at your side, you will need it."


    With that his cousins were escorted out, and Amerys slumped into his chair.


    "Did I do well?"


    The spymaster smiled and nodded kindly at him.


    "A most just decision, your Magnificence. You heard his demands and protests, and acted firmly yet fairly. It is my opinion they should be grateful you have not shortened them by a head for their treason. Many, many men would not have been nearly so merciful."


    Amerys let himself smile a small smile. Maybe he would not be such a bad ruler after all?


    <hr>


    A little over two years had passed since then, and Amerys felt he was beginning to take true strides towards greatness; work on the project was already well underway, the modified versions of his father''s plans making him very popular amongst the stonemasons and architects of the land. But for all the success his project had seen thus far, there never seemed to be enough hands for the work. So, taking advantage of one of the rare periods of peace between the two great nations of Sothena, he had asked his advisors to approach the Sotenari to the north. The Sotenari were hesitant at first, especially given how they''d been at war for most of his divine grandfather''s reign, but when they realised just how many slaves he wanted to buy, they couldn''t have been friendlier. He entertained and was entertained by dignitaries, presented Sotenari Octarchs with lavish chariots, gemstones the size of his head, and great beasts found nowhere else in the world. In return, the Sotenari lavished him with the greatest slaves their empire had to offer. Slaves trained to perfection, and the result of unparalleled quality and care of breeding; there were slaves trained in the arts of war, of masonry, of guardianship, of tutelage, of pleasure. There were hundreds of them, given over as a ''sample'' of what fruits this new relationship could provide. He smiled. He truly was divine; only one with such radiant magnificence could have single-handedly mended relations with their longest and greatest enemy.


    "So, how many head of our stock would your Magnificence wish to purchase from our wares? As you know, your contracts will always take precedence over any others, even the Octarchs themselves acknowledge their position beneath those contracts your radiance provides us with, and as such there is little worry of delay or lacking quality, so it please your Magnificence."


    He tilted his chin upwards and looked down at the representative prostrating before him.


    "Rise. Remind me, how many slaves have been sent to me with the contracts I have already graced your masters with?"


    "Two-hundred thousand head of slaves have been purchased by your most illustrious Magnificence, so please you, not counting the four-hundred and forty-four given as a gift by Octarch Ashtad."


    Amerys smiled down magnanimously. He''d purchased more slaves than any other man on the planet, that much was certain, and he had only just seen his eighth winter.


    And yet the Valley of the Gods demanded a far higher price than a paltry two-hundred thousand slaves.


    "Double it."


    The man did a double take, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.


    "I- your magnificence, of course! It shall be as you command! If it please your Magnificence, would you mind clarifying something for me, so my own feeble mind is not overturned by your meaning?"


    Amerys smiled wider at the man. Truly, these lesser-types were so primitive in the mind. Not at all like his divine self.


    "You may."


    "Thank you, your radiance. If it please you, when you say to ''double it'', are you saying I should double the number of our slaves in your possession, providing another two-hundred thousand? Or would your radiant self wish for me to double the number and then provide them to you, giving you a further four-hundred thousand?"


    The throne room went silent, awaiting his response. For certain, he had originally intended for another two-hundred thousand to be purchased. But then they had been blessed with some truly great harvests recently, not to mention the gold coming through from the eastern traders purchasing the black diamonds from the southern mines at truly staggering prices, so his realm could definitely afford such a magnificent purchase.


    "Four-hundred thousand. Be they man or woman I care not, only that they can perform the physical labours they are purchased for. I would be willing to buy each for half an ankh. I trust your masters will find this satisfactory?"


    The man and his delegation were shocked for a moment into stunned silence, before a grin spread across his face.


    "Oh, your Magnificence! You honour us beyond measure! My masters would be most pleased to receive such a great offer! I can only apologise at the length of time gathering so many slaves will take, but I swear to you that within a year they will be with you."


    Amerys nodded, ignoring his rising annoyance. He knew it would take time to get that many slaves, he wasn''t stupid. Even still, waiting a full year would bore him.


    "In fact, your Magnificence, in light of your most radiant patronage of our guild, many of our senior members wished to provide you a truly great gift; Shaya! Bring forth his Magnificence''s gift!"


    There was the sound of rattling chains and a bellowed roar as a man brought forth two chained figures into the throne room. Amerys'' noticed how his guards'' gripped their halberds tighter. Odd. He''d never known his masked champions fear anything before.


    But then the two figures in front of him seemed truly strange. He had never seen men that big before in his life.


    "Before you stand two premium examples of our greatest success with fleshsmithing to date. Ogyrs, they are known as. A blending of human servility and the strength of the Umbra-in-the-Shapes-of-Men, they will surely be a great boon towards your efforts, especially given the physical requirements of those slaves you request. There are two-dozen such creations awaiting you to take up their whip, if fit pleases your Magnificence."


    Amerys grinned a true grin, and waved a hand beckoning the whipmaster forwards. The man knelt before his ruby-encrusted throne, and raised an onyx-handled ceremonial whip with trembling hands. There was a beautiful diamond set into the pommel of the whip, polished and cut to perfection.


    It did not matter that the man was five times his age, nor that he was just as many times his size and built of pure muscle. He trembled nonetheless. Amerys smiled. All trembled before divinity.


    "Magnificent, are they not?"


    Amerys nodded at the man, too pleased by the performance of the Ogyrs to chastise the Sotenari representative for his informality. The man, Fardin, had earned it, especially if more creations like this could be sent his way. Each of the hulking brutes had the strength of a dozen men, and as such made for perfect manual labourers for working at the Valley of the Gods.


    "Indeed, Ambassador Fardin. Please give my commendations to your ruling council, the Octarchs and Slaver''s Guild both. These creations truly are magnificent. Tell me, if you may, how much would they cost, per-head, in Ankhs?"


    Fardin rubbed his chin, but had a glint in his eye. He was clearly going to enjoy reporting back to his overlords the bulk purchase he had ''negotiated'', as if Amerys wouldn''t have purchased them regardless. He didn''t care, personally. Even at his young age, he recognised that having a man rise high in the Slaver''s Guild and potentially gain a seat on the ruling council thanks purely to Amerys himself would be a great boon.


    "A most just question, your Magnificence. The creation of such creatures is relatively new, and in confidence, the legions back in Zamettar are hoping for militarised variants soon. I believe we can offer you no more than a hundred and fifty head at the moment, at ten Ankhs each."


    "A pity. I would have liked to round their numbers out to two-hundred total."


    The man nodded.


    "Your Magnificence, if that is what you wish then I promise I shall do my best to see it done. For one such as yourself the additional creations should not take long."


    "These militarised variants; I would have twenty dispatched as well. Is there a sort of... smart version? A leader, for lack of a better term. I would have one of those, if such a creature exists."


    Fardin was silent a few moments, sweating from what seemed like more than the humidity.


    "Your Magnificence... I... I will do my best to see the Ogyr Legionaries sold to you. As for the intelligent one..."


    He looked around again, his voice a hushed whisper.


    "None outside of the Guild even know of the development of such a creature, but I can assure you it exists. I will see it sold to you, but it will be expensive. Four-hundred ankhs for the twenty Legionaries, another four-hundred for the alpha."


    "It is done. I will see you paid in advance for such creatures. They are magnificent."


    Next to him one of his champions clenched their fist tighter around their halberd, as they often did when such creatures were seen or mentioned around himself.


    "There are other beasts we make, your Magnificence. If you would like, I can see them sent your way, though I will confess there are few that could be of use in such a truly great project as yours."


    The nasally voice of his spymaster cut into the conversation from the side, a polite cough drawing the attention of both Amerys and Fardin. Fardin took a step back in surprise, a whispered curse under his breath. He quickly covered his mouth with his hands when he realised he had sworn in front of the King-of-Kings, eyes moving to the champion at Amerys'' side who was already hefting their halberd.


    Amerys raised his hand, then lowered it slowly. The halberd moved at an almost gentle pace back to the side of the champion, who maintained his glare at the foreigner despite being denied his kill.


    "There is no need for such an extreme reaction. Our friend here is not divine in nature as I am. He must be expected to make mistakes every now and again."


    His spymaster raised an amused eyebrow before speaking.


    "If I may cut in, I have heard some rumours of a beast that could be most useful in his Magnificence''s'' divine work."


    Fardin blinked in confusion a few times before the spymaster continued.


    "Tell me, Emissary, does the term ''Titanblooded'' mean anything to you?"


    Fardin was silent a long while, his eyes going wide. When he spoke it was a babble at first as he tried to string together a coherent sentence, but with a pointed look from Amerys he managed to find his voice.


    "I... I have already disclosed one confidential creation to your most magnanimous self, your Magnificence. Please, allow me to take this mass order to the council, and I will argue the case for other such confidential projects to be sold to your most divine self."


    "You are unable to tell me of these creatures now? Why?"


    He might have asked it as a question, but all present knew it was not. If he didn''t like the answer, then Fardin''s career might find itself cut short before it had truly begun, and the man himself would similarly find himself shorter by a head.


    "The men of the council are not divine, your Magnificence. They will be slower to accept things than your most intelligent self. Please, allow me to take your word back to the council, where I can argue your case to the best of my abilities. This I swear to you."


    There was silence in the plaza for a few seconds, and Amerys let it linger. This was power. Silence as all present awaited the word of their god. He was almost tempted to order the man''s death on a whim, just to prove the point.


    But he was not a mortal mind, constrained by such flights of fancy. He was divine, as Fardin had pointed out.


    He allowed a smile to grow across his face.


    "Your permission is granted. Make haste north. I expect your council will be most pleased to hear of the purchase I have made here today."


    At this the man grinned and nodded profusely at him.


    "Oh indeed your Magnificence! Such a huge order will certainly make you by far the single most loved person in the capital, nay, the entire empire. You will be contacted most regularly with news of our progress in fulfilling your order, this I swear. Our peoples, ever enemies, have found friendship in your embrace, your Magnificence. I will ensure your kindness is repaid in kind."


    Amerys smiled back at the man as he took his leave. Truly, he had displayed his divinity in the actions he had taken this day.

 Child, God, Dust: The Cruel

    <u>Child, God, Dust: The Cruel</u>


    <u>Tjenkha, Central Nekhtou, the Kikhepis.


    </u><u>The Seventh Day of the First Moon, 2395 BD.</u>


    Today was a day for reflection. For contemplation. For instance, he thought that the vintage in his goblet was most pleasing, and he could see his face in it. Contemplation and reflection.


    He smiled at the joke he had made in his own head, before drawing himself together and regaining some semblance of a serious aspect. He had achieved much in the few years he had reigned so far. The royal coffers remained full no matter how much gold and silver he poured into his monumental project, and his people regarded him as a true god-made-flesh. He had forged a fast friendship with the Sotenari and would likely go on a tour of the great cities of that empire within the next few years, and his armies were buoyed by their successes against rebels and marauding nomads alike. Indeed, it seemed that a strike against Nrtkha, the City of Vultures, would soon be made possible. With the nomads'' piteous tent-city swallowed by the sands of the desert their power would be utterly broken, and they would be forced to scatter on the dunes. His advisors had warned him against such an action, stating that keeping the nomads centralised made them more manageable, and that splitting them apart would only increase the number of raids they launched against his good and loyal subjects as they scoured the land looking for food, shelter, and gold. He remained undeterred. If Nrtkha was destroyed then there would be less nomads to launch raids in the first place, didn''t they understand that?


    He shook his head and regathered his thoughts. It was not only the Sotenari Empire he had begun trading with; further north the city-states of southern Kliskorios were most receptive to his diplomatic overtures, and his exiled cousin seemed to have founded an empire of his own on the Dathanian peninsula centred around a city fittingly named ''Khypria''. It seemed cousin Khypra, backed by an eclectic band of his other cousins, wished to bring a touch of civilisation to the northern savages. Of course relations between them were strained, after all, Amerys had ordered the exile of his cousins, but they were not stupid; they knew that trading with their southern brethren was the best way to secure their power in these new lands. On top of that the easterners were coming with increasing regularity, their appetites for the black-diamonds found in the south of his kingdom around Ntidwakha seemingly never satiated. He took pride in that; these men and women had travelled thousands upon thousands of miles through dangerous waters and hostile lands, and then spent a fortune that most could only dream of acquiring in their lives on something that could only be found in his kingdom. He''d hosted dignitaries from far off lands that most had never even heard of, and sent them away with great gifts that were, to him, little more than trinkets and baubles.


    To them, they were more valuable than all the riches of whatever distant kingdom or backwards tribe they had hailed from.


    He had acquired many titles over the course of his reign so far. His own people knew him as the King-of-Kings, the Divine, the Magnificent, the Holy. The Sotenari called him the Peace-Bringer, the Slave-Master, or just the Radiant. He was much loved amongst the former enemies of his people.


    The nomads had different names for him. They had heard of how the Sotenari had subjugated and broken an entire kingdom to fill out the ranks of the slaves he had purchased, they had seen the great monuments he was building in the Valley of the Gods, and were appalled. They called him many things. But no-one would ever repeat them to him unless pressed.


    Sin-Made-Flesh. He-Who-Forges-Chains. False-God. The nomads had a great many names for him indeed. He was unaffected by them. Well, almost all of them. There was one name he despised;


    A child, younger than Amerys himself, rushed forwards out of the line of slaves, waving his fist towards him. There was a look of uncontrolled fury on his face as he directed a flurry of curses at "He-Who-Waters-The-Desert-With-Tears".


    Amerys signalled to the guard to his left, and a halberd fell swiftly. The boy dropped to the floor before he''d even been able to utter another word, an expression of shock on his face. Really, what had he expected to happen?


    He had taken the tongue from every slave under twelve after that. He would brook no further insult to his person. He was holy, did they not see that? Were they so blinded by worldly attractions that they did not recognise his divinity?


    Amerys took a deep breath, bringing himself back to the present. It didn''t matter. The child had hurt his feelings, and he didn''t like it. He would not be made to endure such ill-feelings again, that much he would make sure of. The name had gotten to him though, had struck a chord within his being. How could someone say something so hurtful to their divine monarch? It was inconceivable in their mind. For the briefest moment, for perhaps the first time in their short life, Amerys was given pause, was given doubt. For a moment he wondered if this would all be worth it.


    But the thought lingered only for a moment, and then was gone. The Valley of the Gods was worth whatever sacrifice it demanded. It was what would remain of him, of his bloodline, his kingdom, when all else was gone. So what if a few lessers were spent on its construction? His new northern ally was more than happy to offer new slaves for his constructions almost as fast as they were bred. In fact, across the last four years he discovered he had been responsible for both the training of record numbers of masonry-adept slaves and the complete destruction of the small kingdom of Ereverry by the Sotenari, who had needed the population of that small kingdom to fill out the ranks of his bulk order of slaves. The people of Ereverry were a queer bunch, he thought to himself. They only worshipped one god, though they didn''t acknowledge him as such. Instead they called him a ''Saint'', which he had been told was some sort of holy champion. It was stupid, he thought. There were dozens of gods, and only one that walked the world amongst mortals.


    Him.


    He looked out over his palace, a goblet of wine in his young hands. It was his eleventh name-day today, and he found himself ruminating on all he had accomplished so far. He was the single largest purchaser of slaves in the world, and the head of the single greatest construction project ever undertaken. Ever. It was no exaggeration. The pyramids of his father and his father before him were as nothing compared to this. One-hundred thousand well trained workers toiled day and night in the valley, and some six-hundred thousand enslaved men and women were being worked to their death even as he sipped a truly excellent vintage from a jewel-studded goblet on a balcony in one of his palaces. Hundreds of ''creations'' from the Slaver''s Guild of the Sotenari Empire could be found amongst the workers, mostly Ogyrs, but also those creatures only referred to as being ''Titanblooded''. He hadn''t known how true the name was before he had seen them in person. Their footsteps were as thunder in the desert skies, their size dwarfing even the Ogyrs that worked alongside them. There were two of them on the worksite, each of them named for one of the titans in Nekhtoudum mythology, Kamas and Nefera; to see them as anything other than the titans of myth was stupid. They were nothing less than true pinnacles of flesh-crafting, or whatever Fardin had called the process. Speaking of Fardin, the man had asked his presence to present him with a name-day gift in around an hours time in the same plaza where he had once been shown the Ogyrs at work. For all he enjoyed the hundreds of lavish gifts he had been presented with, there was something about the creations of the Slaver''s Guild that filled him with excitement.


    "Your Magnificence."


    The voice of his spymaster cut through his reverie. He turned, and bid the man speak.


    "Yes, Misaphris?"


    Misaphris had been a good advisor and a true friend in the years since he had escorted Amerys to the throne. He had served both Amerys and his divine father well, and had ingratiated himself to almost everyone in court. Even the Sotenari, distrusting as they were of most Nekhtoudum, found him to be a most pleasing figure both in court and in courting, so to speak.


    "Your report from your advisory council, summarised as requested."


    He nodded at the man, and bid him read the text.


    "Casualties amongst the workforce have just risen past seventy-thousand workers. We have yet to encounter another nomadic raid since the Ogyrs killed the last party that attempted to free your property in the valley."


    "Anything else?"


    There was a brief pause for a moment, an expression somewhere between pleasure and annoyance on the face of his spymaster.


    "Your... project is progressing well, your Magnificence. The latest progress report was reviewed in your name by your advisory council."


    In reality he knew his spymaster''s unspoken objections to his monument to the gods. Misaphris, though supportive of the new relations between the Kingdom of the Kikhepis and the Sotenari Empire, believed that the vast head of chattel Amerys had purchased would be put to far better use working on farms or building roads or bridges or somesuch boring thing. Amerys knew the man meant well, he just... he lacked creativity. It was not his fault; he just did not have the divine mind Amerys did.


    He let the silence linger a second or two, to get his thoughts back on track.


    "And?"


    "The first statue has been completed, your Magnificence, with the second no more than three weeks away from completion. Most casualties seem to come from those working on the uppermost regions of the mountains and statues due to a mixture of what I have been informed is ''altitude sickness'' and ''thin air'', though the Ogyrs seem to suffer no such ailments when they ascend to such heights. Those in charge of the worksite therefore recommend increasing the numbers of Ogyrs, as they perform their duties far more efficiently than any human could hope to achieve at such heights."


    Amerys nodded.


    "It will be done. I am to meet with Fardin soon, and shall thusly bring such matters to his attention. I know he will do whatever is asked of him by myself; he has risen far on the back of my patronage, and understands that his rise is only assured so long as he maintains my support. Tell the heads of the worksite that they will have more of their Ogyrs soon enough."


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    Amerys'' spymaster nodded and motioned towards the door.


    "Speaking of Fardin, you are right when you say you are to meet with him soon enough. I believe he is waiting for you in the courtyard as we speak."


    Amerys nodded and poured what was left of his vintage onto the ground below the balcony. He had not expected the man to arrive so soon, and yet there was no point wasting time savouring his wine. He could always get another cup, after all.


    "Very well. I shall see him at once."


    A rare, true smile overcame his features as he thought back on the gifts he had been sent by the Sotenari on previous namedays.


    "Oh, I can hardly wait. I wonder what he''ll have brought before me this time?"


    The spymaster just smiled a sardonic smile.


    "Well, there''s only one way to know for sure, isn''t there?"


    <hr>


    He always liked meeting with Fardin. Life had been strangely lonely since he had taken the throne, what with his family gone and most people being to awed by his status to approach him, but Fardin had grown close enough that Amerys was fairly certain he could almost be called a friend. Almost. Misaphris didn''t trust anyone who tried to befriend the King-of-Kings, and as a result Amerys had never kept a true friend for long; they were all just after his riches, his lands, his power, how could he trust them?


    Misaphris diligently kept him safe, however. He made sure that all those who wished him harm were shooed away, told under no uncertain terms never to return. Some sort of melancholy seemed to flit through Amerys'' mind and through his chest whenever the thought of his loneliness passed through his thoughts, but he always pushed it away. It was a fleeting thing, and he was divine. It would be unbecoming of him to waste time thinking on what might have been, of fantasising about companionship. He was divine. That was enough by itself.


    "Your Magnificence! It is most pleasing to see you on a day so beautiful as today!"


    Fardin''s voice cut through the courtyard, and Amerys smiled. Yes, it was a beautiful day out. The sun was shining, there was a smattering of clouds to provide shelter from its rays where required, and there was a most pleasing sensation whenever the northerly breeze met his exposed skin. Yes, today was beautiful.


    "Indeed, it is a most pleasant day. I will admit to being pleasantly surprised to hear of your presence here on this day. Please, rise. Rise, and tell me of your most generous offering."


    Fardin did as commanded, a curled smile upon his lips.


    "As your Magnificence commands! Your Magnificence, may I ask if you still possess the black whip gifted to you three years ago?"


    Amerys grabbed the curled whip at his belt and waved it around for emphasis.


    "Indeed I do. It is almost always worn upon my belt, next to my blade. I do so enjoy seeing the glint of the diamond in its hilt."


    Fardin smiled his sleazy smile back at him, stepping forwards.


    "I am most glad to hear that, your Magnificence. I have something here that will, I hope, truly elate your divine self."


    Fardin clapped his hands twice, and then there was a shrill screech. It was the cry of an animal, that much seemed evident, but Amerys had known of no creature that could make such a loud noise save only the titanblooded.


    "In a moment, your Magnificence, you will lay eyes upon one of the greatest works of our Guild yet. Not for its size, nor the constituent creatures that make up its form, but for how sophisticated its training methods have been."


    A shadow covered the courtyard, and then fell to land alongside Fardin. Hardened flesh, pale-green in colour, covered the bulk of its form. A pair of short horns sprouted from its skull, and its legs were almost reptilian in form.


    "Before you, your Magnificence, stands a wyvern. Not just any wyvern either; this one has been specifically bred and trained to be completely and utterly subservient to you, or rather, your whip."


    Amerys stepped forwards tentatively, ignoring the tensing of his champions. They were here to protect him, so they obviously wanted to step between Amerys and the beast, but they were also smart enough to know that any attempt to come between Amerys and the creations of the Slaver''s Guild that he so loved was tantamount to ordering their own execution. He raised the black whip, holding it up to the winged beast as if to show the creature that he was to be its new master. The creature sniffed it twice, then bowed its head. Amerys turned to Fardin, shocked.


    "He''s... he''s... so docile... how?"


    Fardin smiled and bowed his head a little.


    "She, actually, and I would not wish to bore your Magnificence with the minutiae of how the fleshsmiths mould the minds of such creatures. Instead I will simply say that both the Slaver''s Guild and the Fleshsmiths who serve them are most thankful for your support, and... well, with all else said, happy name-day, your Magnificence."


    Amerys smiled at the man as he petted the beast. This had to be his best name-day yet!


    "Oh, and as a little something from me personally, your Magnificence."


    He gestured to the midsection of the wyvern, and as he walked to the side of the creature to see what Fardin was motioning to Amerys actually gasped.


    A saddle. Fardin had given him the means to ride this creature. Amerys felt a rare spike of true gratitude flood his senses,


    "Oh, Fardin, you''ve truly outdone yourself this time. Truly, thank you."


    The man stood there looking like a rather puffed-up songbird after receiving the compliment, and Amerys made to climb the rungs that led up to the saddle. It was good, comfortable leather, seeming to be secured around the midsection of the wyvern with further strips of the reinforced stuff.


    "Your Magnificence needs only command the creature, and it will obey. It has been trained in your own tongue. I advise only that you ensure every strap is secured and in place around your person, and that you keep a good grip on the reins. I would not wish your Magnificence harmed, and so the safety of your person was paramount whilst such a saddle was designed."


    Somewhere in front of his position Amerys heard a noise of strangled fear from Misaphris, if quickly smothered. It seems his spymaster had just decided to join him.


    "She will rise when I give the word?"


    "Indeed she will, your Magnificence. Are the straps in place?"


    Amerys clinched the last of the leather strips into position, and then tugged each of them in turn to make sure they were secured. His legs were all but bound to the saddle, likewise his torso, and so he would be under little danger of falling from the saddle mid-flight, he assumed.


    "I will fly her now. Depending on how well she flies, I will fly to the Valley of the Gods, to see the statues that have been finished as well as those under construction."


    Fardin nodded, smiling. Misaphris'' frown deepened.


    "She will have you there after a day''s flight, your Magnificence. I wish you well on your journey, and hope you find it most enjoyable."


    Amerys smiled a true smile at him once more, then turned so he was forwards facing in the saddle.


    "RISE!"


    And then he was flying.


    He giggled and laughed as he rose through the air at a truly staggering speed, before gently pulling on the reins, leading the wyvern to slow its ascent before hovering in the air. Amerys laughed heartily as he looked down at the world below from his perch on high. This, this was what it meant to be divine! To soar high above the world upon the back of a creature that had taken most likely longer than a year to create, to condition, to train, and to know that it was meant as little more than a gift to him! A gift!


    He laughed hard and loud. For a moment the lonely feeling that had lingered in the back of his mind was banished as he felt a oneness with the creature that carried him into the skies.


    "Tuaa. That is to be your name. Do you hear me, Tuaa? You''re not some monster or creature that I own, you''re not some slave. You''re my pet, understand?"


    If the creature heard him it did not respond, save for a guttural groan that Amerys took to mean "yes". He smiled wider, if such a thing were possible, and urged her forwards.


    "Onwards, Tuaa!"


    He pressed his feet into her side, and she sped up. He just needed to follow the river Kikhepis until the mountains came into sight, then it''d be child''s play to find the Valley of the Gods. But then, he wasn''t too worried about taking a wrong turn. After all, it would give him more time to savour the joys of flying. A tear rolled down at his cheek, and he swiftly swiped it away with one hand whilst the other gripped the reins. He was so, so happy! He could see so much of the world from up here, and if he had the time he would gladly have travelled to the four corners of the world, but he knew he would never find the time. There were always too many dignitaries to meet, too many ceremonies to oversee, too many accounts to review. Amerys thanked all the gods that Misaphris had agreed to oversee the rest of the functions of state. Without his help Amerys would have found himself unable to deal with all the stresses of rulership, surely. Well, that was what Misaphris said, anyway.


    He pushed such thoughts aside. He was here, now, and should make the most of it whilst it lasted. He was flying, and surely that would be enough to satisfy him for now!


    His flight came to an end all too soon, but oh, by all the gods, those statues were magnificent. Intimidating, yes, but magnificent. The lives spent in their construction, the riches poured into the colossal construction works, it was all worth it. Only two stood finished at the moment, but by the very gods who''s likeness they bore, they were truly worthy of every accolade that would surely be lavished upon them in the centuries to come. From this distance their true vastness could be truly appreciated, not least because he was far from the hundreds of thousands of slaves wasting away in the valley as little more than a form of living rot. They would only dampen his experience if he had to look upon them.


    He sighed to himself. He really wanted to look up from the feet of the statues, to see them from the ground level. He didn''t really have a choice but to see the thousands of head of chattel, did he?


    Well, best get that part over with. At the very least they''ll quail before Tuaa. And then I''ll get some food and some sleep. It''s been a tiring day of flying, after all.


    He was carried to the valley by the sound of almost gentle wingbeats, before setting down carefully in the overseer''s quarter. A lavish tent was commandeered, as well as a bronze tub filled with heated water. He scrubbed himself clean before eating. Who knew that there was so much dust in the air to cling to you? His meal was small, but excellent, and he went to bed with a full stomach and a satisfied smile.


    But strangely enough, he struggled to get asleep. He could not shake the feeling that he was being judged.


    <hr>


    The statues that had been finished defied even his greatest expectations. They were huge, so huge that when he had stood at the base he could not see the head, but when he stood and stared from his camp miles away from the valley itself he could see them in all their glory. They had been carved with such care that they almost felt lifelike, a sensation that sent shivers or chills down the spine, depending on who you asked. The eyes were the most magnificent thing, he thought. They were made of a most strange rock that the priesthood called ''wyrd-stone'', or somesuch thing, a grey coloured rock with blue seams that almost seemed to flicker and flow as he looked at it, giving the impression that it was truly alive. The Sotenari, especially their fleshsmiths, as Amerys had come to know quite well, coveted the substance to no end, as did his own priesthood. Apparently it was used in the construction of some runic magics on the tombs of his forebears, most notably the pyramid of Djaf the Undying, the first King-of-Kings, but the fleshsmiths decried what they saw as a ''waste of a most valuable substance'', and had informed him that it was a most useful component in the making of their creations. According to those who had overseen that particular part of the project the very air itself seemed to cool around the stone, becoming frigid and cold.


    Even thinking about it sent a chill down his spine. He pushed the thought away. Stone was stone, odd or not. It was of no significance to one such as himself. Besides, the feeling of power it gave him, the sensation that he had crafted something that defied all the laws of this world...


    He shivered in ecstasy. Everything was proceeding in a most pleasing fashion; he suspected that his reign held a great many high points for the kingdom over which he ruled, the kingdom his father and his father''s father had ruled, and that his sons would one day continue to rule. Yes, he was to be the high point of a thousand generations of greatness, and so long as the world continued to turn, so long as the sun rose in the east and set in the west, his name would be remembered. He would be remembered.


    Yes, that sounded good. What a lovely thought that was. He thought to himself.


    How much he looked forwards to eternity amongst his divine kin.

 Child, God, Dust: The Still

    <u>Child, God, Dust: The Still</u>


    <u>Tjenkha, Central Nekhtou, the Kikhepis.


    </u><u>The Eighteenth Day of the First Moon, 2392 BD.</u>


    It was done. Finished. Twenty-two statues now stood sentinel over the Valley of the Gods, nay over the very desert itself, their eyes of that strange stone looking down at all beneath them impassively, almost cruelly. They seemed to mock the men beneath them, taunting them for their mortality, their insignificance, their very humanity. It was a monument that could only have been built by the hands of a god, and indeed, it was. He had built it. Him. The world would look upon the Valley of Gods after a thousand-thousand years, and still his monument would watch over the world with twenty-two stone cold gazes.


    He had a new toy, as well. The Fleshsmiths themselves had contacted him directly, rather than through their Slaver''s Guild overlords, to thank him for his enduring and, of course, exceedingly generous patronage. They had created something that defied imagination, something that put to shame anything else he had seen them create. They told him it had taken the lives of a great many acolytes from their order, as well as an untold number of slaves and failed prototypes, but the results were more than worth it. A Drake-Ogyr. The torso of an Ogyr-Alpha, engorged on slaughter and made far larger than even the greatest of it''s brethren, masterfully joined to the body of a wingless dragon, scaled and clawed and above all deadly. It could gallop across vast distances in mere moments, far faster than a creature it''s size should be able to move, so great was it''s size that the captain of Amerys'' personal guard, possibly the tallest man he had ever seen, barely came up to the creatures knee.


    It was... it was beautiful. Perfect. He''d had it barded in bronze sheet-armour, engraved with silver hieroglyphs symbolising protection and destruction, and studded with black-diamonds. A great warhammer was placed in the creatures hands in times of war and battle, it''s haft a great northern oak stripped of bark and branches and a head made of the finest bronze his smiths had ever seen.


    He would only have the best for such a magnificent pet.


    Already he had unleashed his divine pet against Nrtkha, that squalid and pathetic array of nomad tents masquerading as a city in the desert, and the results had been... they''d been beautiful. He had watched from atop his wyvern, circling the city like a vulture, watching to make sure noting bad happened to his newest pet. Entire streets of tents were crushed to kindling and foolscap beneath the monstrous feet of the beast, its tail lashing to and fro like a great crushing flail as the mighty warhammer turned ranks of men and steeds both into little more than a fine red mist and memories.


    He shuddered a little in extasy as the memories of that day replayed in his head. To see the people who had once laid low his divine father forced to flee their ancestral home before the very manifestation of his wroth and fury, the manifestation of the new links he had formed between the Nekhtoudum and the Sotenari... oh, it was most pleasing to think about. He was almost disappointed that there had yet to be any further rebellions against his reign. Oh, the thinks he could do with his pets in a true battle...


    The thought sent another spike of extasy through him, and he made a mental note to check with his advisors if any of the client-kingdoms between them and the Sotenari could be ''integrated'' into the Kingdom of the Kikhepis without alienating their new allies. Perhaps the Sotenari could even be persuaded to split the various petty kingdoms between their two great empires? They had already annihilated Ereverry, after all. Or perhaps cousin Khypra would not be against an offer of expanding his new kingdom; surely he understood that increasing his territories, spreading his influence, was the greatest way to secure a future for his kingdom? There were so many possibilities for conquest, for expansion, for slaughter, he could hardly contain himself.


    And yet he would. For he was divine, and divines did not give themselves over to their selfish desires as mortals did. Such behaviour would be beneath him. Beneath his divine blood. And he was divine, of that there could be no doubt. Who else could claim to have accomplished the things he had by the age of fourteen? Even the great heroes of yesteryear who build the very kingdom he now ruled paled in comparison to his genius, his strength, his magnificence. His work was complete, his great monument finished, his name etched into history even as it howled and screeched at him. And now?


    He sighed to himself. What was left of his reign but mundane projects? Farms, homes, markets; piteous things the like of which Misaphris had been subtly trying to direct him towards for the past half a decade. What was there but road building, canal digging, and estate management to look forwards to? He craved excitement, he craved adventure, he craved more. More monuments, more beasts, more slaves, more, more, more!


    He hurled his goblet across the room and clenched his fists. It wasn''t fair! Why should his advisors get to tell him he had spent enough resources on his projects and that he needed to start "ruling like his grand-uncle", or that he had grown too close to the Sotenari and "needed to act like his grand-sire".


    The men who had said such things had been very bold indeed. So much so that even he felt the need to pardon them for their clearly well-meant words. It was odd; if they hadn''t been quite so harsh that they had genuinely given him pause they would have surely been dead by now. Ah well.


    He barked out a command for a new goblet of wine, and a trio of slaves entered the room. One poured him out a goblet whilst the other two cleaned the tiled floors of the vintage that had been spilled when he had railed at the injustice of the world around him.


    "You. Halt."


    The slave pouring the drink froze in place, their eyes falling to the floor.


    "Your Magnificence honours me with his demand."


    Amerys smiled.


    "I do, don''t I? Look at me, and answer truthfully when questioned."


    She nodded deferentially at him, seeming to have been shaken by the attention that his divine self had seen fit to give her.


    "I stand the ruler of half a continent, I am rich beyond measure, and I have built something that even time itself shall not wear down. And for all of this, for all I have accomplished and all that I own, I find something is missing. I find myself yet growing bored. What would you have me do, if it were your decision to make?"


    The slave in front of him thought long and hard, his gaze never once leaving her. She seemed absolutely petrified, likely for fear she would somehow answer incorrectly. When she spoke it was not a whisper like he suspected she may have liked it to be, for she was clearly smart enough to know not to try his patience, but there was still an undercurrent of deep seated nervous tension in her words and how she held herself.


    "Has your Magnificence yet gazed upon thy monuments? If you have yet to do so, then perhaps seeing it finished will give you further inspiration?"


    Her words trailed off towards the end of the last sentence, and silence lingered for a little while. He saw a bead of sweat drip down her forehead as a smile slowly crept across his face.


    "Of course!"


    He laughed a hearty, if somewhat manic, laugh.


    "I wasn''t missing anything! I just need to actually see what I have accomplished! That... that..."


    He slowed himself, thinking. He hadn''t looked upon all the statues, but he had looked upon them frequently whilst they were under construction, and had seen a sizable number of those already finished.


    "No, that can''t be right... I''ve seen plenty of them, but I still feel like I''m missing something..."


    The slave continued to stand there, looking as though she wished to say more. He motioned to her to speak her mind, looking down his chin at the woman.


    "Speak."


    "Thank you, your Magnificence. You speak of missing something... your parents died when you were but a child, your Magnificence, and your only family resides a continent away. I... I will confess to hearing certain rumours from others around the palace. About how you are a puppet dancing to whichever tune master Misaphris chooses to have played."


    She looked up with him, panic in her eyes as she continued. As she spoke he felt something inside him seem to harden, as though everything was falling into place for all the wrong reasons.


    "Lies of course, your Magnificence! I would never insinuate that your divine self could ever be led in such a way! I only say this to ask... have you ever been permitted a friend?"


    Whatever thing it was that had hardened inside him, at those words he felt it shatter. He must have had a friend at some point, surely?


    Not since Khypra, a voice in his head seemed to say, and you sent him far away from here.


    It was on Misaphris'' suggestion! He railed back, but the voice was silent.


    Then he remembered what Khypra had said in the throneroom, could still remember the half-panic, half-sadness on his face all those years ago;


    "He is trying to turn you against your family, to isolate you and make you his to control!"


    He felt a small, huffed laugh leave his throat. He''d been telling the truth. Khypra had been telling the truth. And so because Misaphris had lied to him, Amerys had sent the last of his true family thousands of miles away. After that there had been no friends. There was never enough time, and besides, friends were a risk. They only wanted to be his friends for power, anyway.


    Or so Misaphris had told him.


    As absurd as it was, he found himself begin to laugh. It was a hollow thing, all mirth absent from the action, and it only grew more morose as it crescendoed. He raised a hand to his face whilst the other clutched at his stomach. He pulled the hand on his face away after a moment. It was wet. Tears. He was crying. He was crying. The hollow laugh morphed and twisted inside him, suddenly turning into a piercing, angry scream that tore the insides of his throat and made him see red.


    He turned back to the slave as guards poured into the room, hearing the commotion. Upon seeing him one of them reach to grab her he stopped them with a shaking hand and bellowed his orders.


    "CEASE! FIND MISAPHRIS! FIND HIM AND DRAG HIM TO ME! NOW!"


    The guards, though surprised, did not hesitate even a moment to enact his word; however dishevelled he may have appeared, he was still their god. Nothing would change that.


    Looking briefly around he saw that the other two slaves had vanished, leaving him alone with the trembling woman. He swiped at his eyes angrily, forcing down however many tears remained unshed. The last time he had cried had been the two year anniversary of his parent''s death. That alone let him know how much this had affected him, no matter how much he would otherwise try and deny it.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    "You''re right. He- that bastard. I''m going to kill him. I''ve had no family because of him. No friends because of him. Why? What did he mean to accomplish?"


    The woman remained silent, then flinched as his gaze whipped around to her. He walked over and laid a hand on her shoulder.


    "How old are you?"


    "Eight and ten, your Magnificence."


    He nodded.


    "You''re the first person here to tell me that truth. You''re a slave no longer. You''re to be my friend now."


    She blinked at him in confusion, an unreadable emotion on her face, before the weight of his words set in. She swallowed thickly before speaking.


    "Thank you, your Magnificence. May I refill your wine?"


    He looked down at his goblet, which had been freshly filled a few minutes ago, and noticed that in his fit he must have thrown yet another ounce of the crimson liquid from its container.


    "You may. My thanks. See to the changes befitting your new status afterwards. Name anything you want, and it will be done. Dismissed."


    She bowed deferentially and stepped backwards.


    "Thank you, your Magnificence."


    She walked swiftly, almost anxiously, to the door. As she opened it and made to leave, Amerys was greeted by a most pleasing sight. Before him a gagged Misaphris was being dragged none-too-roughly before him by a pair of jackal-helmed champions, their halberds eschewed in favour of khopeshes so that they might keep a hand free to pull the lanky man behind them.


    The slave''s eyes widened at the sight, and Amerys reckoned she was afraid of witnessing what was to come. She bolted from the door and ran as fast as she could, the door being slammed shut behind her by yet more animal-helmed guards.


    "Why? Why, Misaphris. For how many years have you kept me alone here?"


    The man tried to speak through his gag, but the effort was fruitless. Amerys was almost tempted to leave it there and then order the man executed, since he obviously would have nothing to say in his defence, but for all the stresses and indignities of the day, he was still divine, and had to act the part.


    He had already eschewed that duty once today.


    Instead, he nodded at one of the guards, who removed the gag from the spymaster''s mouth.


    "What is the meaning of this, your Magnificence? Surely there is a misunderstanding!"


    "You told me cousin Khypra wished for my throne. You had me send him away, along with all the rest. That was a lie, wasn''t it? Yes, I see that now. He had no designs on my throne. So why? Why send him away? Why would you make me do that?"


    Misaphris swallowed thickly.


    "Your Magnificence, with all due respect, you were the one that wanted to exile him, all of them. If you wished them to remain you needed only to say the right words."


    Amerys took a step forwards, genuinely affronted as the spymaster tried to pin the blame for why he had felt so empty, so lonely for most of his life, on the actions he had taken as a child. Tears streamed down his face unbidden once more as he spoke, only this time he did not even try to hide them. His voice cracked as he screamed at the man in front of him.


    "I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD! I WAS HARDLY OLD ENOUGH TO EVEN KNOW WHAT EXILE WAS! YOU WERE MY FATHER''S LOYAL ADVISOR, YOU, WHO COMFORTED ME AND PROMISED TO KEEP ME SAFE. Yes, I can see that now. You held me in a gilded cage, and called me ''guest'' when really I was YOUR PRISONER! YOU TOLD ME HE WAS A THREAT, YOU, WITH ALL YOUR HONEYED WORDS. KHYPRA WAS RIGHT ABOUT YOU! I SHOULD HAVE LET MY COUSINS KILL YOU IN THE THRONEROOM ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!"


    Misaphris made to stand, but was sent reeling back to the floor when one of Amerys'' champions struck him. It seemed the man had spent a great deal more favour than he had realised if even the guards were willing to strike him.


    "Your Magnificence, I must protest my innocence. I know not where this conviction of yours has come from, but I assure you I have only ever acted with your kingdom in mind. I wanted prosperity for your subjects, I wanted to fill your coffers, to leave the kingdom a better place than when I started. All I have ever done has been for the benefit of your kingdom."


    Amerys sniffled a little, his voice only a tad louder than a whisper.


    "For my kingdom. Not for me. I was kept isolated from true companionship for almost a decade, because... because... help me here, Misaphris, I genuinely can''t see a benefit to this. Why? Why?"


    The man looked up at him, and then... well, then he smiled.


    "Because I could. Because I can. I''ve ruled through you ever since your father died. I hardly even had to distract you; you latched on to your project, busied yourself with meeting dignitaries, filled your own time with endless petty quibbles involving the Sotenari. You left the running of the realm to the council, and the council left it to me. You turned yourself into my puppet, and all I had to do was make sure you relied on my council for comfort and reinforcement. If your cousins had to be sent to the end of the civilised world for that to happen, then it was a price worth paying."


    The man stared up at him, smirking. He seemed... not quite smug, but certainly somewhere in the same area. He had surely known that no matter what he said, he was to die here, and so had elected to simply tell Amerys the truth, knowing it would hurt more than any lie ever could.


    Damn him. Damn him to whatever hells existed!


    "I could have been normal! I''ve- gods, how many people did I send to their deaths? How many have been forced into chains because of me? Hundreds of thousands, surely. But why? I''m not deluded enough to think I can pin this squarely on you, no matter how bad you think I am, but as sure as day heralds night you are the root of all of this. I... I could have lived happily! I could have been a good ruler! I COULD HAVE FUCKING BEEN SOMEONE THAT WASN''T... someone that wasn''t a monster. Why, Misaphris? Why?"


    But the man would not answer. He just stared up at him with still, unblinking eyes. Oh. Amerys had stabbed him. When exactly had he done that? The dagger was still in his hands, even as its blade rested within Misaphris'' heart. Amerys sighed heavily. There was blood on his hands, and his arms, staining the floors with the very essence of the man whom only yesterday he would have called his most loyal supporter. There was blood on his hands.


    But then he supposed there always had been.


    He had lived his life in a trance, and now the spell was broken; for the first time he saw himself as he truly was. He nodded towards the animal-helmed champions, and the body of his former spymaster, of his late father''s spymaster, was carried out of the room.


    Oh, what a mess they''d both made together.


    <hr>


    When all was said and done he was left alone in his chambers once more. The blood was washed from the tiles, the body of Misaphris removed, and all was quiet. He had been played for a fool his whole life, and only now could he see the truth; all the things he had worked towards in his entire reign so far amounted to nothing more than a series of vanity projects to fill the hole in his heart where companionship was supposed to go, where cherished memories of friendship should have been. Gods, he was a piece of work. He thought back to less than ten minutes ago when the thought of slaughter actually seemed to excite him, in more ways than one. Thinking on it again, it still did excite part of him. He swallowed hard to stop himself from bringing up his breakfast. Gods above, he was sick! How could he... and all those people... their lives and livelihoods...


    "Oh, gods..."


    He ran a shaking hand through his hair as he let himself all but collapse to the floor. How could he have fallen this far? How? What must people have thought of him? What would father have thought of him?


    What would mother have thought of him?


    That thought proved to be the straw that broke the camels back, as every morsel he had eaten that day forced itself back up, spewing out over the tiled floor. The feeling burned the back of his throat, and so he stood once more, moving to pick up the goblet of wine he must have placed to the side before he started screaming at Misaphris. He took several long gulps, the alcohol helping to sooth his frayed nerves and seeming to grant him at least a modicum of strength.


    Think. He had to think. He could reverse some of the damages he had wrought to the people of his kingdom, given time. He just needed to think.


    The remaining slaves, great in number, would find work on farms and on the building of infrastructure, that was something. Many more could be sold to his vassals or landowners, or even the priesthood. That would make back some of the wealth he had wasted on his monuments. After that, he would... he would...


    He sighed to himself. He didn''t know. There was so much to do, but he knew how to do so little of it. A rapprochement with the nomads, no matter how much he would have had to swallow his pride, would have been next. Key phrase: would have been. Amerys knew all to well that no nomad would deal with him again no matter how long he reigned. Perhaps cousin Khypra? If... if Khypra would even deign to look at him again, then he would apologise, he would tell his cousin that he had been right, that Misaphris had used him as a puppet, he would-


    Amerys stopped himself once more. He would write to Khypra, and he would apologise, but he couldn''t afford to have delusions of rapprochement there either. He had long ago burned that bridge.


    The creations he had purchased from the Slaver''s Guild, they could likely be resold back to their creators for half their sale value without causing a stir. The jobs they had been purchased for were done, after all. Ogyrs and Titanblooded both, they would be sent back to Gorratar soon enough. As for his pets, the tame wyvern and his drake-ogyr, they would both need to be looked after properly; monsters they may have been, but they were guilty only of that which he had bade them to do. They''d never struck out without instruction, and so they were underserving of any harm.


    All of that would at least make a start, he thought as he practically dragged his feet over so he could stand at the balcony once more. His entire body felt as though it was made of lead, so exhausted had the events of the last quarter of an hour made him, but he resolved he had to at least bring himself to face his failures.


    The words he had engraved at the base of the statue of Djaf the Undying were intended to read as triumphant, almost joyous, but in a twist of irony he could only imagine the most bitter of tones being used to read it now. His great work was finished, but all he could see where mountains once stood proud and tall was untold death and suffering. He had lived and reigned as a monster thus far, and somewhere deep within him he knew it was not enough to simply wish to better himself. Indeed, even if he ruled as the single kindest man alive for a hundred years, it would never wash out the stains of the last few years. He was a monster, and would be remembered as such. He let out a sigh as the realisation hit him. He did not feel sad, or angry, or even scared, as he knew he probably should.


    He just felt empty.


    If he were anyone else, he would take a walk off the end of his balcony, but he knew suicide was too good for him. He had a duty to his people to try and be better for the rest of his reign, no matter how long or short it may be. His reign hadn''t been all bad thus far, after all, he had greatly improved relations with the Sotenari Empire, if through despicable means, but that still counted for something. There was little risk of a war between their two nations for the next few decades, that much at least was certain. Nonetheless, he still felt empty.


    He closed his eyes, feeling the cool breeze on his face, and gently swirled the wine in his goblet. He thought back to the statues, their visages and gazes both burned into his mind, and sighed a deep sigh. He chucked a little to himself, the action a quiet and miserable thing, and then spoke the words aloud.


    "Look upon my works, ye divines, and despair."


    <hr>


    A nomad led his camel across the sands of the desert. The passage had been rough, but soon they should reach the main caravan and be reunited with his friends. He patted the neck of the camel that walked alongside him, then stopped a moment as his foot bumped against something hard.


    He looked down to see the corner of what appeared to be a stone block. Sandstone, by the colour, the kind used in the ancient cities of this land.


    He smiled wryly, and continued to move through the sands blown by the wind. Sure enough, perhaps fifteen minutes later he came across what was left of one of the greatest cities the world had ever known.


    Before him on a plinth stood a child of bronze and stone, arms outstretched with exultation, crook in one hand and flail in the other. The statue was little more than a ruin; the head was missing, as was most of its back, but it stood nonetheless.


    Around it the ruins remained silent.


    They had been for a thousand years, and would be forevermore. Good.


    The child had been a monster given human form. He had looked upon the Valley of the Gods once.


    Once.


    Never again. That place was cursed. Untold thousands had been driven to their death at that place to satiate the vanity and piety of a young boy who had been raised almost from birth to believe he was a god. The statues seemed to watch, to judge, to linger in the mind.


    He had looked upon them, once. He had the oddest feeling they were waiting for something.


    He moved his mask back in place, and left to continue his journey. There was a foreign prince that needed escorting to these ruins, and the Valley besides. He would let the others take him here, and especially to the edge of the dunes leading to that accursed place.


    He had lingered in this silent world long enough.

 The Ravens Laughter Part I: To Bet On Losing Dogs - Prologue:

    <u>Prologue</u>


    <u>The Fourth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Angels, but he was tired.


    Romanos ran a hand through his hair as yet another council meeting was called to its end. He wasn''t built for this sort of work. The last month had seen him age about a decade, if the gaunt face and hollow eyes that looked at him whenever he passed a mirror were anything to go by. Oh, for certain, he was fine with administrative duties and seeing to the running of the Order of the Violet. He''d been doing it for more than a decade, after all. But this was different; he''d spent all of that time preparing to see his young friend on the throne, and now all of that work, all of that time spent hoping...


    He closed his eyes and let out a deep, slow sigh. It didn''t matter now. Lykourgos was alive. Asleep, but alive. Nasos had been a most thankful presence; his skills in the medicinal arts were likely all that had kept his prince alive in those dark, terror filled days. For almost two weeks after his friend had taken to sleep he, somewhat ironically, hadn''t been able to sleep almost at all. He barely could stand sleeping now. He just... every day that had passed for that fortnight he had dreaded the news he was certain would come to him soon, news that his beloved friend and in some ways prot¨¦g¨¦ was dead, that he would be interred into the Westcoast Church and rest with his father and sister for an eternity, leaving only his brother behind to bear his family''s name.


    But that news never came.


    Instead Nasos had told him that the worst was over; Lykourgos, though it was unlikely he would wake for quite some time, was unlikely to perish from his wounds. He could have cried upon hearing those words, but he had forced them down. He was a knight of the realm. He could not be seen as being weak, no matter the circumstances.


    He had smiled and nodded, thanked the healer, then sent them on their way. If Nasos noticed that the smile never reached his eyes, he hadn''t mentioned it.


    The other members that sat the council at the moment were an eclectic, if loyal, bunch. He sat it, of course, and besides him were Master Elikoidi and Mistress Crowe. The three of them formed the core of their prince''s supporters whilst he was... indisposed. There were two others of note that ruled alongside the three of them in Lykourgos'' name. The first was Lykourgos'' beloved brother; Prince Rhema had, to most people''s surprise, taken an active role in running the kingdom. He dispensed justice and did his best to keep the unrest from the lowborns from boiling over, a fair few of which believed that Rhema had ordered his brother killed to take the throne. Now, Romanos didn''t exactly trust the youngest of the two princes, far from it, but the idea that he would sabotage his own war effort only to then mortally wound his brother, and then not have him finished off in some way, was beyond absurd. No. Mad he might have been, but not that insane.


    Although it appeared that recently many in court had begun to doubt even his madness. Rhema seemed to be holding himself together well in the days since his brother had been discovered bleeding upon the battlements, driving himself to keep his mind free from the taint of impulse and intrusion, but where most saw it as a permanent shift, Romanos held no such delusions. He would watch the youngest brother, and he would wait. It was only a matter of time until the madness unveiled itself once more, and he would have to make sure that the wild prince didn''t do something stupid when it did. He''d made a career out of keeping one prince from trouble, it shouldn''t be too hard for him to do the same for a second. Master Yzaldae was the last of their council, but Romanos didn''t know him well enough to form a real opinion of him in his tired state.


    Elikoidi was... well, he was Elikoidi. He was lying to them all, in a way. He still tried to pretend what had happened hadn''t shaken him, and some of the other councillors may have even brought it. Romanos didn''t, couldn''t; he''d known the scarred one almost as long as he''d known Lykourgos. No, Elikoidi was doing just as badly as Romanos himself was. Crowe was too busy looking after Rhema and doing her job to worry about their fallen monarch, and the last council member had only just arrived in the country, so it wasn''t as though he''d had the time to form an attachment to the boy who should have been crowned king by now. Romanos was sceptical of the man, and he knew Elikoidi was as well, but Crowe and Rhema had convinced them that, since none of them really administrated over everyday civilian affairs, at least one council member should be brought on to at least make a start of reconstruction. Romanos didn''t particularly like it, in his mind they should just let the lowborns get on with bringing in the harvest instead of sticking their noses into every farmhouse and village granary, but then he had to concede that he didn''t really know anything about these matters.


    "Still here?"


    The voice broke him from his thoughts, but then he wasn''t particularly worried about that.


    "Elikoidi. I am, yes. I was... well, I suppose I was just thinking."


    The younger man nodded and moved to sit back down at the table. Romanos quirked an eyebrow and gave a weak smile.


    "Funny. I seem to recall you always used to sit on the table rather than at it. To annoy me, mostly."


    Elikoidi sighed and returned the weak smile.


    "You don''t need me annoying you at the moment. Besides, I could just as well say you always used to tell his Grace to get a better amount of sleep."


    Romanos let out a huff that might have charitably been termed a laugh, before the two of them continued with their subdued conversation. No matter how much he willed it otherwise, Romanos found himself expending a great deal of effort to simply look up at his sometimes-friend-sometimes-rival rather than the table. After a little while Elikoidi questioned his odd behaviour.


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "I know I''m quite the bright sight and you''re tired, but can''t you look at me?"


    Romanos did his best to drag himself up, forcing his head to turn so that he might look at the younger man.


    "It''s difficult. I... I have not been sleeping well, no. Although you shouldn''t need spies to tell you that."


    The knight gestured weakly at his own haggard face, a wry smile about his lips. Elikoidi''s own lips curled, the scarred skin being pulled taught as a similarly wry look came across his face as well.


    "You think I''m sleeping well?"


    "You look fine enough to me."


    Elikoidi huffed before pulling out a small ball of what looked to be wool and a small container with a stopper in the top from... somewhere, Romanos didn''t really see where he''d got it from, before he seemed to dab the wool into the alcohol and rub it on his face. To Romanos'' astonishment, it seemed to drain the colour from the patches of unblemished skin on the man''s face, until he looked as sleep deprived and tired as Romanos himself.


    "How did you-"


    "Don''t ask, please."


    That gave him a moment of pause. Elikoidi never said please, and especially not to him.


    "But-"


    The spymaster cut him off again.


    "A trick I learned from my previous line of work, let''s leave it at that."


    The words were hurried, almost rushed, as though he could hardly wait to get to the end of the sentence. He gave a moment of thought to the words and suppressed a wince. Yes, he could see how that might aid someone in Elikoidi''s old line of work, especially one struck by the black grave as he was.


    But he could also see exactly why he didn''t want to talk about it.


    He nodded once at the man, and made to change the subject.


    "What do you make of the younger of the princes? He seems to be doing well, even if this rally is only temporary."


    Elikoidi gave him a look that was probably as close to gratefulness as he had ever given him before answering the question.


    "He is full of surprises, that much is certain. Were I not quite so tired I would sit attend court to watch the nobles shit themselves every time he so much as glances at them."


    Romanos gave a light chuckle, even if the thought was a little crude.


    "Now that would be a sight. I am surprised that his Highness chose to let them live, if in captivity. He hates the nobles."


    "But not as much as his brother does. No, I have it on good authority he awaits his brother''s awakening so that he might pass the judgement he was denied after the rebellion."


    Romanos suppressed an involuntary shudder at the thought, but judging by the glint in Elikoidi''s eyes something must have given him away.


    "Your pardon, Master Elikoidi. The thought of the sentence to be passed onto the old nobles... how many do you suspect will die? A half? A quarter?"


    Elikoidi made a so-so motion with his hands.


    "A half, I''d wager. Enough to sate both his need for vengeance and justice but not so many as to alienate the other monarchs in the Heptarchy. He''s far from stupid, after all."


    Romanos smiled, a little more genuine this time, and nodded. Then he sighed.


    "Assuming he wakes up."


    Elikoidi''s own tired face fell somewhat, and the man nodded at him.


    "Aye," he said, "assuming he wakes up."


    There was a little more silence in the room after that, but not much. There was too much Romanos wanted to ask, too many hours in the day that he desperately wished to spend in conversation, distracting himself from the thought of his young friend and suzerain covered in blood and half-dead on the walls of Anaria on the day when he was supposed to be coronated-


    He took a deep, shuddering breath, and willed himself to stop shaking. He closed his eyes and held up one finger to Elikoidi, silently asking for a moment to recompose himself.


    The shaking stopped, and he opened his eyes. Elikoidi looked at him, then nodded once, bidding him to continue.


    "So, if you don''t mind me asking, what''s been keeping you so busy recently?"


    "I''ve been expanding my network abroad. If Lieutenant Isen slipped across our borders... I''ll find him. I''ll find him if it kills me."


    Romanos raised his eyebrow once more.


    "You''re certain it was him? He served loyally for years after the rebellion."


    The man nodded once, almost defiantly.


    "He''s the only person that makes sense. His Grace was meeting with him at the location he was later discovered at, Isen was seen leaving the city in a hurry around the same time, and then he seems to have vanished from the eyes of my rats."


    "And if your rats can''t find someone..."


    "Then they aren''t in Teleytaios anymore. Hence why I''m building my network up in some of our neighbours."


    Romanos smiled teasingly at him.


    "Hard work?"


    "Oh, like you wouldn''t believe nor understand."


    The teasing smile become wry, and the knight gave the spymaster an incredulous look.


    "Okay, that''s fair. Out of everyone you''re going to understand the work that goes into running a large organisation, but I stand by my point. I can''t delegate these things out to others, I need to manually find new rats in these lands, and build their nests, without either the local authorities or the highborns discovering them. It takes time and a level of diligence that... well, trying to set one up in one kingdom is hard enough, but trying to set up two at once..."


    "Two at once? Owkrestos and Nordicos, I presume?"


    The scarred man nodded.


    "Aye. They''re most likely for places that turncoat would run. I''ve also reached out to an old contact in the Wrecker''s Republic. If all goes well, I might have the beginnings of a network on Anatolikoi as well, though given the sea between us and them, not to mention the constant battle between the dozen nations on the island, it will be almost certainly less efficient. Still, if he''s gone there then I''ll find him. I''ll bloody find him, and then he''ll wish he''d choked himself whilst he had the chance."


    Romanos smiled grimly. He didn''t condone torture, not on anyone, regardless of their crime. But for what Isen had done...


    "Aye, I''m certain he will. Tell me if you require my assistance with anything, even things unrelated to recent events. We need to stick together until his Grace wakes up."


    The words left his mouth before he''d even registered that he was speaking, and in a way he was glad. Such thoughts had always been surprised in the past, his pride stopping the words from being said, but now they were out.


    Elikoidi looked somewhat surprised, before nodding slowly.


    "My thanks. You as well. We... we need to stick together."


    The spymaster rose from the table and made to leave, patting the knight on the shoulder as he went passed.


    "Try not to stay sat here too long. Get some rest. He''ll recover soon, I''m sure of it."


    He nodded at the retreating figure of the man that had for so long been the flipside to his coin, his rival in their almost childish battles for their friend''s attention, for influence over him.


    No longer, he swore it. They needed to be united.


    But he couldn''t shake the feeling that he was missing something important. There was a feeling in the air, an almost crackling tension in the city that only seemed to rise as the days of Lykourgos'' coma grew.


    He shook his head and made to stand.


    It was probably nothing.

 Rhema I: His Brothers Due

    <u>Rhema I: His Brother''s Due</u>


    <u>The Eighth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Saints, how in all the hells had Lykourgos planned to manage this mess?


    Rhema let out a frustrated groan as he let his head fall to the table, his face resting atop a pile of parchments and paperwork. Their sister had left... well, he wasn''t sure exactly what it was that she''d done to the lands that had been bequeathed to her, but they were left in somewhat of a poor state. Actually he had a solid bet as to what she''d done with the lands, and that was nothing at all. No wonder taxes and tithes had been down the last few years, there was hardly anyone being sent out to collect them. In some places the bureaucracy acted almost as the old nobles did, as though the rebellion had never happened.


    He''d made sure to cure the realm of that ailment as one of his first actions as acting regent, and his cure, if blunt, had been very effective.


    Heads. Tar. Spikes. Crude, but it worked.


    In more ways than one he was fucking pissed. A goodly portion of her lands were originally supposed to be his, before she stuck her claws into father and had him sent to one of the most outlying regions of the kingdom, and he was fairly certain that even he would have done a better job of administering to the lands than she had. At the very least he would have left the running of his demesne to someone competent rather than leaving it to rot and concentrating on all the fancies and fineries of the capital.


    But no. Here he was, in a small antechamber in the palace, looking through nearly five years worth of records and trying to separate what was true and what had been siphoned away. He closed his eyes and let out an annoyed huff. He really didn''t want to be doing this. In many ways this fell under the purview of the new Master of Copper, an exile from Sothettar who had arrived in the kingdom not long ago. The man seemed good and loyal, and that was what counted at the moment. If Lyk didn''t agree with the man''s appointment when he awoke then he was more than welcome to dismiss him and install someone of his own choosing, but he had the feeling that that would not be necessary. After all, his brother valued nothing quite as much as competence, save perhaps justice.


    Justice. What a stupid concept. What an outdated concept. Any justice in the world had been lost for a long, long time. The death of Harald II? The ascension of the manic king? Or perhaps even further back. He supposed that, to some, justice may have been lost since the Klironomeans ousted the Skraeling kings of house Doregern. Anyhow, justice, no matter when, was gone. But his brother was supposed to bear justice now. King Lykourgos, second to bear that name, should have been a symbol of unity and honesty that all could rally behind and rebuild under. Instead his brother was still a prince, and had been mortally wounded on the day of his coronation. Rhema had some theories about who had been responsible, but Elikoidi seemed certain that it had been Lieutenant Isen. As much as Rhema would have liked to pin such events on the choir, seeing as they''d been responsible for the wounding of his best friend, he had to admit that Lieutenant Isen made for a much more convincing candidate than the cult of the choir anyway. Besides, the old cult was all but dead once more; it''s adherents were scattered and leaderless, with their leader and his right hand having fled on a ship in the chaos of that night.


    Even still, the list of people who would have wished they''d killed themselves when they''d had the chance as soon as he got his hands on them had grown. Turnkey, Ser Aenethar, and now Lieutenant Isen. Well, that was assuming he could get his hands on Isen before anyone else did.


    Rhema happened to know that there was a long, long line of people who wanted to ''speak'' with the soldier before he was granted the mercy of the noose. Elikoidi for a start, after all he''d been friends with Lyk for years before the rebellion, and their bond hadn''t frayed in the years since then. After him it would probably be Dreamwulf. The blind man was as skilled as his brother had claimed, and had a most calm aura about him most of the time. He was a wealth of salt-of-the-earth wisdom, who always seemed to think a great deal before he acted. But then Rhema had also seen the other side of the blind warrior, the bloodhound that could strike down half a dozen men almost effortlessly, the man who would wade through blood and death if it meant his friends would live another day. He was fiercely loyal to his brother, and Rhema had to admit that he''d become quite fond of the man as the days had gone past as well. It was a very rare sight to have anyone else standing guard by his brother''s bedside. He''d had to be damn near forced to take his rest the first few weeks, and the look on his face when he''d seen the state of their king-to-be... well, it rivalled the fury and anguish of Rhema himself. That was a dangerous man, and one he would be most delighted to fight alongside. It seemed odd that a monk of all people was so skilled a soldier, but then he supposed that the young man must have lived an interesting life beforehand. He made a mental note to ask the man about his past at some point. In any other circumstances he''d spend most days sparring with him, but alas, the two of them were far too busy at the moment.


    His brother''s healer seemed to be the other holy-type that he''d picked up on his ventures and expeditions into the occult. Nasos was definitely a more traditional priest than Dreamwulf was, that much was certain, and was bloody good with a needle and thread. That last bit was probably the only reason Lyk could still draw breath, to be honest. He wasn''t sure exactly how the procedure of sealing stab wounds went, but the young man was bloody good at it.


    "Tired, your Highness?"


    Seventh''s voice came from the door of the antechamber, and Rhema raised his head from the table to look at them. He frowned slightly. He didn''t like that his friend still wore a blindfold, but he supposed he understood the need to prevent anyone being driven mad.


    "Always. I don''t know how my brother did it in his old domain, north of the Einar. I''m also unsure quite how badly my sister''s lands were left to rot. I don''t know if it''s neglect, corruption, or some combination of the two, but the numbers don''t paint a pretty picture."


    His friend huffed out a small laugh as they walked over to the prince, resting a hand on their shoulder.


    "Well, at least you''re making a start. I still remember seeing the shock on the faces of those bureaucrats you ordered beheaded for stealing from the crown. Doubly so when you told them you meant to swing the blade yourself."


    Rhema chuckled.


    "Have you had a chance to look upon the eastern gates from the outside of the city? If not then I suggest you do; a few of them still have those expressions to this day."


    "I''ll make sure to check them out. Really though, how are you doing at the moment?"


    Rhema gave the seer a wry smile.


    "Would it be wrong of me to say ''no fucking idea''?"


    Seventh shrugged at him.


    "Sounds about right to me."


    "Yeah, I assumed you''d say that no matter what I ended up saying. Now, tell me something. Who is that man you''ve been talking with these last few weeks. I''ve never seen him before, but the rest of my brother''s retinue seemed rather astounded to see him, not that any of them really knew anything when I asked them."


    Seventh tilted their head to one side in thought, as though they were contemplating the best way to approach his question.


    "He is the man your brother found unconscious at the Horndaal on one of his expeditions. I was able to awaken him when I reached your brother''s camp, but he went back to sleep not long after. Still, with the proverbial spell broken, it was simply a normal sleep he had returned too, as opposed to a supernatural one."


    Rhema blinked a few times, taking it all in.


    "A supernatural sleep? Then how long was he there for?"


    Seventh shrugged.


    "He''s not rightly sure, but not long after the burial of Harald II. Either way, he was entombed in stone for centuries before your brother uncovered him."


    "Why was he there?"


    His friend''s face had a look of confusion, as though he were wondering the same thing.


    "Why was he at the Horndaal or why was he entombed? I asked him on both accounts, but received only vague explanations or passing comments to brush off any further questioning. For why he was at the Horndaal, I at least received half an answer. He said that the fort is old, far older than mankind thinks, and has stood far longer than any man could possibly remember. He got a sort of... wistful look... when he reached the end of that statement. Still, it''s better than his answer for why he was entombed. He just looked at me and cryptically said it was ''for his own safety''. I admire him greatly for reasons I cannot share, not until he tells you himself, but he can be damn annoying when he''s cryptic."


    Rhema let out a snort at that, and giggled a little when Seventh turned to them.


    "Now you know how I feel when I''m speaking with you."


    That earned him a light-hearted clip about the ear, but he could hear the smile in the words of his friend.


    "You''re terrible to me."


    "Aye, I am. But you love me for it!"


    His friend let out a long-suffering laugh as they nodded at his retort.


    "Dear lord help me."


    The two of them looked at each other with as serious an expression as the humorous exchange would allow, before the both of them broke out into a fit of giggles.


    "You know, I should probably feel more... I don''t know, surprised? Awed? That a man centuries old is stalking the halls of the palace."


    Seventh chuckled lightly.


    "Oh, trust me, he''s more than a few centuries old. More than a few millennia, actually. But I get your point. It does seem passing odd that there isn''t more of a reaction, but then I suppose only a few people really have even the most basic idea of how long he''s lived for. Apparently there''s something about him that just... makes people accept it as the truth? I wish I had a better answer for you, but this isn''t like my dream-magics. This is something far, far older. Your brother woke something truly ancient when he uncovered that man, but I don''t think anyone really appreciates the magnitude of it just yet, especially since he seems to be lying low."


    "Why''s that?"


    His friend visibly suppressed a shudder.


    "I told him what had happened to me and he was none too keen to, and I quote, ''deal with those fucking nutjobs again''. Take from that what you will."


    Rhema blinked as the implications of that ran through his mind.


    "Wait, so he''s-"


    "Like me? Pretty much. Well, except for he''s a lot older. And stronger. And more experienced. He''s basically what I would likely be working towards being, had there been anyone around to teach me."


    Rhema shook his head and smiled.


    "Well, you''ve done well enough for yourself regardless. Anyways, I was going to-"


    An armoured fist knocked on the door three times, and Rhema paused.


    "Yes?"


    "Your Highness! The Black Swan is coming into port at the docks! King Alekos was aboard and is currently awaiting permission to enter the palace!"


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Rhema smiled lightly and turned back to Seventh.


    "Ah, he''ll be here to check on my brother. Seems the news must have travelled far already."


    He turned back to the door and raised his voice.


    "Grant him admittance!"


    "At once, your Highness!"


    <hr>


    Rhema stood beside the throne, one hand resting on the head of the axe resting in a loop at his belt and as stern an expression as he could muster on his face. He''d deliberately picked out some of the guards with the sternest aspects to line the halls, just for added intimidation. Now, Rhema liked Alekos, but that only went so far. He also wanted to scare the shit out of the relatively timid royal. Why?


    Because his brother had been very fond of him, and it had crushed him when he left.


    Maybe they''d made up. Maybe they hadn''t. Either way, Alekos was here to see Rhema''s beloved brother who rested in a comatose state after being away for quite some time. Hell, the last time the two of them had actually seen each other was, if Rhema remembered correctly, over two years ago. It took a certain amount of gall, in his mind, to come into Lyk''s family home and ask to see him now.


    "His Grace, King Alekos the Third of Polaeros, Chosen of the Seekers and Flame of Polaris!"


    Rhema''s lip curled somewhat as the herald read out the lofty titles. The last time Rhema had met Alekos he had still been a prince. A small knot of men entered the room, perhaps half a dozen, with the royal at their head. He nodded slightly to the side and Mistress Crowe stepped forwards, before the large woman recited Rhema''s own titles in turn.


    "His Highness, Prince Rhema Sperakos, Regent of Teleytaios and Defender of the Southern Approaches, Lord of Foxglove and Hemlock."


    He suppressed a smile at that last one. Lord of Foxglove and Hemlock. He''d never heard that one used before, but he''d be a liar if he said he didn''t like it. A little on the nose, but then he reasoned that so was he.


    "Alekos Virgilos. King of Polaeros. What brings you to my brother''s kingdom?"


    He knew exactly why Alekos was here, but there were certain formalities to observe. Alekos himself couldn''t have been king for long; he was only a year or so older than Rhema himself, and had spent most of the last four and a half years travelling the world, so there couldn''t have been much time for a coronation. The raven-haired monarch stepped forwards, some measure of steel in his spine, and made to speak. Rhema deliberately cut him off.


    "Could it be that you wish to discuss matters of trade? Or perhaps you mean to attempt to broker an alliance through marriage? If you are here for the latter then I am afraid to tell you that such a match will never be possible, for my sister now lies under the Westcoast Church alongside my father. I take it you will pay your respects there soon after this meeting?"


    Alekos looked at him with an expression somewhere between cowed and annoyed. As boys the Polaeran had always found Rhema somewhat intimidating, and it seemed not much had changed as they aged. Nonetheless there was a glint in his green eyes as he took another deliberate step forwards, hands held out open-palmed in a gesture of peace.


    "I am here to see a close friend of mine who has taken a severe injury, according to rumour, and to ascertain the truth of what has happened. May I speak to his Grace?"


    "No."


    Rhema''s voice was stern, and Alekos looked somewhat taken aback.


    "May I ask why not?"


    Rhema felt his fist clench on the head of the axe in his belt, but he willed it to go slack once more. He was a prince. He was Lykourgos'' brother. He needed to act like it.


    "Because he has been asleep for more than a month."


    Alekos'' eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open and then shut a few times. Had the circumstances been more humorous Rhema might have compared him to a fish out of water, but with things as they were at the moment he kept his thoughts to himself.


    There was a time and a place for such levity.


    "I see."


    There was a slight choke in Alekos'' voice as he spoke the words, but the royal turned to the side and cleared his throat before continuing in a far more level tone.


    "I would still like to see him if at all possible, your Highness."


    Rhema allowed the silence to sit in the room for a while, doing his best to keep his face passive as a few of Alekos'' retainers looked about nervously at the grim-faced Armsmen lining the walls of the room, armoured and armed in battledress with both billhooks and eyes of steel.


    "Granted. Your retainers will be housed in a chamber under guard, and you will be permitted a chamber befitting your status in the palace. I will be seeing no further petitioners today."


    The hafts of two-dozen billhooks hitting the floor at once rang throughout the room as the various petitioners were led out. Rhema beckoned Alekos to his side and walked him down a corridor out the back of the throneroom, towards his brother''s room.


    <hr>


    "Was that really necessary?"


    "Yes."


    Alekos huffed a bit, but said nothing else on the subject.


    "How is his condition."


    "Stable."


    "Okay... do you know why he is asleep?"


    "Failed assassination attempt."


    His brother''s friend was taken aback somewhat by this.


    "We... I heard rumours on the road and in ports, but I had hoped they were just that. Rumours, I mean."


    "They weren''t."


    Alekos turned his head to look at Rhema while they were walking, starting somewhat. Rhema stopped.


    "Why the hell are you being so antagonistic towards me? What have I done?"


    Rhema stared at him impassively a moment.


    "When''s the last time you saw my brother?"


    Alekos tilted his head in thought for a moment.


    "Two and a half years ago, I think. Just before I left for the Kikhepis river valley, in the south of Sothena."


    Rhema nodded.


    "Two and a half years. How long after the rebellion did you leave him?"


    Alekos turned his head away. Rhema couldn''t get a good read on him, but he seemed mildly shamefaced.


    "A week or so. We were riding back to Aenirhen, and I followed the Riverroad east. I had to go home."


    "Aenirhen was your home."


    Alekos turned to him, a bitter expression on his face.


    "Do you think I wanted to leave? That I didn''t want to stay with the truest friend I had known? No. I had to go home to Polaeros, because I was to be king one day. I needed to know the people I would rule, I needed to know how I could make things better. My reasoning for going home was no different than Lyk''s reasoning for staying in Teleytaios, and I am sorry but I have made my peace with our splitting."


    Rhema stood there in silence, him and Alekos staring at each other for a long while, neither speaking. After a goodly amount of time had passed he just grunted, nodded, and carried on walking towards his brother''s room.


    "Your mouth gives me one reason, but your endless voyaging and travelling tell me another. But what do I know? I''m sure you''ve got reasons for that as well."


    He did not hold Alekos accountable for any of those things, not really. But Rhema was angry and sad, and before him was someone who had once made his beloved brother sad. He was somewhat ashamed to admit that antagonising the Polaeran king gave him a feeling of control that he had lacked this last month, even as he acted as regent of the kingdom.


    "Here we are. Hang on, there''s a man wound as tight as a crossbow string standing guard in there. DREAMWULF! YOU THERE?"


    The gruff voice of the blind man came from the other side of the door, slightly muffled by the hard oak between the two of them.


    "Aye your Highness. I''m ''ere. Nasos ''s well."


    Rhema nodded to himself, and opened the door, holding it open for Alekos with an almost mocking grin. Alekos looked at him, almost as if trying to work out exactly what the half-mad prince thought of him, before steeling himself once more and walking into the room.


    "I''ve brought a guest with me, Dreamwulf, just in case you''re confused about the extra pair of footsteps."


    The bigger man nodded, but said nothing. Instead he just remained by Lyk''s bedside and grunted his affirmation, crossing his arms and slumping a little in his chair.


    "Hey, Lyk. Sorry it''s been so long."


    Alekos gave a small wave to Rhema''s unconscious brother, and in that moment Rhema suddenly felt as though he was intruding on a private moment. Not that he particularly cared. Childhood friend or not, there was no chance he was letting anyone alone in his brother''s quarters save his guard and healer.


    "I know you probably can''t hear me, but in case you can then it''ll be good to see you again when you wake up. I''ll not be staying long, but I know you''ll pull through. You always do."


    There was a sort of wistfulness to Alekos'' voice, and it was clear to Rhema that the rest of them in that room may as well not exist in the foreign king''s eyes, not in a dismissive way, but simply because seeing Lyk so frail and gaunt seemed to have put a spell over the young monarch. After a moment of silence he seemed to shake himself out of it and turned to face Nasos.


    "You are the healer responsible for him?"


    The young priest nodded deferentially.


    "I am, your Grace."


    "Tell me of what injuries you were able to save him from."


    Nasos reddened slightly at the implication that he had been responsible for saving the prince, which Rhema thought seemed odd given that it was true.


    "There were a trio of stab wounds, your Grace. Two of which on the upper chest, one of which was near the heart and another slightly more central. Luckily upon receiving neither wound did the blade pierce or damage any organs within the body. The third stab wound was more severe, piercing the stomach. I spent a goodly number of hours with a good needle and strong thread manually stitching the soft tissues of the stomach back together, aided by a number of poultices and remedies. Even so, there was a good helping of luck involved in his survival."


    Dreamwulf scoffed off to the side.


    "Don''t listen to ''ow he downplays ''imself. He''d the only bloody reason his Grace survived."


    Nasos went redder at this and wrung his hands together, and Rhema rolled his eyes. The preacher needed to learn to take a compliment on his work at some point.


    "A most difficult procedure. I have seen many a skilled hand lose a patient to similar wounds in the Royal Hospital in Polaeriopolis. My compliments on your work. As for the reason he is not awake?"


    "I... I was able to identify what I believe to have been a head wound of some sort. Blunt force trauma is a tricky thing to get a measure on. I once treated a pair of knights not long after Seastream who had taken blows to the head. One fell into a coma for several weeks before waking and barking out orders, as though he believed himself still to be on the field of battle. The other seemed to shrug off his wound and then dropped dead in the middle of a conversation we were having, bleeding from the nose. With that in mind, perhaps it is better that his Grace sleeps?"


    Rhema forced himself to remain impassive as the implication that his brother being in a coma was a good thing washed over him. He closed his eyes and counted to ten in his head. Nasos did not intend it as an insult. He has a far greater knowledge of medicine and the body than I do. He means it not as an insult.


    "How have you been caring for him?"


    Alekos'' question broke him from his thoughts, and Rhema absent-mindedly sat down in a chair off to the side and listened to the rest of the conversation.


    "I give him water and thin soups or broths to keep him nourished. I need to be careful to ensure that he is held upright so as to not choke. Stroking the throat of the patient a few times makes the body swallow as if on instinct, conscious or not."


    The Polaeran king nodded. It felt somewhat odd, to Rhema at least, to have a foreign king here and be speaking of medical procedures rather than hosting a feast or ball of some sort, but then he supposed that times were strange at the moment, and Alekos had once been closer to Lyk than Rhema himself had been.


    "And hygiene?"


    "His grace is washed by hand-cloth daily, so as to ensure the wounds do not fester and corruption cannot take root. His night-clothes are likewise changed daily."


    Alekos nodded.


    "Good. You have done most well. My compliments on your skills, and your diligence."


    Rhema felt the need to speak up all of a sudden. There were words he wished to have with Alekos, words in private. Some would be harsh, some remorseful, but he needed to say them.


    "Alekos, a word, if you please."


    The king turned to him in mild confusion, but it was clear that the words were not a question. They were a demand.


    "Certainly, your Highness."


    <hr>


    When the two of them were outside Rhema bid the foreign monarch walk alongside him a little while.


    "I really would rather stay-"


    "I know. But Lyk''s not going anywhere. I spoke harshly to you earlier. I will speak harshly to you again. But I need you to know I do not speak harshly to scorn or to mock. Only because... only because I am not well-equipped to speak otherwise. As I''m sure you''ll remember, I never was truly able to hold my tongue."


    Alekos smiled a little as they walked a little further in the open air, and then up a set of stairs.


    "I do recall several instances where your tongue almost got the three of us into quite a bit of trouble."


    Rhema snorted as he reached the top of the stairs, walking out onto the walls.


    "Almost? I can think of more than one where it did."


    Alekos sighed a little, reminiscing, as the two of them looked out over the city and the Anarian Marches beyond. The two of them were silent a little while before Rhema spoke again.


    "We found him up here. Less than a dozen paces to your left. I''ll never forget the look on the faces of my brother''s retainers. Fear. Anger. Sadness. Grim determination. They''re all quite fond of him. As am I."


    "I am as well. Do not forget that."


    Rhema remained still for a moment, still looking out over the city. When eventually he did turn his gaze to his old friend, to his brother''s closest friend, his face and voice were both filled with... with... it was not anger, nor sadness, not truly. It was more like a melancholic tiredness.


    "I think it broke a part him when you left."


    "I know. But I will not apologise. We have made our peace with our parting already. Whatever part of him ''broke'' as you put it, he has put back together himself."


    Rhema smiled wryly.


    "If you say so. How long will you stay?"


    "No more than three days. Today and two more. Overmorrow I shall leave for home."


    "Makes sense. You never did like this city much, did you?"


    Alekos smiled a little and shook his head.


    "No. Lyk had plans to make the city better though. To make it closer to how it once was."


    Rhema nodded.


    "He has informed me as such. I will... I will send word when he wakes."


    Alekos turned to face him.


    "That would be most kind of you. When he wakes."


    Rhema turned to look at the spot where his brother had been found, bleeding and cold, before walking away, leaving Alekos to do whatever it was he wanted to do in the capital.


    "Aye. When he wakes."

 Christoforos I: Shallow Waters

    <u>Christoforos I: Shallow Waters</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Second Month, 873 AD.


    Thermanthus, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    No, no, no, no, no! This wasn''t how this was meant to go! This wasn''t supposed to happen!


    Christoforos cried to himself as he ran through the back-alleys and side-streets of Thermanthus as fast as he could, hoping beyond hope that he''d be able to shake his pursuers. By all the Saints, he hoped he could shake them. If he couldn''t then he was dead, Cardinal Admeta''s men would see to that.


    He took a moment to catch his breath as he leaned against the wall of a shuttered-up slum house, mind racing. How the fuck had it come to this? Just two years ago he''d been a citizen of the Republic of Aegos, foremost amongst the democracies of Dathan and all the world, and now the city he had known all his life, the nation he had lived in all his life, had become a nightmare of abhorrent pietism and theocratic laws. The Cardinal of the republic, Adikos, had usurped power from the senate and declared himself the ''Arch-Cardinal'' of Aegos, sending out his cronies to subdue the other cities that once had formed the Republic of Aegos. Cardinal Admeta was one such crony.


    People had been burned. People had been beaten. People had been tortured, persecuted, killed en-masse, and for what? The crime of being different. The crime of following their own faiths, their own sects and cults, and not the New-Church. The republic had been declared obsolete, and in its place Aegos and the surrounding cities were ruled by what Arch-Cardinal Adikos and the Cardinals under his command had called ''The Most Devout Church of Aegos'', cementing their theocratic authority. Few people had been under any spell as to what the coming years would entail, but the scale and depth of the violence had truly beggared belief. How could those who called themselves faithful see to the harming of others so gleefully?


    The vaunted ''Hero of the Republic'', General Thrax, seemed to be little better at the moment. From what Christoforos had heard the man had declared himself ''Imperator of Aegos'' and wished to reforge the ancient Aegan Empire, but so far had failed even to take the city whose name he bore in his title. Still, even a despot would be better than this, surely it would be better than the nightmare he was in right now; Christoforos couldn''t think of a single one of his dreams that wasn''t tainted by the scent of incense thrown on execution pyres, by the sound of tortured screams unable to be drowned out even by the ringing of a thousand brass bells.


    Aegos had always been a holy city; in ancient times a great many religions had claimed it to be a holy site for one reason or another, but when the Church of the Saint came along they cast aside all other pretenders, for it was in Aegos, less than a hundred miles from where he stood now, that the First Saint had ascended over the barbarians who had attempted to cast him down.


    Christoforos thought he could really use some of that divine providence right now.


    "This way! I saw him run through here!"


    He swore under his breath as he took off running once more. He''d spent far too long stood there like a statue with a pair of wheezing bellows attached, and should have set off after no more than a few seconds of rest. He ran through yet more alleys and bypasses, knowing that he was entering an area of the city that he''d never really been in before. Not that it mattered at this moment, of course; Christoforos was far more focused on not being drowned in a barrel of holy oil at the moment.


    Oh yes, Cardinal Admeta had gotten very inventive with her executions these last few months.


    Still, as terrible as things were here, in Thermanthus, and as terrible as things may have been in the capital, it was better than whatever was happening in Athio. Whatever Cardinal Sin was doing to the ''heretics'' and ''non-believers'' under his rule, no-one knew. Cardinal Admeta purged them with flame and spear, Arch-Cardinal Adikos with ''forced penance'', but Cardinal Sin?


    No-one knew. They simply disappeared, and not one had ever been found. No-one knew what he did to them, and that was almost worse than knowing would have been.


    He forced his mind to slow as he clambered over another brick wall and into the next alleyway over. He couldn''t afford to waste precious seconds musing over which of the old-republic''s cities was worse off, which one had the vilest, most disgustingly pious ruler. No, right now he needed to find somewhere to hide and to try and forget the faces of the people he''d been hiding with, the people he''d had to leave behind. It wasn''t his fault, they were too slow and the guards were too fast, he was unarmed, he was unarmoured, he was no soldier or combatant. What could he have done to help them? They wouldn''t have wanted him to die with them, surely not?


    He cleared his mind again. There would be time for grieving later. Right now he needed to find a place to hide from the guards, get out of the city, make his way across the border to... to somewhere, it didn''t matter where, and tell the world what was going on here. Surely the neighbouring realms would intervene and put a stop to this madness? The northmen, maybe, in the Kingdom of Kortheros? Perhaps the easternmost Klironomeans could be convinced to launch a crusade and uproot this militant, extremist branch of the New-Church. Besides, Christoforos was a follower of the Old-Church, as were most of his friends! Surely the Klironomeans would recognise one of their own?


    He took a moment to gather his breath once more. He had lost his pursuers, at least for now. His friends may have been dead behind him, but he still lived. That was something. Besides, Elias had broken away from their group at the start of the hunt, perhaps he had managed to make it out as well? Maybe. Maybe not. Right now there was a bigger problem in front of him; he was horribly lost. He''d never been to this part of the city before. It seemed dark and dense, claustrophobic even, though luckily he seemed to be in one of the only ''clear'' areas around. Judging by how silent, how empty this place now was, it must have been one of the minority-community regions within Thermanthus. Perhaps he was in the old Orgilaan district? That foreign people, their diaspora spread thin all across the continent, they had been one of the first targets of the Most Devout Church, though luckily most of them had had the good sense to realise this and had booked it from the Republic of Aegos as it fell. Now only squatters and thieves remained in the old slums, and they didn''t tend to last long anyway. The one benefit to having such harsh, archaic laws forced upon them all was that crime had fallen to its lowest ebb in as long as anyone could remember. Murderers were killed. Rapists were gelded, then killed. Thieves had a hand removed, then were killed. Vocal dissenters had their tongues removed.


    And then were killed.


    Small wonder crime had fallen. The only criminals left were the really good ones who knew how to hide. It felt strange to Christoforos; the once murderous and vile criminal underground were now some of the only good men left in the city, many of them helping people like him escape. Not for good will, of course not, but extortion was better than execution. Besides, even the hardiest criminals had begun to look upon the actions of the inquisitors and holy militias with disgust. He supposed that just showed exactly how mad this corner of the world had gone in these last few years.


    Still, he was tired and hungry. He needed to find some food and a safe place to sleep before he carried on with his efforts to escape Thermanthus, and the nation as a whole. He couldn''t go back to his house, not now, and given that the guards had busted their safehouse that wasn''t an option either. For a moment he thought about chancing one of the old thieves hideouts in case the Old Firm was somehow still around, but he thought better of it. He wasn''t sure if having those cutthroats still around would be a good or a bad thing anymore, but he did know that they were dangerous.


    Unfortunately the only real landmarks he could see were the cathedral and the church on Lysania Street, and given that they were currently doubling as barracks for agents of the Most Devout he really didn''t feel comfortable getting any closer to them than was absolutely necessary. So, there were his options, he supposed. Get closer to the church or cathedral and attempt to navigate using them, or wander around aimlessly and hope that he stumbled across someone who would be able to help him. Joy of joys, what a fun decision to make. He slumped down against a wall, trying his best to ignore how uncomfortable the slick of rainwater along the cobbles made him feel, and sighed heavily. He was fucked. There was little use in trying to beat around that point. He was well and truly fucked. He was being hunted by an enemy who knew him by name and by looks, his friends and comrades were scattered or dead, and in his flight he had lost absolutely all of what remaining supplies he had thought to carry with him. He had no weapons, no armour, no disguise, no food, and absolutely no skills that might help him survive the coming days save perhaps his slightly above-average agility and endurance. Slightly. He was no messenger or soldier, but his time spent running quivers of bolts from his master''s smithy to the fletcher''s shop had at the very least meant he was in a better shape to run than some of his friends had been. Honestly, what had they all been thinking? That they would somehow manage to avoid the hundreds of guards, priests, informants, and inquisitors that littered the city, make their way to the walls, find a way outside the walls without a single bargaining chip, and then somehow make their way out of the country with hardly any food or coin? Saints, it was no wonder most of them had been killed. It was a small miracle he hadn''t joined them.


    "Okay," he said to himself, trying to ignore the churning feeling in his gut as his voice broke the almost stifling silence in this empty neighbourhood, "I need to get up. I need to move. I need to find food and shelter, then I can work out the rest."


    With that he sighed once more, forced himself to his feet, and began walking. He might not have known this part of the city very well, but at least there was little risk of encountering an inquisitor or guard patrol. After all, why waste soldiers and spies on making sure the absent and the dead were not heretics when you could instead use them to terrorise your own populous and earn the favour of your master in the capital? That was why Admeta was doing this, after all; she wasn''t some pious, bleating fool like the others amongst her rank were. She was ruthless, power hungry, and smart enough to know that so long as she could keep the people united against an internal threat, she would remain in power. It just so happened that she''d been given a mandate for such a thing by Arch-Cardinal Adikos, so Christoforos supposed that everything must have been going very well for her at the moment.


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Ah well, no use dwelling on that. Besides, someone was waving at him from a shuttered house. At first it seemed almost absurd, seeing as he''d only been aimlessly walking for a little under a quarter of an hour. But then, he reasoned to himself, it could be a trap. Not that it mattered; he was hungry and the sun was setting. He''d just have to risk it, and hope that the woman flagging him down was a friend rather than a foe.


    <hr>


    "Saints, are you lucky that we found you. You may as well have dropped yourself off at the cathedral, walking around in the open like that!"


    Christoforos turned to the woman, flushing at the admonishment.


    "I''m well aware, so let it go. You''ve told me that half a dozen times this last half-hour, and I''m tired of it."


    "Well, stop standing in the corner like you''ve contracted shock. The others ''ll be back soon."


    He looked the woman over properly as she stepped into the candlelight. Raven-haired, dusky skin, ornate bracelets, rings, ritual earrings.


    "An Orgilaan?"


    She smiled at him and nodded.


    "I am, yes."


    She gestured towards his neck.


    "Ybridica-Agiathos?"


    He gently pressed a hand to the noose pendent on his necklace, nodding once.


    "How could you tell?"


    She shrugged.


    "The rope coils eight times. One coil for the First Saint, seven for the Angels."


    He smiled at her, impressed, as she continued.


    "Of course it is a little bit of a guess. The New-Church makes use of much the same iconography, only with no standard number of coils. It could have been coincidental, and you a New-Church worshipper who just so happened to have an eight-coil noose pendant, but given the fact that you were wandering aimlessly through the abandoned ''foreign'' neighbourhoods of the city, I don''t think you''re going to be in that camp."


    He moved forwards to seat himself by the candle, the short conversation helping him to shake the horrible feeling he''d had in his gut since his friends had been caught.


    "You are experienced in telling apart different sections of the faith?"


    "Sure am. Followers of the spear and the sword, of the tides and the stars. There''s plenty in this little group, though most are spread out through this part of the city. We try to lay low, not give the Cardinal a reason to send her dogs after us. There''s somewhere between a few dozen and a hundred of us non-believers stuck here, and we''re trying to get out."


    Christoforos nodded.


    "Yeah, me too. I was with a group of friends from down the smith''s road, all Old-Church followers save a follower of the Manic-King''s teachings. We got found as we were trying to leave and... well, I''m sure you can gather the rest."


    She nodded sadly at him.


    "Indeed, that I can. We''ve got a plan to get out, the small cell of us here anyway. Are you still interested in escaping?"


    He nodded earnestly, but then there was a knock at the door. He eyed it suspiciously, earning a scoff from his new companion.


    "You are paranoid, aren''t you? Come in, friend!"


    A large, gruff man opened the door, squinting at Christoforos in suspicion a little. Christoforos paid it no mind though, because stepping into the room out from behind the large man was-


    "Elias!"


    "Christoforos!"


    The two of them met in a great big hug, tears springing to the corners of both of their eyes.


    "I thought you were dead!"


    "I could say the same to you!"


    The woman coughed and raised an eyebrow at them. Christoforos and Elias flushed a little, untangling themselves from one another and stepping back.


    "I take it this one is a friend of yours, Christoforos?"


    "He is. The truest friend I know, and no less."


    Elias smiled at that.


    "Is this true?"


    The big man grunted out a noise that might have meant ''yes'' but Christoforos hadn''t even the vaguest idea what it was he''d said. No matter, the woman seemed happy enough at the response, and chose not to press that particular line of inquiry any further. The next question did give the two of them pause, however, and as she spoke Christoforos suddenly felt that he and Elias, mainly Elias, were treading on very dangerous ground.


    "And what section of the church do you follow? To which of your Saint''s cults do you belong?"


    Elias took a deep breath, and Christoforos squeezed his hand in support.


    "The Alithini-Agiathos."


    The woman and large man both spun to look at him, reaching for blades. Christoforos held out is free hand.


    "Peace! Please, peace! He wants to leave just as much as we do! The Cardinals and their boss may proclaim to follow the New-Church, but true worshippers like Elias know better. Elias knows what has happened to the rest of us, and he wants to flee and tell those who follow his faith in Kortheros alongside me, the Old and New churches beseeching the eastern Klironomeans to do something about this."


    The woman relaxed a little, though still maintained narrowed eyes at Elias.


    "I really should not be trusting you, not after the things your faith has done to us."


    Elias nodded, voice level and almost apologetic, as if he had been anything to do with the massacres and violence these last few years.


    "I know."


    Something in the young man''s voice must have resonated with the woman, for her eyes took on an almost pitying countenance as she nodded at Elias, slowly placing her knife back in its sheath.


    "Alright then, I guess. We''ve got a little food and some blankets to keep you fed and warm, but it won''t be much. We can''t afford to waste anything at the moment. We''re fleeing in a few days, and if you want to make your way to Kortheros and bring back help, you''ll need to come with us. Get some rest and regain your strength before then."


    Elias and Christoforos smiled at each other. It seems fate had given them a second chance after all, even if the price had been steep.


    "Thank you, friend. We shall."


    <hr>


    The days came and went, and soon enough they were stalking through the streets of Thermanthus at night whilst shrouded in black cowls. It wasn''t much of a disguise, but it was better than nothing. There were eight of them in total, a small group of four followers of Hydran''s Cult joining with them as they moved to flee the city. He''d been sceptical when the woman had said she''d met with worshippers of the waves before, but here they were in the flesh. He hadn''t truly believed that any following such an obscure cult had existed this far to the east. After all, they normally congregated on the shores of the great western ocean in Licotemos, and this was almost as far away from those distant Klironomean shores as possible. Either way, here they were, heads down low and as eager to leave as the rest of them were.


    "We''re heading to an abandoned sewer opening in the west of the city." The woman had said. "It''s gonna stink like shit and will likely be the most disgusting experience of your life, but at the end of the day it''s our best chance out of this city. After that we run parallel to the road north. Not on the road, there''s too many patrols for it to be safe, but if we follow it from a distance we should be safe. Our task at the moment is to get out, then get help. Understandable?"


    The seven of them had nodded silently at the woman, the large man grunting his affirmation once more as Elias moved next to Christoforos to grip his hand.


    "Right, let''s get moving. Come on."


    And with that the eight of them had set off, twice stopping at a hushing motion from the woman as small patrols moved past them at far too close a distance for any of them to be comfortable, but reaching the grating that she''d promised them would lead out of the city and towards the river. With a small amount of applied force to the rusted grate they were in, and walking through the tunnels in near total darkness towards freedom.


    "Christoforos... what do you think the King of Kortheros will do when we tell him what''s happening here? None of the Klironomean kings in the Heptarchy have cared about matters outside their dominions since Harald the Second was slain."


    Elias'' voice was whispered, but still maintained a slight waver that let Christoforos know that his friend was truly struggling to keep his mind afloat at the moment. He squeezed his friend''s hand again, and gave him his best reassuring smile. It was dark and thus hard to see, but he hoped Elias could see him well enough to be calmed.


    "Hey, we''ll worry about that when we get there, okay? Someone will notice what''s going on sooner or later, and they''ll demand action. Hopefully our words will bring ''later'' to ''sooner'' and ''sooner'' to ''now''."


    Elias smiled a slight smile back at him, nodding as they walked along the slick cobbles of the sewers. Then there was the sound of barking ahead of them, and a voice made itself known.


    "Halt! Cease your movements and identify yourselves!"


    The eight of them froze in place, horror quickly rising. They''d been found out. How the fuck had they been found out?


    Immediately the four Hydran cultists had bolted back the way they''d came, whilst the woman and the large man rushed for a side passage, leaving Christoforos and a frozen Elias alone to face the guards. Why the fuck are they patrolling the sewers? Are they that adamant to stop us from leaving?


    He quickly broke himself as the sounds of footsteps echoed through the sewers, knowing that hesitation would get them both killed. Christoforos grabbed Elias'' hand and yanked hard, practically dragging the frozen man behind him until Elias regained his senses, the two of them tearing down tunnels and adjoining walkways.


    "Christoforos... I don''t want to die!"


    Elias panted the words out behind him, and Christoforos tried his best to keep dragging the man along behind him, but it was useless and the two of them knew it. No matter how feverishly they looked around, how much terror they felt at the approaching voices behind, they knew the foe was close. Still, they continued running. They ran until their legs felt as though they were burning, until their feet were bleeding, until eventually the inevitable happened.


    Elias slipped on one of the wet cobbles, and slammed into the floor. Christoforos screamed in denial, begging his friend to get up, but it was no good. The fall had killed him stone dead. Christoforos could at least console himself with the knowledge that his best friend''s death was quick. It was a poor consolation, especially since such a ray of sunshine should have been laid to rest under the gaze of the stars, not in some dingy sewer, but it was all he could manage at that moment.


    He at last tore his gaze from his friend as the furthest edges of the light of a torch came into view at the end of the tunnel, as well as a command that he halt. He spared one final glance at the surprised expression that was now etched onto his friend''s face, at the black blood staining the cobbles, then continued to run. He didn''t know what he''d expected to happen as he continued to run, but he had not expected it to be this. The sound of baying dogs closed in behind him, and one of them bit at his heels and sent him tumbling to the floor as agony flared from his ankle.


    "No, no, no!"


    The words did little to keep the dogs off of him, as did his flailing limbs. These were not the hounds of the northern folk, but strong Tildan mastiffs, trained for hunting and tracking even in the worst of conditions. There was little he could have done against one of them at the moment, but the three of them around him were little more than the personification of death in that moment. Nonetheless, he battered at them with a flailing fist, striking one in the snout as it snapped and growled at him and another in its chest with his leg. A whine came from one of them, but it was quickly drowned out by Christoforos'' screams. A savage bite tore out a large chunk of one of his thighs, whilst the dog he had managed to strike clawed at his face with murderous intent, gouging one of his eyes. Christoforos screamed and pleaded, as though the tamed beasts would listen to his cries, but rapidly found himself unable to move. A forth dog, younger and smaller than the others, came from somewhere and tore off one of his ears. Christoforos wasn''t in much of a position to work out where it had come from, for even as his ear was torn off the sound of two guards came running around the corner. There was just enough light for him to see one of the guards turn to the other and hold up a hand, the two of them stopping and watching as the dogs tore him apart.


    "Let the dogs have their fun," the senior of the two guards said, "they''ve earned it after today."


    Christoforos tried to scream, to beg them to just kill him, but all that came out of his throat was a gurgling mess of blood and guttural moans.


    He''d just wanted to leave, but he knew that now he never would. He''d be stuck here forever now.


    I hope I see Elias when I die, he thought to himself as he tried to ignore the feeling of his right arm being torn from its socket. That would be nice.

 Cardinal Sin I: Six Little Lambs

    <u>Cardinal Sin I: Six Little Lambs</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    The stones clacked beneath his cane as he stalked the streets of his city. Athio, the Sleeping City, was his to command. So it had been for two years, and if he was lucky this way it would remain for twenty years more. Athio. Athio. A smile came to his face. What a beautiful city. He''d lived here before he took control of the city, half his life all told. Not even once had he ever been anything less than surprised at the beauty that greeted him when he stepped outside. Ancient cathedrals and church spires dotted the cityscape, imposing monastic covens and secret meeting places for those men of faith who preferred their meetings to have a more... covert aspect. But even these buildings were far from austere, beautiful gothic carvings adorning their walls.


    Most of the city was like this. Great and intimidating statues lined the streets, carved images of saints, of battles, of miracles covered the sides of stone buildings, black slate roofs atop grey granite walls painting a picture of intimidation and almost otherworldly fervour. Every city in what had once been the Republic of Aegos had taken on a far more religious aesthetic since the civil war that had seen the Arch-Cardinal and his Cardinals ascendent, but none of his colleagues had created a place of such beauty like he had. What could propaganda posters and shrines do in comparison to such dark and majestic architecture?


    There was no need for pyres upon which to burn dissidents. What need had he for such primitive means of execution when the fear he could inspire through simply making people disappear could render an entire populous servile? He was an artist of crowd control, a sculptor of human fears. Everything about him, his clothes, his mannerisms, the cane of sloe wood he carried with him, the pallor of his skin, everything was dedicated to maintaining an image of otherworldliness. Even his colleagues thought him to take his duties too far; Cardinals Admeta and Trios viewed him with thinly veiled disdain, and his old friend Cardinal Spyridon had withdrawn much of the gestures that had drawn the two of them together over the years. Adikos saw him differently though. To the Arch-Cardinal, he was a blunt tool to show to his foes, a promise of violence and of bloodshed to those who crossed the Most Devout Church of Aegos.


    None of them are correct, he thought to himself as he stalked with purpose through the empty avenues of Athio. He didn''t know exactly what he was, and had never really understood how he should view himself, but he did know he wasn''t the zealot he pretended to be. If he was blessed by the Saints, then why did he sequester himself away from the light of day and walk the streets of his city at night? The curfew he had put in place served both to make unrest more manageable and to reinforce the image that he was no mortal man, but some monster born of faith and malice. He would work through the day in his keep, and when the hours of the day had passed and the fearful citizenry had bolted shut their doors, he would make his journey to the cathedral at the heart of his city. Sometimes people would catch glimpses of him in the night, but those people were quick to retreat from their windows and hide themselves away, praying that they would not hear the sound of a demure knock at the door in the dead of night. Even his own guards patrolling the streets of the city at night to make sure no-one broke curfew did their best to keep a wide berth from him, crossing streets as he approached and pressing themselves against alley walls to gain a precious few more centimetres away from the creature of the night that they saw him as. Good. So long as the people remained too frightened to leave their homes at night, and the guards to fearful to even dream of questioning his actions, then the image he had conjured up was working. Word would trickle to the other cardinals, and Arch-Cardinal Adikos himself, and all would continue to see him as a gothic lord of death in a city that would never wake.


    The truth was a rather different matter, of course. He wasn''t sure how much longer he could spend doing this. He was so tired all the time, the price he paid for working through the day and living his second life at night. He arrived at the cathedral, the huge oak doors engraved with the images of saints swinging open with a great resounding ''boom'', his black velvet cape swaying in the breeze that the movement created.


    "Well, let us see what we have for me tonight, shall we? Come now, little lambs. Your saviour stands before you."


    He took an exaggerated, mocking bow as his eyes swept over the six terrified figures in front of him. Two wore pendants of the Old-Church, a few the makeshift bracelets and jewellery of the Agiathos Epithymounterus, and one man that seemed, unless his eyes were mistaken, to be a priest of the Cult of Aenethar. How the hell that one had slipped through his fingers for so long was truly a mystery to him. Ah well. He''d rectify that tonight. There were only so many religious non-conformists in the city, after all, and every group he got out was one more group moved further from persecution, towards safety.


    His movements and the theatrical inflection he put into his voice were certainly unneeded, since he was no angel of death nor a zealot of Adikos, but he couldn''t help himself. Being able to act like some creature of myth was about the only fun he was able to have in his job. Cardinal Spyridon had once referred to him as ''extra'' through tears of laughter when the two of them were younger, and that particular label hadn''t gone anywhere. He couldn''t even remember why he''d been called that, he must have made some spectacular and over-the-top entrance to announce his presence at an event that really didn''t require it. Yeah, that sounds like me.


    "Now, you do seem to be a fright-filled bunch, don''t you? Come now, you needn''t fear me. Confess your desires to me. Confess your darkness to Cardinal Sin."


    Several people shuffled back a little, but a few remained frozen to the spot. One in particular, a boy just on the cusp of manhood and wearing an eight-coiled pendant, caught his eye.


    "You, little lamb. What is your greatest desire?"


    The boy''s mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to formulate an answer. When one was not forthcoming Sin tapped the butt of his cane against the tiled floors of the cathedral. It was a truly magnificent building, possibly the single greatest building in the city. Dark grey stone lined the walls in the forms of a dozen carved masterpieces, hooded saints forgotten by time and all who lived today immortalised in guise of a faceless, hooded statue, a book in one hand and censure in the other. Another such hooded saint carried a sword and a torch, another held a brazier behind them with one hand whilst the other remained outstretched in a gesture of warning, a gesture to that told you to stop, to halt. The no matter what was in their hands or by their base, the statues all faced north. It was as though they were warning against some unseen threat from that direction, some terrible threat that even the saints had once feared. Sin scoffed to himself. Really, where was he allowing his mind to run? They were statues, carved by human hands and immovable as any other statue or gargoyle he had seen. The entire inside of the cathedral was a work of grim art, an extension of the artist''s soul that did not dominate the inside of the building, but rather seemed to have a symbiotic relationship with the cathedral itself. He kicked himself to cease his dramatics and return to his work. These people were relying on him now even if they didn''t know it, and he enjoyed toying with them. Still, he had work to do, and that began with preparing them to leave the city.


    "To live, Father."


    The boy''s voice was a quiet thing, but there was a level of certainty in the voice that Sin rarely heard from the lost few that ended up here anymore. Quiet it may have been, but it snapped him from his thoughts nonetheless.


    "Good. A solid wish, a good wish. Life is a precious thing, is it not?"


    Someone else broke in, a man approaching his forties if Sin got his measure right.


    "Oh, we''ll live alright. I''ve heard what you do with the people you catch. We''ll live for a long time, but by the end of it we''ll wish we hadn''t."


    Sin raised an eyebrow at the man, gesturing for him to continue with a flourish of his cape. Heh. Extra.


    "And why may that be, little sheep?"


    "Torture." The man spat out. "You''ll have us taken back to your keep, and we''ll never be seen nor heard from again. You''ll garner all you can from us with all the sick shit you keep beneath the keep, then we''ll be thrown in cells far below the city and left to rot."


    Sin snorted. People''s rumours had certainly gotten more imaginative than they had the last time he''d heard any. Before it was just-


    "No, it''s not below the keep! There''s a hidden chamber you can reach through one of these statues to lead below the ground. There''s a torture chamber down there, far below the pulpit and the pews. That''s why the guards herded us into this cathedral. That''s why we''re all here."


    Yep, that was the rumour he remembered. ''Torture chambers beneath the cathedral''. Honestly, he had to wonder how people came up with this stuff. It wasn''t like he was exactly one for such methods anyway; torture was so dull. He hadn''t the patience to waste hours tormenting someone who likely knew nothing that he didn''t already know! If he really was the butcher people thought him to be, he''d simply order the non-conformists purged by spear and quarrel. No sense on such inefficiencies. A gust of wind from a window blew his cape around him, half-obscuring his face. Okay, maybe he wasn''t overly worried about inefficiency. He was, at the end of the day, an actor, and he could never bring himself to act pleased as people were kept in pain on his command.


    "Nope!" He said, popping the p.


    "No?"


    "Nope! You''re both wrong! I get bored far too quickly to spend ages torturing someone. Besides, I''m here to get you out of the city. You''re a motley group of minor sects and cults, and that''s what I''m trying to preserve out by the coast. There''s a village out there. They can help you."


    "You... know of our faiths?"


    Sin laughed.


    "Of course I do! You think the icons you''re wearing are inconspicuous? Come on! No-one would have looked twice at the pendants and jewellery you wear back before the republic fell, but I don''t know if you''ve noticed, everyone''s insistence on wearing a fucking sign of their faith had made it quite easy to tell one sect from another. Believe me, people are looking, and they''ve noticed. If you were in any other city in the theocracy, you''d be dead by now. The fact you haven''t been strung up from rafters or flung off bridges should tell you that I''m not interested in killing you."


    He allowed the silence to stretch out a few beats when he finished. He hoped they took his word as truth, cause if they didn''t then his job was about to get a hell of a lot harder. He liked the pendants and jewellery, in all honesty. Even when he''d been a child destined for the church, he''d always been fascinated by how the other sects operated, by the vibrancy of Athio''s religious makeup. By the time he was fourteen he had already converted to another of the sects in secret, remaining as a priest of the New-Church despite his soul following another. For years that seemed to be fine. The church wasn''t really worried what its members did in the privacy of their own homes so long as they showed reverence and obedience in public, and there were priests that Sin knew to have committed far worse crimes than simply worshipping another branch of the faith.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    That had ended with Adikos'' declaration to the senate in the heart of Aegos that he had been chosen to purge corruption from the heart of the republic, and that a new golden age for the faithful would come around with the death of the old ways. Sin had been right there, watching with wide-eyed idealism as his Cardinal, his hero, tore down the great edifice to corruption that had once been the senate. Sin had worked hard to climb the ranks in record time to stand by the now Arch-Cardinal''s side, genuinely believing that, despite the fact that Adikos was the head of the New-Church, he would bring about a new age for all the followers of that hanged martyr, the First Saint. His dream of the church truly bringing about a new age for the people of the hills of Aegos were so close to being realised! But of course, by that point, the dream had already died. Sin had not noticed it then, but looking back now it seemed painfully obvious that any chance for a better life had wilted even as Adikos delivered his proclamation to the senate. If only Sin could have seen then what he saw now. He would never have fought for such a monster.


    "So you''re going to help us?"


    The voice of the young lamb rang out again, this time edged with something dangerously close to hope. Sin did his best to give a cocky smile.


    "So long as you aren''t a member of the Church of Bloodied Purity, sure. Anyone a slave-driver here?"


    The assembled six all shook their heads, some with a great deal of venom in their eyes at the very idea of forcing men into chattel.


    "Good! Fuck those pricks. Now, you all want to survive, right? Listen to what I tell you, and do what I say. If the Saints are good, you''ll be out of the city by dawn."


    "I don''t understand."


    "Hm?" He turned to face the young man once more. "What don''t you understand?"


    The boy looked up at him, a mix of emotions swirling in his eyes.


    "Why are you helping us?"


    Sin smiled, this time a sincere and true thing, and pulled his necklace up to clutch it in one hand. He showed it to the scared and confused faces in front of him before gently raising the pendant to his face and pressing it against his lips, suppressing a shudder as the cold metal made contact with his skin. It was a beautiful pendant of solid silver, more entrancing than any other he had seen; eight times did the rope coil about a spear, the shaft of which passed through the noose and ended with the spearhead peeking through the top alongside a length of straight rope. The Ichorian Cult did not have a large body of worship in Dathan, that much was true, for it was a cult centred around a Klironomean king, and Sin was no Klironomean, visibly confusing one or two of the people in front of him. Despite how strange it may have seemed for one such as himself to worship a long-dead foreign king however, he felt it more strange that people seemed to forget that yes, whilst Harald the Second had been a King of the Klironomeans, the kingdom he ruled had once encompassed the hills of Aegos as well. The ancestors who had reigned before the boy-king had all been renowned strategists and conquerors, after all. Sin was almost certain that he had some remnant blood from the soldiers of their armies running through his veins.


    "So... you''re a Harald worshipper?"


    Sin smirked, pressing a finger to his lips.


    "Hush now, little sheep. It would not do to spread such rumours. I am the Cardinal of the Sleeping City, after all. Such rumours could be particularly dangerous to spread, would you not agree?"


    The young man, barely out of childhood, retreated a few steps as Sin came closer, nodding fearfully. A man to the side snarled at him in response. A very bold one indeed, to try and appear threatening to one so steeped in rumour as Sin was.


    "And the fact that you''re a member of one of the minor cults is supposed to make us forget the people you''ve killed? The members of your brother-faiths that have disappeared because of you?"


    Sin smiled wider, a ravenous thing barely held at bay by his conscious mind. You could kill all of them, that voice in his head beckoned him in a saccharine tone. It wouldn''t take long. It''s what they expect of you as well. But no. He was better than that. He was no longer Adikos'' rabid dog like he had been in the civil war, beating back the armies of General Thrax. He had far more important work to do now.


    "Killed? I''ve never killed anyone, save on the battlefield. Disappeared? Now that''s a different story. It is true, a great many heretics have disappeared under my auspices. You will as well by the end of the night."


    A few of them looked at him with confusion, a few still with fear. None spoke. Sin rolled his eyes and continued talking.


    "There''s a village due west of Athio, and a carriage that will take you there near a postern gate. Come with me to the vestry and put on the scarlet robes. If you look like monks of the Most Devout, keep your heads down, your mouths shut, and walk in two parallel lines like monks of the church do, then no-one should question me escorting you there. None of the guards with to be around me when the hour of the raven draws near."


    A trembling voice spoke up, whispering out a question.


    "Are you sure we can make such a journey?"


    Sin cackled, finding the question genuinely funny. These people were terrified of him, and yet as of right now they could only trust him or die.


    "Little lamb, I''ve made this journey nearly every night for the last sixteen moons. Not once have any of the guards done any more than query my identity, and those that did immediately shit themselves and backtrack once they realise who they''re speaking to. None of them will give you any trouble. The driver is a good man, so treat him well. He''ll take you to your destination, but what you do from their is your own choice. There are small communities that will accept you on the Isles of Aercad just across the water, or you could pay for passage upriver until you reach the city of Methoy and the lands of Imperator Thrax. I don''t really care. Either way, you''ll be alive and safe. That''s as much as I can offer. Now get yourselves dressed in your garments. We''ll be leaving in less than an hour."


    He sighed and moved to lounge on one of the pews as the six people moved to follow his instructions. Saints, he was bored. Hopefully he would remain bored for the rest of the night, after all, the only excitement he got nowadays was when something went wrong. He just needed to wait until things started to collapse, and then he could turn tail and revolt against his erstwhile master. He just needed to wait a little longer.


    <hr>


    "You all remember what I told you? Keep yourselves quiet and your movements steady. This''ll all be over soon. Let''s go."


    Without waiting for an answer he turned and strode out of the cathedral doors, the six little lambs now in the scarlet robes of the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon, and began the walk to the western gate of the city. There was little to encounter on the way save the occasional patrol of a pair of guards, and none of them were all that keen on getting in his way. Good. He may spend his nights saving whoever he could, but his men didn''t know that. All they knew was that he would send out members of a monastic order nearly every night from the western gate, and that if they wanted to keep their livelihoods they weren''t to bother him. Very few had challenged that ruling so far, and Sin allowed his eyes to follow a pair of guards ahead. The six little lambs were nervous, Sin could feel their anxieties radiating off of them like smoke from a fire, but they maintained their positions at a gesture as he flicked one of his wrists behind his back. He was more than a little satisfied when not only did the sheep stay close, but one of the guards pulled on the sleeve of the other, who shot a fearful glance towards him. The two guards moved swiftly out of the way of their little party, saluting with pale faces and trembling hands as he nodded at them. Oh, it was good to play the villain sometimes.


    "Who goes there!"


    The voice rang out from the gatehouse, young and inexperienced.


    "What do we do?" One of the lambs behind him whispered. "Have we been found out?"


    Sin rolled his eyes and turned to them, motioning for them to be quiet and keep following in rank. The six were all varying degrees of apprehensive, but he didn''t blame them for that. Instead of answering the guard he simply continued walking towards the gatehouse, retinue in tow.


    "I said who goes there! Identify yourself!"


    The young guard raised his spear, and Sin just smiled a predatory smile at him. The guard kicked the sleeping figure opposite, an older and more experienced guard by the looks of him. The man groggily came to and looked around at what was going on.


    "We''ve got company, Korax!"


    The older of the two guards, Korax apparently, took one look at his partner''s raised spear and another at Sin, and immediately blanched. His mouth opened and closed in horror a few times before he eventually tugged none-too-harshly on the arms of his compatriot, hissing a thousand curses under his breath at the younger man.


    "That''s the Cardinal you bloody fool! Put that fucking stick down before you get us both killed!"


    The young man whipped his neck around to look at the other guard, fear plastered on his face, before turning back to the small group at the sound of the clack, clack, clack, as Sin''s cane tapped against the cobbles.


    "Father, Cardinal, I mean, I apologise, I did not realise-"


    He raised his hand at the man''s ramblings not at all caring for his excuses or reasons. At the moment he just needed the young fool out of the way.


    "Peace, my child. You were merely overzealous in attempting to perform your job. Very lucky for you that your friend here was able to warn you of your mistake, was it not?"


    The young man nodded fervently, looking moments away from grovelling in the dirt.


    "Yes, Cardinal. I am sorry."


    Sin nodded.


    "Good. You are dismissed for the night, both of you. See yourself to your barracks and pray that you may not make similar lapses in judgement in the future. Dismissed."


    The two guards left, pale-faced, and Sin ushered the others through the gate where a carriage was waiting. As the little sheep entered the carriage the young man turned to him and gave him a shy smile.


    "Thank you, Father."


    He smiled at them, nodding once.


    "Off with you, little sheep. This nightmare will be over soon, and the diaspora will then return. Of that you have my word and my assurances. Now go, and be far from here as the sun begins to rise. Saints bless your journey."


    "Yours as well, my Cardinal."


    And with that the little carriage trundled along the road, its six occupants headed west, west towards safety and refuge.


    Sin watched the carriage roll out of view, then sighed to himself. It was time to return to his keep. He''d dallied too long here already, and having his people see him in the light would only serve to harm the image he''d cultivated around himself. Besides, he was an ungodly level of tired. It was time to walk home and try to snag a few hours of rest before the new day began.


    <hr>


    He stalked back to his chambers with pride and purpose, a smirk on his face. Servants shied away from his eyes as he walked past, and a serving-girl gasped as he looked at her, clutching the empty round tray she''d been carrying to her chest as though it could be used as a shield. Once he eventually reached his private chambers and the door had slammed shut behind him, he slumped. Saints, he was tired. So fucking tired. The sun was just beginning to rise on the horizon, and if he was lucky he might be able to snag a few hours of rest before the work of the day had to begin. The inside of his room was just as gothic as the city outside, queer statuettes and pagan symbols appropriated as iconography by the church plastering the walls and ceiling. He moved to kneel for a moment before a statue of Agia Harald, muttering a prayer that he might be blessed with fortitude and endurance, a prayer that he might find the strength to continue leading his dual life and saving his people for just one more day. It was a prayer he knew by rote at this point; he''d called upon the reincarnation of the First Saint for the same thing every night for the last sixteen moons. What more could he do than what he already was doing? He didn''t know, and his lord had not revealed anything else to him, so he simply carried on doing what he had been doing, night in and night out. So long as he could save just one more person, this would all be worth it. After he''d saved that one, he''d try for just one more again. The same after that, and after that, and again and again and again. So long as he could protect those under his purview, he would be content. True rest could wait until this whole damnable theocracy had collapsed.


    Sin was a member of the church, yes, and had been for most of his life, but that did not mean he was supportive of how his superior had overthrown the republic, not anymore. He had not worked his way through the baffling ranks of the church''s hierarchy to burn and kill. He''d entered the church so that he might learn to live with the voices that commanded him to commit heinous acts, to silence them, and to help others afflicted with the same disease of the mind. He had not entered the church to kill these people. He hated it. He hated what the church had become in this part of the world, and he hated the amount of work he had to do to pretend he was helping prop it up. Saints, what work!


    At just the thought of the paperwork and administrative duties that would soon form stacks upon his desk he wanted to bury his head into a pillow and scream, but he didn''t. He was Cardinal Sin, and Cardinal Sin did not scream. Cardinal Sin worked as was expected of him, and rested when he could. As such he removed his outfit, changed into a far more comfortable set of smallclothes, and lay down on his bed.


    The weight of the world sometimes felt like it was resting upon his shoulders, the fact that he had to appear as a monster to the world so that his colleagues did not suspect his true faith whilst also trying to get as many religious non-conformists out of the beauteous edifice that Athio had become was a drain on his stamina, his energy, and by all the hells he was tired of it all. He may have been a despot to the outside world, a butcher to the rest of Aegos, and a creature of darkness to those who he reigned over, but right now, lying in bed with his bloodshot eyes screwed shut, he felt like a child waiting for someone to come and help him out of the mess he was in. These people were relying on him. So many people''s lives hung by a thread, and Sin was under no illusions that his actions were reliant on the shakiest of foundations, the most unreliable and volatile conditions. All it would take was one of his colleagues to ignore the rumours that surrounded him, the fear that he inspired, and look closely at happenings in Athio, and he''d be done. It would all be finished. It was a miracle no-one had begun asking questions already. There were so many people relying on him for this, so many lives to preserve, but he was one man. He couldn''t save everyone, but he could save some. That had to be worth something. It wasn''t enough, it would never be enough, but it was something.


    That night he dreamed of a dim flame, and a candle burning at both ends.

 Cardinal Sin II: The Father and the Hawk

    <u>Cardinal Sin II: The Father and the Hawk</u>


    <u>The Thirteenth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    By the Child-King, his head hurt. Sin woke, bleary eyed and tired, as sunlight streamed into his quarters. There was a plate of food upon a small bedside table next to him, as well as a cup of heavily watered wine. It took him a moment or two to get his bearings, but once his eyes could stay open for more than a few seconds at a time he suddenly realised he was not alone in his chambers. Before him was a middle-aged man, bony fingers flitting through the piles of documents and reports on Sin''s desk and eyes not once leaving whatever work he was doing at the moment. Sin sighed. Of course he was here, who else would have the courage to walk into his room uninvited if not Hawk, his most trusted servant.


    "Saints, what time is it?"


    The older man raised an eyebrow, still not looking up from the paper.


    "Good morning to you as well, Father."


    "Hawk, you are two decades older than me. Please do not call me Father."


    The man snorted. They''d had this back-and-forwards for years now, ever since Hawk had become his batman. It was almost a morning ritual for the two of them, their argument over which honourific to use for Sin.


    "As you wish, Cardinal. We are currently in the eleventh hour of the day."


    Sin shot up at that, not feeling able to spare a second to make the quip he would have liked to make about how Hawk would go back to using ''Father'' before the day was out, as the feeling that he''d been out of it for too long sank in.


    "By the thousand and One, you should have had me up hours ago! Right, what have I missed, anything important? Have we been compromised in any way?"


    Hawk looked up at him incredulously.


    "Do you honestly think that I''d be sat here performing administrative duties if we''d been found out? No. You needed the rest. We''ve been doing this for quite some time now Sin, and you need to rest every now and again. Otherwise you''ll slip up, and if that happens we''re fucked."


    Sin took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. The man was right. Sin''s paranoia was almost entirely unfounded as of right now. Hawk was dependable and experienced; if anyone knew the correct thing to do if something were to happen... Sin''s mind trailed off as he caught a whiff of the food on the plate next to him. He snagged a few choice pieces of ham and a few granary rolls. Some blue cheese and a pickled onion had been placed on the plate, and if they tasted half as good as they smelt then he was very much looking forwards to scarfing it all down.


    "Any wetwork to take care of today?"


    Hawk shook his head.


    "Last night''s batch seems to have gotten out smoothly, no wetwork required. A few guards have been apparently spooked by your appearance last night, but I take it there was nothing to worry about there?"


    Sin shook his head, halfway through a mouthful of ham. He swallowed and washed it down with some of the wine before talking.


    "Nah, just a kid who didn''t realise who I was and an older guard who looked close to shitting himself. I think we should be fine."


    Hawk nodded once, returning to the paperwork that Sin really should have been doing himself.


    "I''ll make sure an eye is kept on the barracks that the two of them are stationed in. I don''t expect either of them to have realised anything, but better to be safe than sorry. We can''t abide rumours spreading at the moment."


    Saints, it''s got to come to an end soon. We can''t keep going like this forever.


    "Sin? Cardinal?"


    "Hm?"


    He cursed himself. He must have gotten lost in thought again.


    "I asked if you''re up for a game of Deicide later, to calm yourself."


    He shook his head.


    "No thank you, Hawk. There''s too much to do at the moment. Have we had any word back from the last cells in Thermanthus?"


    Hawk pulled a grim face, and Sin almost on instinct prepared himself for the bad news.


    "A report came in last night. One of them tried to get out through the sewers. They didn''t make it. Four worshippers of Hydran were drowned in holy water in a public square, two were laid low by spears as they ran, and two more were... well, according to our agents that found the bodies, one''s brains had been dashed against the cobbles, whilst the other had been savagely torn to shreds. A foul way to die."


    Sin shook his head, sighing heavily. Hawk looked up again, smiling sadly.


    "I''m sorry, Sin, but I don''t think we can save anyone outside of your own domain. There''s too many unknown factors."


    Sin shrugged as a wave of apathy and tiredness washed over him.


    "There never was much hope of getting any of them out. I... I had wished to get a few of them out of Admeta''s reach, but that doesn''t matter anymore. You''re right. We need to focus our efforts on Athio. Heh, honestly though, those guards looked more than a little intimidated by me. I guess I''ve really perfected this role, haven''t I?"


    Hawk chuckled mirthfully.


    "Small wonder. Those early years you spent travelling with troubadours and mummers certainly have come in handy these last few years."


    Sin smiled. Acting. He''d always had a little flair for the dramatic, and as Hawk had said, a childhood spent with singers and actors had only enhanced those abilities. It''d gotten him out of more than one spot of bother when he was taken in by Cardinal Adikos, that was for sure. It did feel a little weird, knowing that out of all of the Cardinals serving Adikos, Sin was both the most trusted and the only one who hadn''t been groomed for a life in the church since birth. He was just some street rat who couldn''t even write his own three letter name back when he was a kid, and now look at him; the most trusted vassal of a monstrously evil man, trying to balance suspicion and morality to save as many lives as possible. Saints, what a life he''d led until now. And to think, he''d only seen twenty-seven namedays.


    "They certainly have. Though this time I''m not playing for fun, or to steal a coin-purse. This time we''re playing for keeps."


    "I know. Distancing yourself from Spyridon and Admeta was difficult, but-"


    "But it had to be done. We grew up together after I was taken in by the church, and were taught in the same classroom under Adikos for a decade and a half. If anyone could see through my act, it''d be them. Keeping close was just too risky."


    He huffed out a sad laugh, but quickly suppressed any rising melancholic feelings. Those days were behind him now. He hadn''t seen either of his classmates since the civil war, since he was sent to the frontlines and then to Athio. With the things they''d all done in that time, he doubted they''d be able to meet each other''s eyes anymore. Admeta could lie and say her burnings were all for the greater good, Spyridon could pretend that he didn''t hate what he was doing, and Sin could deceive the world into thinking he was the golden boy of Adikos, the prodigy of the Archcardinal, but there was no hiding from each other. That was something he knew he''d have to reckon with soon.


    "When does Adikos want us in the capital for the first meeting of the high council?"


    "You''ll be setting out in a little under a month. It won''t take you more than a few days to reach Aegos, so you shouldn''t need to worry about being late. You''re likely to meet with Spyridon on the road, if he takes the southern route to Aegos anyway."


    "I can''t see him taking the northern route through Thermanthus. Not with how Admeta''s been acting these last few years."


    Hawk sighed.


    "With all due respect, Cardinal, the act you''ve been playing means that he likely sees you in much the same light as he sees her. I can''t see him being enthusiastic to meet with either of you."


    Sin closed his eyes for a while, basking in the sunlight as he sipped from the glass of heavily watered wine.


    "I still feel like it would be easy to rope him into this scheme. I mean, with two fifths of the country under our combined banners, we could even stand a good chance of succeeding in rebellion."


    "But if he refuses that offer?"


    Sin remained silent for a few seconds, doing his best to expel all notion of childhood nostalgia from his voice. Spyridon had been a good friend once, but Sin was a Cardinal now. Cardinal Sin did not allow emotion to weigh into his decision making. Cardinal Sin thought in pragmatics and absolutes. He needed to remember that.


    "Then I''ll kill him on the road. It shouldn''t be too difficult; he never was much of a fighter."


    Of course he didn''t want to kill Spyridon, but if needs be then he would. He wouldn''t let anyone come between his people and safety. Not while he still drew breath.


    "Let me read that report. The one from Thermanthus. I want to know exactly what happened."


    Hawk nodded, almost dismissively, and handed the parchment over. The handwriting was calligraphic but utilitarian, lacking unnecessary flourishes or curves. Good. There was no sense trying to spray perfume a pile of shit; if the news was going to be dire, he''d rather it not be masked by pretty embellishments.


    Nonetheless, he could not help but scowl as he read the latest report from Thermanthus. Another batch of would-be escapees killed. To hear it in the clinical tone of Hawk was one thing, but reading it was something else. He closed his eyes and muttered a small prayer for them. The Saints and the Angels would recognise their own, and the lot of them would find solace and rest in the heavens soon enough. At the very least, for them the nightmare was over. The rest of them left down here would need to continue their work to survive in this hellscape of their own creation. By the Boy-King, he wished he''d tried to talk Adikos out of this when he''d had the chance. How could he not have seen what was going on? Was he so utterly blind to the world around him, so blind in his devotion to the man he had called Father, that he truly had not been able to tell where their decisions were heading? When was it that he had realised what they were doing was wrong? When he received his orders to liquidate the non-conformists in Athio? When he had watched the survivors of the Imperator''s forces being tossed screaming onto pyres at the end of the civil war? Or had it been far sooner? Had it been when he''d watched a crowd tear apart an apothecary for ''witchcraft''? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it was when that guard had beaten that little boy within an inch of his life for the ''sin'' of gluttony after he''d asked for a second helping of gruel. I was in his place once. He could take some solace in the flogging he''d ordered that guard to receive by his own logic. Wroth was just as much a sin as gluttony, after all.


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    He sat up, startled, wondering where exactly his thoughts had ran away to. There was little to be gained by his speculating on the happenings of yesteryear at this moment. He stood up, stretching his arms and legs, and moved to ready himself for the day.


    "There''s a pail and washcloth in the antechamber. Soap as well."


    Sin nodded at Hawk, and prepared his clothes for when he was finished washing; he hated nothing more than having to stand there stark and pull clothes from out of a wardrobe when he was bloody freezing.


    "You''re absolutely sure there''s nothing urgent that I need to look at right now? You''re certain?"


    Hawk huffed, seeming a little annoyed at his paranoia and constant checking.


    "Cardinal, I swear to the thousand and the One, if you ask me that one more time without realising that I will fucking tell you when there''s something important for you to look at, then I will not be held accountable for what I do."


    Sin snorted as he walked out of the room and into the adjoining antechamber.


    "All right, all right. Saints, you''re no fun sometimes."


    <hr>


    "Feeling a little better now?"


    Sin nodded.


    "Indeed. Hey, do you think my proposals stand much chance of being considered at the council?"


    Hawk''s shoulders dropped a little as he let out a heavy breath.


    "It''s a long shot. Even if they do accept your proposals outright, with no pushback, it still isn''t a comfortable situation."


    Sin gave a wry smile.


    "Trust me, I''m more than aware. I loved how diverse and interesting the cities around Aegos used to be, but now it''s just... there''s just monotony. Monotony and fear. Advocating for the non-conformists to be sent to settlements on the Isles of Aercad isn''t exactly what I want to be doing, and raises moral issues all on its own, but it''s surely better than a state-mandated purge."


    Hawk nodded slowly, rubbing his face with a hand.


    "I know. I do agree with you, but this does still feel wrong. Like we''re somehow legitimising what''s been happening by proposing this in an official channel."


    "We''re already ferrying them out to the isles, we just wouldn''t need to hide it anymore. Besides, it''s not like the Adikos will just accept a complete end to the persecutions. I just hope... I just want to at least minimise the damage we''re doing, to stop us from hitting a point of no return before this rotten theocracy starts trying to expand its borders. Did I ever tell you of Adikos'' design? Of his delusions?"


    Hawk nodded, not that it mattered. Sin knew he''d told the man a dozen times already, but that didn''t mean he was going to stop telling him anytime soon.


    "He first told us about it when we were just kids in his classroom. Me, Admeta, and Spyridon. At the time we didn''t really understand what he was talking about, given how he kept trailing off. It was supposed to just be a lecture on the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Terranea, you know, the one that stretched across southern Kliskorios and acted as rivals to the Klironomeans for centuries. He kept trailing off, rambling on tangents and saying... saying that it was no wonder they fell. That their kings were of mortal ken and mortal sin, but if Terranea were reforged under a holier mantle, it would last forever. I never noticed it at the time, but I wish I had looking back now. The barely hidden madness in his eyes, the fervour with which he imagined his new empire... Saints, I can''t believe I never realised it when I was a child. I should have seen it. Why didn''t I see it?"


    Hawk laid a hand on his shoulder, breaking him from his rapidly cascading thoughts.


    "As you said, you were a child. You can''t have known the madness he held in his heart, the hatred for those he should have shepherded despite all his claims of piety. You could never have known."


    Sin nodded, not at all believing what Hawk had said but not wanting to carry on this topic of conversation any further. He hated how he hadn''t wanted to open his eyes to the truth back then, how blind he was to the fact that he''d been manipulated and groomed to act as the Cardinal''s attack dog, his unquestioningly loyal puppet that would dance for his master''s amusement as his strings were pulled.


    Sometimes it felt as though he''d never left that troupe of entertainers.


    "It doesn''t matter anymore, Cardinal. You''ve seen Father Adikos for what he is now. You''ve learned, and you''re doing the right thing. That''s what''s important. That''s what you''ll be remembered for."


    Sin allowed himself a small smile. He still didn''t believe his manservant''s words, and doubted that he ever would, but it was still a reassuring thing to hear.


    "I hope so, Hawk. I hope so. Have we had any word from our contacts in the west?"


    Hawk shook his head, smiling grimly.


    "Nothing. It''s been four months since we had any word from our ''friends'' on the Tildan peninsula. They''ve sensed which way the wind is blowing, and they''ve jumped ship while they have the chance. No help will come from the church in the west. We''re running out of allies, Cardinal. We''ll just have ourselves and our contacts in Kannagrios soon, and... well, it isn''t my place to say, but... well..."


    Hawk looked down, the man remaining silent for a little while as he seemed to search for the right words to describe his misgivings. Sin urged him on, not wanting his most trusted servant to hold back any remarks he may think of as pertinent.


    "No, please, go on. If there''s anyone who''s concerns I want to hear, it''s yours. Do you suspect treason from the northern confederation?"


    Hawk shook his head.


    "It isn''t that, Cardinal. The Confederation of Falcons is as dependable as any Dathanian state, and as honourable as the Klironomeans from which they descend. What concerns me is that they will take far too long to act. The window of opportunity will come and go, and in that time they will hardly have managed to get halfway through a debate on whether or not they should hold a debate to ride to our aid. Even if they did appoint a pair of Consuls to lead them and mustered an army by the dawn overmorrow, they''d have to either march straight through the lands of Imperator Thrax and risk his wrath, or march the long way around and spend months navigating the dozens of city-states to the east. If we mustered our own forces we''d be cut down, or else would need to hole up in this city and shore up our defences, hoping that the knightly phalanxes of the northern confederation will prevail over whomsoever makes camp beyond our walls. It matters not how well we fight or how long we hold, not if they cannot even agree whether or not to aid us."


    Sin nodded glumly. He''d suspected something like this might happen. It seemed that the downfall of the theocracy he was a part of would be delayed somewhat by this news.


    "Then it is imperative I get Cardinal Spyridon on side. We''d have four out of every ten soldiers in the kingdom on our side, and I''m still one of the greatest battle commanders alive in the Aegan Hills. We can make it work."


    Hawk shook his head.


    "No, you can''t. If you could get Spyridon on side, and hire a company of sellswords, and somehow manage to gather your forces without alerting the rest of the Most Devout Church that you were planning to revolt, then you might stand a chance. As it stands otherwise? No. Spyridon''s men will take too long to reach Athio, and there aren''t enough of them to make a difference on their own. There aren''t any real sellsword companies either; Adikos'' ordinance against civilians owning weapons has meant that any seeking a mercenaries'' life have long since gone abroad."


    Sin shook his head, looking out of the window and over the city below. It wasn''t exactly bustling anymore; merchants didn''t shout and holler over one another, and there was never a commotion born of a felony to disturb the peace, but the city was still at least alive. It hurt him a little that he was so close to a scene of normalcy whilst knowing that he could never be a part of it. Not even because if he was seen then the people would realise he was no different than they were, and might put two and two together about the discrepancies of his double life, but because they all genuinely believed that he was the monster he pretended to be. There was no chance of anyone stopping in the street to talk with him, to ask him to give directions or help them in an hour of need. There would never again be a vagabond he might deliver alms and food to, nor a congregation that would view him with comfort in their hearts and warmth in their souls. He was a creature of night and butchery now, and it was perhaps less solace than it should have been to him that he was not really a monstrous being. At least then he might have the strength and courage to stand up to the oppressors without fear of failure.


    "Cardinal? You''re spiralling again."


    Sin snapped back into the room at the sound of Hawk''s voice. On instinct he dug his nails into the wooden table, the pinch of pain serving to ground him as he willed himself to keep his breath steady and his mind in the present.


    "So I am, Hawk."


    His words were shaky and broken apart, pauses stretching out a moment too long between syllables as Hawk gave him a pitying look. If it were anyone else Sin would have been enraged, for he hated the feeling of being pitied, but this was Hawk. Hawk was dependable, and always honest to him. Hawk would not play down bad news and cruel happenings to make things more palatable to anyone, and certainly not Sin. He alone knew what Sin had gone through, and he alone was privy to his darkest moments.


    "Are you certain you do not wish for a game of Deicide to clear your mind?"


    Sin shook his head, probably a little too vigorously, for he felt more than a little light headed afterwards. Hawk gave him a small smile, understanding on his face as he reached for the game board.


    "A pity, for I believed we''d made a sufficient dent in the days work to warrant taking a break, and was very much looking forwards to matching wits with you. Are you certain you do not want to play a game?"


    Sin looked away, flushing a little whilst feeling intensely glad for Hawk''s presence for what must have been the millionth time these last few years. The man knew what Sin needed, what would calm him down, and was kind enough to pretend the reason he wished to play was to satiate his own wants and not to give Sin something stimulating to focus on, as that might damage his precious ego.


    "If you want to then I guess I don''t mind playing. But only one match. Maybe two. We still need to get the rest of this work finished."


    Hawk shook his head, pushing a stack of papers to the side of the table with a chuckle.


    "As you say, Cardinal. Black or white?"


    "White, so please you. I prefer acting to reacting, in both senses of the word."


    Hawk eyed him a little sadly. Their own little code revolving around who played the first move of an innocent board game remained intact, even when it hadn''t been used in so long. White. White always made the first move. White was the first to go. Sin hadn''t played white in a long time, but he''d was under so much stress recently. He didn''t know if he''d be able to outlast the theocracy at the moment, was almost certain he''d die before he had a chance to see it fall. He was going to be the first to go, hence, white.


    Hawk nodded.


    "I''ll play black, in that case. After you, Cardinal."


    The two of them played back and forwards for a while, losing themselves in the minutiae of a game they could both genuinely relax whilst playing. After a while Hawk broke the silence, eyes flicking up to Sin as a horseman took one of the levies.


    "Have you been having any nightmares recently, Cardinal?"


    Sin stilled at the question, eyes flicking up to meet Hawk''s own for less than a second before falling back down to the table. He said nothing, but Hawk read him as easy as one might read a book. The man hummed out a response before he spoke.


    "Hmm, I suspected as much. Is it anything you''d like to talk about?"


    Sin shook his head, shrugging.


    "I can''t really remember most of it anyway. Just blurred, broad strokes. It''s the same one night after night, but I never remember it until I wake up. It''s almost like someone''s trying to warn me of something, fanciful as that sounds."


    Hawk nodded once.


    "And what do you remember, if you do not mind my asking?


    Sin thought hard, wracking his brain for any solid memories of the nightmares.


    "There''s a grand hall, and a semicircle of figures upon thrones above me. I think they''re passing judgement on me. Then there''s a knight of some sort, a huge armoured figure with a mace. I try to run when the judges on their thrones begin laughing, but the knight always gets me before I can escape. He swings the mace at me, I raise my arms to brace, and then I wake up in bed. There''s plenty more than that, but I can''t remember the rest."


    Hawk grimaced.


    "I understand that you are stressed, my Cardinal. If you will only allow yourself a day or two to rest, I can almost guarantee that most of these nightmares will cease. It is at least worth trying, just so you might become a little more rested even if the nightmares remain."


    Sin chuckled, shaking his head.


    "Don''t get ahead of yourself, Hawk. Let me focus on the game for now, and the work later. I''ll rest after the council."


    Hawk gave him a look that was not quite a glare, but certainly a warning.


    "See that you do, Cardinal. See that you do, else I''ll be displeased with you. Now come on, as you said, we''ve a game to play."


    Sin smiled. His life was tough at the moment, but at least he could rely on one person to help him through it. It was a comforting thought, if nothing else; Hawk would be there with advice or a willing ear to listen or even just a game of deicide. It was the closest thing he''d known to the feeling of home in a long, long time.

 Seventh I: The Mists of Dreams

    <u>Seventh I: The Mists of Dreams</u>


    <u> </u>


    <u>The Twentieth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    <u> </u>


    They''d been having the dreams again. Not dreams of prophecy or futures that may yet be, but of memories. Their own memories. Hazy, half formed images of mother and father danced across their waking mind, memories of two people that were so kind, so loving despite their nature, two people they could never truly know outside of places and features they had seen in dreams they''d had a lifetime ago. Even hazier were the memories of the man who had made them, who had granted them consciousness before giving them to the woman who was to be their mother, and the man who was to be their father.


    They wished they could see them again, if only for a day. What would mother and father think of them for their abilities now? Would they shun him? Would they care? Would they see them any differently?


    No. Of course not. Their faces were blurred by the weight of time, but their voices remained with them always. Their joyful proclamations at finally having a child of their own, mother''s endless doting and proclamations of love as she rocked them in the cradle, of father''s quiet but always reassuring and kind presence.


    They missed them immensely these days, as all the mysteries and tricks of the man who they had once called their God all but mocked them for their lack of understanding. They felt like they were trying to read a language no man had ever learned before, or comprehend a colour no artist had ever yet seen. It was almost maddening, but they couldn''t afford to lose themselves in what once was, not when there was still so much to do before them. A realm barely held together, tensions along the borders, and... and they had the oddest feeling that something cold was waking.


    They shook their head and got back on track. Lykourgos was still asleep, but alive. Nasos had been the one to heal his Grace, or at least stabilise him. Most pressing, according to him, was the wound in his stomach. The young healer and priest had made sure that all his instruments were sterilised in boiled water, before washing his hands so vigorously Seventh had thought he meant to take the top layer of skin off. Afterwards he had, to Seventh''s limited understanding, stitched the wound back together. The room had stank of shit and blood. It was no surprise; the open puncture in the prince''s stomach meant that whatever was inside was... well, it was still in there, but it was now open to the world.


    The young man had run himself completely ragged to heal the Prince. It had taken well over ten hours for the procedures to be completed, and even then he did not rest. Endlessly he went back and forwards taking notes on the prince''s breathing, the pallor of his skin, if his body reacted to stimuli. For another six hours he had worked there, before finally being literally carried away by a worried and, unless his eyes were deceiving him, somewhat smitten Dreamwulf.


    They could see those two working well. It would be funny to watch them obliviously dance around each other, at least.


    Speaking of princes, Seventh suspected Rhema now knew what drove his brother to fight like a man possessed to rescue him during the Twilight Rebellion.


    The attempt on his brothers life seemed to have... shaken Rhema, for a lack of a better word. Despite how close they had been, Seventh was never quite sure how much of Rhema''s madness was true madness and how much was an act, a veneer to throw off those around him who may wish him harm. As he had said, after all, in order to fool your enemies you must first fool yourself.


    As Lykourgos had been laid motionless in his royal bed, Rhema had changed in an instant. Perhaps the scene had snapped him back from the brink of insanity. Perhaps he had simply stopped pretending. Either way, the man who now sat the throne was a completely different person than the boy who had sat it a scant few months ago.


    Nowadays he constantly hounded Ser Romanos and Marshal Crowe for tactics to be used in battles and skirmishes, well, whenever they were not off hunting down outlaw bands and Rose-Loyalist holdouts. Where possible he''d also speak to other knights and officers about anything and everything relating to war; he spoke to Lieutenant Marren of Carcass Shot and the proper usage of artillery, and a few of the others about logistics, of all things. He''d even been seen actually starting to learn the basics of stewardship from books that he would never have even touched three months ago.


    When he dispensed justice in his brothers name, above all there seemed to be a single philosophy that he stuck to before anything else: "What would Lyk do?"


    At some point in the second week of his brother''s coma he had sent for some of the records of justice in Aenirhen so he could read Lykourgos'' previous dispensations and reuse them on the petitioners that came to Anaria now. As a result, "What would Lyk do?" Had become, "What did Lyk do?"


    He still had issues within his mind, Seventh knew that all too well, but now that he was both surrounded by actual support and presented with a situation as grave as this, he seemed determined to do his brother proud.


    To say Rhema ''sat'' the throne was not entirely true. Whilst his brother lay unmoving he could have sat it by all rights, but instead he dispensed justice whilst standing slightly to the right of the throne, where a trusted bodyguard might stand whilst the actual king sat the throne.


    He was stood there, now, listening as a messenger relayed troop movements from within Owkrestos to him.


    His left hand lay on the pommel of his sword, his face was grim and stern.


    Yes, thought Seventh, he plays the jester no longer. Now he is a Prince.


    They smiled a little. Lykourgos would be so proud of his brother when he awoke, and he would wake, Seventh would make sure of it. It may have been beyond their ability to shake the prince from his slumber, but that just meant they needed a little help. They would ask their kinsman tomorrow, for their Lord had to know something that could be done.


    And yet, amidst all of this chaos and mystic musings, the gears of state still turned.


    In the absence of the King, still technically a prince, the Inner Council had taken to ruling the realm in his stead. The Council of Five, as it had come to be known, consisted of Grandmaster Romanos as the Master of Steel, Crowe as the Mistress of Iron, Elikoidi as the Master of Silver and finally a man named ''Yzaldae'', an exile from Sothettar, as the Master of Copper, finally rounded out by Prince Rhema, who acted as the figurehead of the extremely reduced council


    Even if Seventh didn''t know the new man in charge of the realms coffers, they at least knew that all four others were as true as could be, their intents never wavering.


    "Sparrow for your thoughts?"


    Seventh turned to see his Grace''s cupbearer stood alongside them, a curious glint in their eyes. and a rather convincing relaxed air about them, but Seventh could see right through it even with the blindfold on.


    "Nothing interesting, I''m afraid. Just thinking on the regency that runs the kingdom whilst his Grace rests."


    The cupbearer nodded and leant on a low stone wall besides Seventh.


    "Yeah, I think about them a lot as well. Well, probably in a completely different way to you. It''s a part of my job to keep tabs on all of them, you see."


    Seventh cocked an eyebrow, a playfully sarcastic tone to their voice.


    "A spy? And here I thought you could be trusted."


    Ilias'' cheeks flushed slightly as he made to respond, and there was the slightest hint of a waver in their voice.


    "No, of course not! I just... I''m an informant for his Grace, that''s all! Someone''s gonna need to bring him up to speed on what they''ve all been doing whilst running his kingdom when he wakes up."


    Seventh nodded, conceding the point, and the two lapsed into silence. It was not awkward but it was far from comfortable, as the young serving-boy seemed to be trying to work up the courage to ask something. After a few minutes passed in silence Seventh decided to take pity on the boy and start the conversation himself.


    "Are you here to ask a favour? Just a question, perhaps?"


    Ilias gave a relieved nod, seemingly thankful for the opening.


    "I... yes, I am. I know it might seem like stupidity or paranoia but... well, you''re closer to his Highness than any other I know and you seem nice, and I just wanted someone to confirm that... to confirm that his Highness didn''t do anything and won''t do anything to his Grace. I know they''re brothers and his Highness does genuinely seem to care, but I just... need to know for certain."


    Seventh was silent for a moment before letting out a single huffed laugh.


    "Is that what you''re worried about? Don''t worry, I can say with complete certainty that Rhema is not in any way responsible for what happened to his Grace. Please, trust me when I say that Rhema would be the last person who wants to see his Grace laid low as he is now."


    Ilias nodded and let out a shaking breath before composing himself.


    "Thank you. It means more than you know to hear that. I will leave you be now, I promise."


    Seventh smiled at him as reassuring as they could before turning to leave.


    "Worry not; your heart is in the right place. Feel free to ask me of any such things you need, anytime."


    "Thank you, Se-"


    There was a little gasp from the cupbearer as they turned to walk away, and Seventh realised that one of their wings was peeking through their robe. They carefully tucked it back in, and pressed a finger to their lips whilst smiling back at Ilias. The boy nodded, seemingly dazed, before they both went their separate ways. They sighed. There was still much to do today. Best to get it over with.


    Odd. It was quite warm out for the time of year, and yet they still felt a shiver pass through them when they looked to the north. Ah well. It was probably nothing.


    <hr>


    They''d had the dream again last night. The dream of looking up at the world from their little cradle, of being rocked and gently shushed and lulled by the voice of their mother as she aged after father passed away. They''d been tricked, mother and father. Mother was barren, and could never conceive, but they wanted a child more than anything. One day their creator, one of Basileous'' compatriots now recognised as the Angels of the Old-Church or the Corvid Gods in the north, stumbled across the couple. They begged the divine to grant them a bairn, and after a day and a night of arguing and pleading, their maker acquiesced. They weren''t sure how they knew this, since they hadn''t yet been made, but they''d remembered feeling like they were... floating? Hovering? Around the conversation. When the divine creature left in the morning, the household had another member.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Them.


    But of course, there was a catch. There was always a catch. Mother and father were so happy to have a child to call their own that it didn''t strike them until four years later. Four years old, and they''d neither left the cradle nor grown an inch. Of course not. They''d begged and begged the Angel for a bairn, a baby, and so that was what they received. Mother had gone out one night, and father had explained to their young ears that she meant to ask the Angel to have them age as their mother and father did.


    She never found him. He was long gone.


    They wouldn''t even take their first steps until mother was on her deathbed, but at the very least they''d been able to let her see them as they worked their way through those first clumsy steps. That was something.


    But then they supposed that mother and father, despite having every reason to resent them for being a drain on their small family, for them not being what they had wanted, for being a changeling child out of myth no less, had loved them. They''d fed them and rocked them and loved them and they could do nothing to thank them for it now, and that made their eyes sting a little if they were truthful. For fifty years mother had rocked them in that cradle, half a century they had known lullabies and sweet nothings to calm them in rain and storms, and in that time they''d aged only about a year in truth.


    They were fairly certain once that their abnormal upbringing had inspired a faetale or two, given that a child who remained a baby for half a century was bound to make a few tongues wag, and that feeling had been proven correct when they''d chanced past a travelling bard singing about changeling children and mothers who nursed babes for decades without their bairns growing an inch. It was an odd feeling, to know your person, your family, had inspired a faetale, but then they supposed that it was bound to happen at some point. The song had been mournful and at the time they''d tried to ignore it, but now they wished they''d paid more attention, if for no other reason than to see how much the singers had gotten right. Well, that and the fact that they''d probably be able to remember the name of the bloody song if they''d paid more attention. Oh well.


    Father died two decades after they were bequeathed unto the little family in that beautiful dark-green shawl that had been some of their only clothes for decades, then mother had joined him in the quiet grave after about thirty years of living with only them in their cradle, with Seventh still barely able to walk. They''d stayed in the house for what must have been two centuries if the fifty years in the cradle was to be counted, and they stayed when the roof timbers rotted and the walls began to crumble. That''s where Basileous had found them, and talked to them for a little while before leaving. That conversation was almost etched into their mind, but it hadn''t mattered, since then he was gone. Then they''d walked down the path in the woods they''d lived in until they found a small chapel-come-monastery, and been taken in by the people who''d lived there. They were kindly folk, some around their age, some wizened and old like mother had been when she passed away, but no matter what they all tried they couldn''t help seventh get to sleep. The young seer remembered feeling so scared that all of this would disappear when they woke up that they refused to sleep. Then, after two weeks of constant wakefulness, they''d been lulled to sleep by a draught purchased from a travelling apothecary.


    They still remembered the numbness they''d felt when they next awoke to find nothing but the ruined remains of the little monastery they''d fallen asleep in, the feeling of briars and moss and mildew covering their body and the finger of a confused green-clad prince poking his face.


    They''d slept for nearly eight-hundred and seventy years.


    Not that anyone had known that, nor had they intended to tell anyone. The monastery had been a ruin, covered in the same plants that had grown over them, and the village nearby was completely gone save only a few stone walls and what was left of a little well. After that they''d immediately went to check on the house that had been already on its way to ruin by the time they''d left, the house that they''d been raised in, and found nothing more than a few scattered stones, the remains of a floor covered in tall grass, and amazingly one and two-half legs from the cradle they''d been rocked in, joined by the curved wood at the bottom.


    It had taken everything they had not to weep at that sight. Then they''d left with Rhema and his retinue to Castelos, and had done their best to avoid thinking on what they''d lost to time.


    But it didn''t matter any more. They had a job to do now, and they were bloody well going to do it. All they needed to do was convince their obstinate kinsman to do this one thing for them. He owed it to them, after all. That and so much more.


    <hr>


    "Basileous, I am begging you!"


    Seventh moved in front of him as the older divine tried to walk past, the younger Seer having spent the better part of the last hour trying to convince him to intervene.


    "Infernal wingling! Don''t use that name here, you should know better! Names have power, child!"


    "It''s the only way you''ll pay any attention to what I say!"


    The man curled his lip.


    "That''s because I have no interest in these affairs!"


    "Come on! Please!"


    The elder shrugged impassively and continued walking, bumping their shoulder as he went. Seventh shouted at the back of his retreating form.


    "You know, this sort of thing is my choice anyway, not yours!"


    The man stopped, and despite his clear bitterness he chuckled. He pointed his finger over his shoulder at the stained glass window behind them, on which the seven Angels were depicted surrounding the First Saint.


    "I suppose so, if you go by their definitions of who we are."


    The younger groaned in frustration, and the man snapped around and pointed a finger at him.


    "Look, if you genuinely think this is your decision, then go and make it."


    Seventh looked away, abashed.


    "I can''t."


    "Why''s that?"


    "I don''t know how."


    The man snorted.


    "Of course you don''t. You''re still a child."


    The insinuation that their age had anything to do with their predicament genuinely struck a nerve in the seer, who gave themselves over to a brief and rare rage.


    "No, it is not because I am ''just a child'', and even if I was still a child, what would that have to do with it? You were supposed to teach me! And then you left! How many of us are left in the world? All I know of are me and you! When my progenitor died you promised you''d teach me what you could, and then you left. I learned what I could, but there wasn''t a single being alive aside from me or you left, so there was no-one! Just me! I revered you as a borderline God, and you see fit to mock me now? I come to you, asking for aid, and you spurn me. It wouldn''t even take you long to do!"


    The man raised a hand, asking for silence, and used the other to rub his own face.


    "I''m sorry I couldn''t be there as I promised. But I am here now."


    "You are. And you can start to make up for it by doing as I ask."


    The man nodded.


    "Okay. How''s this for a debt then? You get three wishes from me. Three wishes, and we''re even. Sound like a deal?"


    The younger Seer blinked.


    "Three wishes? How is that fair? What tasks would I even wish completed that could make up for centuries of lost time?"


    The man smiled, holding out a pale hand for the younger to accept.


    "We''ll have to wait and see, won''t we?"


    Seventh grimaced and took his hand, shaking it firmly. The man smiled wider, and somewhere in the distance there was the sound of thunder from a cloudless sky.


    The bargain was struck.


    "Well, lets get to work, shall we?"


    "When can you perform your work?"


    "Tonight. That''ll square away one of your wishes right away. I don''t like being in the debt of others."


    Seventh snorted.


    "I don''t think anyone does."


    The man sighed.


    "Trust me when I say I hate it more than most. Bad memories. A great many bad memories. Is there anything else you wish to speak of with me?"


    "Yes, one more thing. I know how I''m to use the second of my wishes."


    "Already?"


    "Yes. You''re going to teach me your ways, as you once promised me you would, and tell me about the others."


    The man raised an eyebrow.


    "The others?"


    Seventh swallowed a little as they elaborated.


    "Our kinsmen. The ones I never could meet. I would have you tell me of the last of our kind in this world, before they passed on."


    There was silence for a moment, and a faint look of sorrow mixed with something approaching amusement crossed the face of their kinsman.


    "That''s technically two things."


    Seventh started.


    "I swear, if you try and say-"


    "Don''t worry. I''ll train you in the ways of our angelic-magics, no need to worry about that. As for telling you of the others, you don''t need to wish for that. Just ask. Any questions you have, and stories you''d like me to tell... it''ll be nice to have someone to talk to about them."


    Seventh stared at the man with a faint feeling of pity rising up in their chest.


    "You miss them, don''t you?"


    The man nodded slowly.


    "Aye, and I''m not ashamed to admit that. They were all good friends of mine. Family, if not by blood then by boundless friendship. They were good folk. I miss them dearly. Sometimes I find myself hoping that perhaps the one the Klironomeans call ''Anawroth'' survived that great and terrible battle at the Aauta Pass, but it''s little more than a chance hope. If he somehow survived and dragged himself from the field then he''d have still needed to survive the last thousand years in the tattered state would have been left in."


    "Who made me?"


    "I beg your pardon?"


    Seventh''s features worked into a thinking expression as the thought came to the forefront of their mind.


    "Who made me? Who gave me to my mother and father? If it wasn''t you or Hre-"


    "Anawroth. Our names have power, wingling. For now, we use the names these folk have given us."


    Seventh nodded in understanding.


    "Of course, my apologies. If it wasn''t you or Anawroth, then who was it?"


    Basileo- Hydran, gotta remember not to use the true names, Hydran looked at them and gave them a sad smile.


    "I promise I''ll tell you soon, but not just yet. I can''t bring myself to think of them much more at the moment, especially not with the task you''ve already given me for tonight. I''ll need to concentrate. Such tasks seem simple, but it all depends how close to the shadows he''s gone. Besides, I''m quite rusty. The last time I attempted something like this was... well, it must have been during the Sixth Bastard''s War."


    Seventh blinked.


    "But that would be... what, a thousand years ago?"


    "Somewhere around that, I think. Don''t worry though, there''s little chance of me buggering this up, so don''t look so worried. I''ll have him awake come the small hours of the morning, for better or worse. Then we''re a third of the way to even."


    Despite themselves, Seventh grinned. It was nice to hear his kinsman''s snarky tone be used in a more jovial way than the obstinate antagonism they had become used to over the last month.


    "A third the way to even? If you say so. I still say you owe me a lot more than three wishes."


    Their kinsman smiled down at them and ruffled their hair good-naturedly.


    It was as if he''d never disappeared.


    "Don''t push your luck, wingling. Go, get some rest. I''ll talk with you tomorrow."


    Seventh nodded and left for their chambers. Rest sounded good right about now.


    "Oh! One more thing!"


    They turned around to see the form of their kinsman walking away.


    "Be wary of the victim who grins, the shepherd eating mutton, and the vows that bind a king, else you may find the fate you think certain lost before your eyes."


    Then he turned and carried on walking away.


    Huh, Seventh thought, is that what I sound like when I give warnings?


    <hr>


    Their chambers were better than the ones they''d had at Castelos and the temporary room they''d been moved into whilst Rhema was at the capital in both the days leading up to the civil war and the civil war itself. It wasn''t anything particularly special; there was only a little hearth, no great and opulent tapestries or carvings, nothing like that, but there was a little bit of ivy curling its way around the stone of the balcony opening.


    They smiled a little as they looked at it. In time this room would look much like an indoor forest, minus the trees since that would just be unwieldy, allowing them to feel much more at home in their new residence. In short they very much liked their new chambers. Oh, and it was far away from the barracks, so they didn''t need to worry about soldiers or knights trying anything stupid. They weren''t overly fond of knights, not after what Ser Aenethar did.


    They shook their head and broke that trail of thought. They''d not dignify that man with even the smallest thought, this they swore. They turned their mind away, leaning on their windowsill and gazing out into the skies above. It had been a nice day do far, mild but cloudless, and the air was still pleasantly warm. They were tired, it was nice out, and they had a large bed to sleep in. What more could they ask for at this moment than what they already had?


    Still, they allowed themselves just a moment to watch the sunset before going to bed.


    Seventh stared out of the balcony window of their new room as the last rays of sunshine dipped down and passed under the horizon.


    Then they shivered.


    Cold winds were rising.

 Lore Chapter: Licotemos and Kortheros

    <u>Second Day, Second Month, 871 AD.


    </u><u>Alekos Virgilos, Prince.


    </u><u>Kingdom of Polaeros.


    </u><u>Polaeriopolis.


    </u><u>The Seeker''s Palace.</u>


    My Dearest Alek,


    I must confess to a great deal of nervousness as of late, and for a great many reasons. My research into the occult has continued in the time we have spent apart, though I fear that things are truly beginning to spiral out of control at home. Father came down with another illness recently, the latest in a string of debilitating ailments to have targeted him. I may have made a great many preparations for a potential civil war or succession crisis, but with all my heart I can truly say that I do not think I truly realised just how close to war we were. I will have the throne one day, of that there is no doubt, but I think whatever childlike part of me remained had still hoped the transition of power from my father to myself would be bloodless. I now know better.


    There has been no conflict to speak of, and no war has come about quite yet, but I know it won''t be long. I can feel it in my gut. It''s that same nervous anticipation I had in the runup to the rebellion, that sense of anxiety and adrenaline building seemingly without reason. No, there will not be a war yet, not while may father yet lives. If one of these illnesses one day claims him however...


    I believe I need to redouble my efforts to prepare. Below I have compiled the information you have asked for relating to the kingdoms of Licotemos and Kortheros, the two easternmost nations of the Heptarchy on the Dathanian border. I fail to see why I am the one compiling this information and not yourself, since your homeland is far closer to them than mine, but then I guess you have spent the greater part of your time ''at home'' travelling to lands far from Klironomea. That same childish part of myself I mentioned earlier still dreams some nights of leaving everything behind and joining you, but I can''t indulge that part of my imagination anymore. There''s too much work to do.


    Enough prattle from me; here are my thoughts on the lands of peaches and marble, of golden fields and mines blacker than the night.


    Licotemos is perhaps the only nation in the Heptarchy that could rival the strength of Teleytaios. With the largest amount of land under the control of any Klironomean kingdom they certainly seem to be the strongest nation in the known world if one were to glean their only insights on geopolitics from maps showing national borders. Even beyond that, the fact that they consistently maintain both the largest agricultural output of any nation in the Heptarchy and the world as a whole means they form a vital link in the east of the continent for the trading of foodstuffs and other assorted raw materials. As well as this they are able to raise the single largest levied army in all of Klironomea, or so their kings and lords arrogantly proclaim to all around them in a prideful, bellicose way. So why do I say that they only appear to be the most powerful kingdom in the Heptarchy?


    Because their armies are some of the least experienced in the world, their nobles feckless and indolent, and their agricultural estates archaic and inefficient. The nation is constantly wracked by minor internal wars between noble houses, which while destabilising one would expect to at least provide some experience to the soldiers under the command of the lords, but in truth the only ones who go off to do any of the real fighting are, by and large, the Licoteman knights. Excellent, one might think, knights are excellent combatants! Whilst this may broadly be true, there is much to be desired from the so called ''Order of the Peach''.


    I will go over the inadequacies of the fighting capabilities of Licotemos soon enough, but for now let us turn to the royal family of this land. House Perytlos is one of the largest houses in the known world, with perhaps as many as a score of cadet branches in total. The heads of these branches range from dukes to barons in their noble ranking, but they are not the rulers to be looked at here. The main branch of house Perytlos consists of somewhere around a dozen members, but of all of them there are only six of any importance; the ruling couple and their children.


    King Reyne Perytlos is a man widely regarded as being in his prime, though if this is his prime I hesitate to inquire as to what he will be like when it passes him by. His wife, Queen Aerina Perytlos n¨¦e Petrinos, is made of far sterner stuff. There are many who rumour that, behind closed doors, it is her that is the true ruler of Licotemos. I would not be surprised to learn that this rumour is the truth, or at least contain a measure of truth. Whatever the truth may be, the two of them form the ruling couple of the largest kingdom in the Heptarchy, and indeed the known world.


    Of their children there is much more to say, though I will try and maintain brevity throughout.


    The eldest of the king''s children is one Ser Reynard Perytlos, every bit the image of his father. Thankfully he seems at least marginally more intelligent than his progenitor, though not to the extent of his sister. An expert duellist who earned his knighthood at the age of eleven, he often seems to find himself sent on errands to the outskirts of his kingdom. Perhaps his father believes that the presence of his son will quell banditry and noble dissent, or perhaps he is tired of being shown up by his heir. Who can say?


    The other two princes are nearly as prodigious with in duels as their brother, though the two of them seem to have inherited more of their mother''s intelligence, thank the Angels.


    The second, Prince Stasos, fights as an Armsman, believe it or not, slogging out his days in the mud with commoners. What his father and mother make of that I do not pretend to know, nor am I anxious to find out.


    The last of the three, Prince Mathias, seems to be a more bookish lad than this brothers, spending his days with his sister in the libraries of his home as opposed to on the battlefield. He can swing a blade just fine, but his heart lies more in books and diplomacy than it does in matters martial.


    Of course, there is also the youngest of the four siblings to consider; Princess Iona appears to be an expert when it comes to matters of diplomacy and, if a trusted source in my inner circle is to be believed, rather talented when it comes to more ''underhanded'' matters of state. I have met with the princess and Prince Mathias once before now, and though I do respect her brother she is, much like her mother, a powerhouse when it comes to bandying words and settling disputes in her own favour.


    Each member of the main house keeps the same sigil, that being a brown bow broken in the centre on a plain lime-green field with a peach-coloured edge. A rather ugly design, in my opinion, but then there is more than a little symbolism behind their choice of sigil. Green fields to represent their fertile lands, peach lining because the peach is one of their national symbols, and a broken bow because house Perytlos cemented its power by defeating the cousin of the late King Harald II after two decades of insurrection, breaking his bow which had been a gift from the boy-king before his passing at the fateful battle of the Aauta Pass.


    House Perytlos rules from the great marbled city of Sygomidopolis, a rich and prosperous place. It is the second largest city in the entire Heptarchy, trailing only behind Anaria itself, and has a rather unique privilege of being within arms reach of the home of the Alithini-Agiathos. As with most great cities, the central region is dedicated to sprawling palaces and royal-owned complexes. Every royal palace showcases perfectly the character of the kingdom it forms the heart of, and the Grand Eastern Palace of Sygomidopolis is no exception. It is a haughty and impressive complex, with walls of smooth marble and so many great works of art that the vaults beneath the palace would be sure to make even the most decadent of the Tildan merchant-princes blush. It certainly helps that the city is seen as more ''cultured'' by the southerners; seeing as Licotemos was one of the first regions of Klironomea conquered when the ancient Klironomeans first returned from their exile in the hills of Dathan, the city is made up of almost entirely High-Klironomeans.


    The rest of the city does not share in this splendour, however. Oh, for certain, small pockets of gleaming white buildings can be found in every district, but the majority of the outlying regions are made up of the same lowborn housing and workplaces you can find in any city in the Heptarchy. Both the north and the south are given over to sprawling urban districts, whilst the east and west are filled with workshops and markets respectively. The city may have been devastated by the black grave a few years ago, but it still remains one of the most vital links in the economy of the Heptarchy.


    Most of Licotemos is made up of rolling fields, sprawling orchards, and the occasional large township, but there is also a sizable population residing upon the hills that make up the north-east of the country. Those men and women tend to be hardier than their cousins in the lowlands, especially since they''ve been fending off Dathanian raiders without almost any support from the lords of the lowlands for centuries. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the lords of the eastern hills of Licotemos are the only such nobles in that realm who deserve their titles, for they hold themselves only a little higher than the lowborns that they rule.


    Licotemos also has a small stretch of coastline along the Ambyr Sea, which borders both western Dathan and eastern Tildan, though the large kingdom hasn''t the sailors to make much use of this potentially excellent trading link, nor do they have the political willpower to change such a state of affairs.


    There isn''t much to say when it comes to the religious makeup of Licotemos; being so firmly in the grip of the New-Church means that the vast majority of the nation has abandoned the myriad of other cults and sects of the church, though there is still a sizable minority of Old-Church adherents in the hills of the north-east as well as a goodly number of disconnected villages and hamlets that follow the Silent Cult after the recent outbreaks of the black grave. Even so, the country remains firmly in the grip of the Alithini-Agiathos, and I fail to see such a state of affairs changing anytime soon.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    The Licoteman army is, on paper, very big. Some sixty-thousand men make up the vast ranks of the eastern kingdom, eight-thousand of them professional soldiers. It seems, once again on paper, to be a very powerful realm indeed.


    As with many things in Licotemos, a closer look leaves much to be desired.


    The levies are typically equipped in a manner marginally better than their counterparts in the west, often with boiled leather cuirasses and helmets and even actual, purpose built spears instead of whatever tools happened to be lying around. This should make them a force to be reckoned with, but the lords of Licotemos neglect the training and disciplining of their men. They trust in numbers to win the day, but that often means that thousands of their levies turn tail and run when facing foes who are, on paper, far inferior. The knights lack substance as well. Of the eight-thousand professional soldiers in Licotemos six-thousand are knights, but they are not knights as they are known to the west. The knights of Licotemos are often referred to as ''Peach-Knights'' or ''the Order of the Peach'', for they are more suited to lording over the vast estates of their families than fighting. More is better, in the eyes of Licotemos, and so their knightly chapters eschew plate armour and barding for chainmail, since for the price of a full suit of plate armour and barding for a horse perhaps half a dozen men could be outfitted in chain armour.


    Only a small portion of Licotemans practice archery as well, which leaves the Licoteman military in a rather precarious state; their armies lack both ranged and support and heavy horse, still relying on the ancient tactics of ''more men means victory'', and trusting in their ancient ways to see them triumphant.


    I have little respect for the easternmost kingdom of the Heptarchy, for their leadership infuriates me. They could quite easily become the greatest of all the Klironomean kingdoms, but they lack the willpower, the political vision, the drive to change. They are content to do things the same way their ancestors always have, and as a result they have stagnated ever since the Centuries of Iron came to a close. It baffles me that the royal house has maintained power for as long as they have, though I suppose there is a reason so much of their wealth is spent on generous gifts to their vassals.


    Angels, I hate Licotemos.


    If Licotemos is the garden of Klironomea, then Kortheros is the workshop. Kortheros stands as the third-largest kingdom in the Heptarchy, and guards the majority of the Dathanian border. It is a nation of miners and stonemasons, with rich seams of coal, iron, and gold running throughout the kingdom. Once this land was ruled over by the ancient Aegan Empire in a time before even the Silence fell, but it has long since been a core centre of the Klironomean people.


    Much like Licotemos, Kortheros has great wealth brought about by trade and a people generally considered to be High-Klironomean even when including the lowborns. Thankfully the comparisons end there, for one inefficient, archaic state is quite enough for the Heptarchy to be burdened with, and we do not need a second.


    The current ruling family is, paradoxically, viewed as almost Low-Klironomean in nature. House Blackpit is a young house, having only ruled over the lands of Kortheros for three generations. This makes them much loathed amongst their vassal houses, many of whom believe that they have a better claim to the throne than the sitting monarchs. Despite this they have grown wealthy off of the rich veins of coal that run under their lands. Schemes and plots are therefore abound, however house Blackpit is nothing if not cunning.


    There are currently four members of the sitting royal family, five if the king''s betrothed and soon-to-be-wife is counted, but of the four only one is trueborn. King Aered''s rule is tenuous at best, and he seems ill suited to continue such a reign through no real fault of his own. His vassals dislike him for they believe their claims to be greater, the knights of the realm bear him little love for he is crippled in one leg and arm and can therefore never fight alongside them, and his actions against his bastard brothers have pushed them away from him and filled them with vitriol. It certainly seems as though this king is not destined to rule for much longer, though I suppose that the fact he has lasted this long despite his handicaps does raise the question of potentially hidden depths. After all, one does not last as long as he has with his handicaps without some form of edge over those who would see him cast down.


    Aside from King Aered there are his three bastard brothers, often simply referred to as ''the Blackpit Triplets''. Cunning and brutal, there is little that these three will not do if it benefits each other. It is strange to see a group so brutal and unempathetic care so much for each other, but then the ties of family can often run strong. The three of them take the sigil of their house inverted for their own; where their trueborn brother shows three silver spears on a coal-black field, the bastards proudly fly their banners with a trio of black spears stood upright on a silver field.


    The capital of Kortheros, ever since it was a province of the Aegan empire some two-thousand years ago, has been the city of Tyranopolis. A prosperous and cosmopolitan city, it has long benefitted from its position nestled amongst hills near the mouth of a river. To greatly oversimplify the layout of such a cosmopolitan place it is laid out as such: the centre holds a great and majestic palace, as you have no doubt come to expect reading through the previous entries on the nations of the Heptarchy, the east is made up primarily of marketplaces and bazaars to take advantage of the roads leading into Dathan, the west of housing and amenities for the urban lowborns, and the north a great variety of temples and churches to the various sects of the Church of the First Saint. I will not dwell on the city any further, despite its rich history and fascinating past stretching back millennia, for if I did then I would surely run out of space in this letter.


    As an eastern Klironomean nation, and one with such a large High-Klironomean influence, it is only natural that the primary faith even amongst the rural poor is the New-Church. The people of Kortheros still often believe in the Angels and call upon them alongside the saints, for few amongst the Klironomeans would deny the Angels their due no matter the line their faith takes, but they still attend the sermons of the Alithini-Agiathos and provide them with their servitude. This gives the New-Church far more strength than the old amongst the Kortherans, though the Old-Church still maintains a sizable minority of worshippers in the west of the kingdom and along its coast. There are a few pockets of other cults as well hidden amongst the masses; both the Ichorian Cult as well as the Cult of Anawroth maintain small congregations amongst the aforementioned Old-Church dominant regions, making the south-west of the kingdom rather more diverse in belief than the rest of Kortheros.


    The recent outbreaks of the black grave have not left Kortheros unscathed, and for many moons the streets of Tyranopolis were empty of all life and choked with the unburied bodies of the dead. The Saints looked upon the ancient city of tyrants, and found it wanting. Whatever sins were committed in that city were enough to warrant a full three tenths of the population being struck from the ranks of the living, whilst the rest either fled the city or barricaded themselves in their homes. The recovery of the city was, to the full credit of the Kortheran royal family, a well organised and swift affair. As soon as it was clear that the disease had rescinded, a coordinated effort was made by the royal guards and various groups affiliated with either the merchants or the church to bury the slain, clean the streets, and provide aid to those who needed help to get back on their feet. The city was struck hard by the black grave, that much is true, but through a disciplined and organised aid plan it stands strong again already.


    The Kortheran army may be far smaller than that of Licotemos, but of the two I know well which one I''d rather have backing me in any battle. There are five-thousand Armsmen in Kortheros along with some two-thousand knights, making for one of the largest professional armies in the Heptarchy. Aside from these forces there are also around eighteen-thousand levies that can be called upon in times of war, of which around two-thousand belong to the vaunted ''Borderrunners''. These men and women form an excellent fast response force, riding on horseback to the battlefield and then fighting with spear, shield, and shortbow. Manning the Dathanian border, and occasionally crossing over it, has left these men and women with a great deal of combat experience that is much appreciated when the Angel of War comes calling to Tyranopolis'' gates, and more than once have these brave fighters found themselves as the first and last line of defence for those behind them. After all, if they will not fight to protect their homes, why should they expect the king''s men to do so for them?


    Kortheros is both the most and the least of the Klironomean kingdoms. Strong, and yet not strong enough to strike outwards. Rich, but not united enough to make good use of it''s wealth. Fearsome and storied, but still lacking in history when compared to the long line of nations who once knew the rich Kortheran Belt as the workshop of their lands. A fearsome adversary, to be sure, but not so fierce as to be untouchable.


    I must confess to further worry even as I wrote this letter. I apologise if at any point my thoughts became rambling or scattered, but there is so much to consider at the moment. Rhema has written to me once more detailing the lull in raiding that we have experienced from the south these last few moons, but I cannot help but feel that this is to be the calm before the storm. I am oft kept awake at night by the thought of my brother manning the walls far to the south against the forces of the Al-Alema, the thought that this recent drop in raiding is as the tide pulling back from the sea only to later descend upon the shore as a wave as tall as the spires of a cathedral.


    The Master of Silver has provided me with a few more little whispers from court in regards to my sister''s machinations. She seems to have brokered more than a few deals and made a great many promises as of late, hoping for support in some as of yet unknown endeavour. There is little doubt in my mind as to what that will entail. As soon as my father passes away I fear I must retrace the steps I took in the rebellion to once again strike south and then march to the capital, although this time I will be fighting against those holed up within the walls as opposed to fighting for them.


    I truly hope that matters in Polaeros are better than those in my own homeland. The lands under my purview have prospered since the end of the last war, but if I should falter in the war to come I fear that all of our progress will be washed away and forgotten. I do not want another war against my own countrymen, but I fail to see another path forwards for my father''s kingdom.


    Matters in Owkrestos have quieted down somewhat, despite the fears of Lord Blackoak rising in rebellion against King Aleksandar. Tensions remain high in the wild kingdom, but for now the threat of war seems to have been averted. The tinderbox remains dry, however, and at any point a stray spark could set their land aflame.


    It does seem to me that a pattern is forming across the Heptarchy. We seem to be living through the beginnings of an age of upheaval as the old ways finally rot away and newer players enter the field. A wave of potential rebellions, civil wars, and sectarian conflicts seems only a few years away if one looks closely at the state of the world; diplomatic channels become guarded, then terse, then shut down entirely. Traders are screened with increasing scrutiny as they pass through city gates. Disease and famine subside, but only to allow their older brother a turn at the board. It is war who wakes, war who will ravage our lands once more as soon as the clarion call is sounded, and men will readily take up arms to slaughter their brothers once more. War comes to the kingdoms of the Klironomoi, and may the Angels help us all if we aren''t ready.


    Your friend, now and always,


    Prince Lykourgos Sperakos.

 Lykourgos I: Duty

    <u>Lykourgos I: Duty</u>


    <u>The Twenty-First Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Duty. The word rang through his head like the peal of a bell. Duty. Duty. Duty. He didn''t know where he was, but where was he if not where he was meant to carry out his duty? Duty. That was why he''d lived, wasn''t it? Duty was his mistress, and he did as she demanded. Duty. He did his best to clasp his hands around his ears, as if he could stop the word from rattling around in his mind, but his arms would not respond. His body would not respond. Duty. Duty. Duty. He just wanted it to stop, he knew he had to do his duty, he had always done his duty, what did they not all understand about that? What more did they want from him? Hadn''t he done everything they''d fucking asked him to- why was he so small? Was that... father? Where- what had happened? Why did he feel so small and confused all of a sudden? Why did he feel so scared?


    He didn''t understand, what was happening? Why were his belongings being packed? Who was this giant man come to take him away? Why was father letting him be taken away?


    He turned to his father, hoping that he would make the man go away. Father was the king, that meant he could order this big man to leave!


    "Father, I don''t understand? Why must I go? I want to stay with here, with Rhema and you!"


    The crowned man towered over him, upper body shrouded in a veil of shadows.


    "Damn your impertinence, boy! It is your duty!"


    He recoiled back, as though he had been struck. For a dizzying moment it felt as though his head were spinning, but when he came to he was no longer in the royal palace. No, he knew this place... this was... he was older, wasn''t he? This was-


    "A message, my prince, bearing your father''s sigil."


    "Thank you, Ser."


    He scanned the parchment, and though the squiggles and symbols appeared alien to him, he felt his body move of his own accord to bring a taut fist to his mouth in worry. He could not read what was written, but his voice carried across his chambers in Aenirhen all the same.


    "My father''s missive... I''m not even a man grown yet, I don''t want to go to war!"


    "It is your fathers hand, your Highness. It is your duty to see it done."


    He gave a mental nod at those words. It had been a harsh thing to say to a child of fifteen, but Lykourgos was glad they had been said to him all the same. It had taught him much about what he needed to do in life, of what was expected of him. Wait, they had been said to him. Was this- were these memories? Was that-


    His body swallowed dryly and choppily nodded.


    "I understand. Marshal the forces and send out the demands. My father''s will be done."


    The room spun again, and suddenly Lykourgos was flooded with a sense of anger, white hot and boiling in his veins. This was the main square of Anaria. Yes, he could see it clearly. Some men said that anger clouded the mind, left one prone to impulse and rashness, but Lykourgos did not think it to be so. The fiery anger he had felt on this day burned away the fog surrounding the memory, leaving only the clear scene before him. This was the day he should have won the rebellion.


    The faces of the nobles leered at him from behind his royal father, who it seemed had possessed the vision to destroy the nobility but not the spine to finish what he had started. No, he shouldn''t think of father like that, he couldn''t possibly have lapsed here. Father couldn''t be flawed, not like this. Either way, choler quickly began to overtake him.


    "THEY SHOULD ALL BE HANGED FOR WHAT THEY''VE DONE, NOT REWARDED."


    "Silence, boy. Do not gainsay me."


    "THEY ARE TRAITORS AND VILLAINS ALL! YOUR SON LANGUISHED IN A CELL FOR MONTHS BECAUSE OF THEM!"


    His father''s lip curled in anger.


    "DO NOT SPEAK OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY SON WITH SUCH IMPUNITY!"


    The voice of his sister cut through the air, an unwelcome and yet begrudgingly needed breaker of the tension.


    "I believe my brother to be overcome with emotion with the knowledge that the hostilities are at an end. I am certain he means not to insult you, father; he is of simple actions and simpler reactions."


    Lykourgos glared at her before turning back to his father.


    "If that is the case, then I am certain he will have no issue with apologising for his outburst."


    Lykourgos did his best to swallow his pride, ignoring the continuing sneers of the nobles and the barely contained anger of the men riding by his own side. The king was still awaiting his response, and so he forced out his answer through gritted teeth.


    "Of course not, father. I apologise."


    The king nodded.


    "Then there is no need for concern. I will put this down to the heat of battle overtaking you. Go back to Aenirhen, and care for the north. Do your duty."


    His voice came out strangled with emotion, and for the briefest half-second the thought of overthrowing his father with the forces loyal to himself still in the capital, the thought of treason, entered his mind. Instead he simply swallowed thickly, and forced the wayward thoughts away.


    "Yes, your Grace. I will... I will see to my duty."


    He hated it. He hated that day. He should have killed the nobles then and there, those vile sycophants who had damn near broken the mind of his brother in two. He should have-


    He felt himself blink without his body making the motion as he looked around, a little nauseous from the feeling of the scene changing once more. What was this? He was in a field on a road, a crossroads by the looks of things. He was with- there seemed to be an army dispersing, marching home. This could only be the place that the Coastroad met the Woodsroad, which would make this- No, not this. Please, he could handle anything else, but not this.


    He felt his body bite back a sob as he stared at the apologetic prince in front of him.


    "Please, Aleks."


    The foreign prince shook his head sadly.


    "I need to go, Lyk."


    "Aleks, please. I need you here, you know I don''t understand emotions and I''m- I''m feeling so much at the moment. I''ve killed so many people, there''s so much blood on me-"


    "I''m almost a man grown, Lyk, I need to go home. I need to officially become the heir to Polaeros."


    "You''ll return, right?"


    Alekos gave him another apologetic smile.


    "I need to live amongst the people I''ll one day rule. I''m sorry, Lyk."


    "My brother has gone mad and Lord Drytos is dead. Please don''t make me go back to Aenirhen alone."


    "I''m sorry, Lykourgos. It is what duty demands, for both of us."


    "It can''t be! I need you here with me, not hundreds and thousands of miles away!"


    For a single, blissful moment, there was a soft sensation unlike any else he''d known upon his lips. Then it was gone, and the foreign princeling walked away.


    "Alek-"


    "We need to do our duty, Lyk. Goodbye."


    He choked back bitter tears, rage and grief flooding through him as though this were the first time he was experiencing this moment, as though he had not relived it every night for a month after the fact.


    "FINE THEN! I DON''T NEED YOU HERE! GO, RUN BACK TO POLAEROS, IT MATTERS NOT TO ME!"


    It did, and he knew it. He knew it then and he knew it still now. No matter. What was done was done, and there could be no turning back the hands of time anymore. All he could do now was-


    "YOU HAVE A DUTY TO SEE TO, AND SO HELP US WE CAN''T CARRY IT OUT FOR YOU!"


    Oh. Everything had changed again. This felt familiar, more recent. He desperately tried to look away from the scene, to avoid the disappointment that he knew must no doubt be brewing in his friend at how low their prince had come. There was precious little to be gained from concentrating on this argument, but looking at all of this again made him feel... he didn''t know. He didn''t know how this all made him feel, but he hated it.


    At least this one did not last long. He closed his eyes, and not only did his body respond to his commands, there was also no further memory awaiting its turn to torment him. A palpable sense of relief flooded through him, but it was swiftly swallowed by a rising tide of apathy born of the expelling of such a variety of strong emotions. He sank back into a chair that he barely registered as being present, then opened his eyes again.


    He was sat in a room with someone else, that much was obvious. Looking around he recognised it as his old rooms in the Palace in Anaria, though everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and the windows showed nothing but an endless light-grey mist. There was a stranger in the room with him, a familiar looking thing with strange eyes. He knew he should have felt anxiety or perhaps danger with this stranger opposite him, but oddly he felt completely at ease. Well, perhaps that was just the apathy talking. The man gently pulled back the empty chair and sat not quite opposite the prince, a deep well of both sadness and apology in his eyes.


    "You know you can''t stay here forever."


    Lykourgos nodded. This was no memory. Magic, then. Magic, or one hell of a twisted dream.


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original."I know."


    The man nodded.


    "You can''t pass on yet either."


    Lykourgos sighed, the burden of the last ten years having been made fresh in his mind.


    "I know."


    "What do you remember of what was?"


    Lykourgos looked at him with confusion.


    "What was?"


    "Before you fell to sleep," the man clarified, "before you came to this place."


    Lykourgos nodded as if he understood what the man was asking for, as if he knew what ''this place'' was supposed to be.


    "I was... I was to be crowned. I was to be the king."


    "You still are both of those things. The world has not forgotten you whilst you slept, Prince of the Violet. That luxury is not yours to possess."


    Lykourgos turned away, grinding his teeth. He''d been stabbed. Angels, he''d been assassinated on the day of his coronation. The strange man looked at him with pity in his eyes, and Lykourgos hated it.


    "I''ve lived my whole life at the behest of other people, Ser. I tried to claim the throne, as was asked of me, and I''ve died performing what was wanted of me. Isn''t that enough?"


    The man shook his head slowly.


    "No, I''m sorry but it''s not. You aren''t allowed to die, not yet. I owe a debt to an old friend of mine, and as such you must live. You need to take the throne. You need to reunite Klironomea. You need to live."


    "Why." The prince spat. "So your ''debts'' can be fulfilled? Why can''t you just let me rest? WHY WILL NO ONE JUST LET ME REST?"


    The man smiled sadly at him, and the prince''s eyes widened.


    "Please" the word was choked out as a single sob forced itself from his throat, "don''t."


    "There is nothing else that will convince you. The world still needs you, Lykourgos. If I must use these words to force you to live, then I will."


    The prince raised a balled fist to his mouth, and spoke through his knuckles.


    "Don''t say it. Please, just let me fade here. I want to live, I truly do, but not yet. Please, I just want to fade away here a little while longer. I''ll come back soon, so please, say something else, anything else but that."


    The strange man sighed sadly again, and there was ten seconds of silence before he spoke again.


    "I''m sorry, little prince. But it is your duty."


    He closed his eyes to weep, to bawl, to scream at those fucking words that had ruled and ruined his life, and then he woke up.


    <hr>


    "Stop it stop it STOP IT!"


    He screamed his lungs raw as he shot up from where he lay, desperately trying to drown out the pealing of that bell, the thought of duty. Immediately the door burst open, and a pair of men rushed into the room. These were... these were real. This wasn''t a memory. He hurriedly threw back his dustless covers and tore off his nightshirt, palming at the places he had been wounded. They were- he was healed. Scarred, yes, but healed. His chest heaved with exertion and his very being roiled with emotion, shaking like a leaf in the wind.


    He was feeling so very many things right now, and it confused and scared him. He was grateful to still live, he was worried for what had become of his friends in his absence, he was ashamed of the things he had said to that strange man in the privacy of his own head, he was angry that the man had seemingly brought him back without his consent, he was happy and he was sad and he was apathetic and he was confused and he just wanted the noise to stop please stop I just want the noise to go away.


    A gentle hand was lain upon his shoulder, and he didn''t know whether to recoil at the burning sensation or lean into it as a pup might lean into it''s mother.


    "Deep breaths, my prince. Deep breaths. Can you do that?"


    He shakily nodded at the voice, doing his best to regulate his breathing.


    "You''re safe here. You''re home."


    He looked around a little, confused. Home? This didn''t look like Aenirhen.


    Oh. It was Anaria. He supposed that his own misgivings about the city would need to be put aside for the foreseeable future. He''d be here for some time, unless something major happened. He turned up, gaining some small amount of lucidity, and locked eyes with the young man who''s hand was upon his shoulder.


    "Nasos?"


    The presbyter nodded, giving him a watery smile.


    "Yeah, it''s me. You''re awake, your Grace."


    "Where- this is Anaria. I''m still in the capital. Has anything happened?"


    Nasos gave him a stern look, equal parts worry and annoyance.


    "Honestly, you''re forced into a coma for almost two moons and the first thing you''re worried about is work?"


    Lykourgos shot further up, but was pushed gently down by the healer and the larger man to his right.


    "Tw- two moons! Angels, no, there must be so much that-"


    "Easy, yer ''ighness. Easy." The soft, rumbling voice of the second man reverberated across the room as he gradually and gently pushed the prince into a reclining position once more.


    "Dreamwulf?"


    "There''s nothing that can''t stand to benefit from you getting some real rest and readying yourself properly before diving into work. You ain''t allowed to work until this one says so."


    The bodyguard jerked his thumb towards the smaller man, who waved meekly.


    "Um... well... I see."


    Nasos and Dreamwulf looked at each other, letting out sighs. Exasperation or relief, he wasn''t sure. Maybe both. Nasos spoke first, a tone that told of relief for more than just the waking of the prince, but for the waking of Lykourgos as well.


    "I''m glad you''re awake, your Grace."


    "Me too. I''d be out of a job if you passed on."


    Nasos glared at his friend, but softened when Lykourgos snorted at Dreamwulf''s blunt joke. He took a moment to calm himself down as his healer began speaking once again.


    "If you don''t mind me asking, your Grace, how exactly do you feel?"


    Lykourgos went silent a moment. How did he feel? That was really not something he wanted to think about at the moment. He was angry, he was sad, he was glad, and-


    There was a gurgling noise as his stomach rumbled, and he smiled sheepishly up at Nasos.


    "Hungry."


    The man rolled his eyes at the prince and called out for a plate of food, leaving to acquire it himself when no-one came to answer.


    "Should''ve expected that," Dreamwulf rumbled, "hardly anyone''s allowed in this wing of the palace courtesy of your brother and the Master of Silver."


    Lykourgos nodded, relief flooding through him at just the mention of those two names. They were all right, they were alive, and that was important. Silence reigned in the room for a little while, a not at all unwelcome respite from all the noise of the last few minutes, hours, however long those damn memories had been coming to him for.


    When Nasos did return it was with a plate of the most mouthwatering food he had ever laid his eyes upon. Slices of roasted grouse on a small bed of sparrow grass formed its majority, with a small helping of grapes on the side.


    "There''s this as well, your Grace."


    A small round object was lightly tossed towards him, which he somehow managed to catch with little problem at all. He looked at it and smiled. It was a plum. Guess I''ve not been gone long enough for them to forget my favourites.


    He ate with gusto, washing down the plate of food with a glass of heavily watered wine. It tasted absolutely divine, and the feeling of satisfaction he got from eating his first solid food in almost two months outweighed almost any other pleasure he could think of. On that note, he looked down at his still bare chest, and poked at one of his ribs. He''d lost quite a bit of weight, it would seem. That would not do at all. There was very little loose skin, but then he''d never been particularly hefty either way. Nonetheless, as soon as he could he needed to be up and exercising his muscles once again.


    For now though, he could already feel his eyes slipping shut once more. He didn''t fear a return to his wakeless slumber, for this was little more than his body catching up with the rest it had missed out on, but even so he clutched at the arm of Nasos.


    "You''re all right, your Grace, you''re all right. Go back to sleep, recover from what''s happened. We''ll stay here until the morning."


    Lykourgos nodded tiredly, slipping away into the realms of sleep even as his friend''s hand patted his shoulder. Angels help him, but he was so tired.


    <hr>


    "There were three ravens sat ''pon trees,


    down, a down, hey down.


    They were as black as black could be,


    with a down, derry derry derry derry down."


    His brow wrinkled as the noise carried down the corridor. Didn''t these people know he was trying to sleep? And here he thought being the king meant he could be allowed a few small luxuries in the day.


    "Parched and starved the six black wings,


    their brother sees the death of kings,


    with a down, a down hey down.


    A battle lost down in the field,


    for them their greatest wants would fill,


    with a down, derry derry derry derry down."


    Angels above, it wasn''t that they were bad at singing or anything, but honestly, did they have to sing this early in the- oh. It wasn''t the morning. Peeking through his barely opened eyelids revealed the darkness of the night sky, the glittering of the stars visible through wispy gaps in the grey clouds above. He couldn''t make out too much through his mostly-closed eyes and his opened window, but he could see enough to know that they''d likely be in for more than a light shower by the time day broke. Oh well. He supposed there were worse noises to be lulled to sleep by. Hell, he was pretty sure he''d been sung this as a lullaby when he was a toddler, so it wasn''t all bad. Besides, he was so, so tired.


    "One turns then towards his mate,


    ''Where shall we our breakfast make?''


    down, a down, hey down.


    ''There lies a knight slain ''neath his shield,


    and none who care that he lies still.''


    with a down, derry derry derry derry down."


    Well, if this was the waking he was to receive come the morning then it wouldn''t be all that bad. Even better would be the soft pattering of rain and the rumbling of distant thunder, sounds that seemed to bring even the great metropolis of Anaria to a standstill and allowed the waters to clean away the filth of the city for just one day. Yes, that would be rather nice.


    He stood shakily from his bed, almost immediately falling backwards as his legs gave way underneath him. He wanted to look out the window properly, to enjoy the sight of the city at night, but there was no way he was going to be able to move there at this rate. He supposed he could call for someone, but he assumed that Nasos and Dreamwulf would be the only person around in this wing of the palace at these hours. Wait, Nasos and Dreamwulf, they said they''d be-


    Heh, okay, that was pretty amusing. Dreamwulf and Nasos were asleep in chairs next to one another some four to six paces from the prince''s bed, and seemed to have fallen into a slumber whilst leant against one another. The presbyter''s head was settled on the bigger man''s shoulder, who had gently rested his own head atop the presbyter''s. If he wasn''t so glad to see them safe, Lykourgos would have kept the information back to embarrass them, but as it stood he wasn''t going to be doing that anytime soon.


    The thought of his friends sent his mind afly towards his other friends. Nasos and Dreamwulf had mentioned both Elikoidi and Rhema in passing, so they were likely fine, but that still left a sizable list of things he needed to consider. Were Ilias and Romanos okay? Had Crowe been able to keep the peace in the city? Was Symon still in the city with his company or had they decided to cut their losses and move on? For that matter, had they been paid yet? Surely they must have.


    Of course, how could he forget the harvests! Had the crops been sown, were their any townships or counties that had lost too many men to farm or whose fields had been razed by war? Had the armies been demobilised? Angels, there was so much for him to do.


    Right, he thought to himself, first things first I meet with my retainers and advisors. I''ll inquire about Symon''s Starlings and the harvest there. Next I should meet with the senior representatives of the church, to ensure they''ll support my reign and remain satisfied with their own little status quo. Then there''s taxes, merchant complaints, docking disputes, the complete rebuilding of Anaria, the paperwork required to grant city charters to the major townships of Teleytaios... was there anything else? Was he missing anything? A brief check on border raids seemed an obvious addition to the duties he''d need to see to, but he couldn''t think of anything else at the moment.


    He huffed out an annoyed breath. There went that bell again. Duty. He was already doing his duty, so if that little voice in his head would kindly shut the fuck up then he''d be quite happy, thank you very much.


    "The doe did lift his lifeless head,


    and said unto his smile so red,


    with a down, a down, hey down.


    ''Wherefore my hero doth thou lie,


    beneath the ashen clouded shy?''


    with a down, derry derry derry derry down."


    He smiled softly to no-one in particular. Nasos was right; he was already thinking about work. That wasn''t right of him, not when that would only lead to further complications in the future. He needed to regain his strength and his energy if he was to lead his people as they deserved to be led, and by the Angels did they need to be led at the moment. He may not have received a report or anything of the like on the state of his kingdom yet, but he did know the chaos that an absent ruler could cause; he''d seen it more than once in foreign nations, and never had it received a particularly happy ending.


    No. No more thought on this matter, not right now. At the moment he was going to sleep until the morning came, he was going to eat some bloody good food, and he was going to see all his friends who would, probably, be more than a little relieved to know he was okay. He settled back down under the covers. The coming weeks promised to be busy indeed; it would be best to get some rest while he could.


    There was one other thing he needed to do, however.


    He needed to know how the entombed man had gotten inside of his head.

 Cardinal Sin III: The Leashless Hound

    <u>Cardinal Sin III: The Leashless Hound</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Forth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.</u>


    <u>Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    Angels, this was all horseshit. Four days until he was to set out on the road, and in that time he''d hardly been able to see to his nightly duties. He needed good rest and a clear mind if he was to survive Aegos, and Saints be good he hardly had a clear mind at the best of times. This wasn''t something he could afford to fuck up; if at any point Spyridon or Admeta saw through his act, or even worse than that, if Adikos saw through his act, he''d be begging for the end before he saw the next sunrise over the holy city. There was no way in all the hells that had ever existed he''d allow himself to fail here, not when the lives of so many people were at stake.


    He ran through the motions with his sloe-cane again, making doubly sure that he was just as good as ever with the unassuming weapon. In his line of work you never quite knew who the next to strike at you would be, though he''d learned it was almost always from someone within your own ranks. That was the trouble with sitting at the top of the pile; the only place to go was down.


    Well, he wasn''t quite at the top, he supposed. There was still Adikos between him and the true height of power, but there was no way Sin would be able to outmanoeuvre the old man in games of intrigue, and especially not when the man had the home field advantage. No, there would be no attempt to topple the old man whilst Sin was in the capital, as disappointing as the thought was. He just needed to bide his time a few years more, and then his people would breathe the free air once again. Perhaps history would remember him as a monster, or perhaps the people would believe him when he told them of what he had truly done. If he was exceedingly lucky, he may even retain control of Athio under whatever authority arose out of the ashes of the Most Devout Church. Probably not though.


    "Trying to decapitate the dummy with a wooden stick again?"


    Sin rolled his eyes. It was Hawk, of course. The old man was one of the only people who came out into the training grounds when Sin was there, and certainly the only one to speak to him wish such a casual tone.


    "Very funny, old man. I don''t know if you recall, but I''m to head to the capital in a few days. Therefore I''m doing my best to practice as much as I can between now and then, in case I get in a fight."


    Though Sin never turned to look at the man he could almost feel the incredulous eyebrow raise behind him.


    "You believe you will be able to fight your way through a city of armed and armoured guards, inquisitors, and paladins, with a stick. Unarmoured. By yourself."


    Sin shrugged, still not turning to face the man.


    "It''s worked for me before."


    "Because people are too afraid of you to pick a fight. Whilst your former classmates will no doubt be somewhat cowed by your reputation, that will not stop the more reckless amongst them from acting without thought and provoking a reaction from you. When that happens, there is nothing that your stick will be able to do that will save you."


    Sin chuckled out a dry laugh.


    "Probably not, no. But what do you suggest I do instead? No sword will allow me to carve my path through a city towards safety, and no guards could stand between me and a cohort of knights. Even if we assumed that I took a hundred guards and carried with me a dozen blades, and then we assume that I am able to travel back to Athio, what do I do then? If I have angered my compatriots in the capital to the point that they attempt to seize me with impunity, then their anger will follow me to the very walls of this city. There is little to be done other than train myself to remain hidden if needs be, and slip out if I can should such a situation come to pass. That is why I continue to use this cane. After all, how many old beggars stooped in a robe and leaning on a walking stick stalk the streets of every city in the world? More than a few, that much is certain."


    Hawk sighed, half amused and half annoyed, and then seemed to get himself back on track.


    "If you say so, Cardinal. I thought you might wish for the latest news from abroad."


    Sin propped his cane up against the dummy and stretched his arms in front of him, allowing the tension to leave his muscles as he turned to face his faithful servant.


    "Of course! Anything good? I hope there is, I could use some good news right about now."


    Hawk nodded.


    "Bits and pieces from here and there. The Citizen''s Republic of Kallitrios have held a vote on their stance towards our very own Most Devout Church, and whilst they will not go to war they have barred all traders from crossing the border either way. When you add that to the rest of the nation-states embargoing our own, it leaves us almost completely isolated."


    "Except for the Imperatrix to the south."


    Hawk nodded in acknowledgement, a mild snarl on his face at the mention of the slaver-empress.


    "What more can be expected from one who holds men as farmers hold cattle? Not that it matters; Adikos is too pious to consider dealing with a slaver, and the Imperatrix is too smart to consider aiding a religious madman. It might not be official, but for all intents and purposes the Khyprians have cut ties with us as well. No one is coming to aid Adikos, but with that same stroke no-one is coming to aid us either. We will have to remove Adikos from power on our own, and fend of the Imperator to the north-west at the same time. Any way you cut it, we can''t win."


    Sin smiled.


    "Of course not. There''s no chance of victory no matter what we do. That doesn''t mean we can simply roll over and let bad things happen to people, Hawk."


    The old man smiled back.


    "A smart man would take his money and run far from this place while he still could."


    "How telling," Sin replied with a grin, "that we''re both still here. Come on, Hawk. There''s bound to be more news from abroad. What of Kortheros? Licotemos? Hells, even Polaeros? There''s bound to be some news from the eastern Klironomeans, surely!"


    Hawk shrugged impassively.


    "None that we didn''t see coming from a mile away. More petty rebellions and vassal-wars across Licotemos, more skirmishes across the borders of Kortheros both on our side and the Licoteman side, and nothing of import up in Polaeros with regards to our plight. No changes in any of them."


    Sin latched on to what little good news he could from this mess.


    "Tell me of the skirmishes between our own forces and the Kortherans. How fare the soldiers of Admeta and Trios?"


    Hawk chuckled.


    "A few losses on both sides, neither really have the upper hand over the other. Besides, there''s no major actions anywhere; a few dozen men on each side for the largest of the engagements."


    "A pity. We could do with a few hundred Kortheran Borderrunners falling on a couple of Trios'' patrols. A war with the Kortherans would be a fucking miracle for us, and no mistake."


    Hawk laughed again, a full bodied and throaty thing.


    "Well, that much is true. I don''t think their king is keen on Dathanian entanglements, however."


    "Are they ever?"


    Hawk snorted.


    "Right again, Cardinal. Still, I do share in your sentiment; a foreign invader is almost exactly what is needed to topple this system. A pity that the only man looking to invade our lands is Imperator Thrax. He might not be a zealot, but I''d still rather the people of the Aegan Hills live free again. I want to see freedom for our kind in my lifetime. If I do, then we''ve done well."


    Sin nodded again, drinking deeply from a waterskin. He splashed the last few trickles over his face and hair, hoping to wash away some of the sweat that he''d built up over the last few hours of training.


    "Well, I can''t imagine you came down here purely to give me some mundane news. Have you need of me for something?"


    The man nodded curtly, his face suddenly losing its mirth and becoming almost completely deadpan.


    "I do, yes. It is best if you follow me to your quarters, Father. There is more news I must share, but its nature is... delicate. One befitting your status should not require such news to be shared with... unwelcome ears."


    The man''s expression and tone had changed more than a little, and as he looked around Sin realised why. There was a woman half-hiding in the corner of the courtyard, staring at him. When he gaze fell upon her she made a sort of squeaking noise and fled, causing Sin to shrug.


    "Well, I guess the courtyard is free once more. I take it you''d still rather tell me this in the confines of our own workspace, however?"


    A curt nod was the only response he received, so he picked up his cane, walked back inside, and was simply thankful he''d been able to enjoy the twilight hours whilst they''d lasted. It was rare he got any time to himself anymore.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    <hr>


    "So you''re saying... not at all? Not even the faintest hint of a chance?"


    Hawk shook his head.


    "Not anymore. There''s too much tension between the rest of the cardinals, and the cutthroat nature of internal politics means that they''re all too busy fighting off overly-ambitious subordinates to deal with other threats. As such the first council meeting won''t even have the time to hear any proposals for reform, since it''ll be too busy trying to muster and allocate the resources to our squabbling friends around the Aegan Hills. Monastic orders are beginning to come under closer scrutiny as well, and are chafing against this new authority. The church is beginning to crumble from within, but not at all in a way beneficial to us. We walk a very fine line, Cardinal, and tipping the balance of power too far one way or the other will see our tightrope cut. We can''t afford to try and shoehorn in a motion for reform, not at the moment. There''s just too much tension at the moment, and whether or not the proposed motion were to pass we''d be in a civil war. If it passed, Admeta and Trios would rise up with the extreme wings of the faith. If it didn''t the people would rise up alongside yourself."


    "Spyridon may join us if that were the case."


    Hawk nodded, not in agreement but in a way that suggested he was considering the idea.


    "Perhaps. But then we have already discussed that possibility. Regardless, it would be good to have an ally within our theocracy, a friend amongst your peers. I have come into contact with a few members of the clergy within Chytos, which may pique your attention. They speak a little of how Cardinal Spyridon sees you."


    Sin smiled a little. Chytos was a nice city, smaller and cleaner than most. Situated in the western Rocks of Aercad and overseeing the majority of the smaller isles surrounding it, it made for quite the valuable port city. It might not be able to call upon vast armies by itself, but it could certainly be useful to attract mercenaries and sellswords if push came to shove. Yes, these new contacts could be quite useful.


    "Please, do tell."


    Hawk bowed slightly, moving to sit in his chair.


    "Well, despite the rest of my news being bad this is the good I can offer you; I have come into contact with an Archbishop, a Bishop, three Archdeacons, and half-a-dozen or so Deacons. All are known and trusted men in Spyridon''s administration, and all say roundabouts the same thing; he does not view you as a monster in totality. He despises what he believes you to have done, but he does not despise you. According to more than one of them he actually quite misses your company. I believe that, if the two of you were to meet on the road, it would take little more than a short conversation about the truth for him to become a staunch ally."


    Sin blinked a few times in surprise, happiness and excitement bubbling up inside him. This was perfect! Not only did Spyridon want to reconnect, he also believed the things Sin had said he''d done! That meant that his image was still intact, but his friend could still be a true ally of the cause!


    "Now this is wonderous news! Oh, this trip may still be worth it after all! To forge an alliance in the depths of Aegos, the very rotten heart of this corrupted vision, I can think of no thing that would please me more. Before you say anything yes, I do understand the inherent risks of this situation, and no, I do not intend to back down from this opportunity. We have a chance here to get some real help and hash out a far more concrete plan when it comes to hiding the non-conformists on the isles and rocks. It''s technically his territory we''ve been hiding them in anyway, so I''m quite surprised that no one in his administration has noticed what''s been happening."


    "Unless they have," Hawk began, a smile slowly forming on his face, "and have been letting us send them here."


    Sin smiled back. If that were the case then he almost certainly could count on Spyridon as an ally. He just needed to confirm this first, and then he''d be as set as set could be!


    "No sellsword companies lingering in Kortheros, I take it?"


    Hawk shook his head, and despite what the man would claim Sin was absolutely not pouting, he was frowning, there was a difference.


    "Where the hell have they all gone?"


    Hawk shrugged.


    "West, I think. News is slow to arrive from the western kingdoms, but though the Teleytaian civil war has ended tensions in the area are only increasing. Well, that''s what I''ve heard anyway. News doesn''t come easy from so far away."


    Sin nodded, a little annoyed that they wouldn''t be able to get any contacts to aid them from the northwest. What was it that they were gathering for in the west?


    He shrugged again, deciding that he didn''t have the time to care. He had far more important things to be taking care of at the moment, things he stood to lose far as a result of than whatever the answer to that particular question was.


    "I see. Well, it was worth asking I suppose. Still, there''s a good chance Cardinal Spyridon will stand with us, and that''s a good thing! Even better would be if something happened to the other two, or Adikos, but I won''t hold my breath for a stroke of luck like that to fall."


    Hawk''s face contorted into a grimace. He''d never much trusted Spyridon, nor any of the other Cardinals for that matter. To him they were all monsters, and even those who hated the burnings but still allowed them to happen were complicit in the crimes of their compatriots. Sin was the one exception to Hawk''s rule, for one reason or another, and as soon as the man had realised what he was truly doing he''d almost immediately become indispensable to Sin''s efforts, and his advice was well heeded. Still, the older man couldn''t grumble his way out of this fact, and he was far from stupid enough to try; regardless of whether the man held Spyridon up to the same level as the other Cardinals, there was no denying the fact that having a friend at such a high level would be beneficial to their efforts.


    "So you say, Cardinal. Are you still planning on leaving the city on the night of the twenty-eighth?"


    Sin smiled and nodded.


    "Yep! If all goes to plan I should arrive in Aegos on the night of the second or third. If I do bump into Spyridon on the road then it may take a little longer, given that he''ll likely be with a retinue, but for the most part the journey will all be said and done with in around half a week. Maybe a week, depending on the conditions of the road."


    "They should be no different than they were when you last travelled on them after the civil war. They might not be paved like all the best roads are, but it''s still a trip with cobbled, straight roads all the way along your route. You should be more than fine so long as you remember to rest along the way."


    Sin made a ''psh'' noise and waved away the man''s concern that had been conveyed in the last sentence.


    "Of course I will, who do you take me for? Besides, even I''m not reckless or stupid enough to arrive in the viper''s nest sleep deprived and tired. Any opening will invite conflict from the more ''extreme'' of those amongst my rank, and I don''t intend to give either Trios or Admeta the satisfaction of seeing me dead. No, I''ll be very much okay, don''t you worry about that."


    Hawk huffed a little and turned back to the papers he''d no doubt been reviewing before he''d come out to find him. Taxes, tithes, levies. All just numbers on pieces of parchment. It''s almost funny, Sin thought to himself, that despite overthrowing the burghers and the lords, we clergymen have managed to become both. Oh, for sure, the Most Devout Church of Aegos was at its core a theocratic state, but there was no denying that as the months and years went by more and more trappings of feudalism were starting to manifest. That was what happened when you parcelled out land to your ''loyal'' subordinates, after all. The Cardinals were like feudal dukes, and Archcardinal Adikos was their king. Just like a king and his dukes, they plotted and schemed against each other relentlessly, no matter their oaths of loyalty and pledges of fealty. The four cardinals that served under Adikos, Sin himself included, might have played nice up until now, but he had no illusions that such a streak would continue as the four of them gathered in the capital and met with each other for the first time in two years. Well, all in one place anyway. He knew Spyridon and Admeta had met once a year or so ago, and Admeta also liked to keep up a regular correspondence with Trios, but that was about it. He wasn''t a big fan of how close Trios and Admeta seemed to be; neither of them liked each other, and he could use that to his advantage, but Trios had a great deal of favour amongst the old guard and Admeta had the skills to apply that favour in a very effective manner.


    "Remind me, Cardinal," Hawk broke in once more, "why exactly are you going on foot?"


    Sin shrugged noncommittally.


    "Because I haven''t left the confines of this city in two years. I want to spend a little time walking amongst the natural world, a little time enjoying myself. Besides," he continued, "I used to love rambling with the acting troupe when I was a kid. It''ll be nice to return to my roots for a few days."


    Hawk nodded, seemingly torn between Sin getting there with a quick getaway horse or Sin allowing himself to enjoy what he loved for a little. It wasn''t as if the man had tried to dissuade him from taking time for himself, far from it! Sin had lost count of the number of times the man had tried to persuade him to take some time off, and Hawk had practically had to become his self-preservation these last few years. Even still, the value of having a fast and steady horse that could get him away from danger if needs be did, admittedly, seem to have more than a few advantages.


    "Look," Sin started, trying to compromise, "if I meet with Spyridon on the road I''ll take a horse from his party. It''s hardly like there won''t be any spares with him, after all."


    Hawk nodded in acquiescence, returning once more to the dull and yet vital work of filing away taxation and tithe reports. Sin sighed a little, only a tad dramatically, and made to join him. Saints, this work was boring, and yet without it everything would fall to anarchy and disrepair. He felt a little bad knowing that Hawk would be left by himself to deal with all this paperwork for perhaps as many as two or three moons, but that wasn''t something he could control. Sin had been summoned to the capital by his master, and so to Aegos he would go. At least he could look forwards to trying to repair things between himself and Spyridon. That was a nice prospect.


    Who knew, perhaps this trip wouldn''t be so bad after all?


    <hr>


    His cane had clacked along the cobbles as he''d set out through the northern gate, and the sound carried on softly through the night as he continued walking along the road. The guards at the gates had been quick to part ways, this time with no questions asked. One particularly brave and loyal man had wished him well on his journey, which was a pleasant surprise, especially seeing as most still remained scared of him, but he hadn''t really stopped to thank the man save giving him a deep nod and a small smile. It never hurt to be polite, after all.


    Still, he was given some precious time away from his responsibilities to quietly contemplate the happenings of the world, and he intended to use it well. The Boy-King had always had an affinity for the wild places of the world, or so the scriptures had read. Perhaps that was the result of his Skraeling blood? The Barracks-Kings hadn''t been of noble Klironomean stock, after all. Maybe. Maybe it was simpler, and the child had simply had a strong connection with the world around him. Who could say? Regardless of the whys and hows, Sin felt that same strong connection to the outside world that any spiritual man did. The feeling was similar and yet totally different to the feeling of standing on holy ground in churches and cathedrals, a sense of peace filling him, putting him at ease. If he closed his eyes and just listened out here, he could almost pretend he was back with the troubadours and actors of his childhood, walking from town to town and city to city to put on their plays and sing their songs. Things had been simpler back then. It was a shit life, don''t get him wrong, but it was simpler, and despite knowing how badly it had all turned out there was still a part of him that wished for those days back. Hell, at least no-one was being burned en-masse while they entertained crowds with re-enactments and bawdy songs.


    It wasn''t a long way to Aegos, far from it, but it would still take him a fair few days to walk it. He looked forwards to it, seeing as once he arrived at his destination he would be in a city far larger and more dangerous than his own. There were people here willing to be ruthless, vile, and truly wicked so long as they were the ones who came out on top when the smoke cleared. They would lie, cheat, steal, bribe, blackmail, and kill, and they weren''t particularly picky about who they needed to throw under the charging horse to save themselves. The most ruthless always won these games, the one willing to go just one step further than their comrades and opponents always came out on top.


    If Sin wanted to survive, then he needed to make sure he could be more vicious than anyone else.

 Lykourgos II: Recovery

    <u>Lykourgos II: Recovery</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Sixth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    He woke once more to a scream that he only vaguely recognised as his own. It was not a scream of pain or terror, but one born of anguish and frustration, a mournful tone that spoke of anger already fleeting and despair still lingering. Every night since he''d been woken from his coma he''d had a lingering feeling in the pit of his stomach, melancholia and choler mixing to make an ice-hot cocktail that dripped up his spine all the way to his mind. It was rather petulant of him to hold this annoyance at being awakened before he was truly ready, but he couldn''t help but feel a little put out at the knowledge that everything had very nearly collapsed around him whilst he''d slept.


    It didn''t matter anymore. What was done was done, and there was no way he''d be able to change it. He was still hardly able to stand most days, though he put that more down to his body surviving off of the bare minimum for so long. His strength was gradually returning to him, and he was occasionally able to walk around to try and regain some of the feeling in his legs, but for now he was limited to his own chambers. There was little point in showing weakness to the court, not with how thin he was at the moment.


    Well, when he said he was thin what he really meant was that he seemed to be lacking some of muscle he''d possessed previously. It wouldn''t take long to come back with some training, but spending two months with almost no food in his body followed by a sudden and large influx of rather delicious meals had certainly resulted in a little bit of pudge around his waist, so ''thin'' was probably not the right term. The situation was only compounded by the lack of almost any exercise he''d been able to undertake these last five days, and was one of the first things he wished to rectify when his strength returned in full. A great many days of riding and sparring lay in his immediate future, it seemed.


    Yes, that seemed like a good idea. Regular exercise and an eating regimen would not only serve to get him back in good physical shape, but should also be beneficial to his mind. Alekos had told him about that once, about how the body and the mind were linked in some complex web of blood vessels which carried air to and fro in the body. Lykourgos felt like he was almost certainly misremembering the specifics, but he at least knew that it would be good for his mind as well. Perhaps the exercise would help him shake off the remnants of his anger and annoyance at this whole situation? It certainly seemed worth a try.


    The door creaked open quietly, and Lykourgos turned to see the scarred face of his friend. Elikoidi looked tired, almost as tired as he had all those years ago when Lykourgos had saved him from that hopeless situation he''d been stuck in. Their was a scowl on the man''s face, tempered only by the sheer relief in his eyes as he looked at the prince.


    "I fucking hate you sometimes, you know that?"


    Lykourgos blinked twice in surprise, then snorted.


    "Yeah, I missed you too."


    Elikoidi shook his head, throwing his hands up into the air.


    "NO! I waited nearly two months for you to wake up, and you choose to awaken in the one week I left the capital to look into something along the Owkrestan border. I can''t ride like you can, Lyk. It took me five days to get here."


    Lykourgos felt his mood darken a little, even if he knew his friend hadn''t intended to strike a sore point.


    "I didn''t choose to awaken, Eli. If it were up to me, I''d still be asleep."


    The spymaster looked at him in confusion.


    "I know you didn''t actually choose to wake up, no-one chooses when to wake from their sleep after all. Still, you sound as though something forced you to wake. What was it?"


    Lykourgos sighed, sitting up against the head of his bed, pillows behind his back. He beckoned Eli closer, gesturing to one of the chairs by his bedside, but in his typical fashion the man ignored the perfectly good sitting implement and instead sat on the edge of the prince''s bed.


    "You remember that man I uncovered at the Horndaal?"


    Elikoidi nodded.


    "I do, yes. Odd fellow. He''s still in the palace at the moment, I think."


    "Yeah, he is. He broke into my mind and forced me to wake up at the behest of someone else. Someone he owed a ''debt'' to."


    Elikoidi frowned.


    "I''m not even going to try and dig into magic at the moment. That''s your barrel of worms to crack open, not mine. While I can''t speak for his designs, surely it is a good thing you are with us once more? Surely you''re grateful to be awake?"


    Lykourgos balled his hands into fists, fresh anger roiling through him for the briefest of moments.


    "Look, don''t get me wrong, I am grateful I still live! It''s just that I was in so much pain and I was so tired, and I was resting. Then I relived every single one of what are quite possibly the most stressful moments of my life and I was forced to reawaken feeling like I''d just been stabbed and was barely alive. Oh wait! I was."


    The room was silent for a moment before Elikoidi spoke, raising his eyebrow at the prince.


    "Relived a few memories, then?"


    Lykourgos nodded choppily.


    "Well, how about we talk of the future instead if that''s the case. I have some news that is, all things considered, rather important."


    Lykourgos nodded at the man again, thankful for the change in topic.


    "Okay, let''s hear it. What exactly is it you''ve been monitoring?"


    "Well," Elikoidi began, "first things first you''ll be pleased to know that the last of the opposition to your rule has been destroyed or else scattered on the wind. There''s been a minor uptick in piracy along not only our coasts but the entire western coastline of the continent south of the Aenir. Quite a few of the dissidents who survived seem to have crossed the border and fled to Owkrestos, but I''ll tell you more about that in a moment. In terms of the rest of the kingdom, your brother has taken to his role as regent rather well. Myself and Romanos support him, of course, as does Mistress Crowe, but he''s taken front and centre position when it comes to ruling in your name. You should be proud of him, Lyk."


    He smiled up at his friend.


    "I always have been, Eli. I''ve always been proud of him, and of you. Angels, how proud I am of you. The person you''ve become is... I could ask for no-one better to stand in the shadows by my side than you."


    Elikoidi was silent for a long moment, seemingly struck by his words. When his friend spoke his voice was thick with emotion and quiet as a whisper.


    "Thank you, your Grace. It means a lot to hear you say that."


    Lykourgos looked up at him almost sadly, taking one of the man''s hands into his own.


    "Then I should have said it more often. It is the truth, Eli. And for the record, when we''re in private, never call me ''your Grace'' again. That''s an order."


    The man snorted a little, wiping at his eyes with a gloved hand.


    "If you say so, Lyk. Now for the love of the First Saint, can you please stop making this sappy when I''m trying to keep you up to date on internal and foreign affairs?"


    Lykourgos chucked a breathy laugh, releasing his friend''s hand and moving to sit up a little straighter.


    "All right, all right, you have my attention. You mentioned something about Owkrestos earlier, some ''situation'' developing there. Has Lord Blackoak made his move against King Aleksandar''s regency council at last?"


    Elikoidi shook his head.


    "If it were so then I wouldn''t be so worried. As it stands though, as well as their regular muster there''s the surviving roses to worry about."


    Lykourgos held up his hands, gesturing for his friend to stop.


    "Hang on a moment, lets go back to the start. Tell me what''s going on in Owkrestos from the beginning, then tell me how the surviving rebels come into whatever mess is no doubt on the horizon and waiting for our backs to be turned."


    Elikoidi smiled at him again, seeming both a little amused and mildly worried.


    "Very well, your- very well, Lyk. I''ve been monitoring the situation in Owkrestos these past few weeks. I know it''s probably not the news you want to hear so soon after awakening but I feel it''s important enough to warrant telling you now. Lord Blackoak is mustering his men at Blacktree Hall, all eight-thousand including those from the cadet branches of his house. On top of these eight-thousand some one-thousand traitors and Teleytaian expatriates have gradually found their way to the rally, as well as almost eight-thousand sellswords."


    He choked on the watered wine he was drinking, and his friend patted him gently on the back to help clear it.


    "Sorry, eight-thousand sellswords? That''s a small army by itself!"


    Elikoidi nodded grimly.


    "Lord Aertax Blackoak is one of the wealthiest men in the Heptarchy. If anyone could afford such a force, it would be him."


    "Do we have word on what companies have answered his call?"


    The scarred man made a ''so-so'' motion with his hand.


    "I think, but none of them have actually signed any contracts yet so far as my rats can tell. The Company of the Rose and the Stirgan Woodsmen have if nothing else been seen making their way to Owkrestos, whilst the Company of the Last Chance have been loitering around Derrytown for a few weeks now."


    Lykourgos thought a moment.


    "Derrytown belongs to a cadet branch of house Blackoak, does it not?"


    "Indeed it does."


    "I see. These Teleytaian exiles then, I presume we can assume Lieutenant Isen was amongst them?"


    Elikoidi''s face twisted in rage.


    "I fucking knew it was him! No-one listened when I said it had to be-"


    Lykourgos held up his hand.


    "What do you mean no-one knew? He said-"


    Ah. That was why no-one knew. Isen had escaped and he''d been unconscious so couldn''t share what he''d been told. Well, better late than never.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "What did he say, your Grace?"


    Elikoidi''s tone was soft, but somehow still firm. Firm, and dangerous.


    "Lieutenant Isen told me this as he... when he attempted to kill me. He told me that he had made a deal with Lord Blackoak to seize Teleytaios in the chaos my death would bring. He said there would be chaos with my death and that people would think Rhema ordered me killed to steal back the throne, paralysing the realm."


    Elikoidi looked at him, his expression grim but with a softness in his eyes reserved for a scant few.


    "Your brother has been pushing himself very hard this last month and a half. From the moment he learned of your condition he seemed to... I will not say he is no longer mad, but the worst of his madness seems to have drifted away. He''s been trying to act like you would, to keep the realm together whilst you took a long sleep. I will confess to being... somewhat shaken, to see him acting so... well, almost like you to be honest."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "I will need to speak with him a great deal, and thank him even more."


    "You should. I think without him Isen''s prediction of chaos would have come true."


    Lykourgos nodded, smile fading as the mention of the traitor got his thoughts back on track.


    "Isen. He said he had a deal to seize Teleytaios and restore the old nobility under Lord Blackoak. Then they''ll turn around and depose King Aleksandar in Owkrestos, making Blackoak the king."


    Elikoidi''s face became grim, and he gave a grunt of acknowledgement.


    "I see. In that case I''ll run down the list of his forces as quickly as I dare and as accurate as my limited information will allow, and then redouble my efforts on getting my rats into Owkrestos. Seven-thousand levies. A thousand assorted knights and Men-at-Arms making up the core of the army. Another thousand assorted knights, Men-at-Arms and what seems to be the last survivors of the Band of the Wren. Eight-thousand sellswords, of which some six-thousand can be counted amongst the ranks of the Company of the Rose, the Company of the Last Chance and the Stirgan Woodsmen, whilst the remainder are individuals or small bands coming in for easy money."


    He pinched the bridge of his nose. This was worse than he thought.


    "So that''s seventeen-thousand men, of which around two-thousand are professional and eight-thousand are semi-professional, all under the command of Lord Aertax Blackoak."


    "That is how it seems, yes."


    The prince ran through what he knew to remain of the Teleytaian forces in his head. Perhaps eight-thousand professional soldiers, a thousand semi-professional and...


    No, he couldn''t even call up the levies. They''d already missed a harvest thanks to the war and an early winter, and he couldn''t risk pulling them away from sowing the next harvest. To have one poor harvest was nothing too bad, after all, the year before had been a bountiful harvest indeed, but two in a row would be pushing the country dangerously close to the beginnings of a famine.


    Perhaps if he put out some kind of royal decree or tariff on the exporting of grain, forcing it to remain within Teleytaios it might stave off the worst excesses of price increases and...


    Elikoidi coughed, breaking the prince''s thoughts and regaining his attention. He blushed a little as his friend raised an eyebrow at him.


    "Apologies, I was lost in thought a moment. Thank you for your information. I thought you said your network was patchier outside Teleytaios?"


    The scarred man nodded at him, smiling with what looked like amusement for some reason.


    "Oh it was, and still is in many areas, but I needed to know what was happening beyond our borders after Isen fled. I thought I might be able to find him. I failed of course, but then I began getting reports of village musters and town rallies in the lands of the Blackoaks and their cadet branches, and I''ve been looking at expanding my network ever since."


    Lykourgos nodded. That was useful. Very useful.


    "Whereabouts have you been expanding your network to?"


    "Nordicos and Owkrestos, mostly, with the beginnings of rat-nests in both Triarios and the island of Anatolikoi."


    "Anatolikoi? Why that backwater battlefield?"


    Elikoidi smiled a sad smile at him.


    "I was trying to find your would-be killer, Lyk. I was going to have him killed when I did, and Anatolikoi has long been the refuge of the exile and the traitor."


    He nodded solemnly at his friend.


    "I see."


    They were silent a few moments before Elikoidi abruptly stood and made for the door.


    "I''ll focus my efforts on getting my network in Owkrestos on the same level as the one back here. That way you''ll have at least some greater idea of what''s going on across the border and act accordingly."


    The prince nodded tiredly, and sank back into his bed. Angels, why was he so tired all the time at the moment? He had work to do, he could hardly afford to stay in bed for yet another day!


    "Okay, that sounds good. Hey, would you mind-"


    He yawned, raising the back of his hand to cover his mouth.


    "Could you send for Ilias and Nasos? To help make me ready for the day."


    Elikoidi shot a bemused glance at him.


    "Lyk. Go back to sleep. You''re tired. So long as you will wake up tomorrow you need to get some rest, then you can throw yourself back into work."


    He wanted to argue, but truth be told sleep sounded good right now.


    "Yeah, alright."


    If Elikoidi responded then he didn''t hear; he was already back asleep.


    <hr>


    Angels, that burns more than I remember.


    He did his best to force his arms to bend once more, taking him close to the floor before straightening them out again and raising himself up. He might not have been able to go out and start swinging his sword around straight away, not without accidentally cutting a bystander''s head off anyway, but a bit of light exercise was still on the table.


    Nasos was in the room with him, the healer wanting to make sure that he wasn''t over-exerting himself so early into his recovery period, and the prince knew better than to backtalk the priest-come-physician when it came to matters such as this. Kind he may have been, but he''d obviously had enough of watching his friends seemingly try their best to get themselves killed through self-neglect. The man had been receptive to hearing his worries about the weight he''d managed to gain this last week, and had lain any fears of falling out of shape to rest. According to the healer, his body was simply regaining the fat he''d lost while asleep through his meals. It only appeared to be worse to Lyk because it would take more time to put the muscle back on, but the time would soon come when he was back to normal and would look as good as ever.


    Apparently.


    Lykourgos wasn''t completely sure he bought that. He knew he''d been asleep for two months, but he seemed to have lost a fair amount of both fat and muscle in that time. A little more than might have been expected, anyway. He was almost certain that something else had resulted in the loss of mass, but he wasn''t going to start arguing with Nasos about that at the moment. Besides, this whole scenario reeked of magics, and he wasn''t going to start pretending to understand how all of that made sense. A conversation with the entombed man might be in order soon enough, he thought wryly to himself. A discussion to try and get some answers out of the strange figure might bear fruit, if for no other reason than he seemed a little remorseful to have had to wake me up. Maybe he''ll be receptive to my questioning.


    He was broken from his musings when his face and chest hit the floor, his arms giving way underneath him. He let out a low groaning noise as he lay face-down, arms feeling like they were on fire.


    "Alright, that''s quite enough for now your Grace. Let''s get you back in bed."


    Nasos helped to move him upright, whereupon he shook his head. Nasos sighed.


    "Your Grace, I understand that you want to-"


    "No, no, nothing like that," he gently interrupted, "I just want to sit down instead. If I have to stay led in bed any longer I''ll go mad. I just want to sit by the window for a bit and enjoy the breeze."


    Nasos'' frown vanished in an instant, replaced instead by a cheerful smile.


    "Oh, of course! Here, let me help you."


    His friend helped him to his feet and supported him as he shakily walked across the room. Soon enough he''d be back on his feet properly, unsupported and fighting fit, but that didn''t mean he couldn''t take the support while he needed it.


    "How long before I''m back to normal, Nasos?"


    The young man pulled a thoughtful face as he helped the prince into the chair, moving to lean casually on the windowsill.


    "Situations like yours, the strangeness around your reawakening notwithstanding, often take one or two moons for the victim to recover from."


    "That long?"


    "Yes, that long. But," he said, lowering his voice to a mock-conspiratorial volume, "you''re strong, your Grace. I have no doubt you''ll be up and about in a week or two, and training again in three. That doesn''t mean you''ll be back to your previous strength right away, but you''ll have the freedom to work on getting back to that level with far fewer difficulties. You just need to make sure you don''t push yourself too hard in the coming weeks; your body does not protest against you for no reason. There are those that suffer such ailments of the flesh, but you are not one of them. Listen to what your body is telling you, and you''ll be fine. Besides, I can''t see anyone in this retinue letting you go anywhere without at least one of us by your side. Speaking of which, I believe Ilias has strongly wished to see you again this past week. Perhaps you could send for him and put his mind at ease for a little while? You know he looks up to you greatly."


    Lykourgos smiled warmly.


    "Aye, that sounds good to me. Why''s he not been able to see me sooner? Has he been particularly busy recently?"


    Nasos shrugged, smiling.


    "Sorry your Grace, but I don''t really know. All I''ve heard is that Prince Rhema and Master Elikoidi have been keeping him really rather on his toes recently. He might be your cupbearer and as such be officially tied to you, but if you aren''t ordering him around then he still needs to answer to royalty and authority. Again, I''m not sure exactly what he''s been doing, but he seems... he seems like he''d do a lot better if he saw you alive and well."


    "I''m not sure I count as ''well'' yet, but that is a fair point. I''ll summon him soon enough."


    He sniffed himself, then smiled sheepishly.


    "I think a bath should be drawn first though. It would be best for me to wash properly and not rely on a damp cloth. Besides, it''s not like I''m at a risk of drowning anymore."


    Nasos grimaced.


    "I don''t know how comfortable I am with that."


    Lykourgos rolled his eyes.


    "Here, how about this; I''ll take my bath and speak with Ilias at the same time. Hell, you can stay as well if it makes you feel better. It''s not like you''ll be seeing anything you haven''t already these last few moons."


    Nasos chewed his lip a little before nodding.


    "Yes, that sounds fine. I can''t see Ilias caring either, since he must be used to the communal baths if he grew up poor. Okay, we''ll do that then."


    Lykourgos nodded, stretching a little in his chair. A refreshing bath would do him a world of good, he felt. Besides, it couldn''t hurt to relax a little bit while recovering, could it? It was like Nasos said; he couldn''t push himself too hard.


    If relaxing a little bit more meant that he could push himself that little bit harder and recover that little bit quicker, then it really seemed quite the obvious thing to do in his mind.


    <hr>


    "Your Grace!"


    The bubbly voice of his cupbearer rang out across the room as Ilias ran to the side of the bronze tub.


    "You''re... feeling okay, I hope?"


    The words were said with a nervous trepidation, and Lykourgos couldn''t help but smile when he heard it.


    "I''m quite alright, Ilias, I promise you. I will be soon, anyway. In a couple of weeks I''ll be up and preparing for war once more!"


    Ilias'' smile pulled taught, as though he were conflicted at that.


    "Whilst I am very, very glad you''ll recover fast, I''m not exactly keen on the idea of you going to war again. No matter what Blackoak does to us, I don''t have to like it."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow.


    "You... know of the Owkrestan situation?"


    Ilias nodded conspiratorially.


    "I work directly under Master Elikoidi, your Grace. I know most of what he knows."


    Lykourgos smiled, then ruffled the hair of the cupbearer with a wet hand. Ilias squawked indignantly and swatted at his hand, but the attempt was half-hearted at best. If he was truly annoyed he could always move away, after all.


    "You''ve been kept busy recently, so I hear?"


    Ilias nodded.


    "Yes, your Grace. His highness has been trying to spend time with us, and by ''us'' I mean your retinue, your Grace, to try and get to know our skills and personalities better. Master Elikoidi I think just wanted to keep me busy so my mind was always occupied, but it has meant that I was kept from here longer than I wished. I actually accompanied him to the Owkrestan border regions. Did he tell you that?"


    Lykourgos smiled wryly.


    "He left out that you were with him, but I can see why he took you. You''ll get into mischief if you''re not kept busy, young man."


    He poked at the cupbearer with a finger, his tone jovial and obviously not at all serious. Ilias returned the gesture with a confident smile.


    "Some would say I learned it from you, your Grace."


    Lykourgos laughed heartily at that, then stretched in the tub. It was nice to relax a little.


    "It''s good to hear you talking again, your Grace."


    Ilias'' voice was small when he spoke, and his tone was fragile. It seemed a bit of a sudden jump in emotions, but then this was the first time they''d spoken since he''d almost been assassinated. Perhaps a little emotional instability was warranted here?


    He smiled, and did his best to keep his voice as warm and happy as possible.


    "It''s nice to talk again, Ilias. Trust me, you''ll get tired of hearing my voice again faster than you know. You''ll see enough of me in the coming months, so don''t worry about me going anywhere."


    He closed his eyes and allowed his body to relax further, sliding down a little and just enjoying how refreshed he was feeling already.


    "I''ll hold you to that, your Grace. I''ll hold you to it."

 Cardinal Sin IV: Gather All Storms

    <u>Cardinal Sin IV: Gather All Storms</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Ninth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.</u>


    <u>Aegan Road, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    The road was as dull as he remembered it, but that wasn''t something he was worried about. It was a different kind of dull to the monotony of filing away paperwork; where bureaucratic tasks may have felt soul destroying, the dullness of the road as it ran through the woods was a most welcome thing. It was a dullness that brought about a sense of peace, of tranquillity. There was nothing he needed to do here other than walk in a straight line, and as a result he was more than a little pleased with how the outside world still seemed to resonate with him despite all the time he had spent locked away in his city of slate and granite.


    Thoughts of Athio led him to thoughts of his destination, Aegos. There was a sense of foreboding about the capital nowadays, and even one such as himself could tell that the plastered-over cracks in their theocratic system were beginning to come apart. Archcardinal Adikos was playing at being a king, but the priesthood of Aegos hadn''t the knowledge of feudalism that came with centuries of lordly or regal experience; the balance of power was a shambolic thing that seemed to swing between various parties of interest as fast as solaria raced across the sky, and it brought no comfort to Sin that he was one of those parties of interest. If he fell his cause would suffer a great and terrible blow, the other groups and parties descending on what was left unless someone else could fill his shoes in his ceremonial role.


    Ah well, there was little point to dwelling on that right now. At the very least he knew that, if ever something happened to him, Hawk would pick up where he left off. The man might not have had the religious and ceremonial roles Sin did, but at the very least the materials and information available to him would allow the man to do something. Given the lack of rival lieutenants under him Hawk should have almost no competition with seizing control of the city and continuing their operations, albeit with far more difficulty given the increased scrutiny he would be under from Aegos. Sin cared not, and he knew Hawk felt the same. Their job was saving people, and that was the sort of thing that transcended worries of effort or danger.


    There were no villages to pass through along this route, no taverns by the side of the road. No, such establishments in such places were only there for profit, for the greed of their owners, and avarice was a sin. The taverns had been torn down, and the villagers sent away to find their lives elsewhere. Sin had believed that to be one of the most baffling pieces of legislation to come about from the decrepit old fools who ran the Most Devout from Aegos yet. At the time he''d wondered where it would end; would the farmers find their fields salted, the price they must pay for enabling others to indulge in gluttony? Would merchants at the docks find their ships of grain and fish turned away on the grounds of both avarice and gluttony? Angels, this whole fucking theocracy was a mess. Thankfully not even the blasted octogenarians in charge had been stupid enough to propose any further monumentally stupid laws, and Sin counted that amongst the few small mercies that he had been able to find in the last two years.


    Squinting a little as he looked into the distance he thought he saw a small flame atop the next hill over, little more than a solitary camping fire, but that could have been a trick of the eyes. He hoped that he wouldn''t encounter anyone along this road, since that had the potential to see him in a spot of danger. Well, tell a lie, he was admittedly rather looking forwards to seeing Spyridon again. The knowledge that his old friend had only distanced himself because of what he believed Sin to have done meant that he at least had some moral fibre left in him, and if he truly was allowing Sin to establish settlements on the Rocks of Aercad under his nose then he was either ignorant or just as dissatisfied with the status-quo as Sin was. He sincerely hoped was the latter; Spyridon had never been a fool when they were children, and Sin was willing to bet he was still far from being one now. This purging wasn''t why Sin had become a priest, and though Spyridon may have been raised from birth to follow this path Sin knew for a fact that this was not why his friend had climbed the ranks of the clergy either. Still, Spyridon had been practically raised by Adikos in his teenage years, just like Sin, and so there was bound to be some small chance that the man truly believed in what he was doing. No, he thought to himself, I refuse to believe my friend would have stooped that low.


    With that thought in his mind he realised that he had come to a stop, still staring at that tiny flickering light the next hill over, and so he took another breath of fresh air, smiled a little at the beauty of the outside world, and carried on down the road to Aegos.


    Or at least he would of, if the path hadn''t been blocked by a hooded figure in front of him. A rather large, rather distinctive looking figure. Sin knew this man, definitely, even if he couldn''t put a name to him.


    In times like this Sin was very grateful for his cane, for the tool that Hawk jokingly referred to as a ''stick'' was on his person at all times, and was almost by design multi-purpose. It was a lovely thing, with a hefty weight and the perfect length for both walking and self-defence. He''d carved it himself from a strait blackthorn stem he''d found as a more stylish means of self-defence, not that he particularly needed one since his reputation made few wish to approach him anymore, but it couldn''t hurt to be prepared if needs be. Besides, despite Hawk''s misgivings he wasn''t aiming to use it to batter his way through armed guards, but to swing at individual soldiers and the occasional crowd of civilians in his way as he fled from danger. A sword would leave only a trail of dead bodies and blood like a breadcrumb trail, but a walking stick? How many men and women required the aid of such an implement in their daily lives? Thousands, certainly. It would allow him to slip away in situations where he otherwise might be caught, which was far more valuable in the urban environments in which he would normally be found.


    Annoyingly, this was not one of those environments.


    "Speak, friend. I am but a lonely traveller, headed towards the heart of our great and holy state. Speak, and tell me who stands before me."


    The man''s hood came down, revealing a scarred face and, where the neck met the shoulders, the hint of a mail bevor. Sin grimaced, but made sure to keep his own hood up and his back stooped. A well armoured man, alone on the road, happening to bump into him? He didn''t like the sound of this, not at all. Alarm bells were ringing in his head, and the roiling in his gut told him all he needed to know about the situation he was in for.


    "I am Ser Ezekiel, wretch. You needn''t remove your hood; I know well who you are."


    Sin chewed on his lower lip. Ezekiel. Assuming this was the right Ser Ezekiel, then not only was this one of Trios'' stooges, but also according to common knowledge a rather good fighter as well. Sin wasn''t too worried; he had it on good authority that much of the man''s vaunted prowess was the result of a carefully curated image, not the result of any true skill at arms. Still, Sin hadn''t lived this long without at least a little paranoia, and he wasn''t about to start underestimating a man with a mace clad in mail armour.


    Doing his best to appear deferential he stooped lower, holding out his free hand in an open-palmed gesture of peace.


    "I know not of what you speak, friend! Tell me, why is it you walk these roads alone?"


    "Why do you, wretch?"


    Sin smiled, trying to force as much optimism into the words as possible, hoping beyond hope that by some divine providence he could fool this knight and be on his way.


    "Why, I have already told you, friend! I am a lone pilgrim, traveling the roads towards our most holy city!"


    The knight sneered, looking down his nose at the hooded Cardinal.


    "There are no pilgrims from Athio. No-one leaves the sleeping city, not without leave of Cardinal Sin. Not without leave from you. Take off that hood, Cardinal. There''s little need to cover yourself now."


    Sin froze for a moment, his forced smile falling into a bitter scowl as he stood to his full height and lowered his hood. His grip on his cane shifted, and he passed it from his left to his right hand with as casual a motion as he could manage as adrenaline began to flow through his body. All right then, if this is how we''re doing this.


    "Tell me, Ser Ezekiel. Why are you on the road to Athio? As far as I''m aware your own master should be in the capital at the moment."


    "Indeed he is," the knight said, sneer morphing into a twisted grin, "and he sent me to find you."


    Sin and Ezekiel began to circle each other, the Cardinal looking the knight over for any weak points as he continued talking.


    "Now, while I''m most touched by your master''s concern for my wellbeing, I can find my way to Aegos just fine by myself. The road is short and straight, with few obstacles." Except for you, of course.


    "You misunderstand, Father." The man drew his mace from its place on his belt, levelling it at Sin. "Cardinal Trios wants you dead."


    Sin''s eyebrows flicked upwards as he held his cane up as one would a combat staff, preparing himself from the bout to come.


    "Well, I''d expected an attempt on my life at some point in the coming months, but I will admit that I hadn''t believed anyone would be brazen enough to attempt to assassinate me before I even managed to set foot inside the capital. Trios must be very worried of our meeting indeed if he''s sent his pet dog out to play fetch for him."


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    The knight seethed at the words, preparing himself for combat.


    "I''ll have no more words disparaging my master, wretch. His reasons are his own, and I need not know them. I need only know that it is he who gives me my orders, for under him my soul is safe from the rot and decay of the world."


    Sin scoffed again and spat off to the side.


    "Trios? Acting pure? Strange, I''ve heard rumours of late from back alleys and houses of pleasure which he has failed to ban, that he has some very particular tastes in his lays of choice."


    Ezekiel took a long step forwards at that barb, visibly making himself ready to lunge at the cardinal in the coming moments. With his opponent sufficiently goaded into anger Sin concentrated on making sure that he did not miss a blind thing in the coming fight, for one missed flicker of the eyes might be all the warning that a blow was on its way, or that a strike was actually a feint. The odds were already stacked against him, and he couldn''t risk getting distracted whilst their duel was to begin.


    This hardly seems chivalrous at all, Sin thought to himself as he narrowly avoided an overhead strike. I''d have thought that a knight built round his public image would care a little more for the things he pretended to believe in, if for no other reason than the fact that he must have been caught out before now. Rule one of pretending to be something was to act like it even when you believed you were alone, because there was always the risk of someone walking in on you and catching you red handed, or potentially a spy set to track you might catch wind of what you were really like and see through your ruse. Sin and Hawk had broken that rule a lot more than once, but he always liked to think that he was the exception to the rule. He was Cardinal fucking Sin, and he was the best Saints-damned method actor this side of the Ambyr Sea!


    His mind moved at a truly wild pace, running through his options in a fraction of a second. He would likely be able to outrun the knight, unless he was mounted. Knowing Sin''s luck he would be willing to place a sizable bet on a horse being tethered a little ways away, so he didn''t want to take that risk at the moment. His safest course of action was, annoyingly, trying to knock out the man opposing him and put as much distance between the two of them as possible before he woke again.


    Actually, the voice in the back of his head whispered, it would be far safer to kill him on the road. You could bury him in the woods! No one would ever even need to know!


    Sin didn''t want to do that, but it seemed like a pretty good idea. I mean, it''s not like you''ve never listened to me before...


    He shook the thought free of his mind. He''d decide whether to kill Ezekiel or leave him by the roadside when he''d knocked the man out cold, and not a moment before. Luckily it seemed as though the one area the man hadn''t thought to protect was his head, and so that was where Sin knew he''d need to direct his aim. His sloe-wood cane was strong and tough, yes, but it wouldn''t do particularly well against steel armour, be it mail or plate. He''d have to try and get a good hit against the man''s head if he wanted to succeed here.


    Ezekiel''s foot shifted forwards as the mace swung out in a wide arc, the knight seeking to scatter Sin''s brains across the woodland around them. Sin moved back half a step, feeling the wind that trailed the blow caress his cheek. He smirked at the knight and moved half a step backwards once more, repeating the movement for the second blow, then a third, then a forth. Sin might have been an abysmal priest, but this he was damned good at. His sermons in the civil war had been boring and uninspiring when based around conventional virtues, but when he called upon his men to fight as though the foemen were as daemons, daemons only they could stop before the world was overrun, the forces under his command were electrified with purpose. Priestly duties were not his forte, no matter his education, but fighting he could do.


    With every missed blow the man in front of him became more and more furious, his anger at what must have appeared to him to be an petulant sinner, no pun intended, so casually evading his movements. Sin was more than happy that he hadn''t worn any armour; anything heavy would have restricted his movement far too much for something like this and no amount of armour would do more to save him than sidesteps and cleverly timed dodges. After all, what was the point in wearing armour when he didn''t plan to be hit?


    With every blow the man attempted to land Sin simply moved just enough to avoid being hit, but not so far away as to make a feint worthwhile. Ezekiel was putting too much power behind his swings, there was no way in hell that he''d be able to change the direction of the blow mid-strike, and so Sin felt comfortable in his ability to simply keep on the move. He remained light on his feet, almost bouncing on his toes to make sure that no matter where the blow was aimed he would be able to deftly move out of the danger zone. It was really just a form of dancing, if you stopped to think about it, and whilst he was not a perfect dance partner he had spent a good portion of his formative years being taught dances for travelling shows by a true taskmaster of a matron. Fighting was a form of dancing. He was good at dancing, and better at fighting.


    When a particularly close strike brought the now furious Ser Ezekiel within a close enough range Sin swang his cane in a narrow arc, striking hard against the man''s temple. Whilst the blow was certainly hard Sin wasn''t prepared to throw all his eggs into one basket, and so before Ezekiel could be afforded the time to react Sin quickly stepped forwards and barged the man hard with his shoulder, throwing as much weight as he could behind the blow without losing his balance.


    Ezekiel reeled back, looking a little dazed. It was a little annoying that he hadn''t been able to force the knight off of his feet, but Sin would take whatever he could get. He''d already landed a solid blow to the man''s head, and this cane was hard. Another blow or two like that and any man would certainly be down like a stone. Ezekiel wasn''t the first man sin had needed to clobber about the head, nor was he the first to remain standing after the first crashing blow to the temple, but he was perhaps the first to respond with such an animalistic snarl of rage. Spittle flew from his lips as he shouted his curses at the cardinal.


    "You fucking reprobate! Why won''t you just fucking stand still and die!"


    Sin raised an eyebrow, hoping to make the other man as angry as possible.


    "I''m not planning on dying anytime soon, sorry about that. This little distraction of yours has been fun, but if it''s all the same to you I''ll be on my way. I''ve been summoned by my master, after all."


    Once again the man snarled with rage at the implication that his efforts were little more than a childish attempt at fighting. Of course Sin knew it was not so, for he had been stretched to the very limits of his dexterity and athletic abilities to keep himself safe in this short bout. It wasn''t like he was at risk of running out of energy and getting sloppy anytime soon, for his style of fighting was designed to conserve energy and expend the reserves of the foe, but it did bring with it a danger all of its own. One misstep, one hairs breadth out of place, and he would be dead before his body even had time to crumple to the floor.


    The snarling man in front of him seemed more like an animal than a man, more like a rabid beast than an anointed knight. His eyes barely hid his feral rage, mace-arm shaking with what must have been both anger and exertion, and the knight almost looked as though he were frothing at the mouth. He supposed that when one was as devoted to their master as this one was the mind needed not to think things over for itself, only acting on the whims of the one giving the orders, and so there was no need to act in a manner befitting a human anymore. Well, not when goaded into a rage anyway. That was the key here; if Sin could keep him angry then he could keep him predictable, and if he could keep his opponent predictable then he could keep himself alive.


    Ezekiel''s next swipe came arcing from Sin''s left to his right, but in his rage Ezekiel''s movements were a child''s play to read; Sin could see the stroke coming from a half-mile away, and in a movement that he would later admit to himself was perhaps just a teensy bit ''extra'' he found himself rolling forwards underneath the strike, coming out behind the knight and wheeling himself around to strike hard at the back of his head once more.


    Again the knight reeled and let out a pained cry, both his anger and his exertion evident in every heavy breath he took. He was visibly struggling as he turned around to face the cardinal once more, his free hand seeming to instinctively reach behind him and cover the wounded spot on the back of his head. Almost immediately the hand went still as he touched the place Sin had struck, as though the action had sent fresh pain coursing through him. Sin smiled at the sight, and somewhere in the back of his mind he felt that little voice smile as well.


    He''ll kill us, Sin. You''re only doing what you need to do. Kill him.


    He really didn''t want to kill anyone anymore, but... but he was in the midst of battle, and his blood was running hot once more, and the little voice was right of course I am, Ezekiel was here to kill him. It had to end one way or the other. Kill him!


    Sin struck out hard again in a flurry of blows, less accurate by virtue of the sheer number of strikes he was throwing at his opponent in so rapid a succession, but that was all he needed. Ezekiel had hardly been able to get his guard up as Sin lashed out with his cane as hard as he could, this time aiming for the knight''s mace-hand. With a sickening crack the hard wood connected with the gloved fingers, an on instinct the man dropped the mace and grabbed the wrist of his injured hand with the other, staring at his now misshapen fingers with wide eyes as he hissed out a pained breath. Sin knew the man wasn''t wearing gauntlets, but he''d half expected a pair of mitons to render his blow ineffective. Luckily for him, his opponent seemed to have nought but woollen gloves to cover his hands. A small measure of protection, yes, but almost nothing in the face of a powerful blow.


    Most of Sin''s blows did little more than stun his opponent for a fraction of a second, but he made sure to never allow the man even a moment of respite. Sin was winning here, and he wasn''t going to throw it away by doing something stupid. Ezekiel had begun to curl in on himself somewhat, his body''s subconscious reaction to the onslaught that Sin had begun. His head remains unshielded, the voice beckoned. Strike him again. Sin did as the voice commanded, relishing in the flood of happiness that came from doing as he was asked, from acting upon the urges of that little voice. Ezekiel dropped to the floor at the third blow to his head, but whether that was him falling unconscious or just trying to shield himself Sin didn''t know.


    It''s a trick. Hit him again.


    The cane rose, and the cane fell.


    Again.


    Sin swung again with all his strength at Ezekiel, sprawled out on the floor with a glassy look in his eyes.


    Again.


    He listened.


    Again!


    He did as he was commanded.


    Again!


    He did as he was told, like he was supposed to.


    AGAIN!


    Sin raised the cane once more, then stopped. No. No, he shouldn''t be doing this. He wasn''t supposed to listen to the voice anymore, not again. He was supposed to have been better than this. Ezekiel lay unmoving on the floor, and so Sin pressed two fingers to his arm to find a pulse. The gentle rhythm of the man''s heartbeat could be felt in his wrist, so Sin knew he was still alive. That was... good? He really should kill the man, just to be safe, but... Angels, how could he at the moment? He shouldn''t feed into that voice anymore.


    He thought back on the sick joy that came from doing as the voice asked of him. No. He couldn''t kill a man like this, not when he was already defeated. No, he would instead leave him by the roadside and carry on as fast as he could. He''d pray for forgiveness tonight for giving in to his urges once more, but for now he needed to get out of here.


    If Ser Ezekiel happened to be taken by the elements before he woke back up... well, that was none of Sin''s business. Yes, that seemed to be a reasonable compromise. If he survived then it would be by the will of the Saints, and who was he to argue with them?


    With that last thought in mind he turned and continued walking down the road to Aegos. He hated what Adikos had done, but... but if the man could help him with the voice like he had in the past then surely it was worth at least talking to him in Aegos? Maybe. Maybe not. Sin didn''t know anymore. He''d decide when he got there.

 Cardinal Sin V: A Small Radiance

    <u>Cardinal Sin V: A Small Radiance</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Ninth Day of the Second Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegan Road, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    He allowed the discipline to fall on his bare back as he walked along the road. His other hand still clutched at his cane, now a little tighter as the stinging sensation upon his back grew with each swing of his arm.


    "I am sinful."


    Crack!


    "There is a daemon in my heart."


    Crack!


    "I indulged in the sin of wroth."


    Crack!


    "I allowed myself to overindulge in wine five nights ago."


    Atonement flooded through him with every swing of the whip. Crack!


    "I indulged in pleasures of the flesh with a willing servant."


    He was purifying himself, little by little. Crack!


    Despite the pain that last one still made him smile. The same woman who''d apparently been watching him train had been very enthusiastic to- no. This entire trail of thought was sinful.


    Crack!


    He gritted his teeth at that blow, exhaling with a shuddering breath. She initiated it! The voice cried out. Why would we deny her something so pleasurable?


    Sin flogged his back again with an even greater force, hoping to get the voice to shut up and leave him alone.


    Crack!


    He was glad that he always had the discipline on him. It made his slip-ups so much easier to correct when he didn''t need to go out and find a sufficient number of reeds or thin branches. Far, far easier to carry his own than to worry about all of that.


    Crack!


    He stopped. What was that drumming in the distance. Were those... horses? Soon the noise of a carriage and hoofbeats joined with the faint whinnying on the road, giving him pause and making him stop his penance, if for no other reason than so he could turn around and better see who it was that was gaining on him. He''d punished himself enough for now, so there seemed to be little harm in taking a moment to rest. He laid his roughspun cloak and hood down by the side of the road alongside his haversack, knelt upon the ground, and began to pray.


    <hr>


    It didn''t take more than ten minutes for the party behind him to reach where he knelt. A pair of horsemen brought up the front, both with spears by their side and boiled leather jerkins for protection.


    "Identify yourself, stranger!"


    Sin nodded at the one who had spoke, slowly rising to stand. His back was still bloody from the whipping he had given himself earlier, but he supposed that he couldn''t have looked too bad at the moment.


    "I would have you tell me of your master first, my good man. You are not the first armed men on this road to happen upon me and wish me ill."


    The two men looked at each other, suspicious and confused.


    "We found a knight bloodied and beaten not an hour back from here. Was that your doing?"


    Sin nodded, smiling as he held his hands out in open gestured compliance.


    "Indeed it was, my good men. He sought to take my life as I travelled. I corrected him of the notion that he was capable of such a feat."


    As he continued talking a figure stepped out of the carriage, demure and olive-skinned. Sin smiled as the man turned to look at him, eyes widening and voice filled with surprise.


    "Sin?"


    He bowed his head.


    "Cardinal Spyridon. A pleasure to at last meet with you again."


    The two guards looked at each other once again, connecting the dots. The first man who spoke dismounted, kneeling before him.


    "I can only apologise for my hostility moments prior, Father. I assure you that had I known you were a Cardinal of the church I would not have acted so rashly."


    Sin smiled and gently laid a bloodied, sweaty hand upon the man''s head.


    "It is of no bother to me, my good men. You were only doing your job, after all. My fellow Cardinal, will you not send your men away and speak with me in confidence?"


    Spyridon was still stood there with his mouth half open before he shook himself back into his senses, waving away the two guards.


    "Of course. A moment, please."


    The kneeling man stood and remounted his horse, and led his fellow soldier away. Spyridon watched them leave to the back of the column before turning back to Sin, eying him with a mixture of caution and sympathy.


    "Cardinal Sin. It has been quite some time."


    "Aye," Sin smiled, "and I''ve been quite busy."


    He quickly realised how what he''d said might be misinterpreted, and so he hurriedly continued talking.


    "Not with the sort of thing you think, either! You''ll be pleased to hear what I''ve been up to Spy, I just know it!"


    The man nodded, seeming more than a little unconvinced, before gesturing to the still bloodied discipline on the floor beside Sin''s belongings.


    "Does the voice torment you still?"


    Sin closed his eyes and sighed, nodding slowly. When he reopened them after a long moment Spyridon had taken a few steps closer, and his eyes had taken on that same empathetic nature that they had back before the two of them had hit manhood.


    "I understand. But you claim to have something you wish to speak to me of?"


    Sin nodded hurriedly, slipping on his undershirt and roughspun cloak.


    "I do. I really mean it when I say you''ll like it, Spy. It''s nearly gotten me killed before now, but it''s all worth it. It will be, anyways."


    Spyridon nodded back at him, sighing in resignation. Sin would have his audience, it seemed.


    "You always were up to something, no matter when and where you were. Come then, please, make yourself comfortable in my carriage. We''ll be the only two people riding within, for I prefer to keep to my own company at the moment. You might just be a welcome break from that, however."


    Sin practically beamed back at his friend as he gathered up his various belongings, stowing away the discipline and picking up his cane.


    "Now that sounds like a lovely plan. I was rather enjoying my walk until I was set upon, but I think that travel by carriage for the rest of the journey sounds rather like a nice change of pace. Please Cardinal, after you."


    Spyridon smiled back at him, a pleasant and genuine thing, before stepping back towards his carriage where another guard held open the door.


    "Thank you, little sheep."


    With that Sin followed his friend inside, and the door was shut behind them.


    "So, you''ve certainly travelled light."


    Sin shrugged.


    "I''ve brought myself along. Adikos never told us to bring anything else."


    Spyridon jokingly rolled his eyes, and so Sin quite deliberately looked around the carriage and out of the windows to the entourage outside.


    "How many are with you? Two dozen?"


    Spyridon nodded.


    "Somewhere around that many. Twelve odd guards, half a dozen servants if we include the two drivers, and a few assorted clergymen and women."


    "Seems rather too many to me. I fucking hate clergymen."


    Spyridon gave him an incredulous look, which Sin quickly returned.


    "What, you think I''m excluding myself from that list? You''re okay though, but that''s it. The ones back in Athio actually believe all the rumours about me, so they don''t tend to speak up much any more."


    "Rumours?"


    Sin waved his hands around as if he were describing some great revelation.


    "You know, ''Cardinal Sin! Father of Darkness! Monster of the Sleeping City!'', all that shit."


    "So you''re saying it''s not true?"


    Sin clicked his fingers, bolting back upright.


    "Of course, that''s what I was forgetting! Seems a bit soon to trust you with this, but you seem as good as you used to to me. Can you keep a secret, Cardinal?"


    His friend nodded at him, leaning across the carriage a little.


    "Of course! Why, what is it that''s caused you to become even more reclusive than you already were? It must have been a rather big secret to warrant the measures you''ve taken these last two years."


    Sin positively beamed back at his friend.


    "Oh my old friend, you don''t understand! Never in my life have I committed myself to acting in a role quite like the one I play now! I''ve memorised all my lines, I know the mannerisms I need to use, and all the quirks of the man I pretend to be have been perfected to become almost second nature. Spy, this is the single greatest play I have performed in my life, but I need a second actor to take the stage alongside me now. I need your help with this."


    Spyridon looked at him with both confusion and interest.


    "My help with what? You''re speaking in riddles again, Sin."


    "I''m speaking in riddles because I''m dramatic, fight me. That and I''m taking a big leap of faith by trusting you with this, Spy. By whatever oath you would have me swear, all of what I am about to say is true."


    Spyridon looked at him, eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to get a read on the conversation.


    "And what would that be?"


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Sin took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth.


    "I haven''t persecuted anyone for their faith. There''s not been a single purge in Athio whilst I''ve held the reigns. They''ve all been moved outside of my lands."


    Spyridon''s eyes widened a little, and Sin dropped his voice to a hushed whisper.


    "Yes, I know the rumours you''ve heard about me. I know what people think has happened in Athio, because I need people to believe the rumours to keep my people safe. You didn''t think I''d become unrecognisable these last two or three years, no?"


    Spyridon''s own voice was now a whisper as well, equal parts fearful and conspiratorial.


    "How did you- where are they?"


    Sin shook his head.


    "As much as I would like to tell you, and as funny as it would be to see the look on your face when you realise what has happened, it''s for the best if you don''t know. I half expected you to know already, but if you don''t then I''m not going to tell you?"


    "Why? This doesn''t exactly scream ''baseline trust'', does it?"


    Sin nodded, conceding the point to his old friend.


    "I know, and it is really fucking annoying. Trust me, I really do want to tell you, but for your safety and theirs it''s best if you don''t know. Not yet. Not until this farce in Aegos is over and done with. How many have died under your watch?"


    The man''s answer was almost immediate.


    "As few as possible. I haven''t been able to move them someplace else like you claim you have, but I''ve tried to keep myself blind to the non-conformists for as long as possible. If I don''t see them, they aren''t there, and if they aren''t there then they aren''t in danger. Funny how that works."


    Sin huffed out a laugh. It seemed that, despite the man in charge having raised them both as teenagers, the two of them had nonetheless come to reject his authority in favour of doing the right thing. Well, as right as they could given their circumstances. Sin understood that Spyridon was no actor like he was, and hadn''t the skills to throw off scrutiny. If he had to burn one to save a dozen, then that was what he would do.


    He might be tricking you, the voice whispered. Better to end this now, and work out the rest on the road.


    Sin went still for a moment, and Spyridon must have noticed something for his smile showed sympathy once more.


    "The voice again?"


    Sin nodded coldly, but said nothing.


    "I don''t know what it''s said to you, but you have nothing to fear from me. I want the purges just as little as you do. Besides, you and I both know that if push came to shove and I got in your way... well, I wouldn''t last long."


    Sin gave his old friend a weak smirk. It was almost as though they''d never been apart.


    "You still haven''t learned any self defence skills?"


    The man shook his head, happiness at their rekindled friendship evident in his voice.


    "Nah, that was always more of your thing. I might not have been there to see exactly what happened to Ser Ezekiel, but I do know that you''ve certainly not lost your edge. Either that or he''s nothing like his image makes him out to be."


    Sin kicked his feet up and lounged in the carriage.


    "A little of column a, a little of column b. It probably would have been best to kill him and be done with it, all things considered, but I didn''t dare let myself give in to the voice any further. The man was only doing what he''d been told to do, after all. Ser Ezekiel may appear to be the model paladin, but in all the years I''ve known him I do not think he has ever once acted of his own accord."


    "I think," Spyridon replied, his tone becoming a little darker, "that his inability to act alone is exactly why he makes for a model paladin. A subordinate who relies on you to dictate his every move is a subordinate who will never stab you in the back."


    Sin nodded again, conceding the point. Spyridon always had been quite pacifistic, even when it came to military matters. How he''d survived this long as a Cardinal in what was possibly the most militant church in the known world would have been a mystery, if Sin hadn''t been in the same class when they were hand-picked by Adikos.


    "That seems to be the truth of it, aye. He might be a problem if we make it back to Aegos. I might have goaded him with some very unsavoury words when we fought, in the hopes of making him slip up. It worked, but I doubt he''ll have forgotten what I said anytime soon."


    Spyridon''s head fell into his hands.


    "Saints, you really are just as I remember you. Have you heard the news from Aegos recently?"


    Sin frowned, confused. News? He couldn''t recall hearing any news from the capital that wasn''t related to the upcoming council in months.


    "Your silence tells me enough. Apparently Trios has been in some hot water recently after meddling with one of the monastic orders up in the hills. He''s tried to force them to give up their autonomy and become a part of his own Order of Saint Brassica. The old guard are standing by him still, but it''s clear that they aren''t pleased with him for impeding their old autonomies."


    "Which monastery was it that he tried to strongarm?"


    Spyridon shrugged.


    "I don''t know. The whole ordeal has sprung from a very minor incident that seems to have snowballed. More and more abbots and abbesses come forwards with each day that passes by, and each of them have their own grievances to air about Cardinal Trios. He seems to have brought the monastic communities together, if not in the way he''d hoped."


    Sin barked out a laugh.


    "Saints, that bloody fool. He never ceases to amuse me. If he were just a little more intelligent then the old guard would abandon him, since the only reason they stand behind him is because he lacks the skills to outmanoeuvre them. He''s acted as their puppet for quite some time now, but if he really has been going around threatening monasteries in his spare time... yes, I can see that being very useful indeed as we go forwards."


    Spyridon nodded tentatively, still seemingly a little unsure of Sin''s plans, unsure or... or maybe that was fear?


    "Look, Spy. I know this is a lot to take in. Hell, even if you believe me without question I know for a fact that the implications of what I''ve trusted you with will still be ringing in your head for days, weeks, months to come, but you and I both know that this little fantasy of Adikos'' can''t last forever. It shouldn''t last forever. I need your help to get as many people to safety as possible, and to take down this whole fucking regime from the inside. It will take years of careful manoeuvring and work, countless hours of thankless labour, but by the end of it the Aegan Hills will be free once more!"


    Spyridon smiled softly. Sin looked at the man, and realised that he somehow had him hooked already.


    "It will be difficult, Sin. We won''t be able to communicate much."


    "Oh, but we will be able to! We''ll discuss a few things in the capital and pretend that we''re just coordinating our resources if ever Adikos or Admeta inquires as to our correspondence, not that I can see either of them giving a fuck. Besides, it won''t seem so bad when we have each other to rely on!"


    "So, the end goal is to return a sense of normalcy to Aegos. Why not go to the Imperator to the north-east? Avitus Thrax would surely welcome any aid in taking the rest of the old Aegan Republic for himself."


    Sin felt his lip curl up in distaste.


    "Two reasons: one, I was the one who stood beside Adikos on the field of battle and commanded the army that saw Imperator Thrax repelled. I sincerely doubt he has become so forgiving as to accept me into the fold with my head still attached to my shoulders."


    Spyridon raised an eyebrow, reclining on the plush cushions that lined the inside of the carriage.


    "And the second reason?"


    Sin felt his brow furrow into a scowl as his voice dropped in volume.


    "I''ll be dead and buried before I trust another fucking despot. No, we''ll bring the democratic way back to Aegos. That''s what we''re going to do."


    "Okay."


    Sin looked back up at his friend, more than a tad confused.


    "Okay? That''s it? No reservations, no protests, no trying to talk me out of this? Just ''okay''?"


    Spyridon smiled and nodded.


    "Yep. If there''s anything I''ve learned over the years of knowing you, it''s that you''re usually right in the end. You''re still overly dramatic and haven''t a scrap of common sense at times, but right nonetheless. Tell me what I need to do."


    Sin let out a sigh of relief. Spyridon really was still his friend, he was going to help, and there was a chance at victory here.


    "Right now? Nothing. Quite deliberately nothing. We don''t talk of this unless we know we''re alone, obviously, and if possible we don''t mention it at all until we leave Aegos and are on the road back. Now more immediately pressing is the fact that. as we''ve already seen, our elderly friend Trios has tried to have me killed once, and I doubt Ezekiel''s failure on the road will be the only such attempt on my life, so I need you to listen carefully here, okay?"


    Spyridon nodded intently, showing Sin that he had his full focus.


    "If I should die in Aegos, hell, if I should die at all before this plan bears fruit, ride straight to Athio. Your rank should get you into the city and the keep. When you''re inside, ask for Hawk. He''d been my batman ever since the heyday of the civil war, and has remained by my side ever since. He knows everything and is fucking good at his job. Trust in him, and understand that for all intents and purposes he''s your equal if I''m gone."


    Spyridon remained silent for a little while before speaking.


    "I wish you wouldn''t speak of your own death so casually, old friend, but I understand. If anything happens to you I''ll seek out this ''Hawk'' in Athio, and he''ll know what to do moving forwards."


    Sin nodded, reclining further and lounging on the cushions of the carriage as they hit a small bump in the road.


    "I forgot how much I hate travelling in these things."


    "Sorry friend," Spyridon laughed, "but you''re stuck in here with me for the rest of the trip. I suppose you could get in one of the carriages with the bishops if you''d prefer?"


    Sin gave an exaggerated shudder, delighting in the laugh that it earned from the other man. This was nice. Maybe this stretch of the journey wouldn''t be so bad after all? Saints, it had been a long day. He''d earned some respite at least. Aegos was still three odd days away, given how bumpy the road was and how much larger Spyridon''s retinue was than Sin was used to. It didn''t help that they were all moving at a snail''s pace, but to be honest Sin wasn''t that fussed. An excuse to hang out with an old friend and put off arriving in the capital for a few more days? That sounded good to him.


    <hr>


    Three days came and went, and now at last they were within the holiest, and the largest, city in all of Dathan. Angels, he''d almost forgotten how much he''d once loved this city. Resplendent walls of stone with marble columns and buttresses, the spires of the dozen churches and the three cathedrals, the ancient Senate building now being used as a palace by Archcardinal himself. He''d once loved it here, but no matter how much nostalgia this place held for him, it couldn''t live up to his memories. Nor could it match the dark majesty of Athio, for that matter; his beloved ''Sleeping City'' was held far closer to his heart than the rotten edifice Aegos had become these last few years.


    The carriage rolled to a stop outside the Senate building, and Sin squeezed his eyes shut as he mentally prepared himself to step into the vipers nest. A hand laid upon his own, and Spyridon gave him as much wordless encouragement has he could. As the man went to open the carriage, Sin reached out with his hand to stop him.


    "Spy, listen to me for just a few more seconds and then we exit. When we''re out there, you need to look uncomfortable around me, scared, even. I''ve only been able to do what I do for so long because of the reputation that surrounds me, and I can''t risk it falling apart because an old friend seems pleased to see me again. I need you to look uncomfortable. Do you think you can do that?"


    Spyridon nervously chuckled.


    "With all due respect, we''re to meet with Adikos for the first time in two years, and the last time I saw Admeta there wasn''t exactly a happy parting between us. Let''s just say I don''t think I''ll need to ''act'' uncomfortable whilst we''re here."


    Sin nodded back at him.


    "Good. Remember it, and act as formal as you can around me. I''ll also be acting like people expect me to. You just happened to bump into me on the road and offered me a ride, that''s the only reason I''m here."


    Okay, to be fair to myself, that''s hardly even a lie.


    "Understood, old friend. Good luck."


    With that the two of them schooled themselves, Spyridon''s movements becoming rigid and wooden as he opened the door to the carriage and stepped outside, holding the door to allow Sin to follow. Sin had to admit that he was impressed by how good Spyridon''s acting was. Maybe he wasn''t the only one polishing his acting skills off after all?


    "Cardinal Spyridon of Chytos, and Cardinal Sin of Athio."


    Sin surveyed the courtyard, cocksure grin in place as he nonchalantly stepped down from the carriage and met the eyes of a rather worried Cardinal Trios.


    "It is an honour and a pleasure to be back in this great city," Spyridon began, arms stretched out wide as though he meant to embrace the city as a whole, "I am confident that the growing pains our young nation has suffered through will soon be soothed by our collective counsel and cooperation. I am grateful to be a part of this gathering."


    Sin just about stopped himself from rolling his eyes at his friend''s display, instead languidly turning to look about once more.


    "The capital. I do hope the inquisition has been thorough in it''s job in my absence. If not, I can always step in to... assist those who may be lacking in conviction. I''d prefer if I didn''t have to; I have a great deal to discuss with my fellow Cardinals whilst I am in this city." He turned to look at Trios once more, flashing him a feral grin and tapping his cane twice on the cobbles. "A great many things indeed."


    There was the sound of footsteps entering the courtyard, and a familiar figure caught his eye. The one man he''d been hoping not to bump into yet was already here, less than a minute after Sin had been able to get out of the carriage. The tone of his voice held a level of piety, of fervour, that even Sin himself could never match. This man''s piety was turned towards a rather different end than saving the helpless, however. Adikos did not help the lost.


    He burned them.


    "I could not think of a more appropriate set of words to use on your return to this city, my child. Come, I would talk with you alone, Cardinal Sin. There is much we must discuss."


    Sin cursed internally. He''d been hoping to at least have a little time to reorient himself, to come up with a game plan for the inevitable meeting with Adikos, but it seemed there was to be no preparation time. Ah well; he had a freshly flagellated back, a bloodied discipline, and an explanation for each sin that would only serve to highlight his piety. He hoped.


    He could do little else but hope at the moment.

 Lore Chapter: The Sotenari Empire

    <u>Thirtieth Day, Second Month, 871 AD.</u>


    <u>Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.</u>


    <u>Kingdom of Teleytaios.</u>


    <u>Aenirhen.</u>


    <u>The River Keep.</u>


    My Dearest Lyk,


    It worries me so to read of your own observations. I will confess that having been away from my homeland for so long I have been left with little news of affairs within the Heptarchy, and so your letters are vital to ensure my peace of mind not only because I know that you continue to stand taller and taller in the face of adversity, but also because your observations of happenings both in Teleytaios and abroad have always been excellent, if somewhat cynical. Still, by the time this letter reaches you I will likely have returned home. If what you say is true then I will need to be home see Polaeros through to safety.


    Some of the things I have seen down here have beggared belief, Lyk. I have seen things I did not believe man to be capable of in this city, both in terms of majesty and cruelty. By the Angels, what cruelty! Half a million men kept as chattel on an island smaller than that of the Anatolikoi, some of whom are nothing more than living trophies kept as reminders of the conquests of the lost empire which once dominated the southern continent alongside the Kingdom of the Kikhepis. The level of cruelty required to ensure that the blood of long forgotten peoples survive in chattel for more than a hundred generations for no other reason than to gloat at them was something that, open minded as I may have needed to be on my travels, I was unable to stomach. This is not ''merely'' slavery, as deplorable as that may be by itself. This is sin of the highest order. No deity would condone this.


    I was able to find passage to Gorratar in the end, but I was unable to see my journey through. That is a place I shall never go, not after feeling such dread merely from looking upon its walls from a distance. I have seen many, many things in my travels, and have been to places of great danger. Long have I shunned the ideals of curses and the like, but that is one place no sane man should ever go. Let the jungle take it as it creeps north, let the savage tribes within tear it apart. That place should never have been.


    I am not ashamed to admit that even looking upon its walls gave me nightmares of what might lie within, but then the city is certainly strange; were they truly nightmares, or something more sinister? Premonitions, perhaps? I have spent several nights pondering this question, and am no closer to an answer. Either way it matters not, for I will never enter that accursed city.


    It is unlikely that we will meet again for quite some time, even longer than the normal interludes between our liaisons, but so long as we draw breath we shall never be apart. I will speak to you further below.


    The Sotenari Empire was once the foremost power of the world, with all the splendour that such a title brings. Before the Age of Silence, before the collapse of civilisation on the southern continent, Sothena was regarded as the centre of the world with the northern continent of Kliskorios being seen as little more than a backwater filled with squabbling barbarians and backwards city-states. It was the Sotenari that pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be an empire, of what it meant to rule, of what it meant to be human. Theirs was a nation built on the blood of slaves and the broken, on the iron fist of their legions and the gaping maws of the flesh-crafted abominations they kept by their side.


    It was a nation of war, plain and simple. Not war in the way that we understand it now, not wars fought with pitched battles and skirmishes. No. To the Sotenari a foe who fled and lived remained a foe, a foe who fought and died may become a martyr to their people, but a foe in chains?


    That was delightful.


    To them treaties, reparations, ransoms, and battles in their favour were not the marks of victory. The complete destruction of the foe, the eradication of their realms, the death of their religion and culture, the enslavement of every man, woman, and child? That was victory.


    Such a... unique way of looking at the world has, if nothing else, persisted into the present day amongst the remaining Sotenari. They have not waged war since their empire fell to ruin and the southern continent to anarchy some eight centuries ago, and yet they still maintain this belligerent attitude of superiority. I have heard whispers amongst the well-to-do in Sothettar, however. The wealthy in the last remaining city of the Sotenari people are tight lipped on the subject, but I am no fool. They are waiting for something, quietly preparing whilst the gaze of the world lies elsewhere. I know not what it is they plan, but I have noted that the Sotenari are more unified than most reports would have the world believe. Perhaps it is merely fancy on my part, but then strange things have happened of late.


    With a culture built around slavery is it any wonder that one of the most important institutions of their empire was the Slaver''s Guild, and that it indeed retains its position of prominence within the island-city of Sothettar?


    The Slaver''s Guild of Sothena is and was exactly what it proclaims to be; a guild of rich, influential men who dictate the terms of the slave trade in the Sotenari Empire, or what little remains of it anyway. At the height of its power it was so influential it actually controlled several large tracts of land across the empire, including the city of Gorratar, which acted as its de-facto capital.


    From within Gorratar sins somehow even darker than that of slavery were practiced; slaves, animals, umbra, and even dragons were forced into vile experiments at the behest of a small group formed by the Slaver''s Guild, whose true name has been lost to history. Now they are simply known as alchemists and sorcerers or, most commonly and damning, Fleshsmiths.


    Some of the creations of the Fleshsmiths were extremely successful, and aided the empire greatly in battle, such as the Wyverns or Ogyrs. Others broke free, slaughtered their creators and captors, then fled into the jungles that still makes up the central band of the southern continent. Many believe this to be the origins of the strange, grey-skinned men seen in the Apolean Jungle, but unless someone can enter the ruins of that accursed city and retrieve historical records or other texts, we may never know.


    The experiments of this group, as well as the vast wealth brought about from trading slaves across half a continent and abroad, meant that the Slaver''s Guild became the equal of the eight great families of the Octarchs, and the priesthood of the empire as well. The influence they held cannot be overstated, for every facet of public life ran on the work of the enslaved classes.


    Perhaps I am jumping ahead of myself by speaking of what is, and not what was. The story of the Sotenari people begins nearly four millennia ago, when the city-state of Zamettar opened its gates to the world and seemingly unending legions of iron-willed soldiers marched forth. The next three to four centuries would see this empire expand its borders and influence far and wide, crushing rival city-states and nascent empires underfoot and scattering their memories into the abyss. These centuries, known by their own people as the ''Centuries of Forging'', are long gone now. Most Sotenari scholars agree that the founding of Gorratar marks the end of the Centuries of Forging, the death-knell of that martial era ringing out even as the first of mankind''s attempts to play at being gods were brought kicking and screaming into the world.


    The most famous Sotenari conquest is likely that of the small Kingdom of Ereverry, immortalised in the Kliskorian church marching song ''Erevan Has Fallen''. The reason the destruction of this relatively minor kingdom is still known about today is due to the fact that this small kingdom worshipped a primitive form of what is now known as the First Saint, despite the fact that the man would not be born for nearly another two-thousand years.


    Of course, the golden age of man came to an end with the coming of the Age of Silence. The Sotenari may have had the single greatest military in the known world, backed up by perhaps the most expansive military-industrial complex, but they were far from unscathed. It is even known amongst their kind as the ''Age of Ending''. As with all other nations in the world, the Age of Silence brought about some of the greatest feats of ingenuity and endurance humanity has ever been capable of, and when combined with the vast resources at their disposal the Sotenari Empire did not disappoint.


    It was the Sotenari who dealt the Silence its first defeat on Sothena, shattering a host of moonborn and fallen on the fields of Demarar. It was the Sotenari who held back the tide for decades before faltering, and even as they did they lashed out in a most spectacular manner at the foe; the once-great cities of Byzgar, Methattar, Horattar and Horgar were all reduced to little more than rubble in this period, but still the Sotenari fought on. The east of their empire collapsed, and so what did they do? Well, the only thing they could do of course! They withdrew the remnants of their legions west, dammed the mouth of a dried-up riverbed, filled it with Sotenari Fire until the banks were fit to burst, then set it ablaze! The fires burned half a mile thick and more than two-hundred long for nearly a full decade, giving the remaining portion of their empire ample time to retrain their armies, educate their commanders, prepare their fortresses, and bolster their walls.


    The city of Gorratar itself became the sight of one of the greatest, and certainly longest, sieges in the world; for more than two decades the city of the Fleshsmiths was completely surrounded and a hundred miles deep in Silence-controlled territory, and yet it held out. Twenty years of gruelling siege warfare, of repurposing the dead to make their own monsters to fight the abominations at their walls. An entire generation was born, lived, and died under siege. Never once did they look over the walls of their cursed city and see gentle hills flowering in the spring, nor did the light of solaria shine upon their faces. Instead a sea of the daemonic and the damned greeted them wherever they looked, and yet still they held out. The tales of the Sotenari in this age stand apart even from the great moments of victory in Kliskorios, save perhaps the Battle of Breakspear, so awe-inspiring are their scope.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    After somewhere between one and two centuries the floodwaters did start to recede. The Silence was bested or otherwise retreated from the world of its own accord, and so mankind was left to rebuild. For the Sotenari this process was more difficult than most, for they were an ancient and proud people in a time where newer, more dynamic cultures and nations were better suited to rise. As the Klironomoi charged west from the Dathanian hills to reclaim their homes and found new cities, the Sotenari remained content to merely repair those major cities that still remained in the west. As the Terraneans parcelled out lands to those who had fought the silence and expanded their borders the Sotenari allowed their rich and greedy to seize the vast tracts of land that had once been privately owned but were now empty and fallow. The northern continent moved forwards, but the Sotenari stagnated, content to rot in their ziggurats and palaces.


    Eventually though, something had to give. The Sotenari Empire may have been a crumbling, rotting thing, but they were still a formidable power in their own right. The triumph of the Klironomean Barracks-Kings over the Terraneans and the intent of that dynasty to dominate the entire northern continent was something not even they could ignore, and so as the armies of a young King Harald II moved to finish off the Terranean rump-state his forbearers had made a legacy from trouncing, the southern empire struck. Ferrying several legions across the Ambyr sea they linked up with the Terranean armies and decimated the Klironomean forces, killing the young king in the process. When this was completed they turned on their erstwhile allies, slaughtering the surviving Terraneans and sacking the city of Tilda itself. At the end of their campaign they went home, content in the knowledge that no power would rise from the north to challenge them for many, many years.


    The absence of so many soldiers led to chaos at home, however. No-one is quite sure what started the anarchy, but soon enough the eight Octarchs were at war with each other, their religion had splintered into dozens of cults worshipping only one specific god from their pantheon each, and slave revolts wracked the empire from within. With all these factions facing off against each other and eventually fracturing themselves, it took less than two decades for the once-mightiest empire in the world to collapse into nothing. How could such a war be so devastating as to leave their entire continental empire silent? The answer is simple, and has been stated already:


    To win in battle is not victory to the Sotenari. Only by razing all that the foe once ruled over, by enslaving all who survive, is victory achieved in their eyes. When applied to their chaotic civil war, it does not take a genius to work out why their cities lie silent. Only Sothettar remained untouched, the Sotenari naval forces guarding the island and keeping it open to refugees, who just happened to be those wealthy enough to own their own merchant ships and ventures. Sothettar has grown larger than ever by feeding on the corpse of the empire that spawned it, but it now stands alone in the south. Their continental empire is gone, and they have had little interest in heading south to reclaim it these last few centuries. They would rather languish in their palaces above markets filled to bursting with human chattel than look south, for looking south would mean looking their failures in the eye. That is not the Sotenari way. Instead they have become the foremost naval traders of the northern world. There is little a man cannot find in Sothettar, and even less that he cannot lose.


    Standing proudly in the centre of the last city of the Sotenari are the eight pyramids. They are not the smooth-sided structures of the Nekhtoudum to the south, but rather resemble gigantic sets of steps. The insides of these pyramids are not tombs, but great and lavish palaces filled to the brim with golden fittings and vast works of art. They are beautiful and imposing, though one is unable to look upon it and ignore the uncomfortable feeling that all of this was built on the back of tens of thousands of slaves. In that way I suppose that makes them a microcosm of the city as a whole.


    Apart from the stepped pyramids the greatest structure in the city is the Palace of the Gods, a great and mighty ziggurat that stands apart from the rest of the city with its own religious settlement and walls surrounding it. It is the seat of the priesthood of the Sotenari, who worship their strange gods known as the ''Golden Court'', or the Dewan Talaei in their own tongue. According to their theology there are a hundred gold-masked deities within their pantheon, but of the hundred only the messenger-god receives worship anymore. This state of affairs appeared strange to me, and as such I researched this matter further. Apparently each of the cities that made up the ancient Sotenari Empire tended to only worship one particular deity from the ranks of their pantheon, taking them on as their patron. When the anarchy befell the southern continent only the patron god of Sothettar remained unscathed, and as such the remaining Sotenari upon their island home direct all their prayers to him in the hopes that he may see their prayers delivered to his kin.


    Fortunately for the Sotenari, the remaining god in question is the winged Messenger-God, and I can think of few other potential deities with the skills required to carry out such a task. I''m certain one better versed in the theologies of the world could see a message in that fact somewhere; something about their practices leading them to ruin, their arrogance leading even their gods to be ripped from them, but conclusions such as that are best left to those of a theological bent. I am content simply to see the situation as it is: the Dewan Talaei once contained a hundred golden deities, but of them all only the Winged Messenger remains, and now all prayers go to him so that he may deliver them to the correct deity. Given that each city tended only to worship one of the deities, the fact that only Sothettar remains means that only the patron god of Sothettar remains. That is the only conclusion I am interested in drawing from the facts at this point in time.


    The Sotenari military still relies upon its ancient and once battle-tested legions of freeborn soldiers backed up by masses of slaves, but no longer are their navies of warships outfitted with Sotenari Fire nor their armies with fleshcrafted abominations. This is because, and I am ashamed to say that the scientific part of my mind is disappointed by this fact, the secrets to such arts disappeared with the cities that housed them in the southern anarchy. Once great behemoths and monstrosities barely of mortal ken could strike down scores of enemies in mere moments, but now if the Sotenari wished to wage war they would need to fight it on a level playing field with the rest of the world. Mayhaps that is why they have not attempted an aggressive strike in so many centuries?


    One of the ancient and most storied traditions of the Sotenari people are that of their gladiatorial fighting pits. Whilst not as extensive as the old Terranean blood sports, the duels that take place between the fighters in this pit are legendary. The inaugural match between the first fighters, the very men who''s blood christened the colosseum, has raised the combatants to veritable demigods; the first fighters were a warhammer wielding Skraeling champion and a Terranean sword-dancer, two of the finest combatants to ever have lived. Their real names are unknown, but they are known now only by their fighting names; Stoneheart and Alpha. The Sotenari gladiatorial matches had their greatest colosseum in Sothettar, and so thankfully the history of this sport remains mostly intact. To honour their founders all gladiators forsake their name and take on a stage-name instead; I myself was able to watch a match between Blackrose, who fought like a Sotenari whipmaster, and Forder, who fought in the style of an ancient Nekhtoudum champion.


    Recently it seems that a new combatant is taking the ring by storm however; the Gilded Knight fights, as one might expect, in a way that suggest Klironomean heritage. If I return to this city one day, then I would be most pleased to meet with him.


    As a whole the Sotenari are a strange and at times contradictory people, and attempting to condense such a storied history within one passage was, in hindsight, an exercise in futility. Such an ancient people, much like the Nekhtoudum, cannot be reduced to a scant few pages on my own whims. Contained within this book will be the rest of my findings and writings on their lives, livelihoods, goals, and aspirations.


    And there we are, Lyk! The two largest civilisations of the southern continent squared away without so much as a year and a bit lost as a result! As alluded to at the end of the segment detailing my travels I intend to expand the written section out far further to look at more aspects of Sotenari life, both in the present and the past within their ancient empire. No look at them can be complete without mentioning another half-dozen factors after all, and as such the finished product will likely look far different to what has currently been put to paper.


    Thank you for your writings on Licotemos and Kortheros as well. They may be far closer to my own kingdom of birth, but you''ve always had your finger on the pulse of Klironomean politics more than I ever have.


    Your own work seems to be going well, or so I glean. As I predicted when we were younger, you continue to jump over administrative hurdles as though they were mere marks on the ground and maintain your grace and composure as easily as the hawk stays aflight in the sky. Though it will be some time before we next meet, likely several years, know that I will wake up everyday a little happier for I know I will be one day closer to our next meeting.


    I am admittedly a little saddened by your current duties taking you away from your occult studies, for the runes and glyphs you have provided me with are extremely fascinating indeed! I have been able to transliterate the last passage you sent me, though to you or I it will likely make little sense. It reads as follows:


    ''This ground-memorial skywards the first son. Shadow-edge we were called, sibling of shadow-body, yet forever closed-eyes under tear-eyed progenitor.''


    As I said, this passage makes little sense, but that is to be expected. With how ancient these glyphs appear to be there is no doubt in my mind that, as you posit, the meanings of some of these terms have either shifted greatly over time or else been lost entirely. If I could find places similar to the tombs of the Nekhtoudum kings of old then it would surely be a great boon, but no matter the depths of my research into this matter I have been unable to find another location with these glyphs and another language side by side. Perhaps the ancient ruins of the long-gone northern kingdoms could hold the answer, but those lands are not safe for our kind, not so long as the horse-lords reign over that region. Maybe the Greystones on Brythonia have something similar, but short of a full scale invasion and occupation of the Brythonic Isles there''s no way someone not of the druidic orders of that land would be allowed access.


    As it stands we both have more important things to worry about, though I am loathe to admit it. More important than our fancies and researching, even more important than what we mean to each other. It pains me to write that, but we are both men of duty, and I know you are not blind to that same truth. I do not fear us growing apart, nor do I believe you will fear the same, for there is only you and only me when it comes to matters of the heart, but it will be quite some time before we meet again. I hope what you see will not come to pass, but I understand your vision of what is to come. If war engulphs the Heptarchy once more then it will be you who sees the west to safety and prosperity once more, of this I have no doubt.


    I have been well these last few weeks, thank you for your concern in regards to my birth father''s illness. He is recovering fast, thank Polaris, though there are still fears that another bout of illness may claim him in the future. My cousin continues to ask me of you, but Ser Kyria is nothing if not inobservant. I do not believe he suspects anything of us, but I will be cautious in what I tell him. I do not believe he intends any ill towards you and is simply curious, but I understand how detrimental the sharing of private information can be amongst royalty.


    Remain ever in my thoughts,


    Prince Alekos Virgilos.

 Svaltha I: To Set the Trap

    <u>Svaltha I: To Set the Trap</u>


    <u>The Forth Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Isan''s Passage, Hoarsoil Valleys, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Well, she couldn''t exactly pretend to be happy with her latest assignment.


    Svaltha shivered a little as they continued making their way north. There was something in her mind that told her not to continue on this journey, but the senior Druids had assigned her this task and she''d be damned if she didn''t see it through to the utmost. Besides, it wasn''t going to be hard exactly. The worst part would be the waiting when it all went ''wrong''. Deliberately wrong of course, but wrong nonetheless. One of the elder Seers had seen a vision of two lesser Jotun stalking this roadway, and so they wanted her to be the bait in a little trap. Not to catch the Jotun, but to ensnare some puffed-up young warrior, the son of the Great Jaerl no less. She didn''t know exactly what he was like, but the elders had spent much of the last half a decade making overtures and showing deference to him in a feigned display of submission to make sure he followed their orders without realising it, and if they could get her by his side then they''d have a direct channel through to him at all times without the Great Jaerl suspecting a thing.


    Thinking on the elder Seers amongst the ranks of the Druids made her think of the reports they''d heard from the south. Apparently the coastal southerners had a Seer of their own in their palace, but whoever this Seer was they were certainly not counted amongst the ranks of the northmen. ''Powerful'' was the word on the lips of those traders who had made their way south and back, powerful but raw, powerful but secretive. Whoever they were, they were no ally of the Druids.


    Shaking her head a little she considered how much longer they might have to travel down this road until the Jotun caught scent of them. The giant folk did not scare her as they did most, for she had little reason to fear with the whispers of Krakevasil in her head, but nonetheless there was a sense of nervous anticipation slowly building in her gut. She trusted the elders, of course she did, and she recognised the value of effectively having the son of the Great Jaerl willingly puppet himself for them, but it still seemed rather calloused to send half a dozen guards and attendants purely so that they might be killed to draw in the son of the Great Jaerl; from what she understood the sense of gratification he got from the Druids seeking him out meant that he likely would have gone off into these hills and valleys to find her even without the proverbial sacrificial lambs.


    Still, the senior Druids knew what they were doing. If she played her part well she might even be made a Druid herself, rather than being forced to remain a Novice for another five years. She could probably spin things in her favour with her elders if they recognised that she was sound, that she could be trusted with such manipulations and schemes. She fully understood the need for caution where inviting outsiders into their plots was concerned, for it had taken almost three decades to get Scelopyrea in the state that it was and they were so close to the final battle, but she wished to stand amongst the ranks of her initiated brethren nonetheless.


    Did she not hear the whispers of her god within her mind as they all did?


    Of course you do, came a voice through the rustling of the leaves on the wind, I never leave my children.


    She smiled a little at the affirmation. She''d never doubted her god, but it was nice to hear nonetheless. It made sense if the druids didn''t want her involved any more than this, for to perfectly divide Scelopyrea in two the wheels had been in motion for almost a decade by the time she''d been born, but in a year or two there would be an apocalyptic battle on the ice between the two armies, a great and terrible shedding of blood that would make even the mighty Aenir run red. A goodly portion of all the soldiers, warriors, and fighters in Scelopyrea would die in a single tumultuous day, and by the end of it all the bloodshed would be so great that their god would find the strength to pull himself back together, to walk amongst them once more and lead them to the ultimate triumph over the treacherous Hedyn and Brythonian kingdoms to the west, as well as the soft, weak realms to the south. The age of kings and warlords would come to an end, and the age of the Druid would welcome all with a living god as its herald.


    The carriage bumped a little as it passed over a hole in the road. She''d hoped for a little rain to calm her spirits, but the clouds above refused to give up their water. There were still black clouds over the mountains far to the north, but she knew better than to try and question that.


    Her god wanted nothing to do with that darkness, whatever it was and for whatever hidden reasons he had.


    She jostled a little in her seat as the carriage hit another hole. Honestly, she fucking hated travelling by carriage. It was more than useful for slipping into a trance while on the road, but if the circumstances didn''t require it she''d much rather be riding on horseback than sat in a carriage like this. She hated the fact that she''d be required to play the defenceless damsel in distress as well; she recognised that the senior druids wanted the little warrior she was to ensnare to think that he was a dashing hero, and yes, that outcome was more likely if she didn''t lead the guards and kill the two giants on her own before he arrived, but it still felt humiliating to stand by and do nothing whilst other people fought for their lives around her.


    "Patience," she cautioned herself, willing her mind to slow, "these things are being done for a reason. Keep to their rules and you''ll find yourself rewarded."


    She huffed out a small sigh as she pushed aside her frustrations. Games such as this required one to bite their tongue and keep their pride in check, especially when the potential reward was so great. That was perhaps the one worthwhile thing they''d learned from the southerners; wars and battles were mighty tools indeed, but so to were plots and intrigue. Few outside the order knew that the druids had learned from outsiders, but there was one mantra that had been drilled into her ever since she''d been taken in by the order, a mantra that she knew for a fact came from those distant lands south of the Aenir: "The dagger in the dark beats the longsword in the light". A deadly mantra, and one with a great deal of truth behind it. Whatever most needed an army to do the druids needed only to send one person with a sacrificial blade and a mandate from the purest of their order. None would deny the druids their right.


    No one.


    It didn''t matter what they needed to do, for theirs was the will of the Raven-God. Krakevasil was a hungry god, and it was they who kept him fed. Whatever the price, it didn''t matter. Entire bloodlines had been ended, great unifiers of their people who came about less than once a century were spent with the same callousness as anyone else, and entire armies had marched into death traps with the assurances that all would be well, that victory was within their reach. The druids had orchestrated the deaths of scores of thousands, hell, probably hundreds of thousands, in the last few centuries. It was all for Krakevasil. It was all for the Raven-God. He was out there somewhere, wounded and cold, and it was they who would sustain him with the blood of others until he could take wing again.


    Their god would live again. He would turn aside his traitorous kin who decried his violence, who saw him as barbaric. He would have his revenge. The Raven-God would live again.


    The scratching at the back of her mind told her that her god was pleased with her fervour. Though that faintest of whispers never manifested itself, she could tell nonetheless. She very much wanted her god to be pleased with her. Perhaps, one day, she might even be able to ascend to the title of ''Purest'' amongst their order. Now that would be a most gratifying thing.


    There was a small amount of risk in this plan, she supposed. There was every chance that she wouldn''t be able to hide herself from the big bastards when they came down on their little caravan, or that her survival supplies would prove insufficient to keep her alive until she was rescued. It had to be done, however. If it wasn''t her then the seniors amongst the druids would simply try again with another promising young woman. When that had been pointed out to her by her mentor she''d immediately thrown herself at the task, steeling her thoughts and keeping what she knew to herself as much as she possibly could.


    Giants were... well, unpredictable creatures. This wasn''t because they were wild animals, nor because of some outlandish idea that their minds were unknowable to humans, but simply because they were just as intelligent as any man might be. Intelligent, free-thinking creatures were a hell of a lot more difficult to corral into a scheme than true animals were, and as such she''d have to mostly rely on chance to have the lesser Jotun in these hills act as she wished. All the possible steps had been taken to ensure they came near, of course. There was a cart filled to the brim with strong-smelling vegetables and herbs, and another two of strong alcohol just behind it. As many intoxicants as she could get her hands on had come along with this convoy, and as few people as possible to boot, so there should really be very little to keep the giants away if they caught scent of their convoy. She was admittedly quite glad that the greater Jotun were still unsighted; a lesser Jotun might grow large, yes, but their greater cousins could dwarf the castles of the southern folk and would likely swat aside her little convoy with contemptuous ease.


    She though a little on the fate of Jotunheim and shuddered. Small wonder the giants had fled far away after what had been done to them. It was rumoured amongst the large folk that the last survivor of Jotunheim still stalked the far north, but if Dragrr really was still out there then even his own kin hadn''t seen him in centuries. Now there was a figure that even her elders feared; the last surviving grandson of the first Jotun, the last survivor of the Burning of Jotunheim, and the last living memories of the civilised Umbra. If he really was still out there then he would certainly swat aside the realms of men on his lonesome, perhaps even surpassing Krakevasil himself in terms of raw power. She stilled herself. She''d just insinuated that something could be greater than her god. That was bad.


    Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work!


    It was the waiting that she hated. More than anything else, it was the waiting. What was she to do in this period of time, sleep? How could she, when she knew that two Jotun might come barrelling down into the valley at any moment. Pray? She saw little use in praying within a carved wooden box like the carriage she was in, and in her communions with her god she found that he felt much the same. No, it would not be prayer either. Her weapons were sharp, so she had no need to take a whetstone to them, the plans were burned into her memory and had never been written down, so there was nothing to practice reading with. There really was nothing for her to do.


    Reading wasn''t exactly her strong suit, but then there had been no-one to teach her. The druids saw no use in reading, preferring oral traditions and great poems to be recited instead. Similarly they hadn''t cared much for writing either, save only the occasional runic inscriptions. Runes were a useful tool for communication, especially since the letters of the southerners had found their way north and been taken up by most literate people. This meant that there were few left who could actually read the runes, meaning they were rather useful for coded messages. Aside from that, there was power in the runes. Oh, some called it little more than superstition, but there was power in them nonetheless. The right runes calling upon the right boons carved into the right substance could be very powerful indeed. She had the feeling she might be needing some of them soon enough, especially if the Jotun were ranging south once more, but she daren''t carve any herself without express permission from her elders first. Yes, the runes were an excellent tool for encoding messages, but actually trying to carve runes with the intention of gaining their protection, their strength? You needed to have a damn good reason unless you wanted the sacred elders to get more than a little annoyed at you for wasting the Raven-God''s time and power with trifling matters. No, best to leave such things to the elders and those who''d earned their permission.


    The knowledge that the Jotun were abroad again had left her a little shaken when she''d first heard it. The northmen knew the giants well, aye, and the northernmost tribes and settlements had occasionally made contact with the giant folk every so often through the long centuries since the Burning of Jotunheim, but the giants almost never left the mountains. Whether it was the northern Archic mountains or those peaks to the far north which shielded the Scelopyrene from what lay beyond, they never left the mountains. The fact that they had was cause for concern, as was the fact that they''d apparently been preparing their movements for quite some time without anyone realising. The druids were split on what to do with them, or at least they had been according to her mentor; half of the druids wanted to bring the giants to battle, to spill their blood alongside that of man''s and finish off the last of them when all was said and done, whereas others wished to settle them in their ancestral home and help them rebuild Jotunheim. The dragons were gone after all, so what could possibly remain to threaten a unified Scelopyrene-Jotun alliance?


    Nothing. There was nothing that could stand against them both.


    Whichever path the druids had decided upon she knew not. Such dangerous secrets were not given out to Novices like her, but it didn''t matter. Whichever path her masters decided upon, that was the way she would walk. There were risks on both sides, but either way the druids would end up on top. They always did. For centuries the druids had found ways to ensure that they were the rulers of Scelopyrea, no matter what the Jaerls and chieftains thought, and as such she knew that so long as she lived she would be on the winning side. That was all that mattered in the end; she didn''t care what she sacrificed, who she needed to kill, how many promising futures she cut short, for it was all in the name of a greater calling; it was all in the name of reviving a dying god, in the name of winning.


    She''d had enough of being on the losing side. She was going to make sure that she stayed winning from here on out, no matter how much of her pride she needed to swallow to ensure such events came to pass.


    <hr>


    A few hours later there was a deafening roar. It was a primal yet majestic thing, a symphony that promised violence upon those who heard it and inspired fear in all creatures for half a mile around. She felt a small pang of pity as the dozen people within her convoy began to panic at the unexpected assailants, guards grabbing their weapons and fearfully looking about at each other with terror-struck faces. She watched from out a small carriage window as the two giant figures bounded towards the convoy with great, loping strides, bellowing curses in their ancient language as around half of her attendants ran screaming for the hills, or otherwise cut their horses loose from the carriages and rode off. One cut his horse free and moved to gallop away, but his horse must have caught a whiff of the giants and reared up, crushing the rider down from the torso as it fell. She heard his sickening scream and the crunch of his legs as he went down, but then it was mercifully cut short as he passed out or otherwise died from shock. She wasn''t sure which it had been, because her field of vision was only as wide as the little window, but it was clearly one of the two.


    At that moment one of her retainers came to her side, opening the door and looking at her with frenzied eyes.


    "Svaltha, we need to leave! I''ve got a horse ready as the last few guards make their stand, please, we need to go!"


    She shook her head at Bera, the young woman staring up at her with panic and confusion.


    "Sorry, but I can''t. I need to stay here."


    "Have you taken leave of your senses? Quickly, we need to go! Please, come on!"


    The young woman grabbed her arm and tugged as she spoke, trying to get her to move. Svaltha was rather sorry for the no doubt inevitable death that would soon befall her attendant, after all, the woman was only trying to do her job and was braver than most seeing as she was still here, but sometimes people needed to understand that there was no choice to make. This was one such instance; the elder druids had already made all of the decisions for her when it came to being pressed to leave, and as such there she had precious little autonomy in this matter. Still, she thought, stopping her hand as it reached for the blade beneath the seat, there might be a better way I can use this without breaking the rules set down for me.


    "Bera, I''m giving you an order. Ride hard to the Great Jaerl''s camp, it isn''t far from here. Ride hard, and tell the druids there what''s happened. I''ll see you soon."


    Bera looked at her for half a second and was clearly about to argue, but a second, much closer bellow, shook her from such thoughts. She nodded once and then turned and ran, deftly clambering atop a large draft horse and setting off at a gallop as soon as the nearly-panicking animal was cut free from the cart.


    "Well," she said to herself, watching as her attendant rode away, "I hope my elders know what they''re doing."


    She jolted in her seat a little and clutched the blade to her chest as feeling akin to that of rolling thunder passed through her. She sliced open the palm of her hand and said a few words of reverence for her god. Krakevasil was not fond of cramped spaces, but he was less worried so long as blood flowed. He was a very forgiving god, after all. Besides, it couldn''t hurt to try and get in one last prayer in case this backfired and she really was killed. Even if he still wasn''t pleased about being made to look upon the inside of this little wooden box, there was little doubt in her mind that he''d remain angry when he gazed upon the feast that was to come. He''d waited three decades for this offering, and she didn''t want to keep him waiting much longer. No-one did. The Jaerls were all united, either under the Great Jaerl or his foe, the Eyvindottir, and all their forces would soon meet in one final, cataclysmic battle. The Raven-God would be pleased, so very pleased, and all they needed to do was push the two rival rulers just a little bit further. War was unavoidable, and if it was not, then the druids would make it so. Nothing would come between their god and his feast, but first she needed to entice this young warrior who would be sent to ''save'' her and make him think he was some prophesied figure beloved amongst holy circles. She just needed to hope that the giants remained drunk enough to ignore her until the right moment came about.


    <hr>


    Krakevasil, this is boring.


    It turned out hiding in a carriage from Jotun was a surprisingly dull affair. The sheer volume of intoxicants and herbs in the carriages surrounding her meant that neither of the big folk had smelt her, and the worst that had happened so far was that the carriage had broken its wheels and been half-ground into the dirt when one of the massive lugs had leaned on it and nearly lost his balance.


    She wasn''t afraid of admitting that, even with her prowess, she wouldn''t have been able to win this fight without help anyway. Without a score or two of fighters there was little she''d be able to do with the sacrificial blade in her hand. It didn''t matter though, since a score of men should be coming in a day or two. It all depended on how long it took her ''disappearance'' to filter back through to the Great Jaerl and for a rescue mission to be sent. She muttered out a small prayer as her opened palm bled onto the floor of the carriage below, beseeching her god to make sure that the warrior who came upon her was the one the druids wanted and that he was good enough to survive fighting a Jotun to boot. She wasn''t some damsel in distress or defenceless girl, she''d killed more than one man who''d made that mistake, but she felt no shame at all in admitting to herself that she was outmatched by the pair of giant men who towered over the carriages of their convoy. Already the two figures had taken all the convoy had carried before burning one of the carriages to start a fire for the night.


    Even if she wasn''t particularly afraid for her own safety, she was a little worried for the mission she was on. She didn''t want to die of course, but far more important than that was the fact that if she were to falter here then the grand design of the druids would have to be pushed back by months, perhaps as long as half a year! She had no intention of being a weak link in their scheme, nor did she wish to be the reason why her god''s eternal hunger remained unsatiated. She needed to make sure everything went exactly as planned here, or else the Krakewald would forever remain unavailable to her in death. Where was she to go when she died if not to that misty woodland trail, crawling with monsters to test her prowess?


    No. She would brook no failure from herself here. She would live, she would ensnare the son of the Great Jaerl, and she would ascend to the rank of Purest amongst the Druids when the time was right. She just needed to be patient and careful in the coming hours, and in time she would be rewarded. She slit her palm again and grounded herself on the soil now exposed to her. If she was to be waiting here, she''d much prefer to be making good use of her time. With a few muttered words and the taste of iron on her tongue she felt her eyes roll back in her head, her senses shutting themselves off as she offered herself in communion with her god.


    His voice may have been less than a whisper but, as always, he answered.

 K?til I: Jotun and Man, Mortal Both

    <u>K?til I: Jotun and Man, Mortal Both</u>


    <u>The Sixth Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Dyfed''s Warcamp, Hoarsoil Valleys, Scelopyrea.</u>


    The world north of the Einar was broken.


    Some called statements like that defeatist or pessimistic. K?til knew it as the truth. Winters were growing longer, summers were growing shorter, and the nights ever colder. Something was coming. The druids said as much when he''d asked them, but none of the stuffy old bastards would elaborate about anything, which was infuriating. Didn''t they know he was the son of Dyfed Ost?inson himself? The Great Jaerl of all Scelopyrea, opposed only by the Valkyrie-Queen in the east? Of course they did, for despite all their blustering he was their favoured warrior amongst his father''s court, but he digressed. Something was coming. The sun''s eye blinked shut longer and longer with each passing year, with each moon, and all knew it would soon fall to sleep once more as it had so long ago. Lakes and rivers were beginning to freeze over, and the land was almost constantly covered in permafrost.


    He clinched his helmet a little and secured his belt above his chausses, making sure each piece of equipment was tight enough to be secure, but loose enough so as not to be noticeably uncomfortable. Father had spoken about the prospects of peace with the Valkyrie-Queen again last night, but K?til had made sure to convince him not to throw away his credibility so soon. The druids claimed that the encroaching darkness could only be staved off by a sufficient offering of blood to Krakevasil, the Raven God, and where else was father to find a tide of blood to eagerly spill if not in the veins of his last and greatest foe? Father loved him dearly, but K?til made a note to keep himself quiet for a few days. The man had come close to a rage at his harsh words last night before he''d set out, and he didn''t want to risk usurping father''s authority in front of the assembled men of power so brazenly.


    The hauberk slipped over his head, coif and mitons following soon after. A surcoat found its way over the armour, though without any of the pomp of the arrogant southerners; a plain dark grey cloth, only a little darker than his mail itself, covered his chest and back. He checked himself over once to make sure he hadn''t forgotten anything. He''d forgotten his chausses once and had taken a pretty nasty blow to the leg later that same day. He was in no hurry to repeat that particular folly, for one long scar on his thigh was enough thank you very much. There were a few other bits and pieces to equip on his person as befitted his status, but they were trivial things that he wasn''t likely to forget anytime soon, and took but a moment to gather and put on.


    When all was said and done he was fully armed and armoured with a few spare weapons on his back and an expression of what he hoped was professionalism across his face. He gripped his helmet in his hands, aventail dangling beneath his arm as the cheek and face guards swayed ever so slightly while he stalked through the twisting paths of the war-camp. He was leading a score of mounted huscarls north towards a convoy of druids that had gone missing a few days ago, and given what the druids had said coupled with the reports of bellowed roars and men as tall as trees, K?til had no questions as to what had caused the disappearance of the convoy. Jotun. Lesser Jotun hopefully, but even so, Jotun. Well, he said hopefully, but he knew for a fact that it would definitely be a Lesser Jotun or two. After all, if one of their Greater cousins had finally come down from their mountains then there would have been a great deal more commotion than there had been already; a Lesser Jotun might grow in size to the height of half a dozen men, but a Greater Jotun could dwarf even the mightiest of pines or larches.


    "The men are ready, Chieftain. We await your command."


    K?til looked over at the voice and smiled, moving forwards to clasp his friend''s arm in a soldier''s greeting.


    "I am glad to hear it, Syren. Mount up; we''re setting out immediately."


    The man nodded as he stepped back, hammering a fist on his chest. The bones that lined his forearm and upper chest made an odd sort of clanking noise as they collided with each other, grating in his ears as the man walked away. Syren was a good man, his go-to second in command, and damn loyal to boot. His competence was never in question, but for a young man with so much promise to show so much loyalty in a time like this, a time when men''s loyalties seemed to shift just as easily as autumn snows? That was a most refreshing thing. Syren may have been more than a little odd, what with the extra accessories he''d made to his armour over the years involving a dead horse, a fire, and a great many hours of knapping, but they certainly gave him a unique presence. Besides, the man was good at what he did and true to a fault; K?til certainly wasn''t going to turn the his friend''s services away.


    Aside from all of that though, Syren was just a genuinely good person. Well, as good as one who killed and reaved for a living could be. Krakevasil help him, but K?til had even begun to rely on the man for a few small things, and he firmly believed that if his friend was able to survive until his twenty-forth winter then he''d earn the position of Huscarl Chieftain himself.


    He walked out into the courtyard with purpose and made to mount his barded steed, Syren only a few paces in front. He''d ridden the lengths of Scelopyrea these last few years, had seen battle and taken lives more than once, but this trip was to be something different. It there really were a few Jotun out there that had wondered down from the mountains... well, he''d always wanted a bit more of a challenge.


    "Come now, hunters of the north! Come on and find these giant bastards with me! Find and kill the fuckers!"


    A bravado-filled cheer went up from the score of men around him as he kicked his horse into a canter and made for the last known location of the druidic convoy. The hunt was on.


    <hr>


    The road wasn''t exactly a real road, more of a wide trail beaten into the dirt and frost-covered vegetation of these lands, but it served its purpose well enough. The land was silent and empty of life save the occasional scattering of birds that took wing as the thundering of twenty sets of hoofbeats neared the little creatures, but he wasn''t surprised by the lack of life in these parts. Scelopyrea had always been sparsely populated, but the wars of both his father and the Eyvindottir as the two of them vied for power and influence over the last remaining neutral holdouts had done a number on what few farmsteads were left that had been able to eke out a miserable existence up here. K?til had little sympathy for them, hardy though he had to admit they were; northmen were supposed to take what they wanted, to reave and plunder to make their living. It was blood and war that the Raven God wanted, not peaceful homesteads growing hardy crops in half-frozen fields. Father might not have seen that, but the druids did. Oh, what things the druids had seen.


    They liked him, the druids. That''s why they''d asked father to send him personally to find their missing convoy. They didn''t like making requests of any Jaerl, even less the Great Jaerl, but he was special. That''s what they''d always told him, anyway. They''d cast their bones, read the signs and portents in the stars at night, and had seen what he would do. ''Great things'' were all they would tell him of the specifics, but he didn''t need to know any more than that. Greatness was in his future, and if helping out the druids here and there meant that they''d continue to tell of his destiny then he''d do it without a second thought.


    After all, he''d never wish to offend one who had the voice of a god in their head.


    He slowed his horse a little, patting the side of her neck, and looked around as they approached a clearing. If he remembered the route he was supposed to take then this put them less than half an hours ride from the site of the convoy. Well, the last known sight of the convoy anyhow. If the Jotun had gotten up to their usual fare of glutting themselves on the alcohol that had been transported in the wagons then they''d almost certainly have remained in the area. After all, going back up to the thin mountain air with a hangover never seemed to sit well with the big bastards. Heh, that still felt weird to think about. If anyone would have told him ten years ago that he''d be intimately aware of the practices of Jotun then he''d have called them mad. That''s just the way things were nowadays though; old certainties were melting away like summer ice, and a new world was being birthed before their eyes.


    He stopped himself from carrying on down that trail of thought, unsure where it had come from. There were more important things to worry about at the moment than his own pseudo-philosophical thoughts.


    "Right boys," he said as he turned a little to look at the men around him when they pulled up to a stop in a clearing, "ignore the stories your grandmother used to tell you about the giants, ''cause they ain''t cannibals. They won''t eat their own, and they won''t eat you. More than that, these fuckers don''t eat meat at all, so don''t worry about ending up as their dinner. What you do need to worry about is keeping a good read on your horses; the scent of a Jotun can make even the sturdiest mount falter and rear. I''ll not have a man dying on the trail before we even meet the bastards ''cause he couldn''t keep a hold on his reins and dashed ''imself on a rock."


    There were a few snorts and chuckles at his comment, but he did notice one or two of the younger huscarls nervously patting their horses'' manes already. Well, I guess it can''t hurt to be cautious.


    "We''ve got no clue how many of them there are, nor if they''re armed or armoured. We don''t know if they''re even still there. What we do know is that all twenty of us will be coming back, ''cause I don''t plan to lose anyone to an overgrown frothing lunatic. Now get moving again; we''ll be on them come the evening, and I don''t want to let it get dark while we''re out here with them. They''ve got shit eyesight, but an unmatched sense of smell. They''ll have the advantage come nightfall, but the day belongs to man so let''s make the most of it. Ride on!"


    He''d judged the time well, for within thirty minutes the score of men broke out of the trail and found themselves looking down into the valley where the Jotun lay. There were two of them, which was less than he''d been expecting but in all honesty more than he''d hoped for. He looked at the leaves on the trees around them, watching carefully at which way they blew. He didn''t want to be downwind of the big fuckers yet, not if he could help it. Satisfied that they weren''t yet likely to alert their quarry he looked again at the men around him and gestured for them all to dismount.


    Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    "Tether your horses to the trees. If they were out in the open I''d order a charge on horseback, but as it stands with them still in the dense wreckage of the convoy we''ll have to negotiate the terrain on foot. Boys, we''ll ditch our Longshields here. They won''t do shit against a man that large and ''ll only serve to slow us down. Syren, sound off on weapons."


    His trusted right hand didn''t even need to look around to answer the question, probably having known such a query was likely even before they''d set off.


    "Including the two of us you''ve got ten poleaxes, seven bardiches, and four greatswords. Javelins and throwing axes as well, of course. How do you wanna do this?"


    "We need to split in two. Syren, take ten men and take the one on the left, I''ll lead the other nine around to the right for the other. Keep them separate and unable to help one another; isolate them then strike ''em dead."


    "As you command, Chieftain. You lot, with me! You heard him, so step to!"


    The men bustled around him and his second in command, checking their weapons over as well as their armour one last time, knowing that in a few moments they''d be staring up at giants.


    "Good luck, Syren."


    "Yourself as well, boss."


    With that the men split into two loose groups and marched down to face the giants below. The two of them sniffed the air, looking around a little before their gazes settled on him as he strolled out in front of the men he was leading, languidly carrying his greatsword over his shoulders.


    "You''re a long way from home, Jotun!" He cried out. "Who''re your kin? From which tribe do you hail? The Stonetrees? Mistsons?"


    "Snowborn." Came the one-word response from the giant closest to him.


    This gave K?til a moment of pause. Snowborn? But then these Jotun would be... Krakevasil, the Snowborn hadn''t been seen outside their peaks in a generation, let alone this far south!


    "Then you have come a very long way indeed! I would know why, half-men!"


    The insult at the end of his question made the giant that had previously spoken bristle, whilst his partner looked at him in confusion. It seemed that only one of the half-umbra knew the Scelopyrene language well enough to hold down a basic conversation.


    "I answer many questions, small man." The giant replied. "Why do I need answer more?"


    K?til shrugged nonchalantly at the creature.


    "I don''t know, but you''ll answer me anyway. Why are you so far from home? Were you exiled from your tribe?"


    The giant let out a rumbling laugh at that, but it sounded like a hollow and mirthless thing.


    "Not exiled, small man. Your kind will not understand for many years yet."


    Something in the giant''s tone caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up, and gave him that strange scratching feeling he got behind his eyes whenever something dangerous was coming. He called out again, this time more than a little curious and confused.


    "Tell me regardless! Why come south now after spending so long in the far north! What drives you, making you come south!"


    The giant let out an annoyed huff. It seemed K?til had all but used up the patience that the creature possessed.


    "Seasons come and go, little man, and what once was will be again. You cannot stop it from coming; the seasons are turning upon the wheel of centuries, and winter comes for us once more."


    "Winter comes every year, oafish creature!"


    The huge man rumbled out another mirthless chuckle.


    "Your kind forget much, little man. But we do not. Our kind are cursed to remember what you forget. You will talk no longer. We fight."


    K?til licked his lips a little in anticipation, deciding in the spur of the moment that a pair of giants really could be quite useful to his father.


    "Are you certain you wish to fight? My father is a strong and powerful man, he''d see that you had all the mead and goat''s milk you could want."


    The giant men looked at him with contempt, brandishing their weapons and sneering as they challenged him in their guttural tongue. Guess that tells me what these ones think of mankind, then. One carried what looked like a tree stripped of branches and bark, some sort of massive caber, whilst the other carried a colossal sword twice as tall as K?til himself.


    "You come, Son of King." The sword-wielding giant bellowed out, sniffing the air mightily once again. "You come face us, or prove yourself weak."


    "Far dath tauma Bairn Liard-Liard. Hrethnar visa starhal, blodspa shicowl."


    The Jotun with the sword looked over at his kinsman and translated the guttural rumblings as best he could with his seemingly primitive grasp of the Scelopyrene tongue, levelling his truly massive sword at the score of armoured men.


    "He smells the magic on you, Son of King. Hrethnar looks down and at you from sky-palace. He grins."


    Hrethnar. The Jotun''s name for the Raven-God. K?til grinned at that; even the giants could smell the admiration that the god of slaughter had for him, and so could anyone ever truly doubt his destiny?


    "Then I will not disappoint him. You will be dead before the day is over, shadow-spawn!"


    "Heh. We are not of shadow, little man. We have seen the shadows, and they are what you should truly fear. They''re coming, little man. Will you be ready?"


    K?til raised his sword, not wishing to humour any more of the clearly deranged creature''s ramblings, and charged forwards. The men behind him followed dutifully, one or two men hesitating a little before joining the charge but still joining nonetheless. They were good men, brave men, and it was a pity to know that many would be dead before the night came.


    He''d never fought a Jotun before, but as he would later come to appreciate it seemed to be a rather simple dance. The big bastards were strong, strong enough to kill a man with a single blow, and so the important thing was to avoid being hit. They weren''t slow per-se, but they were far from swift, and so whilst it was a little hard to avoid their attacks once they were in motion it was, if difficult, certainly possible to make sure that one was able to make sure one wasn''t in the monster''s swinging arc. Del went down first, the grey-haired huscarl being cleanly bisected by a single swipe as small rings and scales of metal flew everywhere. Char was next, crushed to a pulp by the pommel of a sword several times larger than he was. It was a damned shame, since the young man had been a fairly good drinking partner these last few weeks.


    Despite the deaths of a few of his compatriots K?til had to admit that it wasn''t going as poorly as he''d feared. The giant was fierce, yes, but there were only so many people he could concentrate on at once. When one man was targeted the rest moved in from the sides and the rear to slash at the creature''s legs with the hope of bringing it down. When Krai suddenly leapt forwards with greatsword in hand K?til thought that the one-eyed warrior must have finally gone mad, but he was able to dive past the colossal hand that swiped for him and drove his sword into the knee of the great creature. An almighty fist crashed into the man, and K?til watched him get sent flying back some twenty paces from the force of the blow before he rolled back further on the frost-covered dirt. K?til hoped the mad bastard would live, if for no other reason than the half-blind fucker''s deeds would make for the subject of much drinking when they all got back. At the moment though he couldn''t spare more than the briefest of moments to think on that, for he needed to capitalise on the new opening that his friend''s reckless, stupid, and fucking awesome move had just revealed to him.


    As the first Jotun fell to one knee and was momentarily distracted by the pain K?til leapt onto it''s back and began to scramble to the top of the giant creature''s form, no easy feat in a full battle dress, slashing at a great pawing hand as it haphazardly tried to swipe him off. When he at last reached the head he raised his sword point-down with both hands before plunging downwards with all his might, allowing his weight to fall with the blow and drive the blade as far into the creature''s head as he possibly could. The jotun gave an almighty groan as the last of the air left its lungs before collapsing to the ground, dead before it hit the floor.


    K?til lay where he fell for a moment, chest heaving in exertion and armour painted with the brains of his colossal foe.


    The second giant gave a guttural roar of rage before battering aside half a dozen good men to reach him when the last of the air left the dead one''s lungs. K?til''s eyes widened as the creature barrelled towards him faster than anything that big should be able to move, and he was just about able to roll out of the way of the great club as it arced to land where he had just been. Something must have hit him a little however, for he felt more than slightly winded. He lay there for a moment, panting into the dirt, before one of his men turned him around and hauled him to his feet.


    "We need some more of that, Jotunslayer!"


    Syren smiled a wolfish smile at him and pressed his sword back into his hands. K?til hadn''t even realised he''d dropped it in his tumble from the neck of the beast, but he was glad to have it back nonetheless.


    "Come on then you big fucker! Let''s have you then!"


    And with that he ran back into the fray.


    <hr>


    Six dead. That was a hell of a lot better than he''d been expecting. He''d talked a big talk when they''d been on the road, but that was all just bravado. At no point had he expected to lose less than half the men with him, but here he was with only six dead and three wounded. Syren had taken a nasty knock, but seemed fine after a once-over. K?til trusted the man to know his limits, so he wasn''t going to push the matter any further. They''d done their jobs, killed the Jotun, and saved the druid. All that was left was to get back to father''s warcamp. By the time the second big bastard fell there must have been a dozen javelins in his back, not to mention a score or more of the small throwing axes. Gods, but they were tough buggers.


    "Chief! Boss! Come ''ere, you''ll wanna see this!"


    He looked up at Syren who was waving at him from one of the ruined carriages that had been in the convoy and raised an eyebrow at him. Most of the men had taken their helmets off since then, and all had been hard at work doing one thing or another. A few were feeding the horses, a couple were tending to the wounded, and yet more had formed a small pyre for the slain to be burned on, Jotun and northman both. As for K?til, he was content to simply clean the blood off of the weapons of his men. He wasn''t going to use his position to avoid work after all.


    "On my way now, Syren. What''ve you found?"


    "There''s a live one here, boss! One of them Druids we was sent out to find!"


    At that he hurried to his feet and all but ran over to where his friend was stood. Sure enough, there seemed to be a young Druid within the sunken, half-collapsed wooden wheelhouse.


    "Can you hear me? Are you alright?"


    She did not respond or move, but something in the back of his mind told him that the Druid was just fine. How he knew that he was unsure, but he knew it all the same. Syren snapped his fingers in front of her a few times, but still she did not react. K?til sighed.


    "Right, let''s get her out of here and onto one of the horses, see if we can''t get her back to the warcamp. The Druids there will be able to look out for her."


    Syren nodded at him and moved to hoist her up, pulling an arm over his shoulder and carrying her outside. When she''d been moved out K?til got a good look at her, and saw exactly why she wasn''t responding; he''d seen Druids in trances before with their glazed-over expression and milk-white eyes, and this definitely fit the bill.


    "She''ll be completely unresponsive until she comes to. Until she does I don''t want anyone disturbing her, understand? Any man that tries to interfere in a communion between a Druid and the Raven-God deserves exactly what''ll come to him. She''ll come around soon, I know it, but until she does we leave her be."


    The men around him nodded their acquiescence, none of them wishing to impede whatever conversation she was having with the voice of Krakevasil. Syren gently set her down outside, then sat down next to him.


    "So, ''Jotunslayer''. How do you like that one, boss?"


    K?til grinned at his odd friend.


    "Not bad. Not bad at all. A pity about Krai."


    "Oh no, he''ll be fine. Broke most of his ribs, but not too badly I don''t reckon. A couple of the lads ''ll help him ride back where he can get looked at properly, but he should live."


    K?til blinked in surprise.


    "Should live? How in the name of... the man took a blow from a Jotun directly to the chest."


    Syren shrugged, still smiling.


    "I mean, remember how he lost his eye? I honestly thought that Nester was gonna do him in, but... well, I didn''t think it was possible to bite though their beaks before, but he certainly proved me wrong on that one. I think I still have some of the shards somewhere."


    K?til shook his head while smiling, huffing in amusement.


    "You''re one strange motherfucker sometimes, you know that, right?"


    "Oh yes boss, I''m more than aware. Wouldn''t be wearing armour with half a dead horse on it if I was normal."


    K?til rolled his eyes and returned to cleaning the weapons of his men. Fuck, it had been a hell of a day, even if it hadn''t really lasted that long. Still, he was certain he''d be back on the road soon. He hoped so, anyway.


    Jotun weren''t the only Umbra that prowled these lands after all, and the Umbra weren''t the only things that wished them all dead.

 Svaltha II: To Ensnare an Eagle

    <u>Svaltha II: To Ensnare an Eagle</u>


    <u>The Seventh Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Isan''s Passage, Hoarsoil Valleys, Scelopyrea.</u>


    She wasn''t sure how long it had been when she came to. It might have been a few hours, could have been half a week, but regardless of how long she''d been in a trance she was still alive.


    Alive, and not where she''d been when she''d first slipped into her trance.


    There was a man next to her wearing some of the most bizarre looking armour she''d ever seen, with what looked like animal bones over steel. She curled her lip up in disdain and confusion.


    "Who the fuck are you?"


    The man bolted upright, apparently having been half-asleep, and looked at her as though she had grown three heads. He immediately jumped to his feet and cupped a hand around his mouth.


    "BOSS, SHE''S UP!"


    At that there was the sound of pattering feet, surprisingly light for a man in heavy armour, and a figure she''d seen before in fleeting visions appeared before her. She stifled a smirk before it had a chance to appear on her face. Perfect.


    "Holy druid, I thank the Bloody One you''re alright. We would have set off by now, but we did not wish to disturb you whilst you were communing with the Lord of Slaughter."


    Svaltha rolled her eyes.


    "You are K?til, the son of Dyfed, are you not?"


    He nodded at her respectfully, if in a manner that displayed more than a little egomania.


    "Indeed I am, holy one. Tell me, do you wish to make for my father''s warcamp?"


    She huffed a little at the uneasy politeness in his tone.


    "Put away the pleasantness and attempted deference, you''re clearly not good at using it."


    The boy blinked at her a few times, apparently surprised by either her informality or acerbic tone, perhaps both, before grinning at her.


    "Well, that''s certainly more my sort of interaction. Right, here''s what we''re going to do," the warrior cupped his hands to call out to his men spread out across the valley, "BOYS! GRAB UP YOUR KIT, GET THE WOUNDED ON HORSEBACK, AND MAKE READY TO HEAD FOR HOME!"


    She winced a little at his volume, then took a moment to look around at what had once been the convoy she''d led. There was a pyre set up using the remaining intact pieces of the carriages and carts as well as all of the little shards of wood that had splintered away, and on top of it lay the bodies of seven humans and two Umbra. Guess they got them.


    "Seven of your men died, then?"


    K?til nodded grimly at the pyre.


    "They did. We had six die in the fighting and one more from his injuries afterwards. You see Krai over there?"


    He pointed at one of his men who was being supported by two others. She nodded twice, gesturing for him to continue.


    "I wouldn''t be surprised if he''s dead come the end of the day as well. A mighty swing from one of the Jotun broke just about every rib he had. A damn shame really, he''s a fine mate to have at your back. Ah well, more''s the pity I guess. Not much can be done unless he gets back to the warcamp, so we''ll just have to hope for the best on that front."


    She nodded at the warrior and gestured towards the two slain giants.


    "Who got them?"


    "Me, in the end." The young man gave her a toothy grin. "Sword through the skull of one, then me and the boys got the other one bleeding out until I could give it a mercy stroke."


    "Krakevasil preserve me, you''d better not let that go to your head."


    The son of the Great Jaerl barked out a laugh at that, deftly mounting his horse. He stopped after a little while and looked almost confused, as though he were struggling with something he didn''t quite understand.


    "Strange though, to see them so far south."


    Svaltha raised an eyebrow again.


    "It''s uncommon to see Jotun this far south, yes, but not that strange. The giant folk have been ranging down here with increasing regularity this last decade. There are few inland traders up here who haven''t seen them anymore."


    "Yes," he started, still looking mildly disturbed, "but not Snowborn. Never the Snowborn."


    That comment took her aback.


    "The Snowborn? Not the Stonetrees, not the Smithsons, but the Snowborn? That can''t be right, their homeland is nearly eight-hundred miles away. What next, are you going to tell me the Fjordbairns are on the move as well?"


    Though he did seem to somewhat enjoy her acerbic comments, something about this situation clearly didn''t sit right with him.


    "Not their homeland, that was burned centuries ago. Semantics aside that''s what I thought as well, but they told me they were from the Snowborn. They hinted at a few things here and there, said our kind wouldn''t understand why they were moving for many years yet, but... but then why are the Snowborn on the move?"


    She stilled herself a little as the young warrior looked off into the distance, then shrugged to herself. She''d consult her peers when she was made a full Druid to see if they knew anything of these happenings, but for now they were of little use to her.


    "As enlightening as this is, how about we get going to your father''s camp? Provided we''re not too far away do you think we''ll be able to make it before nightfall?"


    K?til seemed to shake himself from his thoughts and then grinned at her again.


    "A sound idea. Mount up, boys! Syren, make sure some of the lads take the reins for the riderless horses, but leave one for our holy friend here. Can you ride, girl?"


    She scoffed at him.


    "Better than you can, and that''s not in doubt."


    The boy raised an amused eyebrow at her in response.


    "In that case you''d better mount up as well. We''ll be back at the warcamp before dawn."


    <hr>


    She heard him again when they were riding along a small trail to the warcamp, apparently the route that the men escorting her had taken to get to the caravan to begin with. His voice was the faintest whisper on the wind, the lightest possible touch upon her head, but she heard it all the same. His voice was that of driftwood on the tide, waxing and waning in her mind with every moment she lived. To her he was but the faintest whisper, but she knew that to the elders his commands were as booming thunderclaps in the mind, as loud and belligerent as any Warchief and yet so soft and gentle at the same time. Her god was a litany of contradictions, and she was so very grateful to be blessed enough to hear his voice in her head. Even so, it did mean that she was a little... distant, sometimes. Preoccupied, even. Take now, for instance. She hadn''t even noticed the arrow in her horse''s flank until it tumbled down to the floor with her atop it.


    "Death to the false Jaerl! Death to Dyfed! In the name of the Eyvindottir!"


    Almost in an instant K?til was dismounted and at her side, longshield out in front of him in such a way that covered the majority of her body. He was stooped a little, ducking under his shield, for with the sudden nature of this ambush he hadn''t had the time to put his helmet back on.


    "Dismount!" He cried to his men. "Dismount and kill the fuckers! For the Great Jaerl!"


    "For Ost?inson!" Came the scattered rallying cry from the men escorting her, each man who could dismounting and readying their weapons.


    She didn''t like to admit it, but K?til had done the right thing here. She didn''t want to stroke the ego of a young man who''d doubtlessly spent most of his life in the spotlight alongside his father, but he''d made the right choice. Men on horseback would be useless through this narrow woodland trail, the thick brambles and undergrowth making footfalls a certainty for their steeds and thus limiting their manoeuvrability a great deal. Better to have the men bunched up on foot, all the better to protect each other from their assailants.


    "There, beyond the treeline!"


    The shouted exclamation came from the man she''d interacted with when first awakening, one ''Syren'' if she had his name right. A good pair of eyes he must have had as well; there were indeed figures moving through the treeline from the direction of the shouted warcry.


    "If you''ve got a shield, try to protect your brothers! Look at how they move; they''re hunters, not warriors or raiders! The javelins will fall like rain soon enough, so make ready!"


    Those who had shields moved to follow his orders, covering their comrades as best they could whilst those without instead readied whatever javelins and throwing axes of their own they had to hand.


    Ammunition whistled through the air, both parties throwing their weapons with deadly precision. K?til would not risk moving from his position of protection over her, and so instead simply did his best to catch whatever was thrown towards them on his shield. A javelin went a little wide, impaling the already injured flank of her horse who protested with a great deal of whinnying and ineffectual kicking as it writhed in pain. More were thrown, caught on the shield of K?til who dug his feet in and did his best not to be moved as the heads of two went directly through the wood of his shield and embedded themselves several inches out the back, ending up really rather close to the young warrior''s face. A throwing axe found its way next to them with a ''thunk'', but whilst it seemed well and truly stuck in the shield at the very least she could not see its head peeking through the other side.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "Is anyone gonna throw any of the fucking things back at them, or do I have to do everything around here?!"


    "On it, boss!"


    With that little exclamation she watched as Syren deftly moved to pick up a discarded javelin from the man next to him, appraised its weight briefly, then moved it into a throwing position and let it fly with deadly precision. The javelin flew through the air at great speed, burying itself deep into the chest of one of their assailants and knocking them straight backwards. K?til let out a hearty laugh as the hunter fell to the ground with a strangled gasp of shock.


    "See, now that''s more like it! Come on, if the bastards don''t wanna get in close then we''ll have to play by their games, so lets see some more of that! Anyone got any idea how many of the bastards are out there?"


    "Somewhere between a dozen and a score, chief!"


    She watched as K?til nodded, seemingly out of habit since the man couldn''t really see him very well, and barked out a few more orders.


    "We''ve seen the worst of their javelins now I think! I want throwing axes ready for a counter-loosing and then blades out! We''re all in chain, and they''re in rags and furs! Let''s get the feckless supporters of the Valkyrie-Queen! Death to the Eyvindottir!"


    "Death to the Eyvindottir!"


    Svaltha had to give K?til one thing; his men certainly seemed to like following his orders. They weren''t all that impressive when one had already seen the Jomsravens in action, but they were certainly good nonetheless. She supposed the difference was that whilst the Jomsravens may have been the greatest heavy soldiers the north could offer, they acted only on the orders of the Druids. On the orders of particularly high ranking Druids. They''d never get involved in a petty squabble like this, small skirmishes between two warring parties who were no different than one another and blinded by bloodlust. No. The Jomsravens would have been far better in making sure this situation had never happened at all.


    As it stood however she did not have the Jomsravens by her side, but she did have this little party. They would do for now. Looking around she realised that she must have gotten lost in her own head again, for now the enemy were amongst them. Well, she said the enemy, they weren''t really her enemy even if they were trying to kill her, simply the other side of the balance that the Druids had set up.


    K?til caught a number of blows on his shield from a skinny man with a pair of axes before almost effortlessly cutting him down. Twice were throwing axes sent hurtling towards him, and twice did they embed themselves into his shield. Said shield, which must now have been extremely unwieldy due to the number of axes and javelins stuck within it, was discarded on the floor, the young man opting to rush into the fray with a bellowing warcry. It seemed that, in this instance, the apple had not fallen far from the tree.


    Looking around she saw more than one of K?til''s men join him in his mad charge forwards, but their opponents were hunters, not warriors, and as such the majority slipped away into the woods. A few remained, trying to fight on, but they were cut down almost effortlessly. The men here were wearing heavy chain, and the hunters were not. That was all that her god cared for in bouts such as this.


    Looking down at her own sacrificial blade at her side she contemplating jumping into the fray when the hunters inevitably decided to counter-charge, but such things were, strictly speaking, against her code as a member of the Druidic order. That being said, they did attack me first. They didn''t know who I was, but if I''m only acting out of defence...


    With that thought in her mind she clambered to her feet and forced herself to focus on her surroundings instead of the faint whisperings of her senses. Krakevasil would understand; a god of war would always forgive his followers for spurning his voice so long as it was with the goal of killing the foe, for any who didn''t were foolish in the extreme.


    Less than ten seconds after the hunters had begun to slink back into the forest there was the sounding of a horn in the woods, and a fresh group of hunters rushed forth with blades at the ready. In an instant they were amongst the beleaguered huscarls of K?til''s force once more, though miraculously the only casualty amongst the defenders seemed to be two of the already wounded men who had been supported by their comrades from the caravan to this point. It seemed a pity that they had died here and not when fighting the far greater foe that had slain many of their number back at the caravan, but such was the way of battle.


    She watched as K?til gripped a woman''s throat and jammed his sword down through the nape of her neck, unaware of the man charging towards his side with a spear aiming squarely at a join in his armour. She launched herself at the man as fast as she could move, deftly knocking the strike off-balance with a flick of her blade before ramming the hilt into the man''s nose as forcefully as she could on the rebound, delighting in the crunching sound it made as he fell. She quickly moved around to his side as he clutched his broken nose and opened his throat from behind, his body dropping to the floor like a marionette who''s strings had been cut. Maybe she could allow herself to join the fight. Just a little bit.


    Looking back at K?til she found him staring at her in... well, it looked like a mixture of surprise and gladness, as well as something else she couldn''t quite identify. He stared at her for a few seconds before grinning, offering his hand out and pulling her to her feet.


    "I knew I liked you for some reason. Come on then, let''s get the rest of the fuckers; I''ll watch your left-"


    She finished his sentence for him, a grin of her own coming over her face.


    "And I''ll see to your right. Sounds like fun to me. Come on then pretty boy, "


    Maybe she wasn''t really supposed to take part in violence between polities like this, but it was just so fun. This was what she enjoyed; she might have been really rather good at plotting and scheming, but fighting was far more enjoyable. Besides, if any of her superiors inquired she''d just say that fighting at K?til''s side helped her earn his trust. If the grin he was sporting on his helmetless face was anything to go by then that wasn''t really a lie.


    The rest of the combat went on without much of a hitch, and if it did then it wasn''t in any way which impeded her anyway. There were no further casualties amongst their own side, only those two wounded who had been struck down earlier. Amazingly even the heavily-injured Krai seemed to be alright, which was made even more amazing by the fact that there was a hatchet stuck in his chainmail. It was a one-sided affair really, one that surely must have been orchestrated by her higher-ups. Their attackers had been ill-equipped and ill-prepared to face a group of trained men in full armour. A band of hunters could be a fearsome foe to face in the woods, but facing off against a group of huscarls... well, there was only ever one way this was going to end. She was just giving a mercy-stroke to a man who''d had both of his legs cut off below the knee by a greatsword when she saw K?til finally catch sight of his injured friend, mad smiles on both of their faces. She noted that there seemed to be no real concern for each other''s well being, nor their own, in their tones and actions. It was as though they trusted the other completely to pull through no matter what.


    "Krai, how the fuck are you still alive!?"


    She looked over at the wheezing man, who grinned a wide grin at K?til.


    "You know me; it''ll take more than that to do me in, boss."


    Krakevasil, she thought to herself with a smile on her face, what sort of people have I gotten myself involved with? Despite her better judgement she had the feeling that she might actually come to enjoy the rest of this assignment after all. It promised to be interesting, if nothing else, and at the end of the day ''interesting'' was a by-word for ''violent''.


    And she would be lying if she said she didn''t enjoy violence.


    <hr>


    When the excitement was over and the twelve of them were all mounted once more, herself on a fresh horse since hers was... regrettably incapacitated, they continued on their way back towards the warcamp. She was riding directly behind K?til, and as such figured that this was as best a chance of broaching the subject of her continued companionship that she had as the Druids had wished for.


    Not that he needed to know this was all orchestrated, of course. She wasn''t sure if the ambush by the forces of the Eyvindottir was planned without her knowledge or not, but she wouldn''t have been surprised. She was but one piece in this grand machination, after all. An important piece, a distinctive piece, but a single piece nonetheless.


    "So, my Warchief," she started, noting that he shifted a little in his saddle to turn slightly and look back at her, "have you any amongst the Druidic orders in your retinue?"


    The young man shook his head a little, though the action was a little stiff given the angle he''d turned his neck around at to look at her.


    "Nah, they''re uncertain as to whether or not I''m ready."


    "Well," she continued, "how about me? You slew a pair of giants and we fought alongside each other against an ambush. I''m not a full Druid yet, only a Novice, but I''m due for my true initiation anytime now. I''d be more than happy to serve as your ''spiritual advisor'' so long as you don''t try and keep me away from any fights you partake in."


    K?til grinned back at her again.


    "Not a full Druid yet? We''ll see about that; I''ll have a word with a few of the Druids I know, since they seem to like me. They say I''m destined for great things, so you''ll be a Druid in no time. As for you staying in my retinue... well, I believe you saved my life twice in the ambush-"


    "Three times," she cut in, "if you count the woman with the sword."


    "Three times in the ambush," he conceded with an acknowledging nod, "so it would be remiss if I didn''t take this opportunity to keep you here killing by my side."


    Krakevasil, this was almost too easy.


    "Well, if you wish it then all you need to do is extend the offer, Warchief K?til. The choice is yours."


    He nodded at her once more with a toothy smile, then turned back around and focused himself back on the trail in front.


    That was a quick start to her plan. It seemed a little bit of bloodshed was all it took to get her in the good graces of her charge. Him promising that he''d see her made a full Druid was a very nice addition as well. After all, she couldn''t very well demand a promotion herself, nor could she try and manipulate the son of the Great Jaerl into it, but if she were promoted because of an idea he put forwards... well, the fastest way to gain someone''s trust was to go along with what they thought was their own plan, their own idea. This was indeed a very fortunate start to her plans.


    She pulled a little bit of a face as she stared at the back of K?til. She had her mission, and it seemed at a glance like it wouldn''t be too hard on a surface level; he appeared as though he would be very easily led, especially by a Druid such as herself. The trick would be making him think that the ideas she fed to him were his own. Even then, there was always the risk of someone else realising what was going on and raising the proverbial alarm bells.


    There were several issues when it came to isolating her young warrior, however that was the main one; if someone else stopped her, if someone let him know what she was doing, then that would set her back a great deal. She couldn''t kill off his friends and companions, for he would inevitably find out and that would just make him resent her, but these two in particular, Krai and Syren, needed to go. Maybe... maybe she could persuade K?til or his father to have them ''kicked upstairs'', so to speak. A promotion for Syren would certainly leave him unable to act as K?til''s loyal advisor since he''d be sent out on missions of his own, and as for Krai...


    She thought hard for a moment. The young man was a survivor and warrior, yes, but not a leader. It would not do for him to take up arms as a Warchief. Hmm...


    She clicked her fingers as it came to her. Of course; the man would make an excellent bodyguard for the Great Jaerl, or rather given how few people wished to try their luck with the man, one of his more ''statesmanlike'' underlings. After all, you could never be too careful these days.


    Then again, if the two of them in particular could be manipulated just as K?til was to be, the two of them being Krai and Syren of course, perhaps there could be something to be said for keeping them close as well. They were both dependable and, in the short time she''d known them, they at least appeared to be loyal. If they could both be persuaded and kept on-side for her cause... yes, that was certainly a more palatable plan than any alternative. A far more difficult course of action, to be sure, but if she could see it through then the long-term benefits promised to be far greater than if she just kept the ear of K?til. After all, her advice might reluctantly be written off, but if she could keep a hold over both Syren and Krai as well then the son of the Great Jaerl would surely be unable to reject the advice of three dependable councillors. Of course if she succeeded in this course of action then the Syren and Krai''s advice would simply be whatever advice she told them to give, which would have a far greater on seeing the great plan to fruition in the long term.


    Well, now she had the beginnings of her plan moving forwards at least. All she needed to do was become a trusted member of the little warrior''s inner circle, his go-to person for information and advice. If she could do that then she''d be able to influence the Great Jaerl. If she could influence the Great Jaerl then the blood would run thick and fast.


    And if the blood ran thick and fast then Krakevasil would be made whole again.

 Lykourgos III: A Crown of Thorns

    <u>Lykourgos III: A Crown of Thorns</u>


    <u>The Tenth Day of the Third Moon,  873 AD.


    Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Lykourgos grimaced as he dropped his sword to the ground, slumping down and yielding to his brother once more.


    "Okay, okay, you win. Again."


    Rhema grinned, offering a hand to his brother as Lykourgos allowed himself to be pulled back to his feet. Exercising himself back to health had not been kind to his energy, and yet at the same time he strangely felt more alive than he had in a long while. Getting back into swordplay and footwork was, in his opinion, doing wonders for the muscles in his back and limbs. Practicing with his brother meant that he was quickly getting back on the top of his game, though admittedly Rhema consistently won their bouts. Oh, certainly, Rhema was the better of the two of them anyway, but he was winning more than he might otherwise have if Lykourgos was feeling hale and hearty. He wasn''t worried though; this gave him a more than well-needed excuse to spend time with his brother doing something that the both of them enjoyed, the two of them ending every training session with a number of bruises and dripping with sweat.


    Nasos hadn''t exactly been thrilled when he''d started sparring again, for this was more than a little ahead of schedule, but so long as Lyk didn''t completely over-exert himself there was little to fear in terms of bodily harm.


    "Time for another bout?"


    Lykourgos smiled at his brother, who had taken full advantage of his desire to get fighting fit once more by getting in as much sparring as he could.


    "No, not at the moment I''m afraid. You''ve surely had your fill of beating me by now, haven''t you?"


    His brother laughed at that as though it were the funniest thing he''d ever heard.


    "Me? Get tired of sparring with you? Come off it, you know I''d never! Besides, it''s probably for the best; weren''t you meant to be meeting with Eli sometime soon?"


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at his brother.


    "Eli? That''s rather informal. Have you two grown closer since then, you know, seeing as he lets you call him ''Eli''?"


    Rhema snorted.


    "Of course not. I do a lot more work with him now, but he''s still your loyal friend and not mine. I just call him that ''cause I really don''t care if it annoys him or not. What is it that the two of you are meeting about anyway?"


    Lykourgos'' smile faltered for a split second before falling back into place.


    "Nothing for you to be worried about, that much I can assure you."


    "Well, duh. Otherwise I''d have heard about it in the inner council meeting. You slow today or something?"


    Lykourgos shook his head in exasperation while grinning. It felt good to be able to return to a sense of normalcy after everything that had happened recently, even if that ''normal'' consisted of his brother playfully insulting him whilst they tried to beat the shit out of each other.


    "Angels, how did you all survive without me?"


    <hr>


    "Eli, how have you been?"


    The man daintily placed the back of a gloved hand to his forehead.


    "Oh, miserable! I''ve been sat here waiting for, what, twenty minutes? Twenty minutes and you didn''t deign to show yourself before me!"


    The prince rolled his eyes at his friend''s dramatics, which at this point were entirely expected.


    "I thought you might appreciate it if I bathed quickly before meeting you, given that my clothes were sodden with sweat. Still, I guess we''d better get started; Angels forbid I keep you any longer than the twenty minutes you''ve been here already."


    There was a brief and tense silence as the two of them sat down at the table. They both knew exactly what they were to be discussing, and both of them knew that whilst Lykourgos did not exactly enjoy overseeing this it was nonetheless one of the most important aspects of rulership.


    Wetwork. Bloody, sinful wetwork. Lykourgos didn''t like this part of ruling, but it was an inalienable part of the deal for maintaining power. No leader, be they from the farthest reaches of the north or the most distant ruins of the south, could ever maintain control over so vast a realm without the occasional bout of distasteful actions. Not even the sort of wetwork that dealt with killing people that really deserved death either, such as the nobles. No, this was to deal with other emergent issues.


    The silence stretched on for a few seconds as Lykourgos stared at the table, mentally readying himself to detach the things he was about to order done from the person he was in his day to day life. He needed to, or he would drive himself mad. That was another lesson the late Lord Brathaxe had taught him during his wardship; there will always be daggers in the night for a prince, and there will always be daggers in the night for a bastard. He needed to make sure he was one step ahead of the plots and schemes of those who wished him harm, and if push came to shove, if no amount of subtle manoeuvring or under-table threats would get your opponents to cease their actions...


    Well, you needed to be direct sometimes. Brutally direct. That was just politics.


    "We''d better get started. What seem to be the prevailing issues at the moment?"


    Elikoidi smirked at him a little, probably glad to be getting on with things.


    "The nobles are still being held in the barracks, as per your orders. Daniil and his men have been as good as their word in keeping them in place, loyal little man that he is. That little stunt you pulled with him was brilliant; having now served three masters there''s no-one on the continent who would trust him if he turned his cloak again. He''s bound to you as surely as the sun is bound to the sky."


    Lykourgos smiled wryly.


    "Indeed he is. Tell me, have any nobles in particular given him trouble?"


    "Lady Ahrgo has been reaching out to some of her contacts amongst the merchant classes these last few weeks. There may be some sort of attempted rescue mission soon enough."


    "I see. Send a few of your rats to tell these merchant contacts that the crown thanks them for their services, and that should they maintain their loyalties a slew of city charters will soon be granted across the country. So long as they do nothing to rock the boat, of course."


    Elikoidi raised an eyebrow at him.


    "That would likely work, yes. I don''t know of a single merchant who would be willing to risk losing such lucrative prospects just to get some noblewoman to safety. You were going to do that anyway, were you not?"


    "Yes, but they don''t know that. Anyone apart from the nobles I should be aware of?"


    Elikoidi grinned at his remark, but sobered a little as the conversation carried on.


    "The conclave of patriarchs is continuing to rail against you because they preferred your sister. Not only that but your brother killed the head of their congregation, so you can imagine they''re none too keen on him remaining unpunished."


    "I see. Who is it that now heads the conclave?"


    The dead skin around his friend''s mouth was pulled taut as the grin took on a far more predatory aspect, and when he answered Lykourgos realised why.


    "Patriarch Olyver."


    Lykourgos returned the grin. Oh, this was almost too perfect!


    "Remind me, old friend," he started, "is that not the same Patriarch who dabbled with the teachings of the Silverian Church when he was an Abbot?"


    "The very same. Do you think perhaps it is time to share this information with the world?"


    Lykourgos gave his friend a playfully dismissive look.


    "No, nothing so drastic! Perhaps something more along the lines of a drafted letter to him hinting at a few things. After all, such knowledge could cut short a promising liturgical career if it got our. Lets just make sure he''s on our side instead. Are there any other issues?"


    Elikoidi nodded at him.


    "House Blackoak and its cadet branches are beginning to amass their forces along our border. Carthos and Ousdaal have been used as our first line of defence against Owkrestan attacks for centuries, but even if they weren''t charred ruins they were not built to withstand a force of this size."


    "Do we have any knowledge of their leaders?"


    "Command of soldiers in the field seems to have gone to Lord Tyros, head of the Miststone Hill branch of house Blackoak. He''s certainly the most competent and loyal man the head of the Blackoak family has at his beck and call."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "I see."


    He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table a few times, his other hand rubbing his jaw as he thought. When he spoke his voice was somewhere between flat and dangerously cold.


    "Perhaps we ought to kill him."


    Elikoidi smiled grimly back at him.


    "I will put the wheels in motion. I have a man perfectly suited for a job like this; he''ll have more than one idea to rid you of this problem. You are not concerned of sparking a war with this action?"


    He huffed out a dark laugh at his friend.


    "Come now, we both know house Blackoak is rallying for war against us anyway. Better to spark it by killing the greatest commander amongst the foemen than allow Lord Aertax to order his kinsman forwards from the comfort of Blacktree Hall. Give the order, let it be done. Don''t tell me who you''re sending to do it, don''t tell me where or when he''ll do it. I''ve learned enough from our time together to gather that it''s generally safer if I don''t know the specifics. Just make sure it happens and that it''s clean and quick. It will likely buy us a little more time to prepare as the foe reorganises its forces. In that time we can see if we can''t also pressure the church into lending us their own forces when we blackmail Patriarch Olyver."


    Elikoidi smirked at Lykourgos again, clearly enjoying the fact that he was allowing the darker side of politics to shine through his person once more.


    "Well, that can certainly be arranged. I''m glad to see you''ve learned to be a little more ruthless, even if it took a stabbing to set your mind on the right course. How many are going to die out of the nobles we''ve got locked away? Half?"


    Lykourgos sighed a little, his smile faltering slightly. He didn''t get any enjoyment from this, but then... well, he''d killed dozens in battle, why was this any different? He nodded once at his friend, ignoring the proffered question about the upcoming executions.


    Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    "I now know how much hatred some people can hold within them. I saw it when I looked into Isen''s eyes, and I''ve learned from it."


    If Elikoidi was annoyed by him dodging the question like that then it was never made clear by his face nor voice, and so Lykourgos thought himself lucky that the issue had not been pressed. He doubted his friend would have liked the answer.


    "I''m glad. I don''t want you to end up like that again."


    Lykourgos smiled a little at his friend, but not in agreement. He smiled not because he''d learned how spiteful others could be, but because Elikoidi didn''t seem to realise that Lykourgos now knew just how ruthless he could be if push came to shove.


    If Eli wants me to act ruthless, well, there''s plenty of ruthlessness coming up.


    <hr>


    He was beginning to regain his lost weight, the muscle returning in places. He was also no longer as tired anymore, or rather he was only as tired as he normally was. The work of a ruler was never done, after all.


    "Ilias? How do I look?"


    The young cupbearer looked him up and down appraisingly.


    "Well enough to be seen once more, I''d say. If I were still on the street and I saw you like this I''d probably not look twice at how thin you are, but even if you are still a little thin you''re far from looking weak. In my own personal opinion that is, your Grace. That was why you were asking, wasn''t it?"


    Lykourgos smiled, ruffling the servant''s hair.


    "Right in one. There''s an important public event coming up later today, and I want to make sure I''m at least presentable."


    Ilias nodded at him, seemingly understanding where he was coming from.


    "Well, if it''s for what I think you''re on about then I don''t see you holding centre-stage for long, no offense of course your Grace. Again, assuming I''m not wrong in what I think you''re on about, the justice you hand out will be the focal point of what''s to happen. Will you be needing anything whilst you''re out there, your Grace? I know the various members of the council as well as Dreamwulf will be there, but will you be requiring anything of me?"


    Lykourgos tilted his head a little in thought.


    "No. No, I don''t think so. That said however, will you not want to watch as justice is passed? If you lived in the northern district then you surely have wished for what is to come at some point in your life."


    Ilias made a so-so motion with his hands as he bobbed his head from side to side.


    "Maybe a little. I think... I think I might like to watch it, when push comes to shove. If your Grace would keep me at your side throughout the event then I would be most grateful."


    Lykourgos grinned and ruffled the lad''s hair again.


    "Consider it done."


    He stopped and stretched a little, one or two joints popping as he winced.


    "Ah, that''s going to take a little getting used to. Hopefully that stops happening so frequently as time passes, because that''s really rather annoying. In all my time asleep I''d almost forgotten how tired the business of ruling made me."


    "Tired, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos nodded at Ilias, the young cupbearer clearly confused.


    "Forgive me for speaking out of turn, your Grace, and I know I have been wrong on this subject for quite some time, but I was always under the impression that... well, that being a prince or a lord was easy. That you didn''t have to do any work and that everything and everyone just lined up for your approval before you went back to feasting and enjoying life."


    Lykourgos smiled bitterly at his servant.


    "In many ways you aren''t wrong. If I so desired I could live my life like that from this day until the day of my death, whenever that may be, but I will not. The people being kept prisoner out in the barracks, the nobles, they''re the ones who lived like that. That''s why I hate them. They''re content to sit there and do nothing while their people starve and wither, and I just... I don''t understand how they can do that. I make no claim to having a harder life than the poor, of course I don''t, but there are hardships of their own that should come as a part of ruling. Of leading."


    "You were raised north of the Einar," Ilias said, as though that explained everything, "they were always better than most, your Grace. Leaders, not bosses. If you''d been raised in the capital then you''d not have learned to rule from them."


    Lykourgos pondered this for a moment.


    "A fair point. The northern lords are gone now though, and as such the only men and women in those barracks are the worst sort. I don''t intend to let them go unpunished for much longer."


    Ilias nodded with great sincerity.


    "I''m glad to hear that, your Grace. I know I''m not worth much, but for what little it is worth I''ll support you no matter what. Don''t you foresee any consequences for what you''re to do later today though? I don''t pretend to understand diplomacy, but this seems a rather... I don''t know the right word, but I can''t see everyone abroad just accepting this judgement without comment."


    Lykourgos snorted derisively.


    "Good. I hope there are diplomatic consequences. Let them see what happens to indolent lords and cruel masters. Let them see what happens to those who cross our cause. Let their people take heart in the knowledge that their own lords are not unassailable. We will endure, come what may. We will endure."


    Ilias nodded at him again.


    "So you say, your Grace. Will you be wanting your armour or courtly clothes?"


    "Armour. It should help cover how thin I am, for the most part. It will also send the people a message."


    "And what message would that be, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos turned and smiled down at his cupbearer.


    "That our war is not yet over, Ilias. That there are still foemen out there who would tear down our kingdom. Our war is not yet over, and it will not be over until seven are forged into one. Our armies have more than a thousand miles more to march, and if that is the case then how can we be at peace?"


    Ilias looked up at him again with a loyalty so total that Lykourgos was unsure what exactly he''d done to earn it. The look combined fear and elation, and for a brief moment Lykourgos realised that, to this child, he was worth more than the Angels themselves.


    "If that is your will, your Grace, then I will do everything I can to help you. I promise. I''ll march with you the thousand miles and more, if you wish it. I promise."


    The prince smiled widely once more. Such hero-worship did make him a little uncomfortable, but when it came from so pure a place... well, how could he feel any way other than grateful?


    <hr>


    "Lieutenant Daniil. It''s time."


    "Yes your Grace. I''ll have the prisoners brought to the square at once."


    Lykourgos nodded at the man, who bowed and then walked off barking orders at his men. If nothing else he now felt fit enough to pass judgement over the nobles, and so he had summoned his retainers and demanded they get on with this gruesome task. Elikoidi and Romanos stood by his side, as did the rest of the inner council. Every one of them knew what was to come, though if any of them knew the specifics they''d probably try and stop him. He wasn''t going to let that happen; he''d waited four years for his vengeance, and he wouldn''t be passing it up now when it was within reach.


    Walking out onto the main square before the palatial complex, within the very heart of the eastern district, some two-score sullen faces were being led out by grim-faced guardsmen. Several looked around almost feverishly, as though hoping to see a friendly face that would free them in the crowd. If so, they must have been sorely disappointed. The people here knew the ''nobles'' all too well, especially since they''d spent the last four years living within the capital and flaunting their privileges over them. The people here knew nobles very, very well indeed. Their recent stunt of burning the followers of Hydran''s Cult alive on the docks could not have won them any favours with the masses.


    More than one of the dispossessed lords and ladies had been gagged with cloth and for that Lykourgos was thankful, for when they reached the raised platform above the square and saw the set of gallows that awaited them more than one let out a panicked exclamation. Eight scaffolds had been prepared specifically for this day, and had sat unused and unattended for months now. Well, now they were going to be used. Now they would be fed.


    "People of Anaria! Of Teleytaios! Once I relieved this city from siege, only for my father and sister to forgive those who made you starve, who bade you kneel and scrape before them! Here they stand before you, the last of the corrupt and wicked! Justice has returned to the realm of house Sperakos, but we must not be idle! Wherever corruption takes root, so too must it be opposed! Here stand the last great criminals of our fair land; what do we say to them?"


    He paused for a moment, the crowd letting out a slew of insults and shouted threats at the bound nobles who stood before the gallows. This was the moment he''d waited for for half a decade. This was what he was always meant to do.


    "Then by the power I wield as the sovereign of this land, with the support of the people whom I rule over, I accuse the assembled of high treason and sentence them to be hanged by the neck until dead!"


    A raucous cheer went up from the crowd, and Lykourgos smiled as the crowd of cheering, bloodthirsty lowborns hailed him. They seemed to rather enjoy seeing a ruler with their blood in his veins cut out the festering rot from the realm. Every person in that crowd, he knew, must have lost a friend, a family member, a livelihood, to the schemes and skirmishes of the men and women behind him. No longer would that be an issue.


    The first eight nobles fell through the gallows with a ''chunk'' sound, and Lykourgos just about noticed the worry on the faces of Romanos and Elikoidi. What the other members of his council thought he didn''t know, save his brother. Rhema and Ilias were both watching on with a mixture of contempt and elation on their faces, but as for himself?


    He just stared impassively onwards as the next group were led up the steps to the gallows by his grim-faced guards. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and soaked in the bloodthirsty cheers of the crowd, who it seemed had now taken to hailing him ''the Just!''. He reopened them and held out his arms above him, as though he meant to embrace the crowd.


    "As long as I am your prince, your king, you shall know this: your struggles are mine, your hunger is mine, and my victories are yours! Never again will the craven and the unworthy rule over this land!"


    At that there was a fresh bout of cheering, the second set of nobles falling through the gallows with a really rather satisfying noise. Some who were led to their deaths maintained dignity, some looked remorseful, others scared or angry, but all were led to their deaths nonetheless. Elikoidi and Romanos walked up to him as casually as they could, faces strained.


    "Your Grace, a word if you please."


    Lykourgos looked over at Daniil and nodded, gesturing for him to continue with the executions. He then signalled Dreamwulf and Eros to fall in behind him with a quiet word, and followed his two friends back into the palace.


    When they were back inside and away from the raucous cheering the two of them all but pulled him into a chamber for a private audience, both clearly a little unsettled by what had just happened. Well, Romanos looked unsettled anyway. Lykourgos suspected that, whilst the Grandmaster might have had a few reservations about the complete eradication of the Teleytaian nobility on moral grounds, Elikoidi was likely to be both pleased that the buggers had got what was coming to them and annoyed from a far more pragmatic lens.


    "Your Grace, what the fuck was that? That''s forty people you''ve just sentenced to hang out there."


    "It isn''t like they''re innocent, Eli. You know that better than most."


    There was a brief but oh-so-noticeable bitter smile that came across his scarred friend''s face at that, but it was gone in a moment.


    "No, this isn''t about anything like that; I know they''re guilty, and a part of me hoped that you''d lose your fucking mind and order them all killed, but as your friend and advisor I need you to know this could backfire spectacularly."


    Romanos nodded solemnly, breaking in with his own opinions.


    "Whilst I''ve always hated those self-aggrandising lordlings, you need to understand that this is not a good look for you. Where people outside the capital before looked to you with a cautious hope, now they will simply look at you with a cautious fear."


    Lykourgos nodded stiffly.


    "Then we will work to prove those fears unfounded. There is much work to be done, and I don''t believe for a second that Lord Blackoak will just wait for me to-"


    "Lord Blackoak? Your Grace, if you think that the tensions along our south-eastern border are our main concern at this precise moment then you''re very wrong; as of right now I''m much more interested in finding out whether or not you''ve lost your fucking mind!"


    "Lost my mind? Why would I have lost my mind?"


    "What Master Elikoidi means to say is," Romanos broke in once more, continuing from where Elikoidi had left off, "that you were unconscious for quite some time and then woke up through not entirely mundane means. How do we know that you''re still the same person that led us to victory three months ago?"


    The prince looked between his two friends, confused.


    "I don''t understand, I''ve never hidden my desire to wipe out what was left of the nobles. I even proclaimed that very fact when I seized the capital from my late sister. Why do you begin to doubt me now?"


    "Because normally you have enough foresight to realise that what you want isn''t always what you should do. Because we assumed that you''d kill perhaps half of them and exile the rest in a display of mercy. We thought we knew what you''d do."


    Lykourgos threw his hands up in the air in frustration.


    "I cannot control what you think! If you had concerns then why not talk to me! Why not tell me in advance!"


    "You knew we would not agree to this! This was wrong, Lyk!"


    Lykourgos turned to Elikoidi, raising an incredulous eyebrow at the man''s words.


    "Weren''t we just talking about killing a foreign Lord earlier today?"


    Elikoidi shook his head in frustration, some of the annoyance he clearly felt leaking into his voice.


    "That''s one thing, but killing a full two-score of your own dispossessed nobles will hit us very hard diplomatically. I couldn''t care a whit for the men and women you just had killed, but it''ll make your job a lot more difficult moving forwards."


    "Not to mention the discontent amongst those who still bore loyalties to the nobles. This action won''t be free from repercussions, your Grace."


    Lykourgos closed his eyes and sighed. This was gonna be a long night.

 Ilias I: Through Anothers Eyes

    <u>Ilias I: Through Another''s Eyes</u>


    <u>The Eleventh Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    He went through the motions that had been drilled into him time and time again, not daring to disappoint the matron and master a second time. He still had a black eye from when he''d slept in and been woken up in a most stinging way, the master throwing out a punch really quite hard and the matron''s temper being brought to boil, and for what? Because he''d accidentally slept longer than he''d meant to? He wasn''t too worried anyway; the master hit hard, but the matron hit a hell of a lot harder. Not that he''d ever voice any of that out loud, of course. He wasn''t suicidal, thank you very much.


    He did his best to put the events of last week out of his mind and focus on his dancing, and the ''encouragement'' of the master.


    "Relev¨¦ my sweet, on point, en garde!"


    He forced himself not to grit his teeth, nor to show any displeasure whatsoever. He needed to maintain complete composure if he wanted to get out.


    There was someone new that night. He hadn''t ever known royalty to enter such establishments before, especially someone as young as this one seemed to be; the boy that walked in couldn''t have been much older than he was, maybe a little younger in honesty. And he was royalty, there could be no mistaking it no matter the roughspun cowl about his frame. He walked too surely, his face was too well-coloured and healthy, he was at the very least a lord.


    Wait, was that... yes, surely it was. But Ilias had never... this wasn''t his memory. This was... it couldn''t be a dream, it was too real, but...


    The young royal paid for the night with him. More than anyone had ever paid before as well, a full gold coin. Then there was nothing. No expectations, no disgusting acts, no fear. They just... sat there and talked for a while. Come the morning he was out of the matron''s house and led in a featherbed in the honest-to-Saints royal palace whilst the prince curled up in a chair and tried to sleep there. Strange how it all worked out, especially as this wasn''t his memory.


    The young cupbearer shot awake with a heavy gasp. That dream, that memory, it all felt so real, but it couldn''t have been his. He was all to aware of his own memories, but he could taste copper in his mouth, his feet still ached from the hours of dancing, and the area around his left eye still felt tender, as though he had really been punched.


    Peculiar.


    He shook his head and readied himself. He had work to do today, and he couldn''t waste time on strange dreams and the like, no matter how much his prince seemed to do so in his spare time. Still, perhaps Seventh could be approached and asked about this matter? Ilias thought he got on well enough with the seer to warrant a few curious questions answered at least.


    Then again, maybe not. The details of the dream were already being forgotten, flitting away like leaves on a cold breeze. He shook his head and left his room. First things first, getting his Grace his morning meal so that he might break his fast. Shouldn''t take long.


    <hr>


    The previous day had been... tense, he thought as he moved with practiced ease through crowds of courtiers and throngs of petitioners, making his way through the palace. His Grace was well within his rights to do what he did, by Ilias'' estimations anyway, but the young cupbearer hadn''t been stupid enough to think that the execution of every dissident nobleman would leave no mark on the prince''s reputation. Not that Ilias cared much for those fops.


    Even so, there was a danger there. Rhema was supposed to be the wild and impulsive one, not Lykourgos. He would support his prince and ruler to the very end, with no reservations, but he knew others wouldn''t see things this way.


    But, he reasoned as he weaved through a particularly dense group of people, he wasn''t being impulsive. Just extreme.


    A chill ran up his spine at that thought. Lykourgos was caring and kind with a strange and, at times, mildly awkward sense of humour, but he was nothing if not practical. Ilias knew the royal would have his reasons, but then he had a rough idea as to what they might be anyway. He hadn''t pressed for reasons when discussing it with his prince a few days prior, but he didn''t need to. His Grace would have his own reasons, and that was good enough for him.


    The lowborns had loved the display. The death of the last of the criminals who''d led the kingdom into two civil wars had filled the crowds of the poor and downtrodden with a sense of elation that was almost palpable. Admittedly you had to stretch the truth a little to reach the conclusion that the nobles had caused the civil wars, but they were if nothing else major factors and players both.


    He shook his head and got his thoughts back on track, the motion earning him a confused glance from a serving girl he darted past. The tray in his hands moved slightly as he made to pass yet another early morning crowd, but he was very good at his job, and therefore not a single thing spilled or otherwise fell.


    The elation of the crowd had been palpable, but the part that stuck with him was that he had not been immune to the twisted sense of joy that permeated the crowd as justice was passed down. They''d all known injustice at the hands of a lord, or else knew of someone who did, in the years since the rebellion. It made sense, in a strange way; before the rebellion the lords and ladies all had pretty stone castles far from their lowborn subjects, but with their exodus to the capital after the Twilight Rebellion there were so many more of them than normal in one place, with their ''noble rights'' and ''privileges'' and their Angels-damned self-aggrandisation that at some point almost everyone was bound to have known some noble twat flaunting their almost untouchable status to the lowborns around them no matter how they acted towards their lessers. He''d enjoyed stealing from them.


    And the fact that he''d enjoyed watching them take a short fall with a sudden stop was... a little frightening, if nothing else. He''d at least covered up his joy as best he could under Master Elikoidi''s judging eyes, but he couldn''t hide it from himself.


    At last he arrived at the hall he''d been meaning to get to. Before him was the door to the prince''s chambers, guarded by a stern-faced Dreamwulf and a tired yet anxious Eros. Ilias smiled at the young squire as he approached, and received a half-smile half-sorry-about-the-shouting expression in response. Ilias turned away from the squire and did his best to appear as neutral as possible whilst he held out the tray of nettle-tea in his hands.


    "Are they... still going?"


    Dreamwulf sighed as Eros remained silent.


    "Yep."


    "This is his Grace''s tea, with some food to break his fast."


    "Indeed?"


    Ilias nodded, before remembering who he was speaking with and verbally reaffirming his nod.


    "Indeed. But... he cannot break his fast if he has not yet slept, can he?"


    "Nope. I''ll make sure he has something to eat and drink before he sleeps though, don''t you worry."


    Ilias sighed a little at the blind bodyguard before turning back to look at Eros. Eros was nice, if somewhat na?ve, and though by his own admission he might not have conducted himself well in battle he was a fine swordsman. If Ilias had to guess then he suspected that a career as a bodyguard would be far better suited to the squire. It was the cupbearer''s job to notice things like that, amongst a great many other things, according to Master Elikoidi. It wasn''t his fault if he happened to notice a fair bit more when looking at Eros compared to anyone else.


    He opened his mouth to speak to the squire when there was a crashing noise from inside the prince''s chambers, followed closely by a great deal of what sounded like very angry shouting, some very tart retorts, and then a truly prodigious use of curses.


    Ilias nodded at Eros, almost as though giving him permission to eavesdrop, and pressed his ear to the door.


    "WHY WON''T YOU LISTEN TO MY FUCKING-"


    "BECAUSE IT''S INSANE YOU SAINT''S-DAMNED WHORESON!"


    That word. Whoreson. As soon as it was said all other noises fell quiet. There was a dangerous silence in the room now. Dreamwulf felt it, Eros felt it, Ilias felt it. The blind bodyguard''s grip tensed on the haft of his billhook, and he seemed to be fighting the urge to march into the room himself.


    Whoreson. There were very few words they all knew Lykourgos hated; he didn''t mind being called a bastard, or illegitimate, or even base-born, though Ilias knew they stung more than the prince let on, but whoreson?


    Ilias knew that Lykourgos had never known his mother. As far as he could tell very few people knew who she was, if she still lived at all. On most days being called a whoreson might have stung the prince a little, but for someone as close to Lykourgos as Ser Romanos was to insinuate that the prince had been conceived on some quite potentially unwilling camp whore whilst on the march to some battle somewhere, and all of that after some twelve constant hours of arguing and shouting... people used so often as a generic insult that Ilias had almost forgotten that there was a very real chance that Lykourgos was literally a whoreson.


    It seemed Romanos may have forgotten that as well.


    Whoreson. The word rang like a bell in the cupbearer''s head as he took a few measured steps back from the door and swallowed. Eros shot him what was probably supposed to be a reassuring look, but really just conveyed what must have been a horrible mixture of bad feelings about what was going on in the room directly behind him.


    The silence continued a few moments longer before the conversation in the room wrapped up with a few words spoken in hushed tones, far too quiet for Ilias to make out.


    The door suddenly burst open, startling Eros and causing the squire to jump a mile. Ser Romanos stormed out of the chamber with a thunderous scowl on his face, whipping his neck to his left and motioning for Eros to join him with a slightly shaking hand.


    "Eros. Fall in. Cupbearer. See to his Grace."


    And then he marched down the corridor with very, very heavy footsteps. Eros moved to leave as well, shooting Ilias a small smile and a little wave, which the cupbearer gladly returned. It was nice of Eros to try and put him at ease, not that such a thing was needed; Ilias had seen a much tougher life than the squire, but it was the thought that counted. It was... endearing was the right word, he thought.


    Soon afterwards Master Elikoidi walked out, looking tired and taut but at least far less angry than Ser Romanos had.


    "Ah, Ilias. I would like you to fetch his Grace some proper food as well as his tea. Ale as well may be appreciated. Oh, while I remember, I would like to speak with you tonight as well on some matters of great personal importance to the both of us. An old friend of yours will be in attendance."


    Ilias nodded, ignoring the shiver that ran down his spine and the sense of vague dread in his stomach.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.Please don''t be who I think it''s going to be.


    He was kidding himself, of course. There was only one person who it could possibly be, only one old ''friend'' who had found work with the Master of Silver as Ilias had. He pushed it aside. There was little to be gained thinking of such things at the moment.


    Instead he ran down to the kitchens, fetched a plate of roasted chicken and a pin of ale and then made his way back to the prince''s chambers, once more weaving his way through crowds of people. Dreamwulf smiled as he approached, the blind man snagging a cut of chicken off of the plate with a conspiratorial wink as he scarfed it down, knocking on the door.


    The door was opened by Lykourgos, who wore exhaustion like a cowl and held an expression of thunder on his face. He looked down at Ilias, expression softening just a touch, before nodding and wordlessly taking the plate of food and pin of beer, closing the door behind him.


    Dreamwulf huffed out what seemed to be a mildly relieved or perhaps amused sigh.


    "Don''t worry, I''ll make sure his Grace is alright. You go focus on the rest of your duties. Run along now."


    <hr>


    When he happened past the prince''s chambers some hours later the door was being guarded not by Dreamwulf, but by Nasos. Ilias wasn''t sure why Nasos was guarding the door, since he was pretty sure that even he could take on the kind and demure healer and there were other actual guards that could have been stationed as sentries, but he supposed that there were only so many trusted people to guard the prince and Dreamwulf needed to sleep sometimes.


    According to Nasos his Grace had demolished almost the entire roasted chicken, downed a full yard of ale, and then immediately fallen asleep. He''d shaken his head and laughed a little at that, trying to put off the feeling of dread that was pooling in his stomach with regards to the upcoming meeting. Still, the moment came all too soon, and with a final deep breath he pushed open the door to the antechamber where he knew an all-too-familiar face would sit.


    When he entered the dark antechamber there was exactly the man he had hoped not to see here waiting for him. Stefanos. Stefanos was a cutthroat and vagabond, a ruthless killer and extortionist whose talents he happened to know had been picked up by Elikoidi some years ago. He was a roguish and rough man, not without charisma but not outstandingly beautiful either. Ilias knew Stefanos was working with Elikoidi, but so far had avoided meeting with the man, thank the Angels. They knew each other from a long time ago, and Ilias wanted nothing to do with him now.


    Still, here he was, and here was Stefanos. That was just how the world worked.


    "Well, as I live and breath. Ilias. How long''s it been? Four years, five? You left me for dead after that nasty business with the pot-shop."


    "You-"


    He swallowed thickly, his saliva feeling like tar as it slid down his throat.


    "You made the butcher pay for the body of his own son, then took the cuts to the pot-shop. When the butcher and cook both realised what you''d done-"


    "They had a few things to say, you''re not wrong. Don''t know why you''re complaining, it''s not like you''ve never-"


    Ilias took two steps back before cutting him off, trying to put a little more distance between himself and the man.


    "Don''t you dare compare what I did to your murders."


    The man leaned forwards a little, towering over him.


    "Aw, why not? It ain''t nothing personal to them what I do in. It''s just good business for me, that''s all. No use crying for the dead, is there?"


    Ilias swallowed and did his best not to appear in any way intimidated, but that was a tall order when faced with so ruthless a man.


    "Do leave him be, Stefan. There''s little to be gained from you sending vague threats towards a child."


    The man nodded sternly, his countenance shifting from easy-confidence to barely-feigned servility.


    "Sure thing boss-man. Now, what''s it you called me here for exactly? It''s not often you need me to make any house calls in the palace, nice as it may be to be allowed in unchallenged for once."


    Elikoidi sighed and beckoned the man towards a small stack of papers, perhaps a few more than a dozen in total, each one covered in the neat handwriting of the spymaster detailing names, places, and actions.


    "Pages one through seven are investigations. I need information on happenings in the villages and towns mentioned in the first six pages, with page seven being much the same but with individuals rather than locations. I expect there to be some overlap between the two sections."


    The man nodded, an easy smile on his face all the while. Ilias wasn''t a big fan of Stefanos; you could never quite tell what he thought of you, nor if his thoughts on anyone mattered whatsoever. If something benefited him, he would do it. Thievery, blackmail, extortion, kidnappings, even murder; if he stood to benefit, there was little he wouldn''t do. In some ways Ilias counted himself lucky; the man was at least on their side, seeing as a beleaguered nation with an absent king would never lack for opportunities when it came to spies and other such blackguards. There was still something about him that set the young cupbearer''s teeth on edge however, likely his memories from when he''d known this man in the past, not to mention the fact that if Elikoidi ever did find himself at odds with the king Ilias knew that, seeing as he was working for both of them, he''d find himself potentially targeted by the man.


    Still, there was little chance of that happening.


    Many would have decried their circumstances at finding themselves the unwilling member of a circle of rats, but Ilias had no such qualms. He may have once, when he was younger and more idealistic, before he''d watched pestilence and hunger and the bitter cold claim his friends and his home, but he knew better now. This was just the way the world worked; cutthroats and blaggards made the rules and ruled the roost, and the rest of them needed either to find their places or fall through the cracks and be forgotten. If his place was to serve the king his ale and report what he was thinking to Elikoidi, then that was what he did.


    Of course he was under no illusions when it came to the fact that he wasn''t really following his own philosophy of keeping his head down and his senses sharp. He''d stepped away from safety and into danger the moment he''d began relaying what Elikoidi was thinking back to Lykourgos without either side knowing that he was doing the same for the other. It was stupid, really. They''d spent so long as the closest of friends, but still neither of them could fully bring themselves to trust the other. He was worried that one day he''d need to choose between them, to choose between honour his safety, but he pushed such thoughts away. Such trails of thought always led to a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, and a tingling at the tips of each of his fingers that made him want to shiver no matter the temperature.


    "Why exactly is the kid here anyway? You don''t normally call us both here at the same time."


    "He''s his Grace''s right hand, just like you are mine. Except as far as I am aware, you aren''t reporting to his Grace on my... secret affairs."


    The man let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a scoff.


    "Come on, I know I''m not most people''s idea of a smart guy, but I ain''t stupid neither. I know exactly where my bread''s buttered and exactly where it ain''t. I''m also not stupid enough to think there''s no-one who watches me from the shadows neither, just like him."


    Stefanos gestured offhandedly towards Ilias, who watched as a small smile formed on the Master''s face out of the corner of his eye. Never mind that Elikoidi hadn''t actually answered the man''s question as to why he had felt the need to have Ilias present as well, he was already moving on to the next part of what he wanted to tell them.


    "Quite so. What I need you both to remember is that, whether his Grace is awake or asleep, our job remains the same. I still have yet to tell you of the rest of the pages, correct?"


    "Yeah, but you don''t need to. I can read between the lines on each of them, literally and figuratively. Pages eight and nine are people and groups I should try and make contact with that might end up being useful to your rats, and their nests. The last pages-"


    "Are for something else entirely that does not need to be spoken of aloud. They''re all traitors, planning to make their way east to join up with Lieutenant Isen and Lord Blackoak. You know what to do to those people. Do it quickly, do it quietly, but above all else do it thoroughly. There''s a special task on the back of the tenth page from his Grace himself. Do not hide what you do; make it look like the ambush it is. I want our Owkrestan friends to be goaded into doing something stupid that our king can take advantage of."


    The man''s countenance and air of confidence slipped for a fraction of a second, and for a brief moment Ilias saw the look of anger and glee that slipped through his features; anger at being reprimanded by someone a decade his younger, and glee at being able to-


    No. He had been told not to worry about that. Not if he enjoyed his position as cupbearer to his Grace.


    Blackmail. Extortion. Murder. I helped gather evidence on some of those people. Am I responsible for what''s going to happen?


    He broke himself from his thoughts, deciding that it wasn''t his job to worry about such things. It was how the world worked, after all.


    "And the kid? Wait, don''t tell me. You''re worried about his loyalties, aren''t you?"


    Stefanos turned to face him, a ghastly smile on his face and malice in his eyes as he knelt down to Ilias'' height, the man''s hands firmly gripping the cupbearer''s shoulders as he looked into his eyes. Ilias stayed perfectly still, unmoving. Somewhere behind him Elikoidi patted him on the back in a gesture of half-genuine, half-mocking support.


    "Partially, yes. I trust you to protect his Grace, Ilias, but there are... other things that worry me."


    He swallowed hard.


    "Other things, Master?"


    "Yes. His Grace is awake and for that I am grateful, but none can deny his experiences have changed him. I need to know if his Grace is still who he says he is, I need to know if he plans to continue committing extreme actions such as the mass execution of the entire remaining Teleytaian nobility, and most of all I need to know his plans for the future conflicts he speaks of."


    Ilias trembled a little, the almost hollow stare of Stefanos boring into him as the man remained completely silent while their Master spoke.


    "What would you have me do, Master?"


    Elikoidi took a few steps forwards and looked off at nothing in particular, entering the young cupbearer''s field of view.


    "What you were originally supposed to do. To compile what his Grace does, has done, and will do, and then report back to me. I like you, Ilias, which is why you have received the benefit of the doubt from me these last few months, but I need to start seeing some results from you. I was the one that found you on the streets, and I''m the one who made his Grace take you on as a cupbearer. I don''t like being harsh, I normally leave that for my subordinates, but at the end of the day our line of work is a very ruthless business, as you know."


    Ilias spoke softly and carefully, not wishing to antagonise his boss at this moment in time.


    "I am sworn to his Grace, Master. I have to serve him, by oath."


    Elikoidi turned to look at him, an almost sympathetic smile on his face as Stefanos'' hands tightened their grip.


    "My dear boy, you will not be serving your Grace by allowing him to make rash decisions without consulting his council! I want you to tell me what he''s going to do so I can make him talk it out with his councillors rather than charging ahead like his brother has always been want to do. I want to help him, but if he will not let me help him then I need to use other ways to stop him from making mistakes, you understand?"


    Ilias looked over at Elikoidi and nodded, breaking eye-contact with Stefanos. He didn''t understand, not really, but for better or worse he did trust Elikoidi to genuinely want to help Lykourgos, and the Prince had become increasingly unwilling to open up to his friends like he once had. He wasn''t surprised, given the attempt on his life by someone whom he may well have considered a friend, but it made sense nonetheless.


    He nodded, and Elikoidi returned the gesture, face softening a little.


    "You''re worried. Don''t worry, I understand. You''re worried I''m planning something against his Grace. Rest assured, I am not. I would never betray my prince; I owe him everything I have. Everything. I wasn''t worried about you not reporting in on him before, for I never needed to know what he was doing, but given the attack on his person and his... rash actions recently, that has changed. Please understand that I only wish to protect him from himself if needs be, and I can''t do that unless I know what he''s up to."


    Ilias nodded again, making sure to give away nothing in his body language. Elikoidi nodded in response, seemingly satisfied.


    "Good. I''ll be taking my leave now. Stefanos, I believe you have work to attend to?"


    The man grunted his affirmation, and Elikoidi swept out of the room in his usual, flamboyant manner. The grip on his shoulder tightened again.


    "I don''t think you ought to lie to him, little boy. Not if you enjoy your station."


    "I don''t-"


    "I know you don''t understand. But you told him you did. You''re close to his Grace, and not just because of your job. He treats you like a kid brother, not just a servant."


    "His Grace is most kind to me. It allows me to better perform my job."


    The man darted his right hand from Ilias'' shoulder to hold his chin, forcing him to lock eyes with the cutthroat once more. He was silent for a good, long moment, and despite his skill at reading people there was not a hint of what was going on behind his assailant''s eyes. It was like searching for the sun on a stormy day, so impossible was the task. When eventually his old ''friend'' did speak the words were quiet but forceful, and chilled him through and through. There was malice in the man''s tone, as well as something deeper that he couldn''t even get close to identifying.


    "One day I''m going to kill you. That''s not a threat, or a promise. It''s the truth. One day, it won''t actually be a day of course, since it''ll be under the cover of night, you''ll slip up in front of the Master. Then I''ll kill you."


    Without another word the man released him and walked away, collecting his papers before walking off.


    Ilias slumped to the floor, his breathing deep and fast as his whole body shook. It took him a few minutes to collect himself, but when the shaking was little more than a tremble he stood and made his way back to his quarters, eager to put the whole meeting behind him. He knew he was being stupid by informing on both sides of this meaningless divide, not to mention how stupid he was for thinking that a meeting involving Stefanos could possibly end well, but he was so spent by the events of the day that he practically threw himself into his bed and tried to blot out the look in the almost dead eyes that had judged him as worthless and the conciliatory tone of the Master, but even for someone in his line of work it proved hard.


    When he at started to drift off he was scared and strangely cold. Sleep did not come easy to him, but eventually he managed to close his eyes for long enough to begin the long and arduous process of passing out.


    That night he dreamed of dancing and silent companionship, of black scars as well as the taste of copper.


    That night he bore witness to memories that were not his own once more.

 Lore Chapter: The Kingdom of Terranea

    Ah, Terranea. The greatest nation the world has ever seen, especially in the north of the world. The barbaric Klironomeans claim to have bested us, but it was only through daemonic trickery and the impurity of our own kings that such ''victories'' were capable for their lowly armies. Our majesty knew no bounds, and our ambition blotted out the very moon itself! It was just before the raging fires of the Age of Silence that Terranea was forged, and through that selfsame era it prospered and grew. It was our faith that saw the unnameable hordes cast back into the abyss, no matter what the disgusting Klironomeans claim. The peninsulas of Tilda, Dathan, and Ibaenea may now lie shattered and isolated from one another, but once all three were united under the glorious banner of the kings of Terranea.


    Terranea itself had its roots in the mighty city of Tilda, the greatest city in Kliskorios despite the claims of the vile northmen. Rooted in its ancient towers lies a culture grander than any before or since, and with far more powerful a force than any heathen god could muster. It was in Terranea that the world learned to kneel before the might of the First Saint and the hundreds who followed him, and as such it was only in the capital city of Terranea that the world became pure. When a horde of Skraeling barbarians took offense to the miracles he had wrought in the city of Aegos they stormed the city and hanged him for all to see, but in doing so they did little more than reveal his divine nature to us all.


    To think that I''d ever thank the Klironomoi for something, but for once they did something right; their conquest of the Skraelings, though not motivated by a desire to see the First Saint avenged, achieved that goal nonetheless. But we aren''t here to talk of the Return of the Klironomoi, nor even of the First Saint, hallowed be his name. We''re here so that you, my inquisitive young students, might understand the world that could be. Oh, what a world I could make...


    Hm? Ah, yes, a good question, young Acolyte. There were a myriad of empires occupying the space the Terraneans would one day rule over. There was the Empire of Aegos, the Haggran City-States, the- no, I won''t get further off track. You are correct nonetheless, my Acolyte. There were a great many other empires here once, but they were sinful. Much like those that occupy the space where the Terranean Empire once was now. If nothing else, the Terraneans taught the world that the age of the Sotenari and the Nekhtoudum were over, for the age of the Kliskorians had begun.


    The city of Tilda itself was founded by triplet sisters many centuries before the birth of the First Saint. It is known that the three of them were raised by a pack of wolves along the river Til, before managing to fend off a great pack of direwolves alone and without aid for three days and nights. When the smoke cleared they founded a city atop the corpses of their foes, which formed the seven hills that Tilda is built around, but then argued for three days and three nights over the name of the city before one of the triplets struck down her sisters in a blind rage. We know not which sister it was that was left alive at the end, but it was from her that the rulers of the city, and later the kingdom, did descend. Her line is all but ended now, which is a great pity. The world could use more divine blood in these trying times.


    The city today is famed for a great many holy and sacred sights. Admeta, you will likely learn much from the politicians in the majestic senatorial quarter. Not within the halls of the senate itself, but in the backrooms and antechambers where the real deals are made and power exchanged. Spyridon, the libraries of Tilda are still some of, if not the, greatest in the world. There is so much you could divine on the nature of the Saints in such a place.


    As for you, Sin, I know exactly what will interest you above all else. The Knight''s Steadfast, a grand and majestic structure attached to the northern walls of the city, with the senate to the south and the sea to the west. It was within the three keeps of this structure that the greatest knights in all of old Terranea, and as such the world, were trained. Greater still than the three keeps within the Steadfast is the Grandmaster''s Hall, where the likeness'' of every holy and mighty Grandmaster to have graced the lands of Terranea reside to this day. The statues are exquisite, carved from the finest marble and so intricately detailed one could be forgiven for thinking they are real men stood there instead of stone carvings. The detail, every fold in a cape, every curve in a muscle, all are portrayed just as realistically and lifelike as you or I sat here. Yes, young Acolyte. I believe you will one day fit right in with the heroes of old that watch over the Steadfast, and indeed the heroes of tomorrow that yet train and duel within its walls. A knighthood will never be your calling, but you will be as good as any of them with time.


    Now, that would certainly be an excellent little trip to make, wouldn''t it? The festival of Agia Abiah will be upon us in fourteen moons, and should you prove yourselves well I may be able to take the three of you as a part of Aegos'' entourage to join the procession alongside our brothers and sisters from across the continent. None of you have ever set foot outside the Dathanian peninsula, have you? Well, consider this a gift, if you perform your chores with sufficient diligence of course.


    It was amidst the fighting of three sisters that the mighty city of Tilda was founded. How fitting then, that it came to its end amidst the squabbling of the three regions that formed its territories. The Ibaenean peninsula was cruelly snatched from the loving embrace of Tilda in the Third Kliro-Terranean War, whilst Tilda and Dathan railed against each other over the issue of slavery, with Tilda and the Dathanian western coastline being broadly in favour of and the Dathanian heartlands being broadly against such a sinful policy. That is one of the only things I can admit to the kingdom of Terranea doing wrong; no man may keep another man in chains, this much is known by all. If any of you disagree, then that will prove nothing more than the fact that you require more group disciplinary sessions. So, anyone disagree? No? Spyridon, you seem rather pale. Any chance you may disagree with what has been said? No? Excellent. Good child, I told you you''d learn quickly.


    Now, an important thing to note about Terranea in its early history is that it placed the Saints above all else, save only the First Saint of course. It was through this faith that the kingdom was able to grow and expand, eclipsing all else on the continent, and it was through this faith that the nation was carried through the Age of Silence. What''s that Sin? How did they worship the First Saint if he had not been born yet?


    Had you been gifted with an education in theology like these two I would have ordered a group disciplinary for that question, but you did not have such a privileged upbringing, and so I understand that your question has come from an innocent place, even if it makes you appear stupid in front of your peers.


    The First Saint has been worshipped for thousands of years in small Kingdoms such as Ereverry, long before he was born. Whilst the earliest kings and queens of Terranea may not have worshipped him, large segments of the population were devoted to primitive forms of what we now understand to be the Alithini-Agiathos, or the New-Church, of the First Saint. These cults held such fervour and dedication to their as-of-yet unborn deity that, in the midst of the Age of Silence when all else seemed lost, they recognised his birth and supplanted the pagan gods that once reigned over the misguided kingdom. The populous of Terranea took to their new deity with much fervour, for in the Silence it was clear that their false gods had abandoned them whilst the First Saint would fight for them no matter what. No one can be surprised when men and women turn to that which will fight for them over those who demand worship before abandoning those who trusted them.


    Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, Terranea. Terranea, the shining city on a hill! Whilst ostensibly a monarchy, it also maintained a body of all those influential enough in the running of the kingdom, who were able to overrule the monarch if they felt that the sovereign was overreaching or else making poor choices with his power. A queer and strange form of governance, and whilst it was not pure enough to last it was certainly better than anything the Saints damned Klironomoi could have hoped to live under. Some claim that the church has abandoned the lands of old Terranea, that it sees Klironomea as the future, but such dissidents are wrong. The church can never abandon these lands, for the northmen worship pagan gods whom they hide under the veil of ''Angels'', clinging to the vestiges of their barbaric past and refusing to fully accept the First Saint into their hearts. I weep for their misguided flocks, but I feel nothing short of contempt for their kings, lords, and bishops who blindly usher them towards the many hells that exist beyond this world.


    There were a great many ancient and noble cities that once vied for power over these lands, but for a glorious few centuries Terranea ended such squabbles. Tilda, Aegos, Khypridon, Tyranopolis, and even the daunted border cities of Kannagrios knelt before the majesty of the Terranean monarchs. The centuries that followed the unification of Terranea were a golden age of culture and art, broken only by the occasional squabble with some barbaric outside party, and since the collapse such a great and wonderful period has yet to come about again. Not even the much celebrated Klironomean Barracks-Kings could match the majesty of the Terraneans.


    Yes Acolyte Sin, that includes the pathetic child-king Harald II. Though he may have aspired to much and been well loved at home he accomplished nothing overall, save the complete disintegration of both his own kingdom and Terranea. Fucking Klironomeans.


    The Terraneans held a formidable fighting force indeed under their banner, and you are quite right to ask of it, Acolyte Admeta. Vast ranks of men trained with the shortsword and armoured in laminar, supported by the grandest cavalrymen the world has ever seen. It cannot be possible to overstate just how majestic a sight their grand charges were, and how many vile heathens were ground into less than nothing under their mighty steeds. The armies of Terranea slaughtered barbarian invaders and outsiders a great many times before they finally succumbed to the corruption of their masters, at times even marching north into the degenerate Klironomean lands in support of some claimant to their throne only slightly less degenerate than whichever king happened to be sitting it at the time. Unfortunately by this time the corruption at home had already began to take hold, and as such these expeditions tended towards failure more times than not. Still, look at where those claimants ended up without our support; a popular revolt that ended with a victory for neither side, and instead caused nearly a decade of chaos, anarchy, and war that Klironomea now knows as ''the Interregnum''.


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    Yes, I do have plans to avenge such defeats, but those will not come to pass within my lifetime. My lifetime is devoted to ensuring that the candle of Terranea does not die out in its entirety, to ensuring that a stable and pure system can triumph over the ashes of the old, and when I achieve that I can rest assured that whomsoever takes over from me when I finally leave this mortal vessel behind will be well equipped and prepared to enact such vengeful plans for themselves. It is my hope that one, or indeed all three of you, are able to fill the hole in the church that I leave behind.


    We will rule over these ancient Terranean lands in the years to come, sweet children, but know now that we will not fall to degeneracy as our forbearers did. We will stand tall for a thousand years, unbroken by the weight of all the sins of the world. For such a grand undertaking however, armies will be required.


    Hosts as mighty and great as those of old will need to be replicated in the days to come, but I can ensure that no corruption will find purchase in the hearts of those who serve through the application of an inquisitorial class dedicated to ensuring that the officers and their men all follow the doctrines of the church, ensuring that purity and piety are all that exist in the hearts of the men whom fight under the banner of the church.


    You seem quite taken by such prospects, young Acolyte Sin. To be a commander and soldier as loyal and capable as you shall surely be the standards that all who fight under our holy banner strive to achieve, but be sure to ensure that the daemon within your mind does not overtake your senses. Wroth is just as much a sin as any other, after all.


    No, I will hear no more of this. I do not care that the voice is growing louder, you will control yourself.


    Enough, Sin. I trust you will discipline yourself later to keep the daemon at bay. You will? Good. I see you have not given yourself over wholly to your namesake just yet. Never forget that, Sin. You were named as such for a reason when you came here, and the shadow of what you are will haunt you everyday. You must strive constantly to overcome the daemon, for if it torments you to your grave the First Saint will surely see you consigned to hell. Do not allow the daemon to win. I believe in you, Sin, but you must still prove yourself worthy of the station your education offers you. It is a large step upwards for one who has spent their lives on the streets as you have, so I trust you will not squander this opportunity.


    Back to the topic of our lecture before that interaction, it was the forces of Terranea that brought the civilised world to heel. Oh, sure, the slavers of the south still reigned in their archaic empire and the kings to the north held onto their false idols with ever increasing fervour, but the lands of Terranea were all that mattered of civilisation. No slaver, no barbarian, no thrice-damned Klironomean could ever have hoped to best the majesty that the Terranean armies of old could bring to bear.


    And yet, for all the strength of old Terranea, it to fell before the foe. Terranea, once poised to conquer the continent of Kliskorios, was defeated in a series of wars by the borderline-pagan Klironomeans and their godless kings, whom they affectionately refer to as ''the Barracks-Kings''. Disgusting. It was the fault of Terranea itself that it fell, however, and no-one else''s. Not through poor military skills, nor inefficiency in the economic centre, but rather because the population was not pious enough. The kings of Terranea had grown fat from the wealth of their subjects, and from their ''generosity'' the priesthood also grew fat and corrupt. They cared more for their worldly possessions than their spirituality, more for the laws of their kings than their deities. Is it any wonder that the magnanimous and loving Saints recognised their corruption, and turned aside? After all, a father can only excuse his son so many times before he must leave him behind. You''re quite familiar with that concept, all three of you, aren''t you?


    Do not cry in my classroom, Spyridon. Sin, can you tell me what we, what Terranea, learned from the Battle of the Aauta Pass?


    Yes, very good. We cannot trust the northmen, nor those from the south. To trust any outside Terranea itself is to invite death. Sin, you understand that, don''t you? To trust anyone outside of this small circle is wrong, is sinful. I trust you will not live up to your name.


    Indeed, Terranea was once the greatest and holiest of all the realms of man, but they fell far. The First Saint abandoned the corrupt merchants and moneylenders of the kingdom for cavorting with heathens and heretics both, and so when the northern barbarians struck the kingdom was crushed.


    Terranea has fallen. The reality is sad, but it remains our reality nonetheless. We are a long way from the old capital of Tilda, but this place is just as holy. I fail to see why Terranea could not be reborn here. The old Kingdom of Terranea lasted for nearly four centuries before the corruption of its kings led it to ruin, but if it were to be united under a new type of leadership, a strong leadership that all the dark powers of the world could never hope to corrupt...


    Yes, I could see that state lasting a very long time indeed.


    Yes, you are all asking the right questions. I was right to give you all this chance. I know you will not disappoint me, not if you wish to remain in this position. Think on all I have given you: hot meals, clean water, a roof over your heads. You would not wish to disappoint me, I know it. Yes, the three of you will go far, I think. You''ll all make for fine Cardinals one day. Especially you, Sin. Ensure you do not fall to the madness of the daemon inside your mind, and you will make for a fine Cardinal indeed. Spyridon, Admeta, listen well to what I say; how is it that this boy, tainted by a daemon and having lived for the last thirteen years amongst street-rats and vagabonds, is able to best you in almost every stage of your theological curriculum? I trust you will increase the effort you apply to your studies so as not to fall behind further.


    Do not look so guilty on behalf of your classmates when I point out such a fact, Sin. It is their own fault that they fall behind, and if I must shame them into action with by comparing their achievements to your own then that is what I will do.


    The old kingdom that once reigned over the south of Kliskorios was not, to the shame of all, completely unified in terms of its religious makeup. Pagan religions often clung on in the periphery, but throughout the land there were other cults that wished for recognition. The most shameful were the Dragon-Church and the Slave-Cult, for one worshiped abominations of fire made flesh and the other worshipped the sin of keeping men and women in chattel, believing themselves to be holier than all others and thus immune to sin.


    Make no mistake, children. Whilst the Terraneans and their descendants, us, are holier than any other peoples on the planet, we are not immune from sin. Our resident street-rat proves that well to us. It is how we deal with those sins that defines us, and as such when he flagellates himself later in penance for allowing a daemon to continue to have such a grip over his soul I would like you to assist him in atoning for his sins. No, you may not both join him in penance for your own sins; you must both learn to administer punishment if you are to succeed in this life, for how else will you be able to teach the sinners the error of their ways? Besides, it will also serve as a lesson that while one must not be dissuaded from administering discipline, one must not take enjoyment in it either. By whipping him you will feel the same pain I feel when I must discipline the three of you. You have each seen thirteen winters, and as such it is high time your duties were extended beyond that of mere Acolytes. Have the three of you picked your special educational courses yet? You have? Excellent, allow me to know of your plans. Admeta, you first.


    Inquisitorial work? Yes, inquisitors will be much needed in the years to come. If that is the case then it is for the best that you administer punishment to your classmate here, after all, a great deal of inquisitorial work involves dealing with the sacrilegious and recalcitrant until they break. Spyridon, yourself?


    Administrative duties? Whilst I can see why you may feel a little ashamed to admit that out loud, do not fret. Administrative staff too will be sorely needed in a decades time. Just because you lack the stomach for more physical labours does not mean you are useless to our cause. Last but not least, Sin?


    Yes, I suspected as much. Tell me, did this choice come of your own volition or was it the voice that pressured you into it? Your own volition? Are you lying to me, Sin?


    No, you are not, are you? Excellent! Military matters may not seem liturgical, but in a world such as this an organisation without arms and armour is an organisation doomed to a swift and unremarkable demise. I trust in your boundless diligence and unending endurance to see our forces raised to new heights before the day of reckoning shines upon us all.


    No, you do not yet need to worry about what the ''day of reckoning'' refers to. Yes, Archbishop Trios does know, and is supportive of any such prospective plan that may or may not involve the faith taking a far more prominent position within the politics of Aegos and indeed Dathan as a whole. No, Sin, the majority of the church outside of Aegos does not know of any such plan, and such a state of affairs will continue. How do I know this?


    Because if any of you so much as breath a word of the existence of such plans to anyone when we are not within the walls of this very classroom then you will find that what you have believed to be cruelty, namely the disciplinary corrections, are nothing compared to what is to come. You think being locked in an austere cell with one meal a day to share between the three of you is bad when you have had to endure such conditions for a week? I promise you that should any of you decide to mention this to anyone outside of these four walls that the punishment you endured will seem as a fond memory compared to the hells you shall burn in for betraying the devout servants of the First Saint. Wipe that fearful look off of your faces, for all it tells me is that you all harbour doubts and desires outside the bounds of what the generous upbringing I have provided you would permit.


    Five lashes after class, all of you. Then the two of you can see to assisting Sin with his own penance.


    I am so very proud of all of you, children. I know the paths you all walk are tough, but they are only tough because they need to be. You will be a new generation of the faithful, free from the sins of those who came before you through your penance. A new generation to usher in a new age of glory, a new Terranean state. Yes... yes... a new Terranean state. One not headed by corruptible kings or greedy merchants, but by the honest and the pure, the faithful and the diligent. Headed by the three of you.


    Now doesn''t that sound like a wonderful future?

 Seventh II: The Mists of Spring

    <u>Seventh II: The Mists of Spring</u>


    <u>The Fifteenth Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    There was so much work to do. Not for them of course; they were but a seer, a mystic, and as such their work was far different to those around them. The Grandmaster was constantly training those knights less experienced than their seniors, and they knew for a fact that if they were to walk to the barracks they would see Marshal Crowe and the remaining Lieutenants of Teleytaios drilling the armsmen until they dropped.


    Yes, life was extremely busy at the moment. However no-one was perhaps as busy as the crown prince himself. One look at Lykourgos told the seer everything they needed to know about exactly how much work he had to do, how much preparation went into a war. The young man looked tired, more so than they had so far seen him since they''d met. ''Stressed'' didn''t cover the look of complete and total exhaustion mixed with vague annoyance on his face; he looked as though he were one more ink blot away from shoving the paperwork into Rhema''s hands and dooming them all.


    There was a loud crashing noise from an antechamber connected to the council chamber, and a faint "I''m alright!" could be heard in a voice that sounded distinctly like the prince''s younger brother. Seventh thought that if Lykourgos had sighed any harder he would have managed to eject his soul from his body.


    "Angels preserve me, I forgot how much I hated this."


    Seventh smiled apologetically at the prince.


    "Surely there''s an upside, your Grace?"


    "Oh, there''s an upside alright." The crown prince gestured towards a few opened messages on the table. "I get to go back to war soon."


    Seventh stilled a moment, slightly concerned by how they were unable to tell whether or not Lykourgos was joking.


    "That... doesn''t sound like an upside."


    His Grace huffed out a short and snarky laugh.


    "You''ve never needed to run a kingdom in peacetime. There''s only so many petty issues a man can take before he considers abdicating and founding a sellsword band in the east."


    Lykourgos turned to look at them, a shrewd gaze being levelled at them which made the prince look a lot older than it should have.


    "Why are you here, Seer? Well, I know that title isn''t entirely true, but it fits our conversations all the same. I digress; normally it''s hard to drag you away from my brother, and yet here you are whilst he''s in there doing... Angels, I don''t know if I want to know what he''s doing in there. Not with the amount of crashing noises I can hear anyway."


    They kept themselves silent for a little while, taking in the first part of what the crown prince had said. He knew that they weren''t just a seer, weren''t just some mystic or charlatan, and the only way he could know that was if he''d spoken to their kinsman already. They blinked behind their blindfold a few times as their mind caught up with them, realising that the eldest prince was still waiting for an answer.


    "I was originally here in the council meeting to take down minutes, as I did under your brother. I haven''t left because... well, you''re still here and your brother is in the adjoined antechamber, your Grace."


    Lykourgos nodded appraisingly at them, and Seventh could tell at once there was an idea flashing behind the eyes of the prince.


    "I see. Well, in any case I''m not in immediate need of your services, however I would like to ask if you''ll be joining myself and my brother when we do eventually march out to meet the foe? Rhema certainly seems rather fond of you, and from what I know and he has told me of you there is certainly a ruthless streak underneath your innocent exterior."


    Seventh looked at the prince, their head tilting a little.


    "May I ask what exactly you''re referring to?"


    Despite the blindfold over their eyes Seventh could see perfectly well, and the more mystical half of their senses certainly didn''t miss the raised eyebrow that the crown prince gave him. He spoke in a deadpan tone, equal parts accusatory, impressed, and amused.


    "I find it hard to believe that the majority of my sister''s councillors just so happened to drop dead in your chambers, Seer. Certainly not without your input. Whilst you may not be able to perform an action like that again, since I recognise that such a deed was only possible thanks to a series of carefully curated circumstances, that incident tells me you have a goodly portion of talent when it comes to disposing of those you need to. My brother speaks highly of you, and I personally witnessed the ritual which woke up our... new acquaintance. Though if I have my guess he''s only my new acquaintance, and for you quite an old one."


    They nodded seriously at their king-to-be.


    "That''s true enough. He''s lived a very, very long time. Longer than you understand. Longer than I understand. He''s seen things that are simply no longer possible, on this world or any other. He''s ancient, and he knows me well. Perhaps even better than I know myself. He''s dangerous, your Grace, but not to either of us. He sees something in you, else he wouldn''t still be speaking to you. He sees something in you, your Grace."


    "Even beings such as him can be wrong."


    Seventh nodded with a small laugh.


    "Oh, more than we could ever know, your Grace. Ask him about such things yourself if you wish."


    There was then a lull in conversation, but as Seventh made to continue speaking they sensed a spike in energy at the other end of their senses. The eyes of the prince turned to the door, and they knew at once who it would be. The prospect of another exhaustive conversation with their kinsman filled them with both anticipation and... not quite dread, but certainly unease.


    They knew their kinsman was a fascinating and unique man, even amongst their own kind, but they hadn''t anticipated just how unique he was until he''d arrived in Anaria after waking up. Some of the things he''d shown them, the things they now knew...


    He may not have ever asked for the title of a God, he may have even bid Seventh to "Please stop calling me a god, it feels strange when it''s not a human doing it", but only a true deity could possibly do the things he had done. The creation of entire species, of ecosystems and beings with magic at their heart and roiling in their souls...


    That had been something that not even the rest of his kin back when he''d been Seventh''s age were possible of. That was why they''d grown jealous of what he''d made. Why they feared what he made. It was why-


    They were getting off track again. That would not do at the moment.


    "Young Seventh," a familiar voice beckoned, "a word, if you please."


    They turned and stared a little at their kinsman, nodding slowly. They needed to speak with their elder anyway, and there was no time like the present.


    "Your Grace, may I-"


    "Of course, far be it from me to keep either of you from talking with each other. I''m not stupid enough to stop wielders of eldritch magics from interacting."


    "Wise as always, young Prince of Violets. Come now, Seventh. You have questions for me, and I''ll answer the ones I feel like."


    Well, that wasn''t exactly a promising start, but it was better than nothing they supposed. Well, maybe this would be a good time to confront their kinsman about their standoffishness.


    <hr>


    "There is something you feel you need to tell me. More than one thing, actually. Let us start with your as of yet unasked question about your ''prophetic'' abilities."


    Seventh nodded, doing their best to keep from being bewildered. There was no point wondering how their kinsman knew the questions they kept in their own mind. He was far more experienced than they were, after all.


    "Alright. I think one of the princes is a child of prophecy; I saw visions of them facing... facing that monster. If it was not them then it shared their blood, but there was a figure who sacrificed themselves to keep the darkness at bay. I''m certain that one of them is a child of prophecy."


    Their kinsman sneered a little at that word.


    "''Prophecy''? You have the gift of foresight, wingling, but to call a vision of what is to come ''prophecy'' sets a rather dangerous tone. There is no such thing as prophecy, you must understand. Predictions, yes, but not true prophecy."


    Seventh set their chin a little, defiant.


    "You''re being pedantic. You know exactly what I mean, and if I''ve seen visions of that... that thing that lies above, then I know you have as well. You know it better than most."


    There was a slight shift in their kinsman''s countenance at that statement, as though he weren''t exactly sure which part of their rebuttal to focus on.


    "I am aware of what you mean, but no, I do not have ''visions'' of it. I see through its eyes, and though it has never been able to it so dearly wishes it could see through mine. To stop such a thing from happening the majority of what remains of me is focused inwards, preventing the great enemy from gaining control of my form. As a result I cannot call upon many of my abilities, one of which being foresight. As the enemy stirs and begins to wake there will be less and less need for me to focus inwards, but for now I must force myself to remain impotent."


    "You''re still several orders of magnitude more powerful than myself."


    The man nodded sincerely.


    "I am. And yet compared to what I once was I am nothing. If my past self from when I was at my peak could see me now there would be only pity in my eyes, pity and rage at the ones who caused me to fall this low."


    "You told me when we first met that the ones who caused your fall had been dead for millennia, scores of millennia."


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "They have been, yes. That didn''t stop me cursing them whilst they still lived. It didn''t change what they did to my Penumbra. I feel as though we''ve gotten a little off track, however. The abilities you possess are powerful, your foresight greatly so, however there is no such thing as prophecy. Prophecy is a farce that mankind uses to justify their actions, to claim that something ''had to be done'' or to excuse their defeats by saying ''it was prophesied''. True prophecy is a myth, even to our kind. What you can do is look into the future, but that is not prophecy."


    "But there have been several instances of prophecy through history!"


    The man rolled his eyes.


    "Like what? Name three."


    Seventh wracked their brains to remember the most pertinent examples they could.


    "The first Coming of the Silence."


    "That was a warning from one of my six kinsmen who happened to be in the far north of the world and saw what was happening in the blasted polar wastes. They saw the first of the horse-lords rallying under the command of a great and terrible figure and knew at once that they were the vanguard for an invasion unlike any other the world had seen. It was good sense and luck, not prophecy."


    Seventh swallowed and put forth their second example.


    "Alright then, the Burning of Jotunheim. That was foretold centuries before it happened!"


    Basileous shook his head again.


    "It was, yes, but that was only because the dragons hadn''t exactly tried to hide their desire to scorch the city of the giant-kin. By this point they''d grown lethargic and idle, and as such it took the dragons decades to muster and a century to stop fighting each other to determine their places on the totem pole, so to speak. By the time they finally reached Jotunheim it had been two centuries since they first openly bellowed their challenge to the Jotun and four centuries since people had worked out what was going to happen from more mundane clues. It wasn''t prophecy, it was just a forgone conclusion."


    Seventh grumbled a little, trying to think of a more ironclad example that even his kinsman couldn''t deny. Prophecy had to be real, even if the powers they had weren''t quite prophetic. They clicked their fingers as the final example came to mind. So happy were they to have thought of a third example, and such a strong one at that, that they didn''t recognise how bad an idea bringing this up would be until they were halfway through their sentence and the man opposite was wearing such an expression of burning, rage-fuelled grief on his face that for a brief moment Seventh was genuinely afraid of being reduced to a scorch mark on the floor.


    "The Penumbra were prophesied to fall, and soon after they did. How can you... deny... prophecy..."


    They trailed away and swallowed hard when they realised exactly what they were saying, more than aware that they had crossed a line by bringing up their kinsman''s long-dead children. Basileous Hydran, for fuck''s sake I need to remember to use that name spoke in a voice far deeper than he had previously; his tone was that of collapsing mountains and sundered skies, a tone that promised the end and contained bottomless rage.


    "If you are to discuss my children," he warned, "I would greatly caution you against disparaging them. You might be the last of my kind who live alongside me, and I would not wish to be alone again. You wish to speak of prophecy? You think it''s prophecies that turn the wheels of history? You think it''s prophecy that drags mankind forwards? It''s blood, blood and darkness! Without conflict they''d never move forwards, and without darkness they''d never fear what lurks beyond their sight. Better to keep them on the road of war; maybe they''ll make something of themselves in the crucible."


    They shook their head at their mentor.


    "I apologise for bringing up your fallen creations in such a rash way, but I don''t agree with such a calloused and broken view of the world. I''m sorry, but that isn''t right. I refuse to let that be right. That can''t be all the world is."


    "Oh?" Hydran replied, raising an eyebrow. "And what does make up the world then?"


    They looked their mentor and Lord in the eyes, resolutely defiant.


    "Good people. Hopes and dreams, yes, and certainly blood and darkness, but most of all good people. Good people push the world forwards, and good people give others a reason to keep moving forwards. In all the ages you''ve lived you''ve forgotten that, for there were few who gave you that reason to keep going."


    The elder looked at him with what might best be described as a tired fondness, his anger visibly draining away. Yes, he seemed genuinely touched by their reply, but he just seemed so... so exhausted.


    "You''re just like him, your maker I mean. He''d be very proud of you. Very, very proud."


    "And who amongst your friends was my creator?"


    Their mentor shook their head.


    "Not yet. You''ll learn soon enough, but not yet. Besides, isn''t there something you wished to ask me about the waking of the prince?"


    Their initial annoyance at the answer being held from them was replaced by fresh annoyance at just how their kinsman had enacted their first wish.


    "Yes, yes there is!"


    Hydran raised an eyebrow at him.


    "Would you care to ask it, or are we going to be here all day?"


    Seventh sputtered a little, trying to find the right words. When sufficient time had passed and they couldn''t think of how best to word the question, they instead settled on wording it as a statement. Their kinsman could read between the lines and work out the rest.


    "You could have showed him happy memories! Made him wish to remain in the world, not guilt tripped him into living!"


    The larger Angel smirked.


    "Indeed, little wingling, I could have."


    Seventh sputtered indignantly at him.


    "You- why didn''t you? This isn''t what I remember you being like at all!"


    The man spat bitterly to the side.


    "You knew me a scant few months. You know how long the rest of our kinsmen knew me? Millennia. They were with me when my own children were scoured from the lands, and they remained at my side when the forgotten detritus of creation reared it''s head and blotted out the sun. There were six of them, all told, and they were all that remained of those who loved me."


    He stared down at Seventh impassively, energy crackling through his eyes.


    "And then they were all gone. Dead. Missing. Faded. The last links to who I was have turned into memories. And then you sprang up. From out of nowhere you appeared, claiming to be one''s successor."


    "Do you think I lie?"


    The Angel shook his head bitterly.


    "No. I know you are telling the truth. That''s what makes it worse."


    He pointed a finger at the the younger Seer.


    "I walked this world alone, believing there to be little worth living for, then I met Harald, with his bright ideas and natural charms. Then he rode to war, to fulfil his vision. He didn''t come back alive. I lost everything, then found something worth living for."


    "And then he died."


    He nodded, bitterness still lacing his tone.


    "And then he died, yes. I met him, and in the blink of an eye he was gone. So then you come here, following a pair of new, bright young princes with grand plans and bold ideas, telling me that not only have you, the only remaining member of my kind, survived, but you also try to build my hopes up again with the promise of a ''great future'' and a ''prophesied ruler''."


    The bitterness in his stare was replaced with anger, and for a brief moment Seventh could see burning forests and mountains of corpses, fields of fallen soldiers in the pouring rain, a beam of light shattering a camp of tall, strange men with purple skin and eyes which crackled with energy like their own.


    "I created and built and laboured for centuries to build a world where I could hope and love, but every time I got close the universe tore it from my reach."


    He clasped a hand around the other as it twitched, his breathing coming heavier than before.


    "You think I showed him his duty out of cruelty? It was mercy."


    "I don-"


    "Now he''s back he won''t have false hope. He won''t be blinded by empty promises and courteous platitudes. He''ll know what he has to do, and he''ll do it."


    There was a series off snapping sounds as the man''s bones shattered and reformed themselves, creaking and groaning as he grew. What stood before Seventh now was not the man all others had seen, but a great and terrible Angel.


    He stood well over eight feet tall, fourteen if you counted the antlers that tore through his head and branched out like a gnarled oak, and six wings were arrayed on his back. Each wing was easily large as Seventh, black feathers spun of ebon night framing his figure as he spoke.


    "I am not cruel, wingling. If I showed him his happiest memories he may have simply been content to move on. You wanted him to remain. To linger a while longer. Well, you''ve got your wish. He is back. In the future, when I do something for you, it''d be wiser if you didn''t assume you knew better than myself in these matters and royally piss me off. It wouldn''t go well for either of us. Keep your comments of my creations, my children, to yourself."


    The scene around them changed, and the backdrop of the palace became a battlefield of madness. The only constant was Hydran before him, though even he was different. He was bloodied and held a gore-drenched spear in one hand, whilst behind him lay a dozen dead men with golden eyes and wings as white as snow.


    "Being ''good'' does not mean acting ''good'' all the time. Sometimes you need to do bad things to continue being good. Sometimes others do bad things to you, and you need to let yourself be bad in return. Sometimes you need to be bad because you cannot be good anymore; when others have drank and drank from the well of your kindness, one day they will find it dry, and their only recourse will be to blame you."


    He gestured behind him, but did not turn to look at the slain Angels.


    "They will not thank you for offering them so much. They will not help you recover what has been lost."


    Seventh found their breath coming quicker and quicker as the scenes shifted a hundred times in a minute behind Basileous, forming an image of madness.


    "They will only blame you. That is what their kind does. That is what our kind did. It is what every kind does."


    Seventh shook their head, desperate to retain their mind when faced with such an ancient and troubled creature.


    "No. There is a goodness in all people. It exists in me, and in you as well. You just need to... you just need to show it to those who do care. And when you do, maybe the world won''t seem so dark anymore. You just need to try."


    A baleful glare came forth from glowing eyes.


    "I have tried! I tried when Harald took the throne, I tried when the world fell around me for the second time in what men now call the ''Age of Silence'', and I tried so desperately when everything collapsed the first time with the deaths of my ch-"


    There was the clacking of footsteps behind them, and in an instant the man was stood in front of them in the palace again, not a sound emanating from either of them. It was as though they''d both been stood in silence for the last... however long they''d been talking.


    The man, who Seventh vaguely recognised as the squire that sometimes guarded the crown prince''s chambers nodded respectfully at the two of them.


    "You, entombed one! His Grace wishes to speak with you. Seer, I believe his Highness has inquired as to your whereabouts."


    The man walked away at Basileous'' acknowledging nod, then stood there smirking a little while at them. When he did move to walk away he threw a backwards glance at the younger Angel, a bitter smirk on his face all the while.


    "Maybe you will turn out to be right, young wingling. Maybe. I won''t hedge my bets though. Now run along; you''ve got your own prince to go and see."


    <hr>


    "So, how''d that go?"


    "I''m pretty sure I managed to make him very, very angry at me."


    Rhema gave them an exaggerated wince in response.


    "How bad?"


    "Almost every topic of conversation we talked about ended up with me saying the wrong thing and touching some very sore spots for him."


    "Ah. So he was really pissed off at you then?"


    "Yes and no. Yes in that he was, but no in that he''s got good restraint and pretty much never acts in anger. Not physically or mystically anyway. Oh, he''ll throw a few barbed words around as well as the odd terror-filled vision-come-hallucination, but he''d never genuinely lash out at someone in anger. He''s lived long enough to grow very mature, even if he more resembles a man-child in his current state."


    "Current state?"


    "Yeah, you know, he''s not exactly-"


    Seventh trailed off as they realised what they were about to absentmindedly reveal. They trusted Rhema so, so much, but this wasn''t about trust. It simply wasn''t their story to tell.


    "Sorry, I, uh... It isn''t my place to say, truth be told."


    Their friend nodded at them with a warm smile.


    "Don''t sweat it, I get what you mean. This is more my brother''s sort of thing anyway. I''ll settle for whatever you feel like telling me. Anyhow, what exactly were you talking about with him, if it isn''t all... you know-"


    Rhema made a few wavy motions with his arms whilst doing what Seventh thought might have been a child''s impression of a ghost.


    "-magical and stuff."


    Seventh chuckled a little at their friend''s antics. How was it that Rhema was always able to cheer them up no matter what?


    "Nothing much. Just a little discussion on the nature of prophecy, the driving force behind mankind and progress, and the manner of your brother''s waking."


    Rhema stared at them for a little while as though they''d grown a second head.


    "You call that a ''little discussion''?"


    Seventh nodded at them mock-sincerely, now understanding where he was coming from. Worded like that it did sound ridiculous.


    "The secrets of this world are mine to know and discuss, little prince!" They began, doing their best impression of their kinsman. "Such knowledge is but my burden to bear!"


    They broke out in giggles at the end of their little impression, Rhema laughing alongside them all the while. Sure, they might have been another war coming, but things really didn''t seem so bad right now.


    With any luck it would stay that way.

 Lykourgos IV: The Trumpets Sound Once More

    <u>Lykourgos IV: The Trumpets Sound Once More</u>


    <u>The Eighteenth Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    He looked at the map on his table with a grimace, moving the little pieces around in accordance with the latest intelligence he''d received. There was no-one else in the room at the moment, for he wished to be left alone after his ''altercation'' with the Grandmaster, but he knew he couldn''t afford to put this off any longer. War was here, whether he wished to be friendly with his commanders or not. There was nothing left to do but summon them to him and tell them of his next move.


    The only trouble was... what was his next move? He couldn''t very well pull the lowborn back from their fields so soon after disbanding, for not only would that be detrimental to yet another harvest but it would also result in a sharp spike in unrest amongst the rural poor. That led him to his second issue, however; the forces of house Blackoak, though delayed in their advance thanks to the death of their commander courtesy of Eli, were nonetheless soon to cross the border. Not just soon, but very soon. He would be very surprised if the enemy was not encamped in the ruins of Ousdaal this time next week.


    He brooded a little as he consulted the list of numbers next to him for the umpteenth time that day. He hadn''t truly needed to look at them for hours now, since they were all burned into his mind, but it didn''t hurt to check again. He could count on some ten-thousand professional soldiers loyal to the crown, since those knights and armsmen who had fallen in the succession crisis had more or less been replaced by those squires knighted for bravery in battle and veteran levies hoping to make a career of soldiery respectively, and so his own forces weren''t too bad in terms of numbers, but they were still facing seventeen-thousand men, two thousand of which were professionals and eight-thousand semi-professional. If he could scrape together just a few thousand more men he would be able to sway things to his side, especially if Lord Aertax or whoever was now in command of the Blackoak forces ordered their forces split.


    He felt his lips curl into a snarl as he read Isen''s name on the paper. Angels damn the man to the lowliest hell that existed! He''d not be making the mistake of trusting anyone to be alone around him again, save a very select few people.


    He wasn''t even sure if his closest friends were on that list at the moment.


    He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He was being overly-dramatic. Romanos had said some very hurtful things, yes, but it was all in response to a miscommunication and an argument that had gotten out of hand. He''d make up with the man and forgive him, eventually. Probably.


    He forced out an exhale and steadied his mind again. He would forgive Romanos, and he would do it soon. He couldn''t afford to think otherwise.


    "A one-man council of war then, little prince?"


    Lykourgos looked up in surprise, the dark room previously lit only by tallow candles now seeming somehow brighter as the newcomer walked in.


    "You."


    The man smirked in amusement.


    "Indeed, it is me. I thought you''d have sought me out by now, given our... previous interactions."


    Lykourgos glared a little at the strange man.


    "I''m uncertain if you''ve noticed, but I''ve been really rather busy these last few weeks. I was rather excited to speak with you and ask you some questions back when you were first uncovered and then again when the Seer woke you up, but I have other duties to see to now; there''s nothing that could justify me spending my days with a man who hasn''t even deigned to tell me his name yet."


    The strange man seemed even more amused by something he''d said, but Lykourgos wasn''t really sure what.


    "Seer is such misleading title, even if it''s all they understand of their powers for now, but I digress. Those ''duties'' you mention can be left to other people. You are the king, in reality if not in law. I serve at your command, and you could have sent for me at any point."


    Lykourgos scoffed.


    "I am not stupid enough to leave the running of my kingdom to anyone else, not anymore, nor am I so filled with pride so as to think that a man who lived through the reign of King Harald the Second would be beholden to any man, no matter how high his social standing or legal ranking might place him."


    The man was actually given pause for a split second, but then the smirk was back on his face


    "And how did you come to that conclusion?"


    He set his shoulders a little as he turned to better face the man, sitting up a little straighter compared to how he''d been previously hunched over the map and pages of statistics.


    "You called out for a ''Harald'' when you woke up, and clearly thought yourself in the midst of a battle. Now that by itself is not proof, for ''Harald'' is a rather common name amongst the Low-Klironomeans and Skraelings, but then you called out for ''Korvanus'' and demanded that he ''protect his king''. The only Korvanus I can think of in relation to a ''Harald'' would be Ser Korvanus, the knight who later went on to become the first Grandmaster of the Order of the Bloody Cross and, in turn, was one of the first heads of the Ichorian Cult. The ''Harald'' you spoke of can therefore only be King Harald Whitefield the Second."


    The stranger just stared at him all the while as he spoke, the smirk eventually transforming into a wide smile. He seemed to be very satisfied with Lykourgos indeed.


    "Yes, I think they might have been right after all. You''ll do. You''ll most certainly do. You asked for a name, and whilst I am not in the habit of handing out my true name to people such as yourself, there is one title you will know me by."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow.


    "And what might that be?"


    The man huffed a little.


    "I can already tell you will not believe my words, little prince. Few amongst your kind do, and most of those are not the sort of people I enjoy knowing who I am. I''ve walked amongst your kind for a very, very long time. Longer than you think."


    "You speak in riddles. Out with the answer, man!"


    "Very well," the man nodded whilst holding up his hands in a supplicatory gesture, "to you, I am Hydran."


    Lykourgos'' whirling mind came to a standstill. But that... that couldn''t possibly be true! For one of the Angels themselves to be... but that was...


    The man, the Angel, Hydran, raised an amused eyebrow at him.


    "Yes, I did tell you you''d have trouble believing me. Regardless of whether you do or you don''t, that''s what you can call me from here on out. It''s not my favourite name, but it''s a lot better than some I''ve been given. Far, far better."


    Lykourgos swallowed hard. This was his patron deity, the Angel he''d always prayed to, and here he was in front of him holding a casual back and forwards as though this were... as though Lykourgos hadn''t repeatedly scoffed at him and been consistently demanding in their few conversations. He opened his mouth to speak, but the Angel held up a hand and stilled him whilst moving to lounge in a chair opposite the prince.


    "Yes, I know, it''s hard to believe and, if true, makes you feel fearful and anxious that you''ll say or do the wrong thing. Trust me, I''ve seen it all before. I''d much rather you continued being snarky towards me, since it makes a nice change from the constant bowing and scraping I watch people do in my name. You could stand to be a little less standoffish though, and not just with me. Since waking up you''ve become hard as iron, strong and unyielding, yes, but brittle. Liable to be split in twain or shatter into a hundred shards before compromising with those around you, when it comes to your kingdom at least. Perhaps you should use your upcoming summons to try and mend some fences between you and your Grandmaster."


    Hydran held up his hand again as Lykourgos opened his mouth, bidding him to wait a little longer.


    "I''m not suggesting you forgive him for his rudeness outright since I know what your kind are like with grudges, but I will say that you should stop avoiding him. You''re to be a king, and I do not wish to sound harsh but you need to act like it; you can''t run everything by yourself, your Grace."


    He looked down back at the map and away from his deity, shamefaced. His first real interaction with his patron deity when they both knew who the other was, and it had served mostly as an admonishment for his stubbornness. He nodded choppily, still dazed by the revelation that a true Angel stood before him. He didn''t know why he wasn''t more suspicious of the man sat before him, he didn''t know why his mind told him that the man was telling the truth, he just... he just didn''t know. Surely the logical thing to do would be to dismiss such outlandish claims outright, but then... but then he looked back up into the eyes of his chosen deity, first amongst the seven, and for the briefest of moments he could have sworn they were a brilliant light blue, not unlike the sparks that had flitted across the eyes of the young... well, Hydran had said that Seer was a ''misleading'' title, but that was the only word his tired mind could think of in that moment.


    He blinked, and for a single glorious and terrifying moment the man before him was not a man but a six-winged Angel, no, a giant, no, a mountain, no, a statue carved from a mountain with a baleful glare, no, he was... he was drowning. The man was drowning in cold, briny water, in water so deep Lykourgos could see nothing save the vaguely illuminated figure in front of him. For that single undefinable moment he felt a fear unlike anything he''d ever known, not even when he lay bleeding on the palace walls. Then there was nought in his vision but a series of arcane markings etched into a rocky cliff far from all mankind, sigils and glyphs that danced before his vision. Then there was nothing.


    He blinked again, and the man was sat back before him in the palace again. Hydran rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers, and then... and then... what had he been thinking about?


    Oh yes, the misnomer of ''Seer'' being used to describe Seventh. It felt a little like he was forgetting something, something recent, but he pushed the thought from his mind. How was ''Seer'' an incorrect term anyway?


    Unless... blue sparks, blue light, connection to this ''Hydran'' who sat before him.


    He let out a deep sigh as he slumped a little in his chair. He supposed that was just another ''revelation'' to add to today''s pile.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    "You speak the truth; I will do as you say. Will you be here for the council?"


    Hydran scoffed.


    "No, I will not. Mortal matters are for mortal decision making, not mine. Besides, this whole conversation never happened. I''d like to keep myself hidden in plain sight a little longer, prince of violets."


    The man took a few steps towards the door, turning back and flashing him a smile as he left.


    "I wish you good fortune in the days to come, little prince. This has been a most enjoyable talk; do make sure not to get yourself killed the wars to come. Saving you once was hassle enough."


    Lykourgos nodded, more than a little dumbfounded, and then the man was gone. The door was shut once more, plunging the room back into the dim light of the tallow candles on the table. He wasn''t sure how long he sat there unmoving, his mind seeming to whirl with action before almost shutting down again and again under the weight of what he''d learned, but he had a job to do.


    "ILIAS!" He called, raising his voice as much as he was able. The young cupbearer scrambled into the room, squinting a little as he visibly adjusted to the darkness.


    "Your Grace?"


    "Have you read any of these reports, Ilias?"


    The waved a small number of the papers in his hand, his cupbearer nodding as he realised what they were.


    "I have, your Grace."


    "Then tell me, if you''re aware of course, do you know if the forces are still mustered?"


    "Only the armsmen and knights, your Grace. Symon and his sellswords are still in the city as well."


    "Then we''ll rally them all. If the Starlings are still here as well they''ll be joining me, they don''t have a choice in the matter. Ilias, fetch me Romanos, Rhema, Crowe, and Symon. Patriarch Olyver as well; he seems to have gotten my message. Do not ask them to attend me. Tell them."


    Ilias nodded and scampered off, the faintest hint of a smile on his face. It seemed his cupbearer liked it when he acted authoritative towards others.


    "It will be done, your Grace. I''ll get them now."


    Lykourgos smiled at the young cupbearer as the boy swiftly made to leave. Ilias had certainly been an excellent choice for a cupbearer, being both well-informed with his ear to the ground and loyal to a fault. Not false loyalty like Isen had shown him either, but real and honest loyalty born of what seemed to be a mixture of friendliness, hope, and hero-worship. Ilias was very good at his job indeed.


    Within the next half an hour the various figures he''d asked for all filtered into the dimly lit room, though he had thrown open the shutters of a window to let in a little more light. Crowe and Rhema had been the first to arrive, the large woman thumping her chest by way of greeting whilst his brother grinned at him and clasped his arm.


    "So, this is it then."


    Lykourgos nodded, faintly smiling back at his brother.


    "This is it. War looms once more."


    "At the very least this time we''ll be on the winning side, won''t we Crowe?"


    The large woman gave the younger prince a rather exasperated look, though there was more than a hint of amusement playing across her face.


    "That we most certainly will be, your Highness. I am certain we will be."


    Romanos arrived not long after, Symon in tow. Upon seeing the elder prince a complex array of emotions seemed to flit across the Grandmaster''s face, stilling only when Lykourgos nodded once at him in a gesture that he hoped came across as meaning ''we''ll talk later''.


    "Well, as I live and breath. I thought that ambitious bastard had done you in."


    Lykourgos huffed out a bitter laugh at the sellsword.


    "It was a rather close thing, but no. He failed utterly in his mission to kill me. Vengeance will come in time, of that I have no doubt, but we''ve got a larger issue at hand in the form of the seventeen-thousand men ready to cross our border at any moment. The plan has been made, and all of you have a part in it. Before the last member of our little council gets here, I wish to ask you something, Symon. Tell me, are you still interested in a decade''s worth of employment?"


    The man looked at him, a solicitous smile on his face as he took his seat at the table and lounged back.


    "Always am, so long as the coin is good. Let me guess, you''re worried about whether or not I''ve been offered anything by Blackoak, aren''t you?"


    Lykourgos paused for a moment, half the eyes in the room on him and half on Symon. Damn the man, but he was canny.


    "I might be."


    "Well, you''ve got nothing to fear. I was approached by an agent of the Old-Oak, and he offered to pay me exactly what you already have to switch sides and not a penny more, with no guarantee of future employment."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "So you turned him down?"


    Symon barked out a laugh.


    "Turn him down? Of course not! I told him to give me half the money upfront, which he did, then I came back here. I''m not going to turn down free gold, but I''m also not going to risk our contract in the process."


    "How can I trust you now that you''ve taken the gold of my enemy?"


    Symon smirked at him.


    "''Cause I''m giving you a third of it. Think of it as ''insurance'' for my loyalty."


    Lykourgos smiled despite himself at the man''s words. The son of the late captain Symon was a very canny man indeed.


    At that the door was opened again, this time by Dreamwulf who held it open for the last figure scheduled to arrive.


    "His eminence, Patriarch Olyver of the Westcoast Church."


    The patriarch was a slim man, some might even say lanky, but he still carried with him a sense of gravitas. Well, he did normally, but the gravitas he possessed was somewhat diminished by the nervous look in his eyes when he saw Lykourgos, but then that was to be expected. Fiery rhetoric from one party followed by blackmail from the other wasn''t exactly a concoction that promised a happy partnership, but Lykourgos could make it work. He needed to make it work. Luckily for him the patriarch even more desperately wanted word of his so-called ''dabbling with improper sects'' to remain under wraps, so the prince felt fairly confident that, come what may, the resplendent looking man would be very useful these coming moons.


    "Patriarch, how good of you to come, please, take a seat. You''ve been in good health I trust?"


    The man nodded slowly, clearly cautious and a little surprised.


    "I have been... well, your Grace.


    Lykourgos stared at the man for a few seconds, allowing silence to reign in the room before speaking once again in a very level tone.


    "Any conclave problems?"


    The ''holy'' man shook his head nervously.


    "Ah- no, your Grace. The rest of the conclave have fallen in line and have recognised that the... that the facts we knew at the time of our speaking against you were incorrect. False, even. The conclave have agreed that it is in the best interest of the pious to accept your rule. For the spiritual good of the realm. The ensuing... doctrinal differences amongst those below the conclave are being sorted as we speak."


    Lykourgos nodded at the man''s lukewarm tone. It seemed that the conclave of patriarchs weren''t exactly happy with their forced and sudden shift in tone, but they would cope. He needed their support, and whether it was enthusiastic or not didn''t matter for now. So long as they weren''t actively stirring up trouble then he was content to mostly leave them be, save for the occasional request for forces such as the one he was to make now. Well, he would mostly leave them alone for now anyway. When things calmed down and he was firmly entrenched... well, who knew what would happen then? Such days were a long way off yet, plenty of time for him to plan out what exactly he would do with the patchwork of lands owned by the various churches, cults, and sects across the realm.


    "Very good. A most logical course of action. Now, with that out of the way I''ll begin, unless anyone has any objections."


    The room remained silent for a few seconds, and so he took that as his que to continue. He gestured at the small stack of documents resting on the map on the table, bidding the others to look.


    "We''ve got six-thousand armsmen, four-thousand knights, and two-thousand sellswords at present counting, as far as my reports and advisors tell me anyway. I seem to recall that the church holds a not inconsiderable number of fighting men under its command; Patriarch, I trust the church will be donating a portion of its forces to us for these coming trials?"


    The patriarch nodded, gritting his teeth as he spoke. The man was clearly unhappy with being strongarmed like this, but then his career now rested upon him doing as he was told.


    "Two-thousand men of the church''s own forces will join you. I hope that will be sufficient, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos nodded at the man.


    "Very good. We can''t risk mustering the levies again so soon after they were sent home, so we''ll need to rely upon the forces we have at the moment. We now have fourteen thousand men to face the seventeen-thousand of house Blackoak, but every man of our force is to be of professional stock, or at least semi-professional. There''s one other thing you should all know in advance: there will be no baggage train."


    There was a sound of protest from Romanos, but Lykourgos held up his hand to stop him before he could start.


    "The armsmen can carry their own provisions Ser, and so to can your men. We''re going to move hard and fast to catch Blackoak by surprise, after all, if we went about this conventionally it would take us months to muster the levies and get moving. With this plan we''ll be passing back through Ousdaal in three weeks. We''ll force march our way down and cut the invaders apart piecemeal before laying siege to their border castles."


    "There''s one thing you''re forgetting;" the sellsword captain said, "your siege train will never be able to keep up with the rest of the army."


    "No, they won''t." Lyk conceded. "But I haven''t forgotten it. They''ll need to be left in the dust, yes, but they''re all still armed and armoured soldiers. I plan on leaving a token force to help them guard themselves whilst we march ahead and strike the first blows before the enemy''s reports say we should have even been able to leave the capital. By the time the siege train catches up to the rest of our forces in the Owkrestan border territories we''ll have soundly defeated any field army the Owkrestans can muster against us from house Blackoak, and perhaps even been able to storm some of the smaller keeps and forts along the way. Ousdaal and Carthos weren''t big, that much is true, but they''re a fair sight larger than the myriad of small mottes and towers that dot the border territories. That is my decree, and you''re all to follow it. All our men are to carry with them their own provisions, and they''re to set out at the eleventh hour tomorrow morning at a forced march pace. Are there any questions?"


    There were a few muttered comments around the room, but none seemed too perturbed by what he''d said. Rhema was practically vibrating with excitement, seemingly at the prospect of marching to war alongside his older brother instead of against him. Oh, they''d seized the capital together, but this was different; it was one thing to take part in a battle together, but it was quite another to stand alongside each other on campaign.


    Romanos was quiet, though it seemed he would be wanting a private audience when the meeting was over. Lykourgos didn''t blame the man for his misgivings, after all, marching without any baggage train at all was certainly an unorthodox move, but the prince knew he''d come around when the reasoning was explained to him. He always did, in the end at any rate.


    "No questions then? In that case you''re all free to leave at your leisure. Good day."


    He sighed a little to himself as his councillors walked out of the room, save Romanos who remained seated. The patriarch was rather diffuse in his parting words, but then that had been expected, and so Lykourgos wasn''t too worried about it. It seemed less like disloyalty and more like cautious reluctance than anything else.


    "You... you wanted to talk, Romanos?"


    The bigger man nodded.


    "I do. I''m sorry, Lyk. I didn''t mean to say that to you. It was..."


    "Hurtful?"


    The knight nodded, a little regret in his eyes that was no doubt mirrored in Lykourgos'' own.


    "Yes. It was hurtful of me. I was just so worried that... well, you woke up through a seemingly mystical intervention and then became as hard and uncompromising as any blade born of pure iron. I was uncertain as to whether or not you were... well, still you."


    Lykourgos nodded deeply.


    "I understand, mostly at least. I never hid my intentions towards the nobles, not in an official capacity at least, but now I understand that not talking it through with you properly before I acted was a mistake. I will not apologise for their execution, for that was no error on my part, but I do wish to apologise for the cowardly manner in which I sidestepped your concerns and then childishly avoided you in the days hence. I am sorry, friend."


    "Well," Romanos started with a small amount of mirth in his voice, "it seems we''re both sorry then. A truce?"


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "A truce. That sounds like an excellent idea."


    "Especially with the coming war. Which reminds me, I didn''t want to bring it up in front of everyone but I am a little concerned as to your plan to have the knights carry their own equipment. The men will be tired by the time we reach the battlefield."


    The prince went a little still, mulling over the point. It wasn''t an invalid concern, after all, the effectiveness of the men relied upon their fighting readiness.


    "True. But with any luck the knowledge that their victory in the field will buy them a few weeks of respite will tide them over. It''s a risk we need to take; you can''t deny that this is our best chance at victory."


    "The Old-Oak will never expect it, not if he''s still in his tower at Blacktree Hall. If he''s the ground commander then he will have a better chance of reacting, but with the... mysterious death of the original commander he appointed to his forces, I can see very little chance of him taking a risk by directly commanding everything himself."


    "So you think it will work?"


    Romanos nodded, a small smile on his face as he looked Lykourgos in the eye.


    "Aye, I think it will work. It''s a risk, but I think it will work."


    The prince nodded.


    "I see. Thank you for your council, friend."


    Romanos smiled a little wider, standing and making to leave.


    "It''s good to be back alongside you as well, friend.

 Rhema II: The Princes March

    <u>Rhema II: The Princes March</u>


    <u>The Eighteenth Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    His brother''s nineteenth name-day had come and gone last year, and he hadn''t been there to celebrate it with him. Now his brother was set to march back to war again with his twentieth name-day coming up, marking another year without celebrations and merriment, not that anyone else seemed to realise that. If they did they hadn''t mentioned it; even Lykourgos himself had been rather subdued about the prospect of the whole thing. It was odd, but not unexpected; his brother had yet another war to win, after all. It made Rhema feel a little self-conscious, to be honest. He was willing to bet that before the year ended his brother would have won his third war, whilst he had only ever lost one. Not that such selfish reasonings were truly why he felt this way; his brother, despite still recovering and, though no-one was willing to admit it, still rather frail, was taking on the monumental task of planning and organising what was needed to defend his kingdom and strike back against the invaders when they were put on the backfoot, and what was Rhema doing?


    He was losing himself in memories and wine, just as he had always done.


    No. No more. He wouldn''t let his brother try and take this task on alone as he always had. Rhema would break himself out of this funk and return to that diligent servant of the realm he had been whilst his brother was comatose. Just because Lyk was back that didn''t just give him a blanket excuse to abandon his duties, and it was time to act like it. He was going to help his brother win this war with everything he had, not because he was hungry for glory or for battle, but because he couldn''t afford to leave his brother alone anymore, because his brother couldn''t afford to be alone any longer. Sure, he had his advisors, but Rhema found it hard to trust any of them anymore, any other than those on the council that is. The others all smacked of treason to Rhema, real or imagined, and he needed to become a commander, a leader, that his brother could rely on to do whatever was asked of him.


    It was decided. He would speak to his brother today, and prove to him that he was worthy of being one of his commanders. He hadn''t the natural aptitude of Lyk, that was true, but he was far from an incompetent commander, especially since his studies after... after that day. He would ask his brother to trust him to act at his right hand, and to help him with whatever he could moving forwards.


    He knew exactly where he''d find his brother at the moment; if he wasn''t in a council meeting, hearing petitioners, or sparring with Rhema himself, then he would almost certainly be in a private chamber next to his own, empty save for a table and a couple of chairs, with a map on the table that seemed to change every time Rhema walked in and stacks of papers around him. He''d be in there, as he seemed to be rather a lot these days, brooding more than a little and glaring at some of the papers with such an intensity he seemed to be daring them not to burst into flames. The hour was late, very late, but Rhema knew that''s where he would be.


    There were more people in these halls than there were a month ago; the prince admitted to himself that he may have, just a little bit, been overreacting when he ordered the section of the palace around his brother''s chambers cleared of almost all servants whilst Lyk lay comatose and sleeping. Regardless, things seemed to be going back to normal now, what with his brother waking up and the endless paperwork he needed to wade through, and so life in the palace had slowly begun to return to the standard dull buzz of activity that seemed to characterise the hustle and bustle within its walls.


    He entered the small chamber with not a word, merely a curt nod to the Squire Eros, who seemed to be guarding the door. His brother was within as he''d predicted, staring at maps and sheets of numbers and reports of troop movements and logistics and road repairs and complaints from merchants stuck billeting the sellswords of the Starlings and-


    And his brother was a very busy man indeed.


    "I thought I might find you in here."


    "Rhema. I was going to come and see you soon enough. Did I ever tell you how sad I was to learn of the death of Lord Tyros, the commander of the Blackoak armies?"


    He shook his head.


    "No, you haven''t. I don''t think so, anyway."


    Lord Tyros... that sounded familiar. Wasn''t there a Lord Tyros that- wait, he meant that Lord Tyros? Rhema processed the words and was taken aback a little. He''d not heard of this!


    "Wait, he''s dead? How in all the hells did that happen?"


    "No, he isn''t dead, not yet anyway," his brother replied, a dangerous smile on his face, "but he will be soon. Very soon. I can trust you to look suitably surprised when the news reaches us?"


    He grinned back at his brother. Oh, now this he liked to hear. Death for death''s sake was never something he enjoyed, despite what people may have thought of him, but the death of an enemy was different. Besides, his brother had ordered it, and if his brother had ordered it then it had to be the right move.


    His brother didn''t make mistakes.


    "You''ve got bigger claws than I thought, Lyk. Of course I can. I suppose you''ll be surprised as well?"


    His older brother raised an eyebrow at him and smirked, his voice deadpan.


    "Oh, positively shocked. What a stroke of good luck that will be."


    Rhema laughed again, the morbidity of the moment not lost on him.


    "Well, at least this gives us a little bit of leeway with our own plans. You know, since Lord Aertax Blackoak will need to sort through all of his squabbling subordinates and cadet family members to figure out who should lead in Lord Tyros'' place."


    "Aye, that it will. Still, I''m not foolish enough to think it''ll buy us any more than a few days, a sennight at the most. Lord Aertax is many things, but inefficient is not one of them. He''s ruthless, decisive, and above all competent. With any luck the commander who gets appointed will be less so."


    "Well, the death of his cousin is certain to be a blow to him nonetheless. I still remember meeting Lord Tyros when he led a contingent of men to assist us on the twenty-mile wall at Castelos. Intimidating doesn''t cut it; in that regard he was second only to Lord Aertax Blackoak himself."


    "That checks out," his brother replied, "after all, Lord Tyros has always been the go-to right hand man for Lord Aertax. Of all the heads of Blackoak''s cadet branches, he was the one that kept them in line and stopped them getting any ideas of taking the mantle ''Head of House Blackoak'' for themselves. Knocked their heads together more than once."


    Rhema nodded, going silent for a moment. What was it he had come here for to begin with?


    He brushed his own frustration away when he realised he couldn''t remember. It would come to him soon enough.


    "Complicated, isn''t it?" He settled on saying. "You know, the fact that we''d normally just say ''Lord Blackoak'' to mean Lord Aertax himself, but there are like... a dozen Lord Blackoaks in Owkrestos."


    Lykourgos nodded and smiled at him.


    "I know what you mean. Still, it''ll be rather simple when we''re done with all of this. Remarkably simple, in fact."


    "Let me guess," he began, a feral smile beginning to tug at the corners of his face once more, "there''s to be a repeat of your little display at the gallows? Save me a place in the front row; I wouldn''t want to miss your brand of justice in action for all the world."


    His brother smiled at him and nodded once.


    "Elikoidi and Romanos will take some convincing on this matter. They were less than enthused with it the first time I ordered such an action undertaken."


    Rhema scoffed loudly.


    "Piss on them, you''re our king. Yes, I know you haven''t been coronated and are still technically the crown prince, but right now there isn''t a difference. You''re the king in fact if not yet in law. They serve at your command, not the other way around."


    His brother smiled at him.


    "You should probably be more concerned at the difference between ''Crown Prince'' and ''King''. After all, as soon as I''m coronated I''m naming you my heir."


    He stared at his brother, words faltering and dying on his tongue. What? He was... why?


    "I... I don''t understand."


    "What don''t you understand? Until I have an heir of my own get you''re to be my named successor."


    Rhema continued to stare at his brother, blinking in confusion. He raised a hand to point at himself.


    "You mean... me?"


    Lykourgos looked at him with a mildly amused expression.


    "Mayhaps I''ve not made myself clear... how can I clear this up for you... ah, yes! Prince Rhema, you''re my heir!"


    Rhema sank back into his chair a little. Fuck, he hadn''t expected this. Yes, he knew that in terms  of the succession he was next in line to the throne, but to actually be named the heir by the sitting monarch? That would certainly set him up to act as a counter to those who wished his brother ill.


    "Well... thank you, I guess. Thanks, Lyk. It means a lot."


    "Don''t get too ahead of yourself," his brother added with a well-meaning smile, "if I were to have a child you''d fall behind them in the succession."


    Rhema nodded.


    "Fine by me. It''s enough to know that you''d be happy with me as your heir for the time being."


    His brother gave him a warm and kind look.


    "Rhema, I''d be more than happy if you were to be king again should something happen to me. The chance that you''ll succeed me is rather great anyway; you know I''m not exactly... fond of that sort of thing. No matter how you look at it though, I need an heir right now. The attempt on my life has shown me that, if push comes to shove and I''m killed, there might well end up being chaos thanks to those who would profit from the attention of our realm being stuck firmly on the matter of succession whilst they invade. But there are... complications when it comes to me having a child. I don''t have that sort of desire."


    He nodded again, and tentatively ventured forth his response. It wasn''t meant as a tease, but more of a genuine question.


    "Unless it were to be with one particular person, I take it?"


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Lykourgos nodded, looking away a little with reddening cheeks.


    "Indeed. And... well, there can never be an heir born of that partnership."


    His brother sounded wistful, almost sad, at that particular fact. Rather than continue this particular thread of conversation along Rhema instead opted to shift the topic ever-so-slightly off as he continued to speak.


    "You know he came through here not long ago. A little before you woke, in fact."


    Lykourgos sat up a little straighter in his chair, immediately refocusing on him.


    "What?"


    Rhema just nodded.


    "Yeah, he seemed pretty cut up when he came by. He asked to speak with you, to see if the rumours were true. They were, of course, but he spoke to you anyway. You couldn''t speak back, obviously, but he did speak with you."


    His brother looked at him with a melancholic smile. It tasted of overripe plums and he hated it. He didn''t want Lykourgos being all sad, or even worse, being sad and hiding it. He kicked himself for even bringing Alekos up in the first place. His brother seemed to be staring right through him, which wasn''t good since that usually meant he went into deep thought soon after, not to mention that the gaze made him feel uncomfortable and caused him to squirm in his seat.


    "So," he ventured when the silence had gone on a tad longer than he was willing to bear, "does this mean people will have to call me ''your Grace'' as well then? Since I''m now your heir until you have a get of your own, I mean."


    His brother smiled at him, both the words and the fact that he now had something else to think about distracting him from their previous exchange.


    "That depends; how pedantic do you want me to be?"


    Rhema looked back at him, confused. He either was or he wasn''t, surely? What technicalities hadn''t he thought of?


    "What do you mean?"


    "Well," his brother explained, "you are technically still ''your Highness'' at the moment, because ''your Grace'' is only used for the king and the crown prince. Seeing as, technically, I''m still the crown prince and not yet the king, you''re still a ''Highness'' and not a ''Grace''. As soon as this war is over and I''m coronated however, then you''ll be ''your Grace''. If and when I have a son or daughter-"


    "Or something else besides."


    "Or something else besides," his brother nodded in acknowledgement, "then you''d go back to being ''your Highness'' again. I don''t say that as an insult or something stupid like that, just clearing up the facts so there isn''t any confusion further down the line."


    Rhema snorted.


    "Confusion about the line of succession is what started this whole fucking mess. If it stops this shitshow from happening again then that''s fine by me."


    Lykourgos laughed heartily at that, genuine mirth appearing on his brother''s face for the first time this conversation. It was a nice change of pace.


    "It''s been tough," his brother started after a little pause in conversation, smile slipping a little, "I had hoped for a few years of peace before we were back at war, but maybe this will turn out for the best. I don''t know how, and I don''t know what I can do to make such an outcome certain, but I do know that so long as I have my family with me I''ll be alright. I need you, brother. You''re to be my heir and right hand in this war and all the wars to come. Will you stand with me?"


    He practically launched himself at his older brother, wrapping him in a hug that might have been a little too tight to be comfortable, not that either of them cared.


    "Of course I will, you daft fool! You tell me what to do, you tell me who we''re fighting, and I''ll kill them for you. Whoever it is, I''ll kill them for you. That''s a promise."


    Lykourgos beamed at him, eyes crinkling and blinked-away tears in their corners, and hugged him back.


    "Then I''m glad to have people like you at my side, Rhema. I''m very glad of that indeed. The Angels only know where I''d be without the lot of you."


    Seeing that smile on his brother''s face, feeling the warmth of a familial embrace for the first time in months... he smiled back warmly. He... he wasn''t healthy, he knew that. He''d spent too long as a damaged, half-mad thing to think otherwise, but in that moment he knew that things were getting better. All those who had wronged him, who had belittled him, who had threated and beaten and broken him, they were gone. All of them, gone. All that remained was his brother and his friends. He might not have been ''normal'' like mother would have liked him to be, but he was healing, and that was all that mattered to him. Maybe one day he''d be able to embrace his brother not as the half-mad princeling, but as a sane and sanguine leader instead.


    That was a nice thought.


    <hr>


    The column of marching men had set out that morning as planned, and with a surprising amount of fanfare considering how little time the public had known about the march. Even with so little time to prepare any fanfare, the men had found flowers thrown at their feet as they marched through the city and out the gates with grim intent. His brother had even been given another crown of violets, something he seemed to collect every time he visited this city. Not that they lasted long, of course; flowers wilted fast once plucked.


    "Like the Aenir carves the Northlands,


    and the oak tree dulls the axe,


    as sure as moss tears down Her palace,


    whilst Her fallen turn to grass.


    Erevan is fallen, is fallen, is fallen,


    Erevan is fallen to rise no more.


    Erevan is fallen, is fallen, is fallen,


    Erevan is fallen to rise no more."


    Rhema rode on along the column in silence, his mind mercifully silent. They were being driven at a hard pace by his brother, but he''d yet to know the men grumble or gripe. Well, any more than usual anyway. Haestinghen was just ahead of them, and given that they''d only been on the march for ten days that was a hell of a surprise. To move fourteen-thousand men this far in so short a period of time was bound to give their enemies a nasty surprise. Teleytaios had mostly kept out of the wars of her neighbours these last few centuries, minor border conflicts notwithstanding, but now the Owkrestans had provoked the sleeping Queen of the Heptarchy into action. Teleytaios was to march abroad once more.


    First, however, there were the invaders to deal with. And they would be dealt with, of that he had no doubt. Their own forces were outnumbered, yes, but of a far greater quality. Besides, his brother had been outnumbered a great deal in the succession war, and he''d still soundly trounced the opposition.


    "How are you enjoying their singing?"


    Rhema curled his lip a little.


    "Not much. They''ve completely missed several lines."


    "Only the ones that would stop them from keeping time on march. That''s half the reason they sing, and also why there are only about four bloody songs they know."


    "Let me guess; ''Erevan Has Fallen'', ''Harald''s Dirge'', ''As Whitefield Drove the Deer'', and..."


    He trailed off a little, Seventh filling the lull in conversation.


    "You really shouldn''t be struggling with this last one."


    "Oh, it isn''t remembering it that''s the problem. I just can''t stand love songs."


    His friend sighed and nodded in agreement.


    "Still, there''s not a person alive in all the kingdoms of Klironomea that doesn''t know-"


    "''Derry''s Ten''. Angels, I grew tired of listening to that song three days ago."


    He sighed a little, then turned in the saddle to face his mystical friend.


    "Come on, out with it then. What''s the reason you''ve come to find me?"


    Seventh bowed a little in their saddle as Rhema spoke.


    "You mean apart from the fact that I enjoy your company and you''re the closest friend I have?"


    "Yeah, apart from that."


    The seer huffed a little, and though they would never admit it Rhema knew at once that they were sulking.


    "My kinsman has frustrated me far too much as of late. I''d rather not see him anytime soon."


    Rhema looked at his friend a little confused.


    "But he''s still in the palace, and we''re half the kingdom away. You can''t have seen him at all of late."


    Seventh raised an eyebrow at him, the action barely visible as they gestured towards their blindfolded eyes, and Rhema at once got their point.


    "Right, yep, I understand. Magic. Of course it would be magic. Any chance of some magic we could use on campaign?"


    Seventh gave him a little smile.


    "Not yet, I''m afraid. It''ll be a few years yet before I''ve learned to do anything other than invade people''s dreams and drive them to madness, but I''m learning. It''s a slow process, but still far quicker than it was now that I have a teacher. Anyway, there''s not a lot of meaning behind his teachings for people who aren''t like me."


    "Like you?"


    His friend pointed a thumb towards their own back, and Rhema nodded.


    "Right, I understand. I''ve been meaning to ask you, but... well, I didn''t want to sound stupid or rude at the time. Still, are you... you''re not quite human, are you?"


    Their friend looked at them, their smile turning false and face turning away slightly.


    "Not quite. Close enough though, that I promise."


    Rhema nodded again, not really caring to unpack what exactly that meant. They were still Seventh, his friend, and that was good enough for him.


    "Well, whatever you may be, I still think you''re fucking awesome."


    "Rhema, I nearly drove you mad when we first met."


    He waved away his friends worries.


    "Psh, nah! I startled you from your sleep, so that one was on me. Besides, I was well on the way to travelling down that road anyway."


    Seventh looked at them with a look that combined amusement with bemusement, and thankfully almost no remaining sadness.


    "I don''t understand how you were able to immediately forgive me for that. If you were anyone else I''d probably have been dead on the spot for ''witchcraft'' or somesuch nonsense thing."


    Rhema shrugged, a grin on his face.


    "Hey, what can I say, glowing blue eyes look good on you."


    His friend rolled their eyes and lightly punched his shoulder.


    "You are impossible sometimes, you know that right?"


    He gave them a mock bow from his saddle.


    "Why I''m practically constantly impossible, my dear friend. Angels above only know what''s going to happen now my brother has seen fit to trust me with more important duties. I think at one point he might have been considering making me a diplomat-come-envoy for foreign matters."


    Seventh gave him a quizzical look.


    "Not to doubt you, but in the years I''ve known you diplomacy hasn''t exactly been the first skill of yours that has ever come to mind."


    Rhema barked out a laugh.


    "No, but if Lyk wanted a war all he''d need to do would be to send me abroad. Can you imagine how much trouble I''d get in if I were in the Licoteman court?"


    Seventh gave him a fond smile.


    "You''d somehow manage to spark a civil war in three moons, never mind setting the Licotemans at odds with your brother."


    "Heh, that sounds about right. I''d probably have no idea how I managed it either. Still, that''s all besides the point. We''re going to war and my brother wants me to act as his right hand. If he were to split his forces and appoint me as commander... where would you go?"


    Seventh rolled their eyes, as if the question was too obvious to consider at length.


    "With you, obviously."


    "My brother would likely be able to make far better use of your powers, emergent or entrenched. He''s long wished to see the occult first-hand, and now that he has he might be annoyed if the occult spurns him."


    Seventh shrugged.


    "He''ll live, and he''ll wait. Besides, my mentor seems to have taken a liking to your brother. He''ll have plenty of contact with the occult these next few years, don''t you worry about that."


    Rhema raised an eyebrow.


    "All my brother told me of your mentor was that he forcefully woke him from his sleep, he isn''t what he seems to be, and... and he''s very old. Ancient, in fact. His voice went sort of faraway when he said that, his eyes glazed over a little as well. He seemed... scared by whatever your mentor said or showed to him."


    Seventh rolled their eyes, this time not at Rhema but seemingly at their mentor''s actions.


    "As strange and frightening as he might be, I can assure you that he wouldn''t have said what he said or shown what he shown unless he saw something in your brother. My mentor... I believe he revealed his name to your brother, one of his names at least, and though the revelation of who he is may have shocked his Grace a great deal he seems to be coping remarkably well. Extraordinarily well, to be honest. I wouldn''t be surprised if my kinsman had something to do with that."


    Rhema nodded, not really understanding.


    "So who exactly is he?"


    "I can''t tell you that, but only because it would be rather rude of me to do so without his permission. Next time I commune with him I''ll ask him if I can tell you, in confidence of course. Apart from that I''m afraid that I won''t be telling you much."


    Rhema raised an eyebrow.


    "Why, is it dangerous?"


    "Lets put it this way," his friend began with a shudder, "the Choir are not the only ones with an interest in people like us, like me and him. He''s known a great many groups like that, and really does not want to go through something like that again. I''m not sure why, since if he were in my position he could have... well, there''s a great many things he could have done. The capture of a young member of our kind such as myself is one thing, but to capture and hold not only an adult but one as ancient and powerful as him? That would be nigh impossible."


    Rhema smiled at his friend a little, as warm and soft as he could manage.


    "You really do think a lot of him, don''t you?"


    Seventh nodded purposefully back at him, their tone filled with reverence and what seemed to be nervous anticipation as they spoke.


    "He''s something special, Re. He''s not mortal like you are, and he''s not young like I am. He''s something else entirely. Only a fragment, only a shade, but even so..."


    Rhema nodded, and made a mental note to pass on what Seventh had nonchalantly just told him to his brother. Lyk would certainly want to know that this strange person he was fascinated by was a ''fragment'' rather than a whole.


    "Come on, Re." Seventh said. "I think Haestinghen is just over that hill and a few miles east. Then its just a quick dash south and we''ll be amongst the Owkrestans."


    Rhema nodded at them and nudged his destrier into moving, Seventh following close behind. His friend was right, Haestinghen was near. After that?


    The war would begin anew.

 Lykourgos V: Thrice the Prince Did March

    <u>Lykourgos V: Thrice the Prince Did March</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Eighth Day of the Third Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>The Woodsroad, Southern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    It had been ten days since the army had set out from the capital, and even by his standards they were making good time. Haestinghen had passed behind them a day or two ago, the men being allowed one day to rest before continuing on with their blisteringly fast march. Even still, they would be able to catch the enemy off guard and strike them down before they could reasonably have been expected to move.


    His commanders and advisors rode around him in a loose knot, as well as Dreamwulf and Eros. The two guards, despite knowing the loyalties of every single one of the gathered advisors, were unwilling to take any more chances with his life.


    Still, it was moments and events like this that made Lykourgos extremely happy that he had a man as talented as Elikoidi on his side. He wouldn''t say that the scarred man ran the underground particularly, but he would be very surprised if his friend didn''t have his hand on the tiller of more than a few criminal groups around the kingdom. Almost every informant, spy, and saboteur in Teleytaios was on his payroll, kept in line through a mixture of promises, gold, and favours. Threats as well, of course. Subtle, but threats nonetheless. Elikoidi had come very, very far since the prince had helped him out of that hellish situation he''d been in indeed.


    The man was far from here, having remained back in the capital alongside the relatively new Master of Copper, but the prince was certain his influence would be frustrating their foe even now. No-one would be able to garner any information on the Teleytaian interior without Elikoidi''s say so, nor could the enemy within move unnoticed, for the eyes of his friend remained unerringly on the pulse of the Teleytaian criminal underground. Nothing happened without him hearing about it, of that Lykourgos was sure.


    Nothing except things that happened to him, that was. That was the deal they''d had, after all.


    He was shaken from his musings by the approaching form of his dependable and trusted cupbearer.


    "Your Grace, Ser, we have word on the new commanders of Lord Blackoak''s forces."


    He nodded at the man, bidding him to continue. It seems my musings on the work of my friend were actually rather timely, he thought with a small measure of amusement, for just as I finish thinking of him I receive a message that will no-doubt be in his hand. His young cupbearer rose to his feet, handing over the parchment with a graceful bow.


    Lykourgos read through the message, then furrowed his brows and read it again. He read it once more as quickly but carefully as he could, then looked over at Ilias in surprise whilst handing the message over to Grandmaster Romanos. This was... well, it was certainly good news. Almost too good to be true!


    "He can''t be serious, surely? Lord Blackoak has really given command over half of his forces to that blithering fool?"


    "Indeed he has. Master Elikoidi''s intelligence is rarely wrong, your Grace."


    Lykourgos nodded, his mind already moving a thousand miles a minute thanks to this new information.


    Marshal Crowe spoke next as the Grandmaster handed the note to Rhema.


    "Who has been appointed, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos answered absentmindedly, already hashing out as much of a plan as he could in the moments he had to think.


    "His son and heir, a glory-hungry, self-assured prick. An excellent swordsman, of that there can be no doubt, but not a commander. This changes things; Rhema, I''m giving you command of four-thousand men and entrusting you to draw the eight-thousand men of Ser Aerna Blackoak west. Harry him, insult him, raid him, but do not meet him in battle. It''s a difficult task you''ve got, brother, for you need to stay close enough that Aerna thinks he can trap you in a battle but far enough to get away. You do that and I''ll fall on the other army, then we''ll take those you''ve drawn west between the two of us. A hammer and anvil, so to speak."


    His brother handed the note over to Crowe, a feral grin splitting his face.


    "It will be as you command, brother! Don''t worry about my capabilities; I''ll leave a good chunk of the tactical parts to Crowe here, if you can spare her services for me of course. I know this is a delicate task, and I''m not prideful enough to think I can do it without guidance."


    Lykourgos nodded at his brother, then looked at the Mistress of Iron.


    "Done. Take five-hundred Men-at-Arms and an equal number of Longbowmen, then a thousand of the church''s forces and Symon''s Starlings. That should give you a sufficiently varied body of men for the task at hand."


    Rhema nodded, but then the mercenary captain himself cut in.


    "And what about my opinion on the allocation of my men?"


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at the drably-armoured man.


    "I thought you''d enjoy the chance to be paid to not fight on the battlefield. Your men aren''t being paid per battle, after all."


    Symon''s face lit up with a smile as he chuckled a little, and Lykourgos realised the man had been toying a little with him there.


    "You''re as fun as ever. No good for an argument with me. Well, you''re the boss, your Grace. I''ll get the boys and get ready to split off with the rest of the lads under this one."


    He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Rhema before continuing.


    "I take it we know where this army is headed? They''re obviously splitting, since why else appoint two joint commanders, but where are they going?"


    Lykourgos held out his hand and the note was handed back to him.


    "Nine-thousand men under the command of Ser Aerna are apparently splitting from the army and heading west towards Carthos where, I assume, they''ll be moving along the northern shattered coast. It''s likely they''re heading for Brycgestow, since that''s the main settlement in the south of Teleytaios. If nothing else it seems I was right in one regard; they''re completely unaware that we''ve managed to move so fast. The other nine-thousand men, the ones not under the command of Lord Blackoak''s son and heir, are heading towards the charred ruins of Ousdaal. They''ll be there in a few days, then they''ll probably follow the road north to Haestinghen."


    "But we''ll be in their way."


    "Aye," he said, dangerous smile on his face, "that we will be. It''s mostly open plains there, no cover for the foe to speak of. Since they''ve split in half we''ll outnumber them slightly, even without the four-thousand who will split off and move as fast as they can towards Ser Aerna''s army. Draw him on a wild chase and keep him away. In two weeks we''ll have struck such a blow to the forces of the traitor and the invaders that even the venerable Lord Aertax will feel fear."


    Rhema grinned madly at him as Crowe spoke.


    "In the event Ser Aerna does as we hope do we have your permission to guide him to a fortress or castle of some description? He''ll lack the men to assault us, after all. Three to one are the odds he''ll need if he wants to go about it conventionally, and Ser Aerna is nothing if not exceptionally conventional. We can hole up in a fortified position and whittle his army to nothing if needs be, by which I mean if it looks like he might catch up to us at one point or another and you''re still too far away to reasonably be expected to help us."


    Lykourgos nodded. It was a good point, and one he really should have thought of.


    "Granted. Lead him all the way to Brycgestow if needs be, just so long as he''s kept away from Lieutenant Isen and you''re not at risk of being overrun."


    As he made to dismiss his commanders and advisors Symon spoke up again, this time an expression of easy curiosity on his face.


    "And who is this second army led by? Some snot-nosed lordling?"


    Lykourgos felt his lips curl into a hateful, vile snarl.


    "The second army is led by Lieutenant Isen himself. I will be commanding the force that kills him."


    His brother''s grin somehow grew wider whilst simultaneously turning to a rabid snarl at just the mention of the man who had tried to cut Lykourgos down, and both Crowe and Romanos seemed understanding of his desire to see Isen laid low before him personally. The Marshal nodded at him and spoke her parting words before she made to ride back down the column.


    "Understood, your Grace. If this is where we part ways then may Arnka be with you. Normally I would beseech Anawroth to assist you in battle, but this will not be a battle. This promises to be little more than a blood-hunt. Happy hunting, your Grace, and try to leave at least a few Owkrestan castles unstormed by the time we catch up with you."


    He nodded at her, scowl being replaced by a smirk at her somewhat humorous tone.


    "Will do, Marshal. All the best in carrying out your tasks, and for the love of the Angels please don''t beat them too soundly if you do get caught by the enemy. It might make my own victories look bad in comparison."


    A Lieutenant barked out a laugh at that a few paces away, but Lykourgos wasn''t sure of his name. Most of the Lieutenants he''d known were either dead or traitors now. Wulfstan and Ingfred were dead, and the less said about Isen the better. Marren wasn''t with him at the moment either, since he was busy ministering the siege train several weeks behind, and he just had never needed to get to know the rest of his Lieutenants. They were sound enough men, that much he knew, and there was little risk of one of them pulling a knife on him since he had no intention of being alone with them and none of them were stupid enough to try anything with the scrutiny that had been placed on them as a result of Isen''s little ploy.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    He also knew that his Armsmen were eager to prove themselves to him again. For years they''d enjoyed a position as his favoured fighting force, but with several of their own killing Lieutenant Ingfred and one of their leaders attempting to kill him they seemed worried they might have lost that spot back to the knights. They hadn''t, but he''d wait until after this war to let that be known. There was little sense in throwing away their need to prove before it had run its course, for their determination to do just that little bit more than they had previously meant that they were marching along at this really quite brutal pace with almost no complaints. The knights were grumbling a little and the sellswords more so, but there was nary a whisper of discontent from his Armsmen.


    A few of them seemed to be trying to organise into their own groups outside of their thousands and companies, swearing oaths to him personally and doubly binding themselves to his will. There weren''t many according to his remaining Lieutenants, but they were there. Scattered throughout the thousands, but still there. One particular report had made him chuckle a little; apparently one of the veterans that had served under him as far back as Seastream had formed one such group with his squad mates, calling themselves the ''Bastard''s Boys''. The name might have been a little on the nose, and a more respectable and noble man would certainly have shunned such a vulgarly named group from even associating with him, but Lykourgos was not such a man. If this was how his men wanted to show their devotion to him, to proudly display where their colours and allegiances lay, then he was certainly not going to be the one that made them stop. It wasn''t like they were actually doing any harm to him, if anything it was surely the opposite! He hoped they did well and didn''t grow too disillusioned with him before everything was said and done, but if ever their loyalty did begin to flag then he knew that it would surely be more his fault than theirs. They were good men, his armsmen, and he was proud to lead them. Prouder still was he to know that they were not forced into this life, but had chosen to fight for him and make a career of it to boot. They were good, good men and women.


    He just needed to do right by them. That was why he was to rule, after all. It was his duty to do right by the men and women of his kingdom, to protect them from outside rule.


    Lord Blackoak was going to regret invading the lands of his people. Lykourgos swore that the man would regret it, even if he had to tear Blacktree Hall down to the last stone and rip up it''s foundations. Lord Blackoak would regret his invasion.


    <hr>


    "They''re where you thought, your Grace. The enemy are marching up the road. They''ll be here by tomorrow."


    Lykourgos nodded at the outrider before holding up his hand, signalling a halt to his men''s advance as they reached a shallow ridge on the road. It had been three days since his brother had split with his four-thousand men, and already battle was to be the business of the next day.


    "Romanos, get the Lieutenants ready. I want the longbowmen out the front when the time comes with stakes driven into the ground in front of them. Leave the road itself clear; we''ll want the Blackoak forces to think there''s a weak point in our defences they can exploit and it''ll make setting off again afterwards easier. Have those amongst your knights who will be fighting on foot anchor the flanks of our formation and keep the thousand church-forces that remain with us ready to reinforce the frontlines at a moment''s notice. The two-thousand Armsmen with billhooks will take the flanks alongside your knights on foot; we''ll try for an envelopment of the enemy''s flanks. The boys have a night to rest and a few hours in the morning to prepare, so let''s get the majority of the defences made before the evening ends."


    Romanos nodded, clearly having expected to end up as his second in command given his seniority.


    "Understood, your Grace. What of the knights who will be remaining mounted?"


    "How many are there?"


    "Half of the total number of knights, your Grace. Two-thousand."


    Lykourgos thought for a moment, weighing his options.


    "Hold them back for now. When the envelopment begins and our flanks begin to squeeze around the side of the enemy have our heavy horse ready to charge at any Blackoak soldiers that may try to reinforce their comrades and counterattack our flanks. If we can break whatever reinforcements they send in then our envelopment will go off without a hitch."


    "Only if Lieutenant Isen acts as you think he will."


    Lykourgos shrugged. He knew pretty well what Isen would do.


    "Lieutenant Isen was a commander of longbowmen, not massed levies and knights. He''ll not be as experienced with this sort of formation. He''s a commander of Armsmen with no Armsmen to command; Owkrestos isn''t exactly renowned for its standing army."


    His old friend nodded.


    "You have the right of it this time, Lyk. I''ll send off the orders."


    He smiled at his friend and respectfully dipped his head a little.


    "Thank you, Ser. I know I can count on you no matter what."


    "You flatter me, your Grace. Come, lets get you some rest. Angels know you need it."


    Lykourgos thought of arguing for a moment before nodding. He didn''t want to admit it, but Romanos was more than correct in this instance. He was almost back to the state he''d been in before the failed attempt on his life, but if he wanted to take part in the fighting tomorrow then he''d need to rest at least a bit. He doubted he''d be getting much sleep tonight, not with so much anticipation and so many thoughts for the day to come rattling around in his head, but at the very least he could get something to eat and lie down for a little, even if sleep would be a fleeting thing.


    "That may not be entirely incorrect, yes. Come, walk with me; there''s still one or two things I want to look over before tomorrow comes, and if I''m to rest then I''d rather be doing something meaningful at the same time so as not to waste time."


    Romanos gave him a very exasperated smile.


    "You have a very skewed perception of what ''rest'' means."


    Lykourgos shrugged at his friend in an exaggerated manner.


    "My brother gave me some advice to use when you disagree with me, something to say when I don''t wanna listen to you."


    His friend tried and failed to keep a grin off of his face, no doubt knowing exactly where this was going already.


    "Your brother gave you some advice, did he? I wonder what words of wisdom he bestowed upon you?"


    "Fuck you, I''m the king, I can do what I want."


    Romanos laughed a little at the words, shaking his head with a large grin splitting his face.


    "Not quite yet you''re not, your Grace. Unless you''ve forgotten to tell me that you''ve been coronated in secret?"


    He snorted at his friend''s words as he began to trot slowly back down the road behind the ridge where a few tents were already being erected in orderly rows.


    "As if I''d be willing to pass up on the pageantry. I need the people to see me, Romanos! I''m a vain and prideful man, don''t you know that!"


    His friend laughed again as he followed him to what would, in an hour or two, be a camp for ten-thousand men.


    "You''ve not changed that much, Lyk. You''re still you, and for that I''m glad. Just don''t go actually getting yourself coronated in secret; that''ll raise all kinds of problems if people point to it and start denying your legitimacy."


    He nodded at his friend''s words.


    "I know, don''t worry. Really this war is to be a surer way of cementing my legitimacy than any other however; people love victorious monarchs. They despise ones that bring them defeat. I don''t intend to return to the capital in disgrace."


    <hr>


    He''d dreamed that night. Sleep had come fitfully and was mercifully short, but oh how he''d dreamed. He''d dreamed a very vivid, very real dream; he was on the battlefield that lay in front of him in the real world, save this was underneath a balefully glowing moon, one that appeared far larger than was normal and dominated the skyline. He looked down at his hands and arms, at his body, only to find he was completely drenched in gore from his boots to his breast.


    None of the blood was his.


    He looked back up and across the field at the man who he knew, on an instinctual level, was to be stood in front of him. He didn''t know where his army was, nor if any of them even lived around him, but that didn''t matter; Isen was some fifty feet away, the knife that he''d stuck into his prince''s ribs bloody in his hand and a wicked smile on his face, one that fell as he beheld the gore-drenched form of the aforementioned prince.


    There must have been half a hundred hazy, half-formed men stood between him and Isen, but that didn''t matter. He stood atop a mound of the dead and bellowed out a challenge to his foe, the words leaving his mouth before he''d even realised he was speaking.


    "YOU FAILED, ISEN! I''M STILL HERE, YOU COWARD! I''M HERE, AND SOON WHAT LITTLE I DIDN''T TAKE FROM YOU BEFORE WILL BE LAIN BEFORE ME AMIDST THE DEAD AND THE DYING OF THIS FIELD! COME AND FACE ME, LIEUTENENT ISEN! COME FACE ME AND DIE!"


    He gripped the sword in his hand, only to feel his grip clench nothing but empty air. He looked down in confusion to see that his sword and shield were gone, his slaughter-soaked hands empty. No matter. In any other sort of dream such events would be frightening, even terrifying, but not here. Not now. He didn''t need a weapon to kill the two-faced bastard in front of him. He balled his hands into fists and set of at a sprint towards his hated enemy, his movements taking him in leaps and bounds towards the foe at a speed that defied all logic.


    I don''t care if this is real, a dream, or something mystical. I''m going to kill you, Isen. I''m going to kill you.


    He closed the last few metres between himself and Isen in a single mighty leap. It seemed that there were some perks to this being a dream after all, since there was absolutely no way that he possessed the superhuman abilities to jump that far in the real world. He reached out with his hands as the form of Isen grew nearer, arms stretched out in front of him so that he could throttle the traitor as soon as he got close enough, but then, with an almighty shout that he only just recognised as belonging to himself, everything faded away around him.


    And then he was awake.


    "-ur Grace! Your Grace! Are you alright!"


    He blinked a few times, clearing the fog of confusion from his mind as his mind caught up with his body.


    "Eros?"


    "And me, yer ''Ighness."


    Lykourgos looked at the squire and motioned towards the beaker of heavily watered wine. Angels, he was parched. A small goblet of the liquid was brought to him and he drank it all in a few massive gulps.


    "My thanks, Eros. What happened? Why did you come to wake me?"


    Dreamwulf huffed.


    "We didn''t. We came in since you were screaming and hollering like a man possessed. Kept screaming that you were gonna ''gut the fucking bastard with yer bare ''ands when you caught him''."


    "We thought you might have been in danger, your Grace. When we came in you were fine, fortunately, but we didn''t want to take any more risks. Not again."


    Lykourgos nodded at his bodyguards, aware that one of them couldn''t actually see the motion but still too stuck in the haze of sleep to actually recognise that issue.


    "I see. Thank you both for your diligence. May I ask what time it is?"


    "Some time after the fifth hour, your Grace. Will you be wanting to get back to sleep now?"


    He thought about that question for a moment, then shook his head. No, he''d slept long enough. There were last minute plans to tend to, figures to review, messages to read and reread until they were committed to memory. No, there was no time for sleep. It was good he''d woken when he had.


    "No. No, I won''t be going back to sleep."


    Eros nodded, seemingly half-expecting such an answer.


    "Understood, would you like me to wake your cupbearer so he can ready you for the day?"


    He shook his head gently.


    "Nah, let the kid rest. I''ll get myself ready for the day ahead, then me and you will spar, Eros. I could use the practice to warm myself up before the battle."


    "Yer Grace, all due respect, you ain''t thinking of fighting are you?"


    He looked over at Dreamwulf, confused.


    "Of course I am! You think something as small as the assassin''s knife will stop me getting into the fray? I''ll be on horseback instead of on foot if that helps lay your fears to rest, but there''s nothing in this world that will come between me and that fucking traitor."


    Dreamwulf grimaced a little.


    "''orseback might be fine for you, but I ain''t gonna be able to follow you. Eros, if ''is Grace is set on this then make sure you stick with him; he''ll be in your care today."


    Lykourgos nodded as Eros blanched a little at the responsibility placed upon him.


    "That makes sense, my Personal Champion. If that''s the case I take it you''ll be slumming it with the Armsmen on one of the flanks?"


    "Aye," Dreamwulf replied, "with yer Grace''s consent of course. If I can''t stick with you I''d rather be right in the thick of it."


    Lykourgos nodded again, smiling widely. Dreamwulf was a damn good man to have on his side. In fact the prince was certain that if there were even half a hundred men like Dreamwulf in his army then house Blackoak was well and truly fucked.


    Today promised to be a good day. A glorious day.


    A vengeful day.

 Lykourgos VI: The Battle of the Sodden Field

    <u>Lykourgos VI: The Battle of the Sodden Field</u>


    <u>The First Day of the Forth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>The Woodsroad, Southern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Eventually Romanos came to find him, the sound of fighting maybe making him move a little more briskly than he normally would of, which was a little amusing. When his friend saw that it was just a sparring match with Eros he cooled down immediately, directing a critical but not unkind look at the squire.


    "Not bad. Not bad at all, Eros. You''re still learning, but very fast."


    "He rarely makes the same mistake twice, Romanos. He''s a credit to your order."


    "Actually, your Grace," Eros interjected looking more than a little embarrassed, "I''ve not been initiated yet."


    Lykourgos looked between Eros and Romanos in confusion.


    "What? Romanos, do you mean to tell me that-"


    "I was only waiting until your coronation, your Grace." The knight held up his hands in a conciliatory manner. "I can assure you, and yourself as well Eros, the ceremony will take place as soon as you''re crowned. Unless you order it sooner, of course."


    Lykourgos nodded, and Romanos looked back at Eros.


    "My apologies for interrupting you both, but I''d like to speak with you your Grace."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Of course; walk with me. Eros, I''ll see you as we muster."


    "Of course your Grace."


    The young man dipped into a graceful bow and made to leave. Ilias, who had been watching the sparring with a rather amused expression whilst perched on a fence, looked over at the prince. Lykourgos nodded towards him with a small smile, signalling that yes, he could go and spend some time with his friend instead of looking after him for a bit. Walking with Romanos the prince snaked through the camp, no real location on his mind, and allowed his friend to make some easy conversation with him.


    "You''re fighting with us on horseback?"


    He nodded at the Grandmaster.


    "I am. You''ll lead our heavy and light horse on the right flank, just past our flanking troops on foot, and I''ll mirror you on the left."


    Romanos gave him a mildly concerned look.


    "When was the last time you partook in a cavalry charge, your Grace?"


    Lykourgos stopped to think, a faraway look coming over his face.


    "Nearly five years ago. The Battle of the Anarian Marches. I was right behind you, wasn''t I?"


    Romanos nodded.


    "You were. I know you''re fine for riding, so I won''t press or try and get you to reconsider, just... please don''t charge in too early. Wait for the right moment. I don''t want your hatred of Isen to get the better of you in this battle."


    "It won''t, I promise. I''ll wait for just the right moment and not move a second before. I don''t want to cost us our victory with my own actions."


    Romanos smiled lightly at him.


    "I''m glad to hear it. You''ll take half of our mounted knights in that case, and the mounted squire bands as well. That should give you a thousand men on horseback at your command. If it is not too presumptuous, your Grace, I''d like to keep the true Violet Knights under my direct command."


    He looked at his friend, weighing his options. Whilst any knight in the Order of the Violet might take the name, the real Violet Knights were the inner circle of Romanos'' order. They rode into war on mighty destriers and drafts in full barding, each man heavily armoured and wielding a greatpike of castle-forged steel to sunder any enemy lines, and were all round some of the best heavy cavalry in Klironomea. Well, the Kataphraktoi of the east might give them a run for their money, but there was certainly nothing in the west to rival them in terms of combat effectiveness.


    While he was naturally and instinctively against relinquishing command of all of the Violet Knights to his friend, they were in reality the Grandmasters to command. He''d trained them, he''d equipped them, and he''d commanded them this whole time; if anyone could make the best use of their talents, it was certainly Romanos.


    "Very well. How many Violet Knights are there?"


    "Around eight-hundred, your Grace."


    Lykourgos nodded, running through the numbers.


    "Right, in that case you''ll take command of them and I''ll take command of the rest of the mounted knights. That should bump up the numbers I''m commanding a little and make up for the lack of such elite forces on the left flank under my command, no?"


    Romanos made a humming noise and got visibly lost in thought for a moment.


    "I think... yes. Yes, that makes sense to me. If I were you I''d keep the heavy horse at the front of your formation to shatter the enemy if they try to outflank us, whilst keeping the squire bands as less of an armoured fist and more of a harrying force to chase down any stragglers and routers. We don''t want to let the enemy leave the field today, after all."


    "No, my friend," Lykourgos replied, "we certainly do not."


    <hr>


    Most of their men were behind the ridge. It was a shallow thing, and had they any trebuchets then the big war machines would almost certainly have been visible above it, but it hid most of their flanking troops well enough.


    Two-thousand Longbowmen stood behind a line of stakes and hastily dug trenches a little above the foot of the slope, each man ready and able to do what must be done in defence of the realm. Angels, but he was proud of his men. It had started raining not long after he''d spoken with Romanos on the allocation of their horsemen, but neither man had been willing to let that dampen their spirits; the men needed to know that they weren''t put out by the brutal march and a little bit of ill weather. It was a war fought on his territory, and simply put there no force in any of the heavens that would sap his morale whilst fighting on his own lands. Besides, the rains had been light and sparse, so the ground was still solid and stable.


    The approaching soldiers of house Blackoak were marching up the road, the sound of their boots echoing out across the sodden field. They they were in a far wider formation than the road would accommodate, which suggested that they suspected battle, but they were still in a marching formation rather than battle lines. A cautious march, he supposed was the right term. He hoped that his lieutenants in the middle of the field would hold steady and not act until they''d received the signal from the frontline, but he hadn''t the time to think of that at the moment. He needed to rely on the frontline drawing the foe in so that his flanks could encircle their sides, whilst himself and Romanos used the horsemen to break whatever counter-flanking manoeuvre the foe attempted. He would have little idea on how the battle was going until he was in the thick of it and could see for himself, but he had to trust in his men to do as they were bid. He''d go mad with nerves otherwise.


    "Are you alright, your Grace?"


    The quiet voice of Eros sounded out next to him, and Lykourgos nodded. His squire seemed more than a little worried, but he wasn''t going to hold that against the poor lad.


    "I''m alright, Eros. Just the anticipation making me want to charge in right now is all, even though I know I can''t. I need to wait until the time is right."


    The squire nodded at him respectfully.


    "I understand, your Grace. I trust in you to move at the right moment, and will follow where you ride."


    Lykourgos smiled at him, hoping the gesture didn''t look as rueful as it felt. It wasn''t that he was sad that he was at war again, more so that he felt... he felt guilty precisely because he should have felt sad. But he didn''t. No, he was Prince Lykourgos of house Sperakos, rightful King of Teleytaios and breaker of the nobility. He was made for war, and he knew it. He didn''t know how he''d known it, and he certainly hadn''t felt like it after his first war, but looking back on the savagery that had overtaken him once at Haestinghen and again at the Anarian Marches he knew that he was made for war.


    He was to be a soldier-king, that much was certain, and he would never have anyone claim he was unworthy of fighting by the side of the men who fought for him. If he would not stand with them, then they had no reason to stand for him at all.


    A few more minutes passed, and then there was a great deal of shouting.


    "Nock! Draw! Loose!"


    "Loose!"


    "Loose!"


    The command for arrows to be loosed was shouted out several times in a quick succession, but it sounded less like panic and more like a careful yet swift repeat of the motion. A part of him wished he''d decided to be their with his longbowmen at the front, after all it had been a little while since he''d been able to practice his skills with a bow, but no. He needed to be here, ready and able to deal a decisive blow to the rear lines of the enemy. Even if the centre formation of his forces broke, which he did not for a second believe would happen, the destruction of any enemy rear-line units would leave them without ranged support or a baggage train to speak of, as well as crippling their command capabilities and rendering what was left of this army impotent.


    And that was just the worst case scenario; a victory would mean that the enemy was left with no army to be rendered impotent at all.


    But such thoughts were useless at the moment. He needed to keep his mind on the here and now, and right now it sounded like there was a ranged duel ongoing as the enemy infantry advanced up the road towards them. Lykourgos couldn''t see what was happening, but if he had to guess then he''d say that his longbowmen were likely winning in whatever ranged duel was ongoing, thanks to their greater range and power their weapons held when compared to the shortbows favoured by levies. Well, favoured was probably the wrong term since shortbows were all most levies would have to hand when called upon to serve, but his point remained nonetheless. The longbowmen would do a far better job at culling the foe from a distance when compared to their levied counterparts.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    The sellswords amongst their number would certainly be toting longbows of their own however, and so Lykourgos had to hope that they''d been placed at the fore of the enemy''s march and not at the rear.


    Still, it would be a little touch and go when the sellswords and levies got close amongst them. The longbowmen could hold themselves in a fight and the forces of the church would reinforce them if needs be, not to mention that the trenches and stakes would make a full on frontal charge up the slope a very tricky manoeuvre, but there was still the inherent risk of the foe breaking through. Still, that was what the flanking manoeuvres were for; the frontline was merely there to tie the foe down, to hold them in place, but once the flanking forces crashed into the sides of the enemy lines they''d go down like wheat before the scythe.


    "Hold steady men, hold steady."


    He spoke softly, quietly even. He wasn''t sure if he was talking to the men around him or to himself really, but he spoke nonetheless. Nearly a full hour later he was almost certain he''d go mad with anticipation, the sounds of combat on the frontal slopes of the ridge being carried back to him by the wind as light rainfall pattered off of his armour, and as such when he saw one of his Lieutenants give the signal for the flanking forces to move he almost mistook it for the signal that his own men needed to follow. He realised his mistake just before he called for a charge though, and luckily his throat tensed up at the last minute stopping him from saying anything.


    That was a bloody good bit of luck; that could''ve been bad.


    The flanking force next to him charged forth, the heavy infantry of his army rushing onto the field and swiftly taking up their places on the side of the mass that was the enemy. He couldn''t see what exactly was happening, but he could see enough to know that his trap had been sprung just as he''d hoped.


    "Men, with me at a trot. We''ll be moving to a more exposed position to better view the side of the battle and ensure we can respond should the enemy try to counter-flank our forces. Keep close and don''t start forwards when you see the enemy. We charge when we need to, not a moment before."


    There was a muttering of agreement and acknowledgements around him at that, the men recognising their place in the plan. They just needed to wait a little longer. He just needed to wait a little longer. His vengeance would be upon him momentarily.


    For another hour he sat there astride his horse, the short trot the only movement he''d ordered in the last two hours whilst the battle raged on around him. It was infuriating, but he''d chosen this position for himself. The flanks of the enemy were engaged, so there was no way to charge in from the sides. Well, not unless he was willing to flatten the backs of his own men first anyway, so that avenue was closed to him. The front was much the same, save there were even more obstacles to overcome with a charge there. No, he was just here to launch a countercharge, and if the words of the aide next to him were anything to go by then the time was fast approaching.


    "Your Grace, along the edge! That''s their knights, your Grace!"


    He looked over and then nodded at the aide. Very astute of the young lad; the foe''s horsemen were only just organising themselves in ranks to charge at the flanking soldiers of his own forces. He spoke loudly and as clear as he could, coughing twice to clear his throat before he spoke to avoid another set of orders getting caught in his throat. While he spoke he moved to clinch his helmet in preparation for the battle to come.


    "Right then, as soon as they set off at a gallop I want us doing the same! They''ll need to shift direction to face us and that''ll mean they''ll completely bypass our men on foot! We''re going to charge at them head on! Who''s with me!"


    There was a chorus of cheers from his men as he spoke. He raised his sword aloft and spoke again.


    "WHO''S WITH ME!"


    There was another chorus, this time far louder, and as the knights of the foe began to trot out into the open he pointed his sword at them and bellowed out his command.


    "CHARGE!"


    For a few seconds there was little movement, the horses taking their first few steps at a much slower gait than the gallop it would soon be, but almost before Lykourgos had even had the time to think about that his destrier was building up speed. The men around him too were rapidly gaining pace, riding hard on the backs of their coursers and rounceys with blades arms ready to deal a fatal blow to the heavy horse of the foe.


    Now, heavy cavalry such as this was far better suited to charging at ranks of infantry, and not at other bodies of similarly armoured horsemen, but when push came to shove it was a job they would have to do. Besides, he had the initiative, and that would be all it took to win the day here. He was sure of it.


    After what felt like an age of riding at the enemy and staring at them as they drew closer the two forces of heavily armoured horsemen finally collided. Almost instantly the sound of crunching bones and the screaming of dying men and horses were in his ears. Mounts went down at the force of a collision with another, men in full plate and mail armour were sent flying from the saddle to drown in the mud, and with practiced actions his sword rang out with the sound of steel clashing against steel.


    It was a horrible, messy, chaotic slog, and he relished in it.


    This was what he was best at. He could do this. He could lead a band of screaming men into the fray with no regard for keeping himself alive, he could front an assault that led to the victory his men had wished for, and most of all despite his lack of self-preservation he could keep himself well enough to do it all again and again. War was in his blood, and in moments like this that fact was made plain and clear.


    He swung his greatsword around, catching a blow that a short man in mail had sent towards his neck. With a swift riposte he forced open the man''s guard, leaving him completely open to the follow up strike that split the mail of his throat guard and pierced through his neck. Angels, if only Lord Brathaxe could see me now.


    The thought of his late foster father sent a momentary spike of melancholy through him, but it was quickly washed away as he made to defend himself from yet another opponent. He wasn''t even really giving this fight his all, what with his attention wondering, but somehow his limbs always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. He''d grown very good at fighting these last ten years.


    For all the skill he possessed however, he had to admit that Ser Romanos really was something else. Having cleared the ridge and already surged forwards, Lykourgos could see across the flat field all the way to the other flank of the foe, where the Grandmaster himself was leading his Violet Knights against the rear lines of the enemy with his silvered sword atop his massive draft horse. It seemed that the heavy horse of the enemy had been concentrated on the prince''s flank, and as such his friend led his knights almost uncontested into the sternguard of the foe.


    Lykourgos'' entire army had done him proud, that was more than true, but he knew that none would take offence when he said that it was the Violet Knights under Romanos that truly stole the field that day. They were as a thundering avalanche of steel-clad hooves brimming with lethal weaponry, slamming into the lines of the foe with wild abandon and hardly even being slowed as they rode on through the shattered rear lines. As their relentless charge advanced they left little more than bones and sinews trampled into the dirt of the field, the terrified foe barely even having time to scream before they were laid low under the might of the greatest knights that still lived.


    Ranks of levied bowmen and spear-wielding lowborns were sent careening back, their comrades further behind them breaking ranks and running as fast as their legs could take them. Lykourgos looked back at his light cavalry awaiting the order to charge behind him, and with a single motion of his arm nearly five-hundred men on horseback began to gallop down the ridge and towards the fleeing enemy. The age of the knight may have been coming to a close, but looking upon the brutal efficiency of their charge into the rear lines of the enemy, it was clear that the armoured heroes of yesteryear were intent on making sure it lasted for just one decade more.


    Yes, he thought with a wry smile as he watched the enemy lines break, very few of the fleeing foe will remain come the day''s end. There''s little the conscripted masses of the foe will be able to do now that they''ve panicked and ran from the field. Still less their mercenaries; sellswords won''t fight for the losing side. Not if they can help it.


    That thought brought his mind to his brother, half of who''s small army was made up of Symon''s company. With any luck Rhema had been able to make good on his orders, alongside his commanders of course. He trusted his brother, of course he did, but Lykourgos wasn''t foolish enough to think that there wasn''t an element of chance involved in his brother drawing the enemy west. Ah well, he thought as he attempted to still his mind, there isn''t anything to be gained by worrying about such events here and now. Rhema''s force will pull through, he''s got Crowe to see to that. Symon as well. They might not have been particularly orthodox commanders, and Symon was a sellsword to boot, but they were some of the most experienced in the entire Teleytaian military.


    There was a jarring impact on his shield as an arrow impacted with a dull thud, causing him to quickly move behind the steel-rimmed wood to better cover himself. There seemed to be a small group of archers that had taken to firing on the melee of heavy horsemen, those enemy bowmen furthest from the devastating charge of Romanos'' men who hadn''t yet been touched by the commotion. Well, we''ll just have to change that, won''t we? The last of the Blackoak heavy horse was either being cut down or making to flee, and so he called out to his own heavy horsemen around him.


    "Halt! Halt! Give no chase! Form back up on me! Form up on your prince!"


    There must have been a full hundred bowmen raining arrows down on him, on his men, but he didn''t care. Eros had wheeled about his horse to rejoin his side, and so he spared a brief look at the young man and nodded respectfully. He hadn''t the time nor need for anything else.


    Turning back to face the enemy without even bothering to check if anyone else was following him he spurred his horse forwards again, aiming to lead the knights under his command in a charge against what was left of the enemy''s rear line and link up with the Violet Knights of Romanos. There was little risk of confusion or attacking friendly forces; the Violet Knights were extremely distinctive, and even if the rest of the knights under himself would not be as distinctive he still doubted that they could be mistaken for Owkrestans. The men of Owkrestos boasted few heavy horsemen or knights amongst their ranks, and though house Blackoak did maintain a good body of them it seemed that they were all with Ser Aerna, and therefore were marching on his brother far from this place. No, this army seemed to be little more than levied men, sellswords, and the thousand traitors and roses who''d coalesced under Lieutenant Isen and had hoped for glory and riches by betraying their homeland.


    Lykourgos would make sure they found nothing more than a shallow grave.


    <hr>


    "Went the day well, your Grace?"


    He nodded at his friend, grinning widely.


    "That it did, Grandmaster."


    "I have a gift for you, actually. A moment please, your Grace."


    Romanos gestured for two of his knights to move forwards, both of them very big men with a look of grave seriousness about them. There was a corpse held up between them, and at another gesture from Romanos they dumped it unceremoniously at Lykourgos'' feet.


    The eyes of the familiar face were wide with shock, now frozen in such a position. One arm hung stiffly from its socket, whilst the other was severed at the elbow. Both of the man''s legs had been similarly detached at the knee joint, and his chest seemed like it had been stoved in by an armoured hoof. Angels, this man had not had a clean death.


    Good.


    Before him was the corpse of Lieutenant Isen, the seven-times-damned traitor who''d very nearly been the death of him on the walls of Anaria. He was very, very pleased to see him like this. A pity that he hadn''t been able to kill the man himself, but you couldn''t win them all.


    "We recognised him when the worst of the fighting was over, your Grace. It seemed a shame to leave him to rot when he could serve as an example."


    Lykourgos felt his lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile, but forced it back down. It was a little amusing how against the execution of the nobility Romanos had been, and yet for some reason he felt that parading around this corpse was fine. Still, Lykourgos had to agree with the Grandmaster on this one; it would serve as a powerful message indeed.


    "I agree. Have him tarred and sent back to the capital. No, better still, tar him and have him sent to King Aleksandar of Owkrestos. Let the young king know that, though he may not have sanctioned this war, it was his duty as a king to see that his vassals are reigned in. He has failed in his duty. Send it to him as a warning, telling him that if he does not submit himself before me in recompense for his failures then I will come to him myself. Of course if it comes to that then I will not be going to him alone, but at the head of more than ten-thousand men. Do you think that message might find an audience with him?"


    Romanos smiled grimly at him.


    "A bit on the nose, but it certainly would. I''ll have these two men of my knights deliver it personally under a banner of parley. That should see them safely to Stagspring."


    "Good. Make it so. Ach, enough of this Romanos; we''ve won the day here! Let''s go and congratulate the men then have a few drinks. Angels know I need it, and I''m willing to bet you do as well."


    "Well, that certainly sounds like a plan. Come on your Grace, let''s get back to into our camp."

 Lore Chapter: Dathan and Aegos

    The Dathan peninsula. There''s a lot of history in so ancient a place as this, but unfortunately not much of a future. Well, not unless you count religious fundamentalists, resurgent slavery, and a quality of life that somehow manages to be poorer than that of the Klironomoi to be the future. You want to know about Dathan? Here''s the most important thing you need to know: It''s fucked. Completely and utterly fucked. Constant border wars and unending civil strife, enough bureaucracy to make even the most accomplished Tildan paper-pusher blush, and a growing tide of sectarian violence. I can''t exactly claim innocence on that front, nor shall I.


    See, as you''re no doubt aware, we in Aegos have just finished up with our own little civil war. I say finished, what I really mean is it''s been put on hold for the foreseeable future, since Imperator Thrax needs to lick his wounds after I beat him back alongside my master but we in the Church lack the strength to cross the river and take the fight to him, not without crippling our own military capabilities anyway. Anyway, the semantics are beside the point. We were at war, now we''re not. See, that seems like an improvement on paper, right? Wrong! Even putting aside how fucking disgusting the regime I''ve managed to become a major player in is, tensions on the peninsula have never been higher! There''s a complex web of alliances and rivalries stretching more than a dozen nations, and all it''s gonna take is one small incident to bring everyone to loggerheads. The trouble is that it''s impossible to keep track of who''s in league with who at any given time, and you''re likely more than aware of the sort of issues that can cause. One wrong letter to someone you thought was your ally can turn a sure victory into a crushing defeat, and you''d do well to remember that.


    I trained as a part of the clergy under Archcardinal Adikos, with a specialisation in all things martial and violent. Nowadays I wish I''d tried my hand at something else and remained an unremarkable little runt, but what''s done is done. I trained to be a holy soldier, and I was very good at it. When Cardinal Trios floundered and his flank was broken at the fields of Pylamum I was the one who won the day, recovering our position on the field and turning aside the foe. When the city of Thermanthus rose in support of the Imperator it was me who stormed its walls, slaying the dissidents and avenging the garrison within that had been slaughtered by the locals. It was me who won the civil war for Adikos, and no-one else. If only I''d seen what I was really doing back then, but it''s too late to change things now. It''s only been a few months since the end of the conflict, and already I''ve grown to hate what I''ve served this whole time. I always hated certain aspects of the faith as a kid, but I was an actor; hiding my thoughts on the matter was easy. The hard parts came about when Adikos was able to convince me that the thoughts I was hiding were wrong, that I wasn''t supposed to think like that and that if Adikos thought something then it was right. That''s how you indoctrinate people.


    And of course, that''s what it was. Indoctrination. If he could make me think my own mind was betraying me, if he could convince me to reject what my own senses were telling me in favour of the words he spun, then I wouldn''t even be able to hide in my own mind from him. He succeeded for a long, long while. I think in some ways the war was good for me, as much as I hated the strife it caused; by taking me away from Adikos for so long I started to realise how much of a hold he had over me. That was when I took my first steps away from the church, in secret of course. I practiced my acting skills to keep myself safe for the first time since I was a child, I allowed myself to think anti-Church thoughts, and most dangerously I reconverted to my old faith. I''d been indoctrinated out of my old beliefs, but with some prompting from a dear friend and almost a year of separation from my master I was able to find the courage to go back to what, in truth, had always been the faith to which my heart and soul belonged.


    You wanna know how to make a man think whatever you want him to think? Train him when he''s a boy.


    That was a dark period in my life. Even now I find myself in its shadow on occasion. But you''re not here to listen to me talk about me; you''re here to learn about Aegos and Dathan!


    The city of Aegos is one of the oldest, and certainly the holiest, city on the continent. Founded in an age long since passed, more than a millennia before the coming of the Silence, Aegos served as the capital of the appropriately named ''Aegan Empire''. Despite what some may say this was not a golden age, no matter how pretty the borders looked on a map of the continent. It was an age of slavery, long before the Church of the First Saint made its way north to Kliskorios, where the suffering of the lowborns outstripped even what they endure today. This land was dominated by pagan faiths and pantheons, all coexisting in a strange and begrudging manner since no temple wanted to risk losing its influence to another, and was a hotbed of religious activity. See, the city of Aegos itself has been regarded as a holy city by a great many religions; most famously the Church of the First Saint regards it as holy for it being the place where the First Saint was hanged and subsequently ascended, but other faiths hold it in high regards as well.


    Well, they once did. The pagan faiths of southern Kliskorios have been gone for a very long time, and these days the only real religious violence comes from the various branches of the Church butting heads with each other. The more things change the more they stay the same, I guess. I''m not really well educated in the matter of the ancient faiths of this land; I know they were many, and I know they generally coexisted pretty well together, but apart from that there''s not much else I can tell you. I spent a good portion of my life illiterate and the man who took me in and taught me my letters is quite possibly the most rabid zealot currently alive, so he''s not exactly the sort of man you ask to learn about these sorts of things. A pity really, since they do seem interesting and I would like to learn more about them, but I''m going to be far too busy for that in the coming years. Besides, most of the books talking about such subjects have probably been burned already. Dangerous things, book burnings. Even if most of the populous can''t read, it''s still a dark portent of things to come. I''d say they''ll start burning people next, but we already have. Well, I haven''t, but the nation has. I won''t be following my fellow Cardinals down that path, no matter what I have to make the outside world think. I''ve got a few plans of my own, but you don''t need to hear about them yet.


    Knights? You wanna start to learn about your new brothers then, I take it? That''s fair enough; if I weren''t going into the clergy I would have tried my hand at knightly endeavours. There''s not much difference between the knights of Klironomea and Dathan, save only that our knights don''t go for knightly orders like they do, nor do they tend to join together in bands. No, our knights prefer to wander the land along, questing like the heroes of old. Now, what exactly such quests entail vary wildly from man to man, but if nothing else a great many of them do genuinely believe that they''re sticking to their chivalric codes with their actions, so there''s at least some measure of self-accountability for what they do. The ones that don''t bother sticking to that, the ones too brainwashed by their masters, their faith... those ones can be very dangerous indeed. You can tell them apart from the madness in their voice, the complete lack of autonomy in their actions. They''re far more dangerous, because they have no need to keep themselves to a code; all they do is look for their master''s signal, then they act. After all, their master could never be wrong, could they?


    Yeah, I''ve got a pessimistic view of the world. Can you blame me given the shit I''ve seen? The shit I''ve been involved in? I might be pessimistic, Dathan might be a shithole and Aegos in particular a disgustingly zealous sewage-heap, but that doesn''t mean I''m content to roll over and let the bad things happen. If we all did that then nothing would ever change in the world, would it? Well, not for the better anyways.


    Yeah, I''ve been involved in the military affairs of Dathan for a fair few years now. Aegos mostly of course, but I''ve travelled around a fair bit and seen the fighting styles of most of the Dathanian states. For the most part they follow the same philosophies, that being a combination of heavy infantry in phalanxes flanked by light horse formations with crossbowmen forming a supporting element. Whilst no two Dathanian cultures fight quite the same, they all follow that basic structure with one or two little changes made.


    First things first are the armies of Aegos. A simple enough thing, taking the tried and tested phalanxes of old with new crossbows in support, but instead of light horse these formations tend to be backed by flanks of heavily armoured knights. These days there''s an added element of zealotry that has overrun the civic pride that used to be found in Aegan formations, but that''s more a matter of aesthetics and morale than strategy and logistics.


    The Kannagrians in the north, true to their mixed Klironomean-Dathanian ancestry, rely on phalanxes of armoured knights fighting on foot with heavy steel spears. It might not seem far removed from the heavy infantry of the rest of the peninsula, but believe me when I say they''re a force to be reckoned with.


    Of course there''s also the Khyprians to our south as well. They keep their formations the same as our own, but their infantry tend to be armed with long khopeshes instead of spears, with formations of chariots in support as opposed to crossbowmen. Oh, and slaves. Lots and lots of slaves. Granted, most Dathanian states still allowing slavery on their lands tend to make use of their chattel on campaign, but most armies relegate the lowest of their societies to backline roles, maintaining camps and baggage trains and the like. This, in their minds, allows them to claim that they deserve to keep the slaves, for at least they have removed them from the dangers of the battlefield. A flimsy and pathetic excuse, as all excuses in favour of slavery are, but Khypria does away with even these weak pretences. To the Khyprians a slave is still a warm body with a pair of thumbs, and as such they can grasp the haft of a makeshift spear or, if they''re lucky, a rusted khopesh just as well as any free man. Of course the forced conscription of so many men not only leads to poor morale amongst such forces, for who amongst the enslaved is happy with being forced to fight their master''s wars, but also dissent amongst the nobles at home. After all, if their slaves are being sent to the frontlines at the behest of the Imperatrix then that''s a potential loss for them in terms of both profit and their own personal manpower.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.


    I fucking hate slavers.


    The last really notable Dathanian army would be that of the Citizen''s Republic of Kallitrios. Kallitrios is one of the oldest still-standing Dathanian states, second only to Khypria as far as I''m aware, and they''ve always had a more martial culture than the rest of Dathan. Their society maintains a rigid caste system, with the Archons and Kalliates sat on the top of the pile and the Helots at the bottom. For our purposes the Archons are the citizens who''ve served in their military, the Kalliates free citizens who have not yet served or otherwise have yet to finish their service, and the Helots a slave caste treated as little more than a commodity and source of labour.


    The armies of Kallitrios are made up almost entirely of Kalliates, who are not yet able to be called Archons for they have not yet finished their service. Elite units of the Kallitrian military are constantly maintained, formed from veteran Archons who have elected to make a career of military life rather than returning to their civilian lives at the top rung of society. Their phalanxes are legendary in battle, and damn-near unbreakable. We fought one in the passes south of Athio during the civil war, since the Kallitrians wanted to support the slave-holding Imperator Thrax rather than the rabid zealots that made up our side. We beat them there, but by the Saints did they put up a bloody good fight. They''re raised from birth to fight, and it damn well shows. They''re not unbeatable, far from it, for their formations are rigid and their doctrines of combat more likely to break before they bend, but they''re still exceedingly capable soldiers. Would that they could turn out the slavers and join the right side of history, but the minds of those addled by greed and the power that comes from holding the whip are rarely sound enough to make such decisions.


    Of course there''s a nicer side to Dathan as well. Some of the greatest artists, poets, sculptors, and architects in all of history were from the myriad of brother-cultures that make up the Dathanian peninsula, giving much prestige even to what, in all honesty, has always been the backwater of Kliskorios. Dathan makes art and kills itself with endless petty wars, just as it always has and always will. Oh, for certain, there was a brief few centuries when the land was as one under Terranea and all was at relative peace, but both before it formed and as soon as it fell the folks here were back to slaughtering themselves once more. It''s stupid, really. We''re far enough away from the Skonisnomas that the horse-lords have never attempted to invade us, the Scelopyrene would need to sail around the entire continent to reach our shores, and no-one anywhere else on the continent cares enough for our lands to bother risking their power in an invasion. If we were so inclined we could form some sort of unified state peaceably, or at least create a broad coalition to work through our issues diplomatically and with compromise, without needing to fear any outsiders again. Instead we continue to war against each other in endless petty skirmishes and pitched battles, spiced up with the occasional siege, where nothing ever changes save the ever-decreasing number of boys who march back home.


    Fuck, how did I manage to make a conversation about art more depressing than the topic of war? I don''t know how I managed that leap, and quite frankly if I didn''t manage to amuse myself with this then I''d apologise.


    No, but in all seriousness, we''re the ones that give the world its greatest monuments and beauteous palaces. If a Klironomean king wants a new wing on his palace, if some Tildan merchant-prince wants a swanky new statue or impractical vanity project, we''re the ones they hail. We''re not renowned soldiers or statesmen, we''re middling at best when it comes to horsemanship and castle building, but places of beauty and fragile prestige? That we can do. That we can do damn well, so much so that Dathanian designed buildings can be seen across the continent, even reaching south into the old cities of the Sotenari Empire at its peak. We''ve been perfecting the arts for thousands of years, and the people of this peninsula show no signs of stopping in that particular avenue of development anytime soon.


    I mean, just look at our very own Aegos for instance! Three sister-cathedrals, each with their own little architectural quirks and stylistic embellishments designed to make them the envy of the world! Not only that, but it allows the priesthood in Aegos to make more of a claim towards Aegos being the holiest city in all of the Saintdom. After all, no other city can claim three cathedrals within their bounds, still less a dozen churches alongside them to minister to smaller local congregations. Almost every denomination of the Church of the First Saint maintained a church here before Adikos'' seizing of power, but now they''re little more than barracks for inquisitors and the like. Even the Church of Saint Lycaon, which served the Ichorian Cult within Aegos and was named for one of the Boy-King''s most trusted companions and generals who died in his Aegan campaign, fell to ruin under the auspices of the Most Devout. A pity; I''ve loved that church since childhood.


    As in all the lands that once made up old Terranea, Dathan holds on to a strange collection of thousands of saints and holy men that are regarded as akin to minor gods and local deities, with the New Church taking on the aspect of little more than a folk religion in some places. The Archcardinal wishes to stamp out such ''misinterpretations of the faith'', but so long as people live life in regions untouched by the Most Devout Church such worship will continue. Such beliefs are more prevalent in Tildan than in Dathan, and it shows. In the city of Tilda itself there''s a temple to Agia Eliazar, the Consecrated, patron of scholars and religious artists. That''s in the very heart of Tilda, for centuries the centre of the Agiathos no matter how much the other holy cities chafed under its rule. There are still some pockets that continue to worship Saints as minor deities in Dathan; in the northeast of Dathan one can find worship of Agia Priore, the Slight-Handed, who still is kept in the prayers of the craftsman and the thief, both of whom might find themselves cursing their clumsy hands by the end of a job. Perhaps the most influential of the rural cults in the old Terranean lands is that of Agia Abiah the Unforgotten, the Flagellating Child-Emperor beloved by the pure-minded and holy soldiers of the principalities and republics of Tildan and Dathan alike.


    Oh yeah, there are somewhere around half a dozen cities that all vie for the position of centre of the faith. As of now it''s Tilda, and it has been for a great many centuries with no indication of such a state of affairs changing. Aegos is important to the faith as well, since it was here that the First Saint ascended to take his throne in the heavens, but the fact is that it''s a smaller city than Tilda and less centrally located. Adikos wants to change that, I think. He wants an empire he can rule from the site of the First Saint''s ascension, but even if he somehow manages to take not just Dathan but all the lands of old Terranea then it''ll be a tough sell for many. Political and economic importance on the scale of Tilda don''t happen by accident, nor do they appear overnight. There''s generations of wealth and favours that have been used to build up the status of the church in that city, and few Cardinals would up sticks and move to Aegos on the whim of one man, no matter how influential he is. All he''s got are the Cardinals he made himself, but sometimes I think he yearns for greater things even still.


    Anaria and Sygomidopolis have both vied for the position of centre of the faith before now as well, Anaria for the political importance of the city being the birthplace of the Old-Church and Sygomidopolis for being the first great city founded by the Klironomoi when they returned to Klironomea from their eastern exile. Lest we forget, of course, that the Klironomeans spent a great many centuries living in the hills of northern Dathan and Aegos itself. They''re not as removed from Dathan as they''d like to pretend, but then I think that''s why they try and keep away; they were forced to live here for hundreds of years after being removed from their homes, and even a thousand years hence the kings of the Klironomeans are hesitant to return to their place of exile. They''re not big fans of our Saints over their either, since they seem to think they tread on the toes of the Angels. Whichever one is right I won''t say, not least because of my own internal conflicts. Mostly however such things aren''t any of my business, Cardinal or not.


    Of course there are a great many other saints, ranging from the internationally influential to local family figures, and in many ways this makes the New-Church even more fractured than the Old. The purest form of the faith, the ''original'' branch that sprung up during the Age of Silence, is all but gone from the world these days. The Old-Church keeps a few of its tenets alive, albeit merged with pagan teachings when the old Klironomeans merged with the Skraelings, and the New-Church which came about afterwards when the original branch was codified and standardised of course contains more than a few references to what once was, but there are few who keep to such archaic philosophies these days. There was no ''Divine Right'' in the oldest sects of the faith, no concept of Angels nor other Saints. I think that''s what Adikos wants an eventual return to, if he can garner enough strength and take enough of the continent. He wants to eradicate slavery from the world, but only so he can levy his own chains upon the free and the pure: the chains of piety. Those who will not conform will die if he gets his way, no matter how high their status might be. We''ll all kneel to him, or we''ll all burn.


    I''ve heard a few of his other plans as well. Heard, and read of them. I think the most striking one is his desire to completely seize Dathan, turning it into his perfect little church-state, with all the apparatus it entails. He wants to force every church to answer to his own, every monastery under one centralised organisation, and of course, he wants to massively expand and increase the power of his little pet inquisitors.


    Vile people, too much power and not enough brains to tell piety from bloodlust. There''s a joke in their somewhere about how they''re cut from the same cloth as the rest of us men of the Saint, but I''m not particularly someone who likes to look inwards and reflect on what I''ve done. Drives me up the wall, you see. I do it enough as is, and I''d really rather not start spiralling right now if it''s all the same to you.


    Well, there you have it. A rambling, eclectic spew of words that I''m going to charitably claim has been an informative look at Aegos and the Dathan Peninsula as a whole. Have a nice day and please, for the love of the First Saint, leave me alone to get on with my work. Big things are coming you see, and I need to prepare. Big, big things. One way or the other this will all come crashing down, friend, and whether I live to see it or not the death-throes of our state will be bloody. I''ll either live to see its end, or my shade will laugh up at Adikos from whichever one of the hells my soul is bound to rest in if my journey comes to its conclusion before I see this through to the end. Either way, the blood will run thick and warm, and the subcontinent of Dathan will consume itself in war once again.


    Oh, how I can hardly wait...

 K?til II: See My Renown

    <u>K?til II: See My Renown</u>


    <u>River Isanar, The Frozen Trails, Scelopyrea.


    The First Day of the Forth Moon, 873 AD.</u>


    They''d gotten very unlucky. What should have been a short ride back to the camp lasting no longer than a night for their small band at the most had turned into a multi-week affair. Why?


    Because it seemed as though a freak landslide had knocked out only bridge across the river Isanar that was still usable, so they''d had to travel two-hundred fucking miles upstream to find a ford that they, their horses, and their wounded could cross without being swept away by the greatest of the river Aenir''s tributaries.


    The journey had been disheartening, to say the least. The spirits of even the most cheerful amongst his retinue had fallen far this last week, and just about the only man amongst his companions to still be smiling was Krai, because of course he was. The man was as mad as a march hare, had only one eye, and seemed to have broken nearly every rib he had before taking an axe to the chest, and yet somehow he seemed to be the only one amongst them all to be completely unaffected by the arduous journey they''d all needed to make.


    K?til tapped the amber pendant around his neck. It was a treasured thing, one of his most important possessions, and he guarded it jealously. Never did it leave his neck, not with how rare things like it were. It was an expertly carved thing, as thick as his thumb and half as wide as his palm, and upon it were etched runes that called upon the one worthy god for courage, to bolster his morale whenever it may flag and he feared his own mind would fail him. ''Spirit'', he''d been told the rune meant when the druids had given it to him, and though some called it superstition he was certain it worked. Yes, there were those that claimed even the druids could not truly give out boons from the Lord of Slaughter, but then K?til had never run from a fight so it had to be doing something.


    "What are you thinking about over there?" A voice called from behind him, and so he turned to face it.


    "I''m thinking It''ll be nice to be back at the warcamp. It''ll be good to see my father and tell him of our victories."


    Svaltha nodded at him, though the action seemed rather absentminded and he was uncertain as to whether or not she''d actually listened to him. He shrugged to himself and decided it didn''t really matter, so he turned back in his saddle and concentrated once more on the trail in front of him, not to mention the woods on either side.


    He had no intention of getting ambushed again after all.


    Even with his sullen mood, there was no doubting that it was nice to get to know the druid with him. If he didn''t know any better he''d say she was planted for him to find, so well did they get on! Besides, they were less than a day from the camp now and rapidly approaching from the north. They were hungry, tired, and carrying wounded, but they were alive and heading for hearth and home! It had been a hell of an adventure, but K?til was proud to say that they''d done it; their mission had been a success, and he''d rescued a druid before fending off an ambush and leading his men back to safety despite the adversity they''d all encountered.


    They just needed to ride a little further.


    Krakevasil, but he was tired. Not as tired as Krai, that poor bastard, but at least his friend could look forwards to spending some time in the healer''s tents instead of giving a report to the Great Jaerl himself.


    K?til thought for a little bit on the state of the healer''s tents and how... unsympathetic the healers themselves could be, and then shuddered. Scratch what he''d said about Krai being able to look towards rest, he genuinely wasn''t sure if Krai would rather have died on the road.


    He walked with purpose towards his father''s feasting tent, where he knew the big man would be holding court. Well, he said holding court, but their courts were very different from the ''real'' courts to the south. This was not a place of law and policy, but one of fighting and feasting. That was what real rulership was made of after all. Svaltha and Syren followed to his right and left respectively, close behind but not quite in his shadow.


    The two guards noticed him as he approached, helmet under his arm and aventail waving freely in the breeze. They each slammed a fist to their chest in greeting before stepping aside to let him in. He''d seen those guards around his father a lot these last few years, but still didn''t know their names. They were scary buggers, even he would admit that. They were each a head taller than he was and well-built, but they were just... completely silent. They could fight alongside one another like no-one else he''d seen, but they were completely silent the whole time. Their eyes gave nothing away, but did make him feel a little uneasy.


    "Father, I have returned!"


    His voice cut through the din in the hall, and immediately all eyes were upon him. He continued without waiting for a response.


    "The mission was a success. Me and the lads found the convoy, killed the two Jotun who''d smashed it to bits, and rescued the novice druid as the druidic orders had wished me to."


    "My son," his father started, clearly relieved to see him but aware that he couldn''t show such emotion so openly in front of his men, "it is good to see you again! But your tale does not explain why it took you so long to reach us. You''ve been gone almost an entire moon, boy."


    K?til couldn''t help but smile at his father as he continued.


    "On our way back we were set upon by the agents of the Eyvindottir, father. We bested them, of course, but when we continued on our way we found the only bridge across the Isanar had collapsed. We spent weeks riding north to try and find a good ford across the river, and the rest of our time riding back south. It''s my honour to tell you that, aside from those we lost to the Jotun or the ambush, I never lost a single man to the elements along that journey."


    He knelt before his father then, having finished with the broad strokes of his report. Any further specifics his father could ask him about himself if he so wished. As soon as he made to kneel Syren did as well, as did Svaltha. It wasn''t uncommon to find druids unwilling to bow, but K?til was pleased that she wasn''t so obstinate and proud as to think herself above the Great Jaerl himself, the rightful ruler of all Scelopyrea.


    "I see a druid by your side, son. I take it you''re the one he saved?"


    K?til tilted his head a little and nodded at Svaltha, letting her know it was her time to speak.


    "I am, Great Jaerl. Your son... rescued me from the two Jotun who came down from the hills. In the process he managed to uncover some information about the movements of the Jotun that my superiors will no doubt be happy to learn, led his men in defending themselves against an ambush from a numerically superior force of hunters sworn to the Valkyrie-Queen, and led his men over four-hundred miles across the countryside to see them back here to safety. He''s done well by you, if it is not to presumptuous for me to make such statements."


    Dyfed''s smile was evident in his voice, pride radiating from his smile as the young druid listed his achievements on the field. He''d led dozens of missions before now, but never once was father anything other than proud of him and his exploits. As much as he might have been loathe to admit such a thing out loud, K?til was intensely glad for his father; he couldn''t see himself reaching the hights he already had without his father being such a genuinely caring person when it came to him.


    "It is never too presumptuous for one who communes with the Lord of Fresh Carrion to make such assumptions!"


    The Great Jaerl''s gaze shifted slightly back towards K?til, the pride in his eyes only growing.


    "My son, the Jotunslayer! Well now, it seems we must have a longer conversation about this, son. A longer conversation, and a great many drinks!"


    There was a cheer from the crowd at that, and K?til smiled as he rose to his feet alongside his companions. He''d killed his first jotun. Not just that, he''d killed his second as well.


    Jotunslayer. He liked the sound of that.


    Almost as much as he liked the sound of that drink.


    "You, Syren!"


    "Aye, Great Jaerl?"


    Dyfed was silent for a moment, looking K?til''s strange friend up and down appraisingly before sniffing mightily and nodding.


    "You do well watching my son''s back. Keep up your work, keep the knives out of his back, and you''ll be rewarded well indeed."


    K?til watched as Syren simply nodded once again in response, a strangely sincere and solemn motion given the tone just moment''s before, much like how his father''s tone had shifted for that matter.


    Syren and Dyfed continued staring at each other for a little while, one with a shrewd and calculating gaze and the other with absolute loyalty. K?til didn''t think Syren would move from where he''d rooted himself without his father''s say so in that moment.


    Luckily for them he got it in the form of a final, sincere nod, which seemed to conclude whatever silent conversation his friend and his father had been having. His father smiled widely once more and stood from his throne at the top of the dais, summoning forth several kegs of ale with a wave of his hand. Tomorrow K?til would see to his mundane duties, but tonight? Tonight was for drinking until he couldn''t stand on his own two feet.


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    <hr>


    "So then, ''Jotunslayer''," a feminine voice called out from somewhere to his right, "now that we''re back I want to spar. You seem like an alright fighter, if a little slow. You wanna give me a try?"


    He heard Syren snicker a little at Svaltha''s comment as she approached, though when K?til turned to glare at his friend the little shit poorly disguised the gesture with a cough.


    "You wanna spar? Alright then. Best of five, no armour. South coast rules."


    She nodded at him in response, a smile on her face as a few more of the boys came around to watch the clearly developing duel.


    "Sounds good to me. Try not to pass out on me too quickly. I know how hungover you must be from three nights ago."


    He chuckled a little at that comment, the reminder of the truly epic feast that had been held last night. Krakevasil, what a bloody good night that had been.


    "You both know the rules, so get on with it! I''ll call winner!"


    K?til nodded at his friend, noting that Svaltha did the same. He hefted his greatsword in his right hand whilst Svaltha readied her sacrificial blade. It wasn''t the pathetic little knife that the Brythonians called a ceremonial blade either; the druids of Scelopyrea preferred sacrificial blades the size of a shortsword more than anything else, either curved like a sickle or straight-edged as any true sword. This one seemed to fall soundly in the latter category, save only a slight curve near the tip of the blade. He had few doubts that this blade had been used for more than lambs these last few years.


    The two of them circled each other for a good while before the young druid launched into a furious flurry of attacks that he was only just able to turn aside or otherwise block. Not one to go down without a fight he retorted as best as he could, though the increased length of his greatsword was somewhat of a hinderance up close like this. If this were a real fight he''d be half-swording, but given that he hadn''t any protection on his hands that wasn''t really an option for him.


    The bout ended with him flat on his back in less than three minutes, which would have been embarrassing if he didn''t get to give the rest of the lads so much shit for going down on a regular basis.


    "Fuckin'' hell, I''m already getting a sweat on. You''re good, credit where it''s due, but you won''t get me down that easy again."


    He took his shirt off to better ground himself on the cold air, closing his eyes and forcing his muscles to relax. He could win this easily enough, just so long as he stayed relaxed.


    Their second bout left a few of the lads enraptured by the back and forwards. It might have been a rare enough thing to find an equal in combat, but he''d been a fool to underestimate Svaltha. After all, he''d already known she was special, and she had to be special to have stood by his side as she previously had. For quite some time they went back and forwards once more, the two of them unarmoured but certainly not unarmed. To the weak-willed southerners it probably would have looked like they were genuinely trying to kill each other, and in a sense they were; if you weren''t giving a practice bout your all and treating it like the real thing then it wasn''t very good practice, was it?


    He knew that the boys already respected her for fighting at his side in the ambush, for fighting alongside them against the forces of the Valkyrie-Queen who stood between his father and a unified Scelopyrea, but that was different. Anyone could fight like a daemon when they believed their life depended on it, but this was a whole new avenue of combat. This was a friendly spar, and paradoxically that was potentially more telling of what a combatant was like. In friendly spars there was little need to muster your best, little need for adrenaline and the rush of battle to overtake you and guide your hand. All that being said, that meant that if she could hold her own here...


    Yes, she was good indeed.


    He moved to heft his sword in one hand, lashing out with a clenched fist with the other. He had little intention of ensuring that the blow connected, but it did force her to duck down low to avoid it which had been his plan the whole time. As she lowered herself somewhat he pulled around his greatsword in a sweeping arc aimed at her legs, and while she was just about able to get her own blade around in time to block the savage manoeuvre she was still knocked off balance by the awkward angle she''d been forced into, making it rather easy for him to barge into his sparring partner and knock her to the floor.


    "Second match goes to K?til! Good on you boss, you''re one for one now. Back in positions!"


    K?til moved himself back to his marked place, readying himself again. He wasn''t going to just accept a one for one! He was K?til, son of Dyfed, grandson of Ost?in, and he was destined for greatness! But then if he was destined for greatness, and she was able to best him thrice in combat...


    He shook himself a little, shuddering as the delightful sensation that came with readying himself for combat coursed through him once more. Perhaps it was time to change up his style? He''d only fought in his native Scelopyrene style so far after all, perhaps it would be good to incorporate something else into the mix?


    No, he thought to himself, not yet. The next bout after this one makes more sense. I need to see if she''s got any more tricks of her own first before I play my hand.


    The third round came and went, and it turned out he''d been wise to wait. She''d had more than one trick that she''d played that round to get him off his feet, and then a few more when she''d realised that if she couldn''t get her blade to his throat then he had no intention of staying down. Still, she''d eventually won the bout despite his best efforts. He wasn''t worried though; he was certain that she''d thouroughly exhausted her arsenal of tricks, and so now it was his turn to pull a little ''foreign influence'' into his fighting style.


    Syren made a comment and a bet, stating that he was putting however many coins he had on him that "the new girl knocks the chief on his ass again this round". K?til, more than a little galvanised by this, felt a fresh rush of energy flow through him. Krai took Syren up on the man''s bet when he saw the glint in K?til''s eye, nodding with a grin at him whilst K?til grinned back. Yes, it was time for something a little more exotic to enter the ring.


    He threw her off in this round with a move he''d picked up from the Skonisnomas, a move that required him to feint not once but twice before tossing his sword from his right hand to his left and striking hard at her waist. Strictly speaking the Skonisnomas tended to rely on swiftness more than strength, but he needed to put as much weight behind the strike as possible to compensate for how unwieldy his sword felt in his unpractised left hand. She actually swore as the second feint saw her move off-balance, doubly so when the handle of his blade swapped hands and came down at her.


    Svaltha caught the blow on her own smaller blade, but whilst she could blunt the blow the sheer force of it knocked her and made her stumble clean out of the small ring. K?til smiled back at Syren.


    "You were saying something?"


    His second in command rolled his eyes as he called the bout, grumbling something under his breath about "bloody horse-man tricks" before handing a few coins over to a grinning Krai, who gleefully took them and nodded in an exaggerated manner at K?til to show his thanks. The coins Syren handed over were a motley collection, for the Scelopyrene had never bothered with making coins of their own. Instead they used pillaged coins from other societies; Klironomean crows and sparrows, Tildan saints-faces, and K?til was pretty sure he''d even seen a ceremonial Sotenari broken-ankh before now. Such coins came from what seemed to him as entire worlds away when he was a child, but now he''d grown he recognised what using such a motley collection of coins meant, what it represented. It gave a message to every trader who came to the shores of Scelopyrea to sell their wares: ''If your civilisation is within reach of the sea, then you''re not safe from us. You''ll never be safe from us. We will go where we please, and we take what we want from who we want. We''re the masters of this world, no matter what you think''.


    <hr>


    When the last round was over and done with he was spent. Not in a ''too tired to carry on'' manner, but more of a ''I''m grinning like a fool too much to concentrate'' kind of way.


    Even as he was lain out on the ground with Svaltha''s blade to his throat, he couldn''t help but grin. Oh, he''d just known she was something special. To yield in combat was something he hated, for usually it was only through the luck of his opponent rather than any true skill, but at this moment in time he wasn''t sure if he''d ever been as happy as when responded to her nonverbal command to give in.


    "I yield."


    And with that his men cheered the victor, clapping her on the shoulder and, of course, helping K?til to his feet. She was smiling in what seemed to be an almost confused happiness at a still heavily injured Krai while she took a step back, whilst Syren smiled down at him and clasped one of his forearms to help him up to his feet.


    "She''s got you beat, boss."


    "Oh, I am more than aware of that Syren."


    "You don''t seem too cut up about that."


    He barked out a laugh at his friend.


    "Trust me, I am fucking elated right now. Anger is about as far from my mind as it''s ever been."


    Syren laughed as well, shaking his head a little.


    "I fucking knew it''d be a woman that ended up kicking your ass, and I fucking knew that you''d enjoy it a little too much for it to be normal."


    "Hey, what can I say? She''s good at what she does."


    "And I''ll not deny that for even a moment. Come on, lets get some fucking drinks. Her as well, she''s earned it."


    His second in command turned to the rest of the lads with a snarls, since to a man they were standing around doing bugger all. Krai coughed wetly and his knees seemed to buckle somewhat, and K?til watched as Syren swiftly moved over to him to hold him upright.


    "And for the love of the Raven-God, will someone please help me get Krai back into the healer''s tents before he keels over and dies? Raven''s teeth, do I have to do everything myself!"


    K?til stifled a laugh as another of his men sheepishly moved to assist Syren, Krai slowly walking back in the directions of the healer''s tents thanks to the help of his two comrades. Even as he walked on shaking legs whilst being incredibly injured he still somehow managed to flash a grin back at K?til as he wheezed out a snarky comment.


    "New challenger, boss. I would''ve offered to fight you today after that last one if you hadn''t already lost three times. You might even have had a chance to win thanks to my ribs."


    "If you say so, you graceless shit. Get back to the fucking healers before I give you another reason to head down there."


    Krai laughed a little, the motion quickly turning into a hacking cough as he spoke before turning back to face the direction he was being carried in.


    "You got it, boss man! Try not to lose so soundly next time!"


    He flipped off his wounded comrade as the man was carried off, a lazy smile on both of their faces. He was very much fond of his brothers, and they of him. Ravens help him, but they were all beginning to rely on each other. And they were all brothers, of that there could be no mistake. They were not bound by blood, but they were brothers nonetheless. There was to be held a ceremonial feast in a few days time, both to celebrate the victory they had won and to mourn the loss of those who had otherwise fallen. He, Krai, and Syren had survived however, and he knew for a fact that he was going to keep the two of them by his side as his trusted seconds.


    Of course, there was now another member to that little circle he''d built up. Turning to face her with that same lazy smile on his face he clasped her forearm in a warrior''s handshake.


    "Those were some good moves back there, Svaltha. Damn good indeed. We''ll be fighting and sparring a lot more these next few weeks, of that I have no doubt. All four of us: you, me, Syren, and Krai. We''re going to be sparring with each other a hell of a lot in the weeks to come."


    She grinned back at him, clearly relishing the prospect of more bouts to come.


    "And after that?"


    "After that we''ll be too busy fighting the enemy alongside one another to fight each other! Wherever my father orders his forces after the Eyvindottir is crushed, be it to the islanders of the west or the divided Angel-worshippers to the south, I''ll make sure we''re at the front of every battle, the vanguard of every host! We''ll spill a torrent of blood in Krakevasil''s name, and the halls of Scelopyrea will ring out each night with the sounds of people singing songs of our deeds!"


    She huffed out a laugh, but something in her eyes told him she very much liked the idea of spilling that much blood.


    "You talk a big game, pretty-boy."


    "I know I do," he said, grin still in place, "but only because I know I can do it."


    She laughed heartily at that before leaving with some of the lads for the offered drinks, and as she walked away and he made to follow her he just couldn''t stop his mind from running away from him.


    By the Raven-God, what a fucking fascinating woman.

 Svaltha III: Spirits Left Unseen

    <u>Svaltha III: Spirits Left Unseen</u>


    <u>The Sixteenth Day of the Forth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Dyfed''s Warcamp, Hoarsoil Valleys, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Speaking with her superiors had never been a particularly easy feat for her. She''d always been so intimidated by them, and as a child she had privately wished to see them just a little bit scared so she knew for a fact that they were as mortal as her. She''d gotten close enough to that almost forgotten wish recently, and now she never wanted to see such a thing again.


    The druids had been what looked like a mix of surprised and apprehensive, leavened with perhaps a little joy. They''d known some of the giants were abroad, but if something really was pressing on their mountain homes and driving them south...


    She''d never known her elders to look scared before, and she had still yet to see a member of the order higher than herself look afraid, but that was the closest she''d ever seen to real fear on their faces. But why? The giants themselves, whilst terrible foes, were far from a real threat to the druidic order. All except Dragrr, perhaps, but he hadn''t been seen in an age and a half. Maybe it was... what if they knew something she didn''t? What if they knew what might be driving the giant folk south? The other seasons were growing shorter and shorter, winter ever longer and colder, and the land itself rarely saw the sun anymore. What if something truly was pushing in on them? What if that was why the druids had grown so desperate to resurrect their god these last few decades? Oh, for certain, decades felt a long time to her, but for an order who had spent a millennia trying and failing to find their fallen lord thirty years was just a blink. Why this sudden drive? Why now?


    Why?


    She didn''t know, and it scared her a little. She didn''t like to admit it, but if even her elders were beginning to grow afraid, if even they were left in nervous anticipation at what was coming...


    What hope did she have?


    She shook her head a little to rid her mind of such treacherous thoughts. She was a child of the Raven-God, and that was strength enough for her. Her god would see her through whatever storm lay on the horizon, no matter how dark the clouds appeared. Her god would protect her and her ilk, and if that was the truth then it didn''t matter how many lessers were trampled into dust and spent as callously as lesser men spent gold. The druids would endure, as they always had. Not the druids of the far west, but the true druids. The Scelopyrene druids. Krakevasil''s druids.


    In an age long past the gods had all abandoned the people of Scelopyrea, the Corvid Pantheon turning their backs on their own faithful during the dark days of the silence. Of the seven gods only one remained, only one true protector to shield them where seven should have stood. The Raven-God, the Father of Carrion, the Lord of Slaughter, call him whatever you will. He had remained, and the others had left them.


    And then, when the floodwaters receded, the Brythonians and their ilk had the gall to call them the traitors for turning away from the rest of the gods! For walking away from gods who never cared! Was it the Jay who ensured their fields were fertile? No! It was the Raven who watered the soils of Scelopyrea with blood. Was it the Magpie who brought about wealth from trade? No! It was the Raven who taught them to take what they needed! Was it the Rook, the half-forgotten and faded Lord of Death who-


    She stilled herself again. The other gods were traitors, and were to be shunned as such. The Raven was all that mattered. Krakevasil was all that mattered. One day he''d return to them, and lead them to unending glory and slaughter. They just needed to wait a little longer. Just a few years more. And if she were able to keep her three new friends from the slaughter when the time came... well, what could she say? She''d grown quite fond of their company these last few weeks, and it helped that the three of them were all really rather good at their jobs. Krai was still alive, somehow, and was healing fast. He''d even gone around the camp for a little bit of light exercise today, and though it wasn''t much she was still surprised that someone who was as badly injured as he was could physically be jogging at the moment. She shook her head a little as she remembered how the one-eyed man had  needed to be physically stopped from trying to spar by Syren and K?til himself, the two young men half-grimacing and half-laughing at their friend as they guided him to a tree stump so he might sit and watch instead.


    Speaking of Syren, he was still doing well from what she''d heard. He''d been summoned by the Great Jaerl himself a few times now, and he always seemed resolute if a bit shaken whenever he returned. The boy was strange, more than strange, but she''d be lying if she said he wasn''t one of the funniest people she''d met, as well as being loyal and capable to boot. Many people in her position hated those with a strong sense of loyalty since it was far harder to get them onside, but she found such a trait to be wonderful! Loyal friends and companions were predictable, and predictability was invaluable when you had a job like she did. The disloyal turncloaks were hell to work with, since there was no guarantee that they''d do what you wanted them to do no matter how much leverage you held over them or how big a reward their was. No, she''d much rather deal with loyal people any day of the week. It was just a matter of making Syren think that he was best serving his leader by acting as she wanted him to, and in that regard she just needed to make sure she was good friends with him.


    She wasn''t sure if she was pretending to be friends or not at this point, and in all honesty she was leaning towards calling them all true friends, but the mission still remained in the back of her mind at all times. She had a job to do, and trying to keep her new friends alive and well whilst carrying it out would be an extremely difficult job. If push came to shove and she needed to choose between her friends and the mission... there was no room for hesitation. Scores of thousands would die, and so what matter three more?


    But she was getting ahead of herself. That was all a matter for then, but she was in the now. There were a great many fights to be had and battles to relish before the world was upended once more.


    And then, last but certainly not least amongst her three new friends, there was K?til himself. The son of the Great Jaerl, the target she was destined to dig her claws into and guide as a puppet. There was so much to say about him, but foremost amongst all his qualities was that of his military prowess. Any northman could swing a sword or wield a javelin with some degree of skill, but to actually lead men as he could with such ease and grace was certainly a rarity. He cared more for seeking out dangerous foes to best personally than he was with leading, but when he actually put his mind to the more mundane business of leading men and women into battle he was a force like almost no other she''d seen. He couldn''t match his father, but then there was only one person who could in all Scelopyrea, so she didn''t think anyone would think such a judgement too harsh.


    The two of them spent much time talking, usually just about fighting techniques and survival skills, but occasionally he''d ask her about other things, things that realistically speaking only the druids should know. He''d asked her questions about the Jotun, the two of them trading knowledge about the ways of the giant folk and the recent happenings surrounding their movements and migrations. Some time later he''d asked her about some of the less clandestine rituals druids underwent, such as their communion with Krakevasil. She''d told him about how his voice came to her as the faintest of whispers carried on the wind, that in order to hear his words she needed to pay such great attention, as though she were trying to hear the cawing of a bird from deep within the ground.


    Then he''d surreptitiously asked her about runes. She knew he had a rune of carved amber that called upon Krakevasil to bolster his spirits, but he seemed... he seemed as though he really wanted something more. He''d asked her some really rather apposite questions about materials needed in the carving of runes, of who he''d need to speak to and beseech for permission before they were carved, that sort of thing. His pertinent questions had given her an idea, but it was too soon to bring such things up. It was a good idea, a very good idea if she did say so herself, and one that would certainly catch the attention of their god, but it would have to wait a little while before it could be brought up. She''d need to get permission and advice from a few other members of her order first, but when that was done she''d be able to offer him some brand new and extremely potent runic inscriptions.


    "-altha? Svaltha?"


    She blinked a few times, mind snapping back to the present. She gave K?til an apologetic half-smile as she realised he''d likely been trying to get her attention for a little while now, and calmly asked him to repeat himself. The son of the Great Jaerl was far easier to talk to than her superiors, and for that she was glad.


    "Wait, what were we talking about?"


    K?til smiled at her, clearly amused.


    "Krakevasil, you really were out of it for a minute. We were talking about the movement of the horse-lords to the east of the Archic mountains."


    She nodded, the details of their conversation catching up with her. Yes, the increasing unity of the Skonisnomas was very strange. There were only a few of the great nomadic dynasties left, time claiming the majority and war still more. The last of the twelve original dynasties had fled back to their ancient ancestral homelands in the frigid northern wastes when the Silence had receded from the world, but that dynasty was as good as gone. Nothing could survive that far north, still less a society so reliant on grass for their horses and the temperate climate of the plains for the ability to move freely and make camp wherever they wished. No, that dynasty was certainly lost.


    "You think they''re close to uniting?"


    K?til nodded at her.


    "I do. I still have a few contacts from the east, and as the seasons roll by there is ever less opposition to... well, I don''t know who it is that leads them. There isn''t really a single man or woman in charge, rather a council that every nomadic leader is invited to sit at. At any given time there are, apparently, more than a hundred people on that council. As more and more of the nomads join, those who are reluctant watch on and realise that there is no trick there; the nomadic council does seem to be genuinely pushing towards a loose confederation where no tribe or band are beholden to any other. I don''t know what they''re preparing for, but there''s bound to be a war involving them soon enough. Not with us I don''t think, not with Scelopyrea, but with the decadent southerners of Licotemos. You know, that massive Klironomean kingdom. They''ll fall like rain from a cloud when the nomads invade."


    She nodded in agreement. For any peoples not born in the saddle to stand against the horse-lords in the field invited only disaster. If the nomads really were poised to strike south once more, then that raised more questions in her head. If the Jotun were moving south, and now so to were the Skonisnomas... should Scelopyrea be moving south as well?


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    "Hey, I can practically hear you thinking there. Conversation runs both ways Sval, and right now I''m carrying this one."


    She snorted at his jape, weak enough though it may have been, and made to continue talking. Hey, K?til being right was a rare enough occasion, but in this instance he had done most of the talking while she''d been uncharacteristically silent.


    "Well, what was the original reason we were talking? Not that little aside about the horse-lords, but the actual reason?"


    K?til was silent for a moment, visibly wracking his brains. It seemed like he''s nearly forgotten as well. After a little while he snapped his fingers, a smile coming across his face as he spoke.


    "Oh, of course! My father is beginning preparations for a series of skirmishes along the banks of the river. Apparently when I told him of how our party had to move up the river to find a ford the druids in attendance at the hall were inspired, and with their advice my father has decided to engage the forces of the Eyvindottir along the banks of the river Isanar in order to draw them all in and eventually meet the Valkyrie-Queen in one final battle. The fate of the northern world rests but a few years away, maybe as little as a year, and as soon as Scelopyrea is whole the world will be ours to take."


    Svaltha grinned. Now that was some fucking good news. The elder druids had been as good as their word when it came to planting the odd idea for the Great Jaerl, and she had absolutely no doubt in her mind that, in the east of Scelopyrea, the Valkyrie-Queen was being fed the same advice by the druids in her own warcamp; "March along the Isanar, engage the supporters of the backwards ''Great Jaerl'', draw him into one final battle.". The coming year promised to be brutal indeed.


    "Now that sounds like a bloody ordeal. I can hardly wait to join in myself, only my vows as a druid prevent me from doing so unless attacked first."


    K?til raised an eyebrow at her, mischief in his eyes.


    "And if you just... tell people you were attacked first?"


    She shrugged while smiling.


    "The elders would probably get more than a little disgruntled, but Krakevasil himself would care not. He has very few qualms about what someone is doing so long as they''re in the right and the blood is flowing."


    "And we''d be in the right, of course! We''d be uniting the scattered tribes of Scelopyrea!"


    Svaltha nodded, choosing not to mention the fact that the Valkyrie-Queen was doing the exact same thing, and then changed the subject a little as K?til poured out two tankards of ale. She wasn''t sure where he''d got the rundlet, but she wasn''t going to complain about a free drink.


    "So," she said when she''d taken a long gulp of bitter, "what are we going to be doing in the year of skirmishes?"


    "Well, as father''s favoured commander apart from himself I''ll be heading most of the skirmishes myself. I hope you''re not too saddened by the fact that your vows will be holding you back from a year of small-scale battles."


    She rolled her eyes at the shit-eating grin on his face.


    "I''ll be making plenty of exceptions and excuses so long as I can get involved."


    There was no shame in that; yes, her vows might have forbid her from getting involved in violence between polities unless she was attacked, but the elders knew what she was like. They must have known that she''d try and get involved in as much carnage as possible. They always said that Krakevasil demanded blood, after all. If they rebuked her then she''d just make sure to keep out of it from then on, but until a punishment was forthcoming she''d get involved as often as she wished. My god demands war, and how can I not obey?


    <hr>


    The rest of that day had been... a very mixed bag, all things considered. On the one hand she had been granted an audience with the Great Jaerl himself, but on the other hand she was to meet with the Great Jaerl himself. Standing before him was, by itself, a daunting task. She had to crane her neck back to meet his gaze, and she was in all honesty terrified of the man. He was huge, larger than any man she''d seen save only the Jotun themselves, and was so broad shouldered that she was certain he could break her in twain with one hand. He carried with him an aura of such intensity that she was almost certain that his gaze would melt her into little more than a gibbering wreck, for it was no maddened, violence-crazed gaze like she''d half-expected before meeting him for true; he was shrewd, she knew that now. Oh, she''d known he must have been a grand commander, a true leader of men, but what she hadn''t counted on was just how piercing and all-seeing his stare was. She was almost certain that he was looking right through her and into her very soul, and for the briefest of moments she feared that all of her plans, hidden away and never spoken of, would be laid bare before the eyes of the greatest man the north had seen in centuries.


    Yes, he was huge, but that was not why she feared him. He was smart. Smarter than almost any man she had met in the north, smart enough to know what he was doing and play people against each other for his own gain. She now understood exactly what her elder had meant when the woman had decried her fellow druids for allowing the eldest son of Ost?in to slip through the order''s fingers; he would have made a fucking terrifying druid.


    Dyfed Ost?inson was every bit the man that the stories had made him out to be, in short. Yes, she''d seen and spoke to him very briefly before now; all the way back when she''d first arrived in this camp he''d asked her one or two questions with a cordial and almost deferential disposition, but it seemed that his prior attitude was purely pragmatic. He did not defer to any druid, still less one as minor as her, and had only acted as such so as not to alarm the more senior druids who had been in attendance that night. But in the meeting, now, in private?


    He held no such reservations.


    He wasn''t rude, never rude, but by the Raven-God could she read between the lines. He suspected something. By Krakevasil, he suspected something. Was this- did he know? Had someone within the order tipped him off, rendered the plans of her peers moot? Was he-


    She took a deep breath, steadying herself as surreptitiously as she possibly could. She didn''t fear looking nervous, after all, she was a young druid stood before one of the greatest warriors the north could offer with half of their people at his back. It would be more strange if she weren''t a little nervous, on a personal level if not an official one.


    "You summoned my, mighty Jaerl. I have obeyed."


    His eyes swept over her once more, and with a grunt he nodded.


    "I did, and you have. Drink, girl. I''d prefer you not to be shaking whilst we talk."


    He handed her a goblet of wine, strong but not overly so, and allowed her to drink a few mouthfuls to quell her anxieties. She dipped her head a little in thanks at the dangerous man, then made to speak once more.


    "Might Jaerl, may I ask why you have summoned me?"


    The man nodded, and from the brief flicker of his eyebrows she got the impression that he might almost have been tempted to make a joke of some kind just then. Whatever it was went unsaid, for it seemed he was not in the mood for jovialities today.


    "You have taken an interest in my son."


    She nodded respectfully.


    "I have, mighty Jaerl."


    "Why?"


    His question may have only been a single word, but the sheer simplicity of what he was asking stunned her for a moment. She''d been expecting rigorous grilling, of having her arguments meticulously combed through, each one ending up split apart like a frayed rope, but this put her on the backfoot before she''d even been able to prepare her defences.


    It wasn''t just that she didn''t understand what exactly the Jaerl meant, but rather that she''d been hoping that he would have worded the question in such a way as to indicate what he may have been looking for so she could fit her reasoning around that, but she had nothing to work with here.


    With that look in his eyes she knew full well that such vague and concise wording was intentional.


    Swallowing slightly she made to speak, answering as best she could with as much of the truth as she could reasonably fit in her statement without giving the game away.


    "He rescued me from the Jotun, and then defended me again from ambushers whilst I was lost in thought on the road. I''ve travelled half the length of the river Isanar with him and his men. I enjoyed fighting alongside him and, selfish though it may be, I''d hoped that if I proved myself useful to him he might be able to see me promoted from my novice state faster."


    There. No word of that was a lie, but it was not the full truth. Someone as intelligent as the Great Jaerl seemed to be would see the half-truths for what they were, and she had no delusions when it came to thinking that such an answer would satisfy the curiosity of the great man in front of her, but at the very least it would buy her a little more time to straighten her thoughts out and force him to elaborate a little more, giving her an in. Or an out, as the situation may be.


    "I see."


    The big man was silent for a long while after that, his expression giving nothing away as he stared at her impassively. When the silence had stretched on too long to bear she made to speak, only to be cut off by the Great Jaerl.


    "I do not like druids. I respect their counsel and I acknowledge their godtouched status, but I do not have to like them. Your masters think themselves smart, as though I am dancing to their tunes unknowingly, but I know it all too well. I know not what your masters have planned, but you will leave my son out of it. Do you understand?"


    She swallowed hard. He wasn''t willing to give away exactly what he knew, and she didn''t blame him, but she couldn''t stop herself from blurting out her confusion at his brazen dismissal of the druids.


    "But why tell me this to my face! Surely it would be better for you to hide this information, to keep it out of my hands?! What if I tell my elders and-"


    She cut herself off, kicking herself for letting that slip, and awaited whatever fatal blow was sure to follow now that she had admitted, to the Great Jaerl''s face, that she was looking to influence his son.


    But such a blow never came.


    For five beats there was silence, and then she watched as the Great Jaerl, father of K?til Dyfedson, finally broke his impassive fa?ade. He grinned at her knowingly, a mocking thing, and when he spoke she felt as though ice were forming in her stomach.


    "Go. Tell your masters, girl. Tell them everything. Tell them the Great Jaerl is capable of thinking for himself, that they are not the only ones who have learned how to scheme. Tell them this, and see what they do to you. See if they will listen. I won''t stop you, you can even go straight to them right now if you want! But you won''t, will you? No, I see the recognition in your eyes. You know I speak the truth. What is the word of one novice compared to their prized pawn? Go, girl. Run back to my son and his friends, and be glad that they enjoy your company. Should you betray them you''ll be dead before you have time to pray. Am I clear?"


    She nodded fearfully at him, and with a nod of his head he dismissed her.


    "Oh, one last thing." The Great Jaerl started, his voice no louder than the low rumble it had been this whole conversation. "If the druids wished to make us dance to their tune as though we were actors in a play, then they should have done a better job at making us stick to our lines. Dismissed."


    With that she left, unanswered questions racing through her mind. The Great Jaerl knew he was being played, knew and was deliberately leaning into it. What was he planning? He hadn''t acted with hostility to any druids before now that she knew of, but maybe they''d all been just as intimidated as she had. And for that matter what did he mean by ''us''? Who were the other ''actors'' in this play? Who could he possibly be an equal-


    Oh. Oh, by the Lord of all Bloodshed, no.


    She stopped and stood still, looking back towards the tent of the Great Jaerl, but of the man she could get no sight. He was inside, the flaps were shut, and the two huge guardsmen were stood at the closed entrance once more.


    Oh, if her suspicions were correct then they were all fucked. Royally fucked. If this is true then my god will never be- will forever remain led in-


    She stilled her thoughts until her mind was clear, then forced one single thought to the forefront of her mind.


    She needed to go to her elders right now, no matter what the Great Jaerl had said. They needed to act. She had no proof, but- well, there was no ''but''. She had no proof. She''d never be believed.


    She heard a familiar voice over to the side, Syren walking over to her. There was a strange look in his eyes but it must have been a trick of the light, for when she looked back it was gone.


    "He can be a right scary bugger, I know. Come on, lets get you something to drink. Krai and the boss have been worried about you; you''ve been in there for hours."


    She looked over as she walked alongside him, trying her best for an easy smile.


    "Krai and K?til, but not yourself?"


    "Oh, don''t you worry," Syren replied, "I know well enough what you''re like. You were always going to be fine. I knew that as well because I know what the boss'' old man is like. Not a good man to cross he ain''t, but so long as you never get any funny ideas we''ll all be fine here. I''m sure you''ll be smart enough not to do anything stupid."


    Though his voice was as jovial as ever she couldn''t help but be a little put off by that hint of warning in Syren''s words. Whether it was real or imagined she didn''t know, and so she did her best to shake such feelings off and just continued walking with him to where she knew K?til would be waiting with cold beer. Maybe Krai as well, if the man hadn''t been chased back into the medical tents again.


    She''d just focus on that for now, and work out her next steps later. Things were going to get a lot more complicated from here on out.

 K?til III: Immortal For One Night

    <u>K?til III: Immortal For One Night</u>


    <u>The Eighteenth Day of the Fifth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Dyfed''s Warcamp, Hoarsoil Valleys, Scelopyrea.</u>


    They''d spent a lot of time together this last month, he and Svaltha. They''d sparred for a good portion of it, and drank for even more. A great many nights had been spent in a red-eyed haze as they inhaled the smoke of burning hemp flowers, the two of them talking well into the hour of the wolf. They''d grown close in the short time they''d known each other, and already K?til felt as though he wasn''t sure what he''d do without her. She was a boundless source of companionship and entertainment, not to mention the fact that she''d been able to sneak him and their friends a few of the moonflowers that the druids used for ritual purposes. He was pretty sure the druids called them ''thornapples'', which was odd since they looked nothing like an apple, but to be honest so long as he was able to use them again he wasn''t really sure he cared what he had to call them. Fuck, now that had been a fun night; he wasn''t sure exactly what had been real and what had been imagined, only that Syren had endured a particularly nasty bout of vomiting afterwards. If anyone asked they''d all been extremely worried after their friend had eaten some bad food, but in truth?


    The other three of them, he, Svaltha, and Krai, had been nearly pissing themselves laughing as Syren wailed at some unseen assailant in the shadows. The odd young man had punched him quite hard when he''d heard of that after recovering, but given that he was laughing almost as much as they all had been K?til was pretty sure there were no hard feelings.


    She''d been raised in the druidic order to a full-on druid now, rather than the novice she had been before, and as a result she had a little more freedom when it came to what she did in her day-to-day life. She did have to attend far more meetings with her new equals and old superiors, but he reckoned that was par for the course. She''d need to be getting more involved in the happenings of the druidic orders if she wanted to make anything of her new rank, and by the Raven-God he knew that she did. Not just for herself, he suspected, but also for him and their friends. She was odd like that, Svaltha.


    With all that said, she had been acting strange these last few days. This last week, in honesty. She was certainly already a little strange beforehand, what with her hearing the voice of a vengeful god in her head, but then he supposed that if she hadn''t been strange then she might not have fit in with the rest of them quite so well.


    They weren''t exactly normal, after all. All told they formed quite the eclectic band; a woman more skilled in combat than any he''d met who also happened to hear a deity in her mind, a man with an absurdly high pain tolerance and seemingly unending luck, someone who''d attached the bones of his first horse to his armour, and then there was himself. He was obviously the one that stood out the most, what with being marked for greatness by Krakevasil himself and the chosen champion of the druids amongst his father''s supporters, but he supposed that at a glance he may have appeared to be the most normal of them all.


    But anyway, Svaltha had been acting strange recently. She''d mentioned once or twice that she might be able to help him with increasing his bond with their glorious god through rune carving, and that if he wished it she would speak to a few people to make sure that she could get it right. She said that she knew how to make them more powerful, more potent, than even runes carved on amber.


    Ah well, he couldn''t dwell on that now. He needed to speak with father.


    Walking up to the tent he nodded at the two silent guards at the entrance, both of whom parted to allow him through before moving back into their original positions as he passed.


    "My son. It is good to see you."


    K?til nodded at his father, a small smile on his face.


    "Father. It is good to see you as well."


    Dyfed smiled back at him but said nothing. K?til didn''t mind; father had always struggled a little with showing emotion without at least a small amount of shouting, but he was trying. When his father did eventually find the words to begin there was a look of... something, something K?til  was having a hard time placing, spread across his face.


    "K?til. I do not wish to reprimand you but... well, forget that part. This isn''t going to be a reprimand anyway, just a question."


    He raised an eyebrow at his father, spreading his hands out as he gestured for the big man to continue.


    "You''re close to that druid, aren''t you my son?"


    K?til stilled for a moment, his mind stuttering to a halt as he tried to piece together a good response. It wasn''t like they weren''t close, but did he mean like that? Well, that wasn''t exactly false either, but it wasn''t strictly true at the same time. Anyway, he probably should get to answering father sometime soon.


    As he made to open his mouth Dyfed cut him off with an almost strained sigh.


    "You needn''t say anything, my boy. Your silence says enough. Be careful around her, son. Druids are dangerous things."


    K?til nodded, his mouth suddenly very dry.


    "I know, father."


    His father looked at him as he responded with what  might just have been concern.


    "I know you think that you know, but please listen to me. You must be careful now, my son. You are ambitious, just as I am, but you need to be careful around the druids. They will promise you great things, my son, and stoke your ambition to ever greater heights. This is no bad thing, but you need to remain mindful. Ambition is a flame, my boy, but fire burns just as much as it warms. The druids want blood, and they may try and temp you into crossing the river once the enemy are on the run. Do you understand?"


    K?til nodded solemnly.


    "I do, father. I will not give chase to the enemy, not across the Isanar. I will not allow a hunger for glory to overtake me. I promise you, father, I will not fail you here."


    Dyfed smiled at him kindly, his eyes containing a softness that had been lost to all save only K?til himself since mother had disappeared.


    "You never do, my son. You''re a better man than I was when I was your age. You''ll do great things, that much the druids have gotten right, but you can''t allow yourself to fall into their schemes if you can help it. They mean well, but they will seek to guide you more directly than befits their status."


    K?til stood their, silently. It was no secret that his father was, whilst of course not doubting their piety, not the biggest fan of druids. Nor was it a secret that K?til had long been favoured by the mystics of the north. He would not argue with his father, but with that same thought he did not wish to engage in a conversation that might disparage his favoured seers. As a result he simply nodded stiffly, agreeing with his father whilst saying nothing. Father always came first. Always. That was the way of things in the world, and his father was the sort of man who would not make such comments without a very good reason. K?til loved druids on the whole, some particular druids far more than others, but he would not take his father''s words lightly.


    Even so, he felt no harm in omitting Svaltha from that list. She was a druid because of him after all, so she owed him one. Besides, they were friends! They''d saved each other''s life more than once now, not to mention Krai and Syren liked her. They were good judges of character, mostly. Well, actually Krai was a shit judge of character, but Syren was still a good judge. The weird man had been a little distant recently, but was starting to come around again. It was probably just because of that time with the moonflowers. It was funny though.


    Realising that father was still staring at him and waiting for a response, he continued.


    "I see. I''ll do my best to keep that in mind when dealing with druids, father."


    Dyfed nodded, and the two of them lapsed into silence once more. It wasn''t a comfortable silence, for his father was clearly trying to work out how to ask something, but after a little while the large man finally managed to ask what K?til suspected was the only important question in his father''s opinion so far.


    "Does she make you happy, my son?"


    K?til nodded, and his father mirrored the action.


    "Your friends as well? Are you happy around them as well?"


    "In a different way, but yes, certainly."


    Father nodding, the beginnings of a smile on his face, but he quickly smothered it with a hand. K?til had still seen it however, and so he knew that his father was happy for him nonetheless. To try and move the conversation along a little K?til tried bringing up some of the other pieces of information he''d been given by the druids recently.


    "Have you heard from the druids? The giants are on the move, father. All of them."


    Dyfed grinned at him.


    "I do, my son, but I do not think you understand that when the druids say ''all of them'' they do mean all of them."


    K?til''s eyes widened.


    "You mean- you mean the Greater Jotun? You mean Dragrr?"


    Dyfed continued grinning, sending a single nod towards his son as a gesture of acknowledgement.


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    "You seem rather calm with this revelation, father. Dragrr is huge, far larger than any other creature left in this miserable world."


    His father merely grunted his acknowledgement at him, a cryptic message closing out their conversation.


    "Giants do not seem nearly so tall when they are on their knees, K?til. Think on that a little while."


    He nodded, a little bewildered, before his father smiled at him one last time and gestured towards the entrance of the tent, signalling that he could leave.


    "You are happy, and that''s what matters. You may go now, my boy. Enjoy yourself a little longer; the war begins in earnest soon, and you''ll be leading a great many of our skirmishing forces along the river. I know you will do me proud, boy. I know it."


    <hr>


    He knew father had been right about the druids, deep down in some sensible part of himself that he''d done a pretty good job of ignoring these last few years, but that hadn''t stopped him from continuing his interactions with Svaltha, interactions that Krai had described as "Like watching a pair of randy stoats circle each other", which had earned him a clout about the ear.


    The two of them, K?til and Svaltha, were... close. They hadn''t said anything about it but he knew what he felt, and he was almost certain she felt it to. Given that she''d promised him he''d be receiving his new runic inscriptions tonight he knew she must feel the same; druids weren''t allowed to just carve runes when they felt like it, there was an order to such things. With the amount of runes she intended to carve he doubted that the elders would let her carve another for decades when the night was out. If she were willing to do that for him...


    They could match each other in combat like no-one else he''d fought, she had a wit so sharp and acerbic he''d thought she meant to kill him with it at times, and above all she had a body like-


    He closed his eyes and cleared his mind for what was to come. There was a time and a place for such lines of thought.


    As for him? He had been stripped down to the waist before being tied by the ankles and wrists to a low altar that had doubtlessly been used for sacrifices before, not that he was at all worried about that prospect, and was now awaiting the return of his own personal druid and the blade she was to use on him. Not to sacrifice, but to sculpt.


    He writhed experimentally a little where he lay, glad for the bonds that held him in place. Without them he was certain he''d kick his legs or flail like a child at what was to come. Krai and Syren were still busy dealing with some menial tasks so they wouldn''t interrupt, not that such things would have mattered anyway; this was the private tent of a druid, and woe betide anyone who intruded on the privacy of a druid. In her hand was a small, thin blade of carved antler, and on her face was a look that combined infatuation with trepidation. Oh, they''d come far these last few weeks, but they weren''t that far along, surely. Maybe she was just excited to be able to be able to use her admittedly limited rune carving abilities on him as a test subject.


    See, most druids carved runes into talismans or monoliths. Others preferred to carve prayers into weapons and armour. They were relatively commonplace, and simple enough to not have any real risk of an adverse effect. The runes were tied to the materiel it was carved with and into, however, and so such calls to the gods were often weak and fickle. K?til''s talisman, the amber necklace he wore, was still good though. From what little he understood from listening to the druids at the time amber was one of the single best materials from which to carve runes. He wasn''t sure why, but he wasn''t going to pretend to start understanding runes now.


    He knew that some sort of glassy rock that came from volcanoes was better, and that shards of the Greystones were better still, but such materials were almost completely inaccessible to them at the moment. The only thing that might be a rival for Greystone shards in terms of raw power was... well, life.


    K?til wasn''t interested in mundanity like that, and neither was Svaltha. They didn''t want fickle blessings, nor did they care for weakness.


    Using a blade of carved antler that she had made herself, she was going to carve a litany of runes directly into his flesh. A blade made from the dead to carve runes into the flesh of the living. Death and life, the cycle of struggle. What pair of materials could possibly result in greater bindings?


    The process promised to be excruciating, arguably more so than when he''d previously been wounded in battle, but the rewards? They promised to be even greater.


    Even if he was looking forwards to the rewards however, he couldn''t quite stop the nervous anticipation as he watched his friend make sure her antler-bone blade was sharp and clean one last time.


    His eyes were stinging with sweat and his breaths came ragged through the cloth in his mouth that was preventing him from biting off his tongue, but even in this state he was able to follow her voice and listen as she explained the runes she had carved.


    Three times her blade of bone cut horizontally through the skin of his chest, digging into the flesh beneath, each one a line of equal length running parallel to the others. A forth cut ran vertically to the right of the other three, but halfway down the blade snagged and stopped for a moment before Svaltha jostled it a little, allowing it to continue cutting through his chest. The lines weren''t big, probably no more than four inches each, but by Krakevasil did the process hurt.


    "That was a rune of protection, K?til. You will continue to fight through wounds that would kill lesser men a dozen times over."


    The knife caught again when she moved to carve the next rune, and while the motion shocked him a little he couldn''t help but feel as though the cut was... less painful, almost. Not quite muted, not even remotely lessened in truth, but he didn''t feel as panicked by it as he had the first time the blade had caught and snagged.


    The rune she was carving, though he angle he was arched at made it difficult to see, felt as though it were a rough octagon, and though each stroke was the same size they were smaller than those that had made up the rune of protection. Through the middle of the octagon and carrying on through either side was a single vertical line, two more strokes being added from the right of that line on an upwards slant at the tip and middle forming a sort of slightly-off ''F'' shape. Where the first rune had been but four lines, this one had been eleven. The pain hit him in waves, but he didn''t care. His mind didn''t scream at him to move away, his body was far stiller than it previously had been, and he almost felt at ease as the blade ran through him again and again.


    Almost as soon as that rune had been carved Svaltha had started on the next, this one seeming to take far more concentration. He reckoned that had something to do with the fact that the other two had been made up entirely of straight lines, whereas this one felt like it was incorporating a great many curves. It felt like a line spiralling inwards, but broken through the middle by another vertical line. The vertical line had been carved first, he must have somehow managed to miss that despite the fact it was literally being carved into his skin. He wasn''t sure how deep it was being carved, but he''d have felt comfortable placing a bet that the knife was being driven more than an inch under the surface.


    The ''spiral'' that was broken by the vertical line didn''t come within an inch of the dividing line on either side, and as a result the spiral was not one continuous cut but in fact a series of around a dozen. He wasn''t sure what these runes were for, but he trusted Svaltha. She''s a druid, so she knows what she''d doing. She knows me, and so she knows what I need. She''ll make the right decisions and make the right marks, of that I have no doubt.


    "I''ve added the runes for ''endurance'' and ''magics'' next to the rune of protection, chieftain. Neither blade nor eldritch might shall see you laid low now, not for so long as this rune remains. And it will remain, K?til. It is a part of your flesh now. None save death may see such markings removed."


    Despite the searing pain he couldn''t help but grin maniacally through his gag. He was drawing closer to his god, and though he had known such a thing would happen he hadn''t realised just how true it actually was. Here he was, tied up and bleeding, and yet he didn''t care anymore for the pain. The pain was nothing to him, not now. It might even have felt good in truth, as though he knew deep down that this was always meant to happen like this. Krakevasil cared not from where the blood flowed, after all. He only cared that it continued to flow.


    As that last realisation flooded through him he felt the last of his worry melt away into nothing. He was still in pain, of course he was, but no longer were his breaths panicked or muscles twitching with the need to move him out of harms way. He was still in pain, but it didn''t matter any more. Pain didn''t matter when you realised it wasn''t supposed to matter.


    Krakevasil didn''t care who''s blood was running, and so why should K?til care whether the blood that coated his chest came from him or not? Blood was blood, and Krakevasil was thirsty. His god would drink from his veins just as soon as those he had slaughtered.


    He couldn''t stop his fingers and feet from twitching intermittently as more and more lines were added across his chest, the minutes rolling into hours as day turned into night, but with every single stroke he knew that he was coming closer to the Lord of All Murder, the Suzerain of the Battlefield. He was coming closer to Krakevasil, and though his blood was still running fast he had never been more certain that he was doing the right thing.


    When at last Svaltha put down the knife and breathed a sigh that managed to mix extasy and relief he felt the gag removed from his mouth.


    "Well," he said, "I take it we''re done here then?"


    "Yeah," she replied, almost breathless, "we''re done with the runes. Here, take a look for yourself."


    She held up a plate of polished bronze at such an angle that he was able to properly make out the series of ritual carvings that now littered his front. The cuts had been deeper than he thought, deep enough that there would likely be a series of scars when they healed. It made sense, he supposed, for if they healed to nothing the runes wouldn''t be there anymore.


    His entire chest looked like a tapestry or record of some sort, and there were so many runes of varying sizes that he wasn''t sure where to even begin. There were dozens, scores, maybe even as many as a hundred small runes painting his chest, and though he recognised a few of them and some of them were repeated a few times, the majority he had to admit he wasn''t that sure on. The druidic order held the language of the runes close to their chest, after all, and there was only so much of what Svaltha had said that he''d been able to take in.


    "Doesn''t look too bad. A bit sloppy, but that was to be expected."


    She scoffed at his dry tone, politely ignoring his minor stutter as he sucked in breath after rattling breath.


    "I did a damn good job and you know it. Let me start cleaning you up before anything else."


    He nodded absentmindedly, still looking at the plate of bronze even as it was moved away from him as Svaltha pulled over a pail of water and soap with a rag.


    The first rune had been one of the largest, but there must have been seven smaller copies of it strewn across his chest. Some were slightly different, though if they meant something else or if they had just been carved a little off he wasn''t sure. Svaltha was new to this, after all. Any which way you looked at it though, it certainly seemed like Svaltha had really tried to use the entire canvas she had been given to work with.


    When the worst of the blood was washed away he found the bonds around his wrists and ankles were loosened somewhat, though still not removed entirely. His friend moved a drink of some sort to his lips, a hot and steaming liquid that tasted vaguely of moss, and he drank it greedily.


    "You''ll need to eat quite a lot of meat in the coming days. It''ll get your blood back up and stop you being woozy or drowsy."


    K?til nodded as best he could, but stopped when he found his head lolling about a little. Her words made sense to him; he''d been advised to do similar things before now when he''d lost a little too much blood when fighting.


    "Well, get this rope off of me and we''ll see about getting me some rest then, shall we?"


    She smirked down at him, hunger in her eyes.


    "I don''t think so. I said we were done with the runes, chieftain. We''ve still got a long night ahead of us both. Try not to fall asleep, won''t you? I don''t want to rest quite yet."


    Her voice dropped a little at her closing words, and despite the fact he was still tied up and bleeding he smiled. Tonight might not be over for a long time, but as he grinned back at her with that same hunger in his eyes he found that he was more than happy to oblige his druid.

 Rhema III: A Rod of Iron

    <u>Rhema III: A Rod of Iron</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Second Day of the Fifth Month, 873 AD.


    </u><u>The Suthdaal, Southern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    The smell of wet mud and horses breath was almost overpowering in the small clearing behind the Suthdaal. The ancient fort might have been little more than ruins, but with some hasty work it had served its purpose well once more. Most of the walls had been patched up with rubble and reinforced with wooden beams, the gates had been hastily filled in likewise, and the worst of the rot had been cleared away from those quarters and towers that had still been intact. The woods to the northwest had become undergrown in the centuries this place had been abandoned, one of many such forts to suffer a similar fate across Klironomea, and as such that had been the perfect place to set a little trap for one of their new friends.


    "We got him, Ser! We got him!"


    A couple of sellswords shouted out to him, signalling that their ambush had been a success. Looking behind him Rhema could see the two drably-dressed figures dragging a semi-conscious knight between them, the Blackoak tabard over his breastplate tattered and torn. He smirked a little as he watched the men cheer their victory here. Angels, what an arrogant twat Ser Aerna had turned out to be.


    The ambush he''d laid in the woods outside the fort that his forces were holed up in was more costly to his own side than to those that he''d ambushed, but that didn''t matter. Why? Because the end result was that he now had Ser Aerna Blackoak, son of Lord Aertax and heir to the Blackoak family, in chains before him.


    "Nice work. He give us much trouble since going down?"


    The younger of the two sellswords shook his head.


    "Nah, but he still killed a dozen good men before anyone had even been able to hit him when he was fighting. Thank the Angels for your sword-arm, your Grace. I thought I was next for a moment."


    Rhema laughed a little with his men, trying to ignore the headache that he could feel coming on. Instead he tried to just be glad that this little skirmish had gone according to plan. He still enjoyed fighting, but wasn''t stupid enough to put his own pleasure above the greater victory. Things had gone to plan here today precisely because he''d held himself back instead of rushing forwards like his instincts had screamed at him to do, and so he supposed that there was probably a lesson in that somewhere.


    Still, he had been a little annoyed that he''d needed to leave his axe behind. According to Symon, who had organised this foray, Rhema''s axe was "about as subtle as your brother''s executions", and as such he''d needed to leave it behind. Still, at least he had his trusty sword by his side.


    It wasn''t a large weapon like the greatsword his brother preferred, nor even a longsword, for in honesty was closer to one of the longseaxes that the levies carried with them. Far better made and finely balanced of course, but in terms of pure size it was far from great. Good. Longer swords were more unwieldy in close quarters, and if Rhema was fighting he wanted to be as close to the foe as possible. He didn''t mind using a crossbow every now and again, but he wasn''t at home in a fight unless he was the centrepiece. He needed to be the jewel in death''s crown, an unstoppable force of nature, when he was on the battlefield.


    It wasn''t just pride that demanded he get in close with the foe either; his entire fighting style revolved around relentless attacks, not letting the enemy recover for even a moment. That had been why he failed in his dream-bouts with his brother; he''d not been able to continue going on the offensive any longer for his stamina had run dry, and if he wasn''t on the attack then he was buggered.


    Still, he doubted that such things would be a problem today. He''d been itching to engage the enemy or sally forth these last few weeks, but had held himself back on the urging of Crowe and the order of his brother. He wasn''t prepared to throw away his brother''s carefully prepared strategy on a whim, still less one that had relied on so much chance. If Aerna had been just a little more intelligent, if he''d listened to the lords under his command just a little more...


    Well, what use was there in dwelling on such ''what ifs'' at the moment? Capturing Aerna had helped sate his need for combat a tad, even if the slippery bastard kept making disparaging comments about Rhema playing second fiddle to Lyk. He couldn''t of cared less what the arrogant man said; Lykourgos was his older brother, and Rhema would carry out his orders no matter what. That was how the law worked. Not the true law, not written laws that were debated over in courtrooms and justice-houses, but the laws that mattered. The son follows the father, and the younger brother the elder. That was the true way of the world, and Rhema would not allow the needling of some cocky, arrogant prisoner get in his way.


    The man had been a very good swordsman, true, but he was now in chains nonetheless. Symon had heard that the man liked to personally lead bands of knights to chase down the Teleytaian light horse that would harass his camp, and so Rhema had slipped out of his own fort and personally laid an ambush for the ''Huntsknights'' of Owkrestos. The Owkrestan knights had taken down a great many of Rhema''s men, that much was true, but when the day was over and the dust had cleared they were all either dead, captured, or fled. That ''skirmish'' had taken the lives of around forty men all told, with another hundred injured, but the single most important thing out of all of that had been the capture of Ser Aerna. Rhema knew that his brother wasn''t one for anything short of complete and total victory, but if he needed to make peace the traditional way then the capture of Lord Aertax''s son and heir would certainly give him some more leverage over the Old Oak.


    He wished he could learn a little news with regards to his brother''s forces, but alas, being stuck in this fort hadn''t really boded well for receiving news.


    That would soon change, however. He knew it would. With the death or capture of their commander the enemy camp was already falling into infighting as the members of the various cadet branches of house Blackoak attempted to prove their seniority over each other and take the now-vacant spot at the head of the army. Okay, maybe ''infighting'' was too strong of a word, since he wasn''t sure there was any actual fighting going on, but without a clear leader the siege camp at their walls was in the throes of paralysis.


    That he could work with. That he knew Crowe and Symon were planning to work with.


    He wasn''t sure if it was to be tomorrow or overmorrow that the assault took place, but by the end of it he would stand triumphant over an army more than twice the size of the one he was leading. If that didn''t make him popular with the singers then he didn''t know what would.


    Already he''d heard some sappy dramatised recreation of the succession crisis, and he had been genuinely torn over whether to shatter the singer''s instrument against the table or the man''s voice box to make him shut the fuck up. Any song he could inspire by his victories in this war would surely be better than that.


    Seventh had made some comments in a very dry tone that "Of course it''s wrong, after all, you were never distraught or overwrought at the prospect of fighting your brother", which had very nearly earned them a clip around the ear. Smarmy little fucker.


    Ah well. He could think of worse songs that they''d sing.


    <hr>


    "What do you mean he''s gone!"


    Crowe huffed out a disgruntled breath, a hand rubbing around her eyes.


    "I mean exactly what I said, your Grace. He''s gone."


    "We''ve had him held here for less than two hours!"


    He turned to look at Symon, hoping the man might have answers, but the sellsword captain just shrugged at him whilst kicking his feet up and resting them on the table, muddy boots and all.


    "What do you want me to say? The man''s a daemon with a sword. Killed his guards while still bound and escaped. He hasn''t made his way back to the siege camp though, so that''s something. I don''t think he intends to sit outside these walls anymore. He''ll be going back east, that''s my bet. Back to his father. He''s got some stupid sense of arrogant honour, and knows that his old man will be fuming at him for losing this war. He''ll be riding back to tell the Old Oak himself and save a bit of face, you know, put a spin on it and blame someone else."


    Rhema''s jaw worked for a moment as he ground his teeth, willing himself not to lose it right  then and there. He closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath, adamant that he wasn''t going to lose it here. Fuck, he didn''t like how his head he felt at the moment.


    "Well, that''s some fucking shit news all right. I''m heading back to my chambers before I do something stupid; let me know when the sally-forth will take place and don''t start without me."


    Crowe gave him a mildly worried stare as the headache made itself known again, but Symon just lounged where he sat and gave him a lazy salute. Rhema returned the gesture, then walked away.


    When he got to his makeshift quarters he shut the door and let out a deep sigh. Two hours. How the fuck had the man been able to escape after just two hours? Honestly, I should have just killed him when I had the chance. Lyk will probably want him hanged come the war''s end anyway.


    He huffed out a silent laugh at that thought before wincing and raising a hand to his forehead. Angels, his head hurt. He wasn''t sure what had brought on this headache, but he hadn''t had one this bad since he was a child. Maybe it was something to do with the weather? They had been having some heavy rainfalls with high temperatures as the summer months began to make way for autumn. Maybe that was-


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    "Preparing for battle again, brother? And here you told me you weren''t our half-brother''s equal."


    He froze in place as he heard a voice echoing softly within the room he''d taken for his own.


    "Who''s there?"


    The voice scoffed as though offended.


    "You know exactly who I am, little brother. I promised you I''d always stay with you, didn''t I? You don''t get to just forget what you did, Rhema. You aren''t allowed to forget me."


    He whipped around with his hackles raised and anxieties building, dreading the figure he knew he''d find before him. Angels, please keep me in your embrace, please make her go away.


    Before him was his sister, or what was left of her. Blood pooled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks, an expression of cruel malice on her face.


    "What''s the matter, little brother? Haven''t you missed your sister?"


    With the headache increasing in intensity and a hallucination that he could not bear to see or hear a moment longer in front of him, he turned back to one of his tried and tested methods from his childhood. Mother and father had both gotten him to stop, but they were gone and it had worked for him, and he''d take anything right now.


    Moving swiftly to one of the rough stone walls that lined his room he braced his arms on the wall, threw his head back, and then threw it forwards with as much force as he could muster. The impact left him seeing stars, but for a moment he felt the headache recede. In a few seconds it was back, which only strengthened his resolve to get this fucking ordeal over with.


    "Leave me alone!"


    The ghost or vision or whatever the fuck this was of his sister remained silent, but smiled a sickening smile. Rhema felt his blood come to the boil as the almost mocking words of his sister played back in his head, their final conversation in which she had told him that the love he bore for his brother was a weakness, that he was a coward who hid behind a veneer of martial prowess. He couldn''t let her win, not here, not again.


    "You''re just a bad memory. Get OUT. GET. OUT. OF. MY. HEAD!"


    Each word was punctuated by the young prince smashing his head into the stone wall, a sickening cracking noise being heard as felt his own nose break. Not too badly he hoped, but he didn''t care what it took right now. He needed her to leave.


    She smiled at him with a look of satisfaction, but all of a sudden the spot in which she''d been standing was illuminated in light and, just as soon as she''d arrived, she vanished. It was as if she was never there. That''s because she never was. My mind just likes to play tricks on me from time to time.


    "Rhema! Rhema, are you okay!?"


    "This isn''t the end, little brother. You''ll see me again, soon. Very soon. Goodbye, brother."


    The voice rang out in his head, fading even as it spoke. He''d hardly even registered the fact that Seventh had rushed into the room, immediately reaching to stop him from continuing his preventative measures. They succeeded in getting him to stop, but only because there was no further need. There was no reason to continue with such measures at the moment, and whatever little residual thoughts he may have had that argued against that didn''t matter. The headaches were gone. She was gone. Where she had once stood now nothing but a shadowy corner was visible. He''d won against his mind again.


    With a half-formed thought he recognised that this was probably the sort of thing he''d been told to reach out and tell people about, but that felt like it would be a whole lot of work.


    No, he''d just blame it on the battle when the day was over. It would be easier to deal with than the stares and the pity.


    He couldn''t do that to Seventh though. Seventh had seen, and Seventh was special. They were nice. He''d tell Seventh, if he even needed to. They probably already knew what had happened, what with their ill-defined magics and all. He looked over at them, concern visible on those features not obscured by their blindfold.


    "Rhema, please tell me if something like this happens again. Please."


    He nodded at his friend, only half-listening to their emotion-laced words for he was still rather shaken, but made a mental note to try and keep that promise. Seventh was their best friend, after all. Their closest friend. When combined with their inherent abilities it seemed obvious that they should learn of such happenings, should they continue.


    "Your nose, is it-"


    "I''ll be fine, Sev. I just...  I just had a bad memory, that''s all."


    Seventh nodded slowly, looking not at all convinced, but didn''t press any further.


    "Would you... would you like to search through my magics once more? It calmed you down when we were in the capital."


    Rhema thought for a moment, smiling at the kind offer, but shook his head.


    "No, we haven''t the time. The fight for the enemy''s siege camp might be first thing tomorrow morning, and I can''t afford to be tired because we''ve been scrying all night. Maybe afterwards?"


    Seventh smiled softly at him and nodded.


    "Okay. Please tell me if anything like this happens again, Re."


    "I will. Just... don''t tell anyone else about it. I saw her, Sev. I saw her plain as day. She was taunting me, mocking me, and my head hurt so much. I just... I just needed it to stop."


    Seventh frowned at him, gently raising a hand to cradle his cheek.


    "Rhema... it hurt you."


    He smiled at his friend with a strange mix of optimism and sadness.


    "It worked, didn''t it? I don''t think she was real, anyway. I think it was just my mind trying to sabotage me again."


    "I can''t sense any magics in the area, Re, so while I don''t like to say it I think you''re right. Even so, this is precisely the kind of situation my dream-magics are perfect for! I can help you if this happens again, Rhema. Just call for me, and I''ll always answer."


    The two of them sat down next to each other, Seventh leaning on him and resting their head on his arm.


    "Okay, Sev. Thank you."


    <hr>


    He''d been right. The sallies had begun at first light the next today, the sellswords of Symon''s Starlings fighting alongside church-militia and the thousand assorted armsmen that Lyk had left under his command ready to fight in a chaotic melee amongst the tents in the encampment of the foe. The day promised to be bloody, but if nothing else that would help him set aside his anxieties and fears over his dead sister for a little while. He ran through the checks on his light armour one last time, ensuring every little thing was in its proper place and fastened as tight as he liked it. There was killing to be done today, and he intended to make good use of the equipment he had become so familiar with these last few years.


    "You good, kid?"


    The ever unphased and always cocksure voice of Symon came from his right, the man walking over with a greatseaxe slung languidly over his shoulder. His scale armour always seemed to be dirty, despite the fact that he knew the man ''kept every bit of kit in good nick'' and cleaned it regularly. Apparently he''d had the scales discoloured with a few different dull greens and browns, which made it harder to see him in the Owkrestan woodlands that he''d been fighting in most of his life. He''d seen quite a few of the veterans wearing similarly discoloured armour, be it leather or mail, and some of the younger members of the band had started following their lead.


    He wasn''t sure if it actually made a difference or not, but it was something to tell his brother nonetheless. Maybe something useful would come out of it.


    "I''m good. I''ll be better when I''m in there. What about you, old man? Are you feeling good for this?"


    Symon scoffed and gave him an indignant stare, probably because of the ''old man'' comment, but in Rhema''s defence he had been called a ''kid'' first.


    "That I fuckin'' am. Besides, messenger came telling me to take a hundred of my best and ride to join your brother outside Stagspring. I''ve taken the city before, so it''ll be up to me again when this is all done. Well, in any case, look lively and mount up. We''re going out there now, so you''d best show me what you''ve got."


    He nodded at the man and gave him a two fingered mock-salute before hopping up onto the saddle of his horse.


    "Say no more, captain! I''m ready to go."


    He hadn''t known just how correct he was.


    Ten minutes later he was in the enemy camp having arrived only a few minutes after the first wave. As soon as he''d reached the front he''d pulled the reigns and brought his courser to a stop, dismounting and pulling his weapons from their places at his belt. Axe in one hand and sword in the other, he''d began to move through the enemy camp with no real plan, instead merely seeking out one or two men at a time who were wearing the colours of one of the many Blackoak cadet branches and charging straight at them, killing them in the ensuing duel and then repeating the process. His brother was made for valiant charges and clever tactical moves, but Rhema was not. He was made to butcher and bolt, killing his foe before moving onto the next.


    Lykourgos was a soldier. Rhema was a warrior.


    He was learning to be a leader of men, a tactician who could actually direct a battle rather than just fighting and hoping for the best, but at the moment he knew exactly where his strengths lay. Let others deride him for his methods if they wanted; he got results, and that was what his brother valued above all.


    There was a shout from his left as some huntsknight approached him waving around a two-handed warhammer, and so Rhema broke himself from his musings and made to fight once more.


    As the man drew closer and made to swing his hammer in a controlled arc Rhema moved first, his axe almost completely bypassing the man''s guard and clanging against his plate armour. Of course the man wasn''t going to go down just from that, he was in plate armour for Saint''s sake, but the blow would certainly have winded him if the dented line near the bottom of the chest plate was anything to go by. The man struck out with his warhammer again, forcing Rhema to leap backwards a little before flicking his sword out and rolling it outwards to ensure that the follow-up jab that the knight attempted with the spiked head of the hammer went wide. Angels, he enjoyed things like this.


    Life''s simpler pleasures were always his favourites; be it wine, fighting, or the eldritch creature in a humanoid form with powers beyond his comprehension and a penchant for making sarcastic comments that had somehow become his closest friend and companion these last few years, life''s simple treats stood leagues above the pomp and splendour of other endeavours.


    The man''s hammer struck forwards in a downwards arc, getting lodged in the mud for a moment when Rhema moved aside to let the weapon fall on empty air. It wasn''t stuck long, but it was just long enough for Rhema to dart forwards and lodge his sword in an armour joint at the knight''s right armpit. There was a gambeson beneath the plate, mail as well, but with the right application of force his sword cut through both of them in one swift motion.


    With his sword still lodged where the man''s arm met his shoulder Rhema shoulder barged him as hard as he could, a scream tearing its way through the knight''s throat as his arm was forcefully and permanently dislocated at the shoulder in the drop. A swift strike to the throat with his axe and Rhema ensured that one more huntsknight was gone from the world. The huntsknights really should have been made history already. Hedge-knights with undue prestige, that''s all they are. Not to worry, I can help speed along the process a little. I''m good at what I do.


    The thrill of battle and the constant self-affirmations that this was what he was made for helped him force down the terrible feelings that had been lingering over him since last night, since he''d seen the ghost of his sister taunting him for his inadequacies. He was Rhema fucking Sperakos, and he was better than she''d ever realised. His brother knew it, Crowe knew it, and Seventh knew it. Even if he only had one of those three to keep him sane, he knew he''d be alright. He could be at peace here.


    Wrenching his axe free of the man''s neck he moved to stand once more, sword firmly gripped in his left hand. Two more men ran towards him hollering out war cries, and within moments both fell silent. Moving through the camp he continued to carve a trail of death through the men of house Blackoak, his very nature seeming to transform from that of a man to a whirlwind of blades, his axe lashing out in great slashing motions whilst he simultaneously parried with his sword before reversing the order of his motions, parrying with his axe and stabbing at exposed arms and stomachs with his sword. He might not have been the perfect prince, but he was good at this. So long as his brother had enemies in the world, so long as there were wars that needed to be won and battles that needed to be fought, then he was still useful. He was still needed.


    At the end of the day could there be a more welcome thought than that?

 Lykourgos VII: One by One the Branches Burn

    <u>Lykourgos VII: One by One the Branches Burn</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    Copseshield, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    He''d been driving himself hard recently, his men even more so, but his strength was now back. For three moons he had campaigned, and already the speed at which he had progressed startled even himself. A ''lightening strike'', men were calling this campaign, and it was not hard to see why. In three months he had routed the forces of Lieutenant Isen and swept the Owkrestans out of Klironomea. Not alone of course, for his brother had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, but even so it was impressive.


    In that time he had also marched his forces into Owkrestos itself, and although the siege train was still weeks behind him his army had been able to take the seats of two cadet branches of house Blackoak. Blossom Grove had fallen in less than a week, the result of five days of relentless assaults on the walls, and though all his men had were battering rams and scaling ladders they were still able to storm Kindling''s Ash and open up new avenues of attack.


    Now, sat in his tent in a siege camp outside the walls of Copseshield, he was almost certain in his victory over house Blackoak. When Copseshield fell, and it would fall soon, then Blacktree Hall itself would be completely open and exposed from the north. Perhaps more importantly than that, though he was in a state of peace with King Aleksandar of Owkrestos at the moment, the capital city of this kingdom would lay open to Lykourgos from the west. Owkrestos would fall to him, and within the year if all went as he willed it.


    Though he had maintained complete confidence in his brother, it was still a relief when he heard of his victory over Ser Aerna. Originally the plan was that Lykourgos would reel around and help his brother after defeating Lieutenant Isen, but that had been completely unnecessary. Rhema had retreated into a local fort, not particularly big but certainly with enough room for four-thousand men to effectively garrison it. Ser Aerna had been bored by the siege and, instead of attempting to storm the walls which could have been risky, had instead taken to personally leading his knights on horseback to chase down any of Rhema''s mounted bands who would harry the warcamp. Rhema had, somehow, managed to get out of the fort and lead one of these bands himself, which had led to the capture of Ser Aerna and the disintegration of command in the attacker''s siege camp.


    One drawn out shouting match over who held seniority between the various cadet branches of house Blackoak later and the camp was in flames, a messenger informing him that Marshal Crowe and Symon Symondson had led the garrisoned forces to burn and kill anything and everyone in that camp. With two tactical blunders the forces of house Blackoak had been reduced to a fraction of what they were.


    Oh, how the Old Oak must be raging.


    Ser Aerna had apparently slipped his bonds and escaped in the night, killing more than one of his guards before melting away into the night on horseback, but that mattered very little at the moment. The Owkrestan army, or at least the portion under the command of house Blackoak, was little more than a collection of tattered bands making their way back to Blacktree Hall to try and regroup into a cohesive force once more. It didn''t matter; there simply weren''t enough of them left to pose a true threat. Besides, a good portion of Lord Blackoak''s assembled host had been formed of sellsword bands, and there was little hope of them making good on their promises to fight to the death. If he had to place a bet he''d say that they were already halfway back to their home territories to try and mitigate the disaster that their hiring had been.


    Thinking on this for a little had given him two main lessons; the first lesson to be gleaned was that, no matter how much he appreciated the help of Symon and the Starlings, there was a reason he wasn''t going out of his way to hire sellsword bands. Any ruler who relied on mercenaries for their operations, be they offensive or defensive, was destined to flag and fail. The second lesson was that, although he''d been pretty good at this already, he needed to re-establish the chain of command properly. If something were to happen to him he needed to know that there was a clear leader to take his place.


    The obvious candidates were Grandmaster Romanos and Marshal Crowe, perhaps Rhema if it were a small army. Of course it needn''t be that he was dead for such a transfer of command to be necessary; what if he were wounded, sick, captured? Someone would need to be there to pick up where he left off until he was returned to his forces. After them it was the lieutenants that were responsible for the men, but after Isen he didn''t really trust them as easily as he once had. Elikoidi probably would have said he was finally learning. Lykourgos just felt as though he were becoming paranoid. He''d need to start trusting them once more; it wasn''t them who''d betrayed him after all.


    "Your Grace?"


    Lykourgos looked up to see Ilias peeking his head through the flaps of the tent, a somewhat nervous look on his face.


    "Yes, Ilias?"


    "There''s a knot of riders coming from the east. A hundred or so. They''re flying a dozen different banners, but the biggest is the banner of house Wyldlarch."


    Lykourgos smiled.


    "Ah, it seems my message must have reached King Aleksandar after all. Come, help me ready myself. I take it word has been sent to the rest of the commanders in my force?"


    Ilias nodded.


    "Yes, your Grace. Romanos is selecting an honour guard for you."


    "Good. You mentioned that there are only around a hundred men in total, but have we any idea how many actually intend to parlay with me personally?"


    Ilias shook his head.


    "Apologies your Grace, but I do not know. If I were permitted to guess I''d say the King himself and a handful of his lords, but for all I know they might all wish to approach you. I just don''t know."


    Lykourgos nodded. It was perfectly reasonable; Ilias couldn''t be expected to read someone''s mind, after all.


    "That''s quite alright Ilias. Hopefully I don''t need to suffer the indignity of speaking with yet more nobles, but I don''t think I''ll be that lucky."


    He continued to sit there for a few moments, mulling over what he would say and do. After a few seconds had passed he decided that it would be best to simply act in the moment. That''s when he did his best work.


    Well, while that might not be true I''m not really intending to maintain the fa?ade of peace between us anyway. The King of Owkrestos might not be directly responsible for this war, but it is his vassal that has declared it and therefore it is upon him that the blame must fall. Teleytaios will not brook instability at her borders. I will not brook instability on my borders. Owkrestos requires a strong ruler, and if King Aleksandar will not be that ruler then I shall.


    He blinked himself out of his thoughts and turned back to Ilias, giving him an apologetic smile once more.


    "Ah well, there''s hardly anything to worry about in either case. Grab Dreamwulf and Eros if Romanos hasn''t already, then it seems we''ll have to get ready for a royal meeting."


    <hr>


    Lykourgos trotted up the hill, certainly not resplendent for he was wearing practical and effective armour rather than his ceremonial plate, but looking regal nonetheless. He had his greatsword strapped across his back, not to mention the longseaxe on the left hand side of his belt next to the dagger he''d replaced. There were dirks in his boots as well, but seeing as they weren''t visible that was beside the point. Upon his brow he wore not an opulent and dazzling crown, but a thin and plain circlet of gold. He wanted to show the Owkrestans that he was here as a soldier, a conqueror, not some princeling that stepped from the pages of a faetale or foppish monarch looking for plunder and prestige.


    He was here for business, not glory.


    Dreamwulf and Eros rode alongside him, as did Romanos and Ilias. This time it was Romanos who held aloft his standard, the blue cloth snapping and booming as it caught the wind. A body of knights rode behind some ten paces behind them, more as a precaution than anything else, though Lykourgos had wished for a few bands of Men-at-Arms to follow him to really hammer home the point that this was an army, not a band of chivalrous men in gleaming plate suits. Unfortunately the vast majority of the Armsmen were not trained to ride in gear as heavy as theirs, and as such more than one would have likely fallen from the saddle and just looked foolish.


    Coming up the other way was a small band of regal-looking figures, their own banners waving proudly as knights followed up behind them. Lykourgos held up his hand, signalling for the knights not in his retinue to stop as he closed the distance alongside his four friends.


    From here he could see the young crowned figure atop one of the horses opposite mirror the motion, the knights of the boy''s own entourage stopping just as Lykourgos'' had.


    As they closed the last of the distance he bit back the urge to remind his friends not to speak unless he called on them. It would be more than improper for any of them to address the approaching king personally, hell, it could even be considered improper for him to do so given that he wasn''t technically crowned yet, but he doubted anyone would bother pointing out that particular point. Still, there was no need to remind his friends of any of that. They all knew exactly what was expected of them in moments such as this.


    Finally both of the small parties came to a stop, each one around ten paces from the centre point of their chosen meeting ground. Lykourgos summoned up the cockiest voice he could as he spoke, a seemingly-lazy smile very deliberately and slowly creeping across his features whilst he rested his left hand on the hilt of his longseaxe.


    "Well, as I live and breath! King Aleksandar Wyldlarch the Forth himself! Welcome, your Grace, to Copseshield." He flourished a hand back towards the besieged castle before continuing. "It''s inaccessible at the moment, but you''re in luck! We''ll have the gates open overmorrow, so you''re more than welcome to wait until we''re inside."


    The young king was clearly trying not to look at all intimidated, but he was trying too hard not to react to what had been said, ironically giving away his nerves. The boy''s smile was stiff and false, his eyes flickering about nervously first to the longseaxe on Lykourgos'' belt, then to Dreamwulf and Romanos by his side, and finally up to the knights on the ridge before he managed to meet Lykourgos'' eyes once more.


    "Prince Lykourgos Sperakos. I heard that you were laid low by an assassin some months ago; I am pleased to see you standing and healthy."


    Lykourgos smiled with amusement at the boy''s pleasantries, knowing for a fact that the assembled lords in his retinue would much rather have seen him dead.


    "Well, that''s most kind of you. Still, I must say I''ve been quite disappointed in your ability to keep your vassals in check. I''m not sure if you realise this your Grace, but some eighteen-thousand men crossed into Teleytaios with the intent to overthrow my rule almost as soon as I had awakened from my slumber. I am... displeased with your inaction. Very displeased. I had hardly been able to recover from my injuries before your lords began their invasion, thinking us weak and unprepared. They were very wrong. I assume you received my message?"


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    The young monarch turned a little green, but nodded. Heh, it seems the message got across perfectly well. It was intended more as a message for the lords at the young king''s court than the king himself, but it might be useful to have the boy a little afraid of him in the long run.


    "Good. I take it you are therefore here to submit yourself before me in recompense for your failures?"


    The young king stood still for a moment, likely feeling a little ill at the memory of what must have been Isen''s rotting and mutilated corpse, before shaking his head and proverbially finding his footing in the conversation once more.


    "No. No, I am not. I am here to demand that you leave my lands at once. Leave my lands, or else enter into a deal with me. With my regency council. If, as I suspect, you are unwilling to leave our lands without bloodshed, perhaps there is something we can offer you to persuade you to leave?"


    He raised an eyebrow at the boy. There was little a marionette such as him could offer the crown prince of Teleytaios, save delivering him his kingdom.


    "And what might that be?"


    "My help in your war against house Blackoak. The Blackoaks have long been a thorn in the side of royal authority in Owkrestos, and with your counter-invasion we have the upper hand we need to rid ourselves of this menace."


    Lykourgos couldn''t help but huff out a laugh as he smiled wryly.


    "It seems to me, young King," he started, "that we do not require your help to defeat the forces of house Blackoak in the field. Somewhere around a fifth of your kingdom sits in my hands at the present moment, and I''m afraid to say that I have no intention of leaving these lands."


    Aleksandar swallowed hard. It was harsh of him, but Lykourgos wasn''t particularly impressed. The boy was smart by all accounts, but lacked the spine and power to prevent himself from being puppeted by his nobles. It would have been sad, only this king was to be his enemy. Still, he might be able to work with him. Maybe. The boy wasn''t as smart as Alekos, but he wasn''t stupid either. He''d know he stood no chance of victory here. To win this war Owkrestos would need a strong king, but it didn''t have one. Aleksandar was weak, and both royals knew it all too well. They were enemies, but of the two of them one had found the strength to seize his throne, and the other had not.


    He knew all too well that a weak enemy was far simpler to defeat than a strong one.


    "You have no grounds to occupy these lands."


    Lykourgos shook his head.


    "I do, actually: my great-grandmother was a princess of house Wyldlarch on my father''s side. Not that such a pretense is needed; I don''t know if you''ve realised this but my army is mobilised and ready, not to mention in Owkrestos itself. Half of the forces Owkrestos had lie dead wearing Blackoak colours in Teleytaios, and any sellswords you could have hired on a short notice are scattered or vanquished. It will take you time to call up what is left of your forces, and in that time I will have been reinforced by the army of my brother and my siege train. I will uproot house Blackoak, then the rest of the Owkrestan lords. Who is it that acts as your wardens today? I see two figures glaring at me as I speak. Introduce them, if you would."


    He allowed his eyes the briefest of flickers over to the two men. One was wearing a suit of gleaming and intricately engraved plate armour, and the other a suit of boiled leather over dull mail. Looking at the banners above he knew exactly who the two men were, or at least he was pretty sure he did as he recalled the lectures and lessons when he was a child. A red apple on an apple-green field, fess cottised with forest green: house Redseed. Four winding light-blue lines that gradually met each other as they descended, four becoming two a third of the way down and two becoming one two-thirds of the way down, on an ocean-blue field: house Fengrove.


    As if in response to his thoughts the young king nodded and announced them formally, the two men bowing at him with scowls on their faces as they observed the formality of showing deference to a royal, even if he wasn''t of their kingdom.


    "Lord Fengrove of the Murkwater Redoubt and Lord Redseed of Grey Orchard. They are here to see to my protection on this day."


    "I am pleased to announce to the both of you that this war will see your own castles stormed as well!" He grinned at them as faux-excited as he could before he turned back to Aleksandar. "''See to your protection''. They are here to ensure you read out your lines as written by your regency council, you mean. Don''t you find it demeaning, having to bow and scrape from within your gilded cage whenever these feckless ingrates demand?"


    The young king looked up at him, not quite insulted but almost... hopeful. Yes, Lykourgos could work with this. Aleksandar made to speak, moving his pony forwards a few paces as though meaning to distance himself from his puppet masters.


    "Maybe... maybe it seems like we might have a common cause after all then. An alliance between our kingdoms?"


    Lykourgos looked around at the assembled Owkrestan lords. He wasn''t impressed. The offer of assisting this young king was almost tempting; to break the nobility here as he had at home and deliver this young king the key to his freedom would certainly see Owkrestos indebted to him for quite some time, but there were too many uncertainties with leaving these lands unattended by his own hands. No, there would be no deal made here. Maybe if he could get a private audience with this young king and really spell everything out to him things would be different, but no matter what this lad was set to lose his crown.


    "No. Teleytaios will not stand for her borders being threatened any more. Teleytaios, as of this day, lays claim to all the lands formerly belonging to the kingdom of Owkrestos. Bend the knee to me and your lands and holdings will be seized. If you do not, then they will be seized by force. The only difference lies in whether your vassals wish to live as well."


    The king of Owkrestos, young as he was, paled a little in his saddle. The Owkrestan lords and knights behind him were, to a man, either afraid or angry. It didn''t matter; they''d hardly had the time to muster their local forces, and none at all to link up into an army. Even if they did, half of their kingdom''s fighting forces were either scattered or fighting for him now. Lykourgos rode closer to the young man, ignoring how the hands of guards fell upon the pommels of their blades.


    "You''ve always had trouble controlling your lords, haven''t you? There are many out there who see you as a puppet. Is it true?"


    The young king''s eyes filled with shame as he gave a single, ever so slight nod in response.


    "It is."


    Lykourgos nodded, smiling a little as he looked over the boy''s shoulder at the lords who controlled him.


    "Don''t worry, your Grace. I''m sure you''ve heard the rumours. I have a rather effective method for controlling noblemen. A very effective method. You''ll not wear a crown much longer, but at the very least you''ll get to watch them swing."


    Lykourgos stilled his mind, leaning in closer and letting his voice lose its edge. There was no need to scare the boy more than was necessary; now that the lords knew their fates he could speak to this king more freely. His voice was not a whisper, but thanks to the space between the two royals and any attendants there was no risk of anyone else overhearing his words so long as he kept his voice quiet.


    "Meet me in my tent tonight. Most of what I said is true, but other parts are not. So long as your lords know not of what we discuss we might yet work together."


    The young boy looked at him, apprehensive, afraid, and yet hopeful. Then he nodded.


    With that Lykourgos wheeled his steed around and cantered back off towards his own retinue, grinning widely. Things were going very well indeed.


    <hr>


    "Your Grace."


    Lykourgos nodded at the young king as he entered his tent.


    "Your Grace."


    Gesturing to a chair he bid the monarch to sit before motioning for two goblets of wine, Ilias pouring the drinks out with expert precision.


    The boy did not touch his drink, but Lykourgos made sure to take a few slow sips. Acting casual in an environment such as this often worked wonders with negotiations. Not that there was really much to negotiate.


    "Does your council know you''re here?"


    The boy raised an eyebrow at his tone and spoke in defiance. It was the most spine Lykourgos had seen from him since meeting the lad.


    "Does yours know you''ve declared war on Owkrestos?"


    Lykourgos huffed out a laugh and clinked his goblet to the foreign king''s.


    "Touch¨¦. I asked to see you not to discuss things so much, but to deliver an ultimatum and help you see the benefits of what I want to do."


    Aleksandar eyed him suspiciously.


    "Go on."


    "Your kingdom is now mine. It will be soon, anyway. Just as I did in Teleytaios I will dismantle the nobility here and forge Owkrestos into a part of a truly modern state. It is your choice if you try and resist with futility or embrace this change and be rewarded."


    The boy scowled at him when he finished speaking, but credit where credit was due, he kept his temper in check.


    "Rewarded how?"


    "You care for your people, I know you do. Fear not, I have no intentions of mistreating them whatsoever, but if you surrendered to me now you would be guaranteed a position in my inner circle. You''d be the voice of the Owkrestans at court, you could ensure that their traditions are not eroded by outsiders. There''s plenty of benefits to cooperation here, your Grace."


    The young king seemed to mull the proposition over for a few minutes before rising to his feet, shaking his head with a resolute yet scared frown on his face.


    "No. No, I will not stand by and let you do this. To hell with your deal, I''m done here!"


    One of his guards made to stop the young man as he made to leave the tent, but Lykourgos bid the man halt with a wave of the hand. Without another look the young king mounted his pony and rode out of the camp, and by the angels he rode hard if the sound of his horse''s rapidly hammering hooves was anything to go by.


    "A pity," Lykourgos said to no-one in particular, "but I do not blame him. Ilias?"


    "Yes, your Grace?"


    " I want our commanders to know that, should King Aleksandar be spotted making his way to Stagspring, he is to be allowed to continue on his way unimpeded. There''s little more he''ll do in his reign."


    His cupbearer nodded at him.


    "At once, your Grace. Your will be done."


    <hr>


    A day and a half later and, just as he had promised the young king, it was done. A third cadet branch of house Blackoak had fallen to his forces, and now the amount of choices he could make in terms of where next to target had grown substantially. Not that he needed such an extensive list, for he knew exactly what he''d be doing and exactly where he''d be striking next.


    "Ilias?"


    "Yes, your Grace?"


    "I want a message sent to my brother. Tell him to march on Blacktree hall, and that the siege train will join him."


    Ilias looked up at him from the young cob he sat astride, the dapple-grey horse standing about five hands shorter than the prince''s own destrier.


    "Of course, your Grace. Anything else?"


    Lykourgos stopped for a second, thinking briefly before shaking his head.


    "Only a shorter message telling the siege train to head to Blacktree Hall as well. As for us? We''re heading east. We''re marching on Stagspring."


    Ilias stuttered a little, confused.


    "But- your Grace, we''re just at war with house Blackoak, not all of Owkrestos!"


    The prince smiled down at his cupbearer.


    "We are now. You were present at that meeting, Ilias. You heard my ultimatum. We are at war with all Owkrestos, whether they wish it so or not. The first stepping stones across the river have been taken, and we must carry on to the other bank before the rest of our way is made slick by the deluge once more. We strike now, Ilias, before our foes have the chance to mobilise. We carry on marching until our enemies lie still and cold."


    Ilias was silent a moment, the two of them staring out at the walls of Copseshield as the sounds of battle raged around them. The ladders were already in position at the walls, and the first few of his men had already found their way atop the battlements.


    "It seems" Ilias began, "that for every enemy we defeat two more rise to face us. One of whom attacks us, the other being made by our own decisions."


    There was no judgement or sadness in the voice of his cupbearer, merely a statement of fact. Ilias would not judge him for what he did, this Lykourgos knew, and so statements such as this that would have seemed disheartening had most others said it seemed perfectly innocent coming from the lad.


    "Well," he responded with a smile that didn''t quite reach his eyes as he ruffled his cupbearer''s hair affectionately, "I suppose we will be on the march for quite some time then."


    Ilias nodded at him and turned to look back at the walls of the castle, Lykourgos doing the same soon after. A ram had battered down the gates and men were fighting amidst the splinters of the door and shards of what had been the portcullis. Atop the walls the fighting was still ongoing, his men gradually pushing the defenders further and further back even as more ladders went up.


    Copseshield had fallen, just as Blossom Grove and Kindling''s Ash had previously. One castle at a time Owkrestos would fall, with smaller keeps and watchtowers striking their banners and opening their gates or else falling in an afternoon. There was little to fear from Owkrestos now. He almost wished it had been more interesting thus far, seeing as he''d not faced any strong opposition since the armies of Lieutenant Isen were swept aside, but given that ''interesting'' in this context would have meant ''anything that wasn''t a complete and total victory'' he''d be fine with the events that had occurred.


    Lykourgos stood out before the walls of Copseshield, watching as his banners flew where once those of house Blackoak had fluttered in the wind. Owkrestos knew he was coming now. They knew his intentions. If King Aleksandar was unwilling to stand aside then he would be crushed, as would all those lords and ladies who followed him. He was to be a conqueror, and though he had no illusions insofar as thinking that there would be no unrest in these lands he was also level-headed enough to know that there was more than one way to deal with unrest; you caught more flies with honey than vinegar, after all.


    After Owkrestos, who knew? Only one certainty stood tall in his mind at the moment:


    This would be far from his last conquest. Owkrestos would be far from his last conquest. Klironomea called, ripe for his taking. He would not let opportunity pass him by. He could not afford to let opportunity pass him by.


    To do so would be to scorn his duty, and he always did his duty.

 Lore Chapter: Rulers of Legend

    When I was a boy, I was taught to revere legends.


    Not legends like immortal, supernatural beings. Legends of flesh and blood. Legends of mankind.


    Look at any culture around the world, and you will find legends revered as far back as history will take you.


    For Klironomea it is a simple affair. The most recent ''legend'' is that of Harald the Second and his forefathers, the Barracks-Kings of Klironomea. When the Barracks-Kings were nought but children swaddled in the crib, they revered the baseborn Prince Loukas Stagmore, who desperately tried to do right by the people who had been crushed under the tyranny of his family. Prince Loukas would have revered the Black Prince, Magnarius ?lfwyne, the first and last ruler of all five lost kingdoms of the north who was forced to lead his people into Klironomea to protect them when the horse-lords first spilled south. When Magnarius was alive the Klironomeans hadn''t even returned to Klironomea yet, but still the trail of legends stretches back further, and so he looked to the great monarchs of the Skraeling house Doregern as his group of reverence. I believe you get the gist of what I''m trying to say.


    My point is this; every generation has its great heroes and villains, and to a man they all look back upon the greats from the century before their own for inspiration. They all look to the past for guidance, to look for what they should emulate. They crave the approval of men long since dead when they should have been looking forwards at what they could achieve with their own ideas, their own drive.


    That is the fundamental flaw with most rulers. They want so desperately to be revered in history just as they revered others, and as a result they are utterly incapable of seeing their plans to fruition because they''re too preoccupied with wondering whether or not the generations to come will disdain their name for the actions they took in enacting their plans. If one worries about what the future will think of one then the dream is as good as dead as soon as one attempts to start. You can''t worry about that sort of menial thing.


    In a stroke of irony you are almost certain to be remembered for a thousand years if you care not for being remembered as ''kind'' or ''good''. What matter is it whether you are loved or despised once you are buried? Be you remembered as an Angel or a daemon, you will still be remembered. Those who wished to enact their goals without dirtying their hands are consigned to be forgotten, remembered only in extreme circumstances. Men like Magnarius ?lfwyne and Prince Loukas are merely the exceptions that prove the rule.


    So, is it better to be remembered for completing your actions no matter the cost or forgotten for failing to see them through whilst maintaining your conscience? The former of course, but there is a third option that is better still.


    To enact all of your goals, to see every plan through to fruition and every monument built to completion, and yet still ensure you are forgotten? That''s true success. Not the vanity of those who wish to be remembered for doing good, not the callousness of those who care not how they act, but the middle ground that ensures your name will be buried in history. I learned that at a very young age from the spymaster of our now-departed King Aered. Aered was a weak man, and I used that to my advantage. People will not remember me for the humiliations I thrust upon him, however. They will only remember that he was humiliated. Our house has grown far, far stronger under my leadership, and so long as you and your sister continue to follow my lead it will continue to do so when I''m gone.


    No, I do not wish for fame. In fact when I die I would rather no-one remember me at all.


    Are you listening to me, Aerna? I need you to stop playing with your sword at tourneys, to stop spending more time thinking up snide comments you think are clever, and to start learning what it means to lead. Your distant cousin, Lord Tyros, will be leading our armies. I''m sending you to act as his second-in-command.


    Do you understand what that means, boy? That Teleytaian exile will be at your side, but you''re to be my representative on the fields of this war. I need you to stop playing at being a lord and start acting like one. The new ruler of Teleytaios is young, but he''s smart. He''ll know where to strike and how to keep you from battle until it suits him. Listen to me: keep your forces close to those of your distant cousin. If and when the new monarch meets Lord Tyros in battle then you are to join our kinsman and follow his command.


    Yes, his command.


    I don''t care that you think yourself a ''higher'' member of the family since he''s from a cadet branch and you''re from the main. He has experience that you lack since you only ever partake in jousts and duels when you should have been learning. That''s besides the point now. You''re to follow the command of-


    A messenger? Yes, yes, what tidings?


    Oh. That''s certainly unfortunate.


    It seems there is to be some change in your plans, my son. Lord Tyros was killed on the road. You''ll take your half of the forces, as originally discussed, and Lieutenant Isen will take the other half. The rest of my words remain the same; stay close to him. This ''Lykourgos'' is no fool. He''ll know his best chance at victory is to take you on separately. Deny him such an easy victory. Bleed him dry as much as you can, seize as much wealth as you wish from the countryside, meet him in skirmish after skirmish if that''s what your ego demands, but for all of our sakes remain close to the other half of the army. If you go gallivanting off in search of ''honour'' and ''glory'' then our forces will be cut down in those foreign lands. Do not disappoint me. Do not bring shame to our family.


    Listen here, boy, I have spent my entire life waiting for this moment. Decades of planning on a scale your prideful mind couldn''t even comprehend, a generation of wealth spent and hundreds killed in minor wars that have expanded our family''s holdings at the expense of our fellow vassals. I will not have it all wasted if you decide you want to throw it all away in a fit of arrogant self-indulgence! You understand me? Good.


    Men are men, my son. Men are fallible, flexible, guidable. No man through history has ever achieved greatness without the backing of those around him. Take the example of Magnarius ?lfwyne for this point. He did not seize power, he was given it by the consent of those around him. He had the right blood, if the stories are to be believed anyhow, but that wouldn''t have mattered at all if he hadn''t been supported by those around him. He wasn''t superhuman, he didn''t have any special powers or fanciful mystic arts at his disposal, for such things do not exist. What he had was steel and good council. That, and an army of tens of thousands of men. Not that it saved him, of course. He was reliant upon the kings of the south, the Skraeling monarchs of what would one day be called Klironomea, and in return for guarding their northern flank against the nomadic invaders upon their horses the Skraelings gave them land to live on and their support in battle whenever a great horde fell upon them.


    Until that support never came. Until the support stopped. Without support his people were butchered. Magnarius ?lfwyne and his Black Order put up a good fight, a valiant fight, and he was killed all the same. If he''d have been smarter he''d have offered his sister as a concubine to the last of the invading horse-lords and ordered her to slit his throat when she''d bedded him. That way the horde at his walls would have turned on each other and melted back into the north. But of course, Magnarius ?lfwyne would never do that. No.


    The Black Prince was noble. The Black Prince was kind. And soon enough, the Black Prince was dead.


    Yes, the skills of all the ''legendary'' rulers came to nothing when they couldn''t apply them properly. I know you''ve always been fascinated with the Barracks-Kings, and the original point of this conversation was to try and dissuade you of that notion, to prove to you that there are no legends. I was taught to revere them when I was a child, but I saw through the words of my tutors. Where they saw examples, I saw weakness. Where they saw purity, I only saw excuses for sins. There are no legends, son. If you''re to succeed me when the time comes then you''d best get ideas of legend out of your head. If you really need more convincing then let me tell you of the Barracks-Kings. Not the drivel your wetnurse used to tell you, but the truth.


    House Whitefield, or the Barracks-Kings as history has labelled them, are often looked back upon with fondness by lowborn and nobles alike. Folly. They were baseborn tyrants in a period where strength was needed the most to ensure stability. The nobles and bureaucracy of the realm had been all too happy to stand by and allow the rampant excesses of the Manic King for years, but the military had finally had enough. The professional soldiery of the then-unified Klironomea put one of their own on the throne, a Skraeling by the name of Harald.


    This is not the Harald around which the Ichorian Cult is centred; this Harald was actually a good leader. A strong leader. Harald the First was a warlord, and knew himself well. He knew where his strengths and weaknesses lay, and so he endeavoured to embark on a show of strength to solidify his rule.


    He formed a noble house, house Whitefield, and gave himself a dynastic insignia; the banner that flew at the head of his armies bore a solid black flame on a white field, hence his house name. Now that he had integrated himself with the nobility at least a little, he set out to reverse the fortunes of his ailing kingdom.


    There had been two Kliro-Terranean wars before the reign of Harald the First, and both had seen economic and territorial concessions forced upon the kingdom by the southerners. Terranea was at its zenith at this point, but their golden age came crashing down in a storm of iron. King Harald the First shattered their armies of slaves and professionals both, tearing down their castles and undoing every concession that had been forced upon Klironomea. In two years of war Klironomea regained all she had lost in the last three decades as well as the entire Ibaenean peninsula, which the king granted to his bastard brother in return for his vassalage. Klironomea was strong again, and ruled over much of the civilised northern world with a rod of iron.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Harald the First reigned for twenty-six years, far longer than the madman he deposed. His son and heir, Godwyn the Forth, reigned nearly as long at twenty-two years. Godwyn was a mediocre king at best. Oh, he was an excellent warlord and a match for his father, but that was the problem. Klironomea didn''t need more conquests, she needed stability. If wars needed to be waged then at least they should have been aimed back at the Terraneans, perhaps seizing the rich hills of Dathan, but I digress. A hundred years before his reign a great bridge of marble had been built across the river Aenir, and in such a bridge Godwyn saw opportunity. He marched his armies north into Scelopyrea and bested any force the barbarians sent against him, forcing them to become tributary states to his kingdom. He repeated such actions again just to the east, besting many of the local leaders of the Skonisnomas and forcing them into a similar position.


    At the very least Klironomea''s northern borders were now nominally secure, but Godwyn had spent so long on campaign in northern tundras and plains that his men were tired and wished to go home. He was despondent at the news, for he had already planned an invasion of the northernmost tribes of Scelopyrea when the worst of winter had passed, but now he knew such a plan would never come to pass. He ventured north alone one night, not a single man seeing him leave, and left word for his son to succeed him.


    Personally I think it''s far more likely his men murdered him and never told anyone, but whatever the circumstances may have been his abdication from the throne was much needed. Klironomea did not need a warrior at its head. It needed a statesman.


    Where Godwyn was a warlord his son was a true king. Many people believe Harald the Second to have been the greatest of the Barracks-Kings, but that couldn''t be farther from the truth. The last king''s father, the son of king Godwyn the Forth, was a far greater ruler. Wulfstan the First understood what Klironomea needed; she didn''t need vanity projects and grand fleets, she didn''t need reckless expansion into the north, and she didn''t need the pointless wars of his father and, to an extent, his grandfather.


    There was only one war during the reign of Wulfstan, the Forth Kliro-Terranean war, and it saw the complete seizing of around a third of both Tildan and Dathan. Terranea was left as an impotent rump state, the majority of her most profitable lands now in the hands of her continental rival, and Klironomea was ascendent.


    Wulfstan recognised that his father''s northern acquisitions were worse than useless to Klironomea, but he also recognised that with a bit of work he might be able to lay the groundwork for something greater. He wanted to begin integrating his father''s Scelopyrene tributaries into Klironomea properly, to lay the foundation for a new jewel to be added to his kingdom''s crown. But if he were to do this then he would first need a solid centre north of the Aenir from which to begin projecting power. The answer? To build a brand new city.


    On the northern banks of the Aenir by the great bridge there is a ruined city called ''Murkmere''. It''s true name has been forgotten, but we know that it is the same city that began with Wulfstan''s ambitious pragmatism. He saw Scelopyrea not just as a potential new land to be exploited economically, but also as a way to remove the barbaroi as a threat once and for all. To do this he would need a power base north of the river, and so he founded a city on its northern banks. It was quickly populated by the Low-Klironomoi and Skraelings, who saw it as an opportunity for a better life for the Barracks-Kings had always been supporters of their ilk, but when the Barracks-Kings fell and Klironomea was shattered the lords and petty-kings of what would soon become Teleytaios all agreed that the bridge could not remain standing and facilitate a barbarian invasion of their lands, and so under the leadership of the Kings of house Sperakos the city was stripped of valuables and strategic items, its people were escorted south, and the bridge was torn down behind them. That ended Wulfstan''s dream, though the king had been dead for a decade by that point.


    Wulfstan the First was a good king, but after thirty-six years on the throne, making him the third-longest reigning Klironomean monarch, he finally passed away and left the throne to his only son. Harald, second of his name, was now the king.


    Harald the Second has become a figure of legend in the centuries since his death. People look at his one-year-long reign as being filled with hope and a tragic end, but anyone with sense will see that the boy was a fool. He was too unwilling to compromise on his hopes and ideas, too unwilling to wait and make the right preparations for his ill-fated war, and far too ambitious for his own good.


    If he''d had any sense he would have allowed his reign to be peaceful. He could have continued his father''s plans and seen to the integration of southern Scelopyrea, he might have been able to get away with ferrying a legion or two to Anatolikoi with the admittedly diminished royal fleet, he might even have been able to find allies amongst the barbaroi of Brythonia.


    But he didn''t do any of that. Instead he decided to attempt to finish off the Terranean rump state once and for all.


    That by itself wasn''t a bad idea; the problem was that the Sotenari were getting worried about Klironomean dominance of the northern continent and were poised to intervene. It would have been far better for Harald the Second to wait a decade or two before striking, but he was impatient. He wanted to united the civilised north, and he wanted to do it now. The brat was hardly even sixteen if the memories I have of my education are right. He was far too unaware of the influence that outsiders could have on his wars, and he paid the price for it.


    You can call the battle by whatever name you like: the Battle of the Broken King, the Battle of the Aauta Pass, the Battle under Fallen King Mountain, it matters not. What does matter is that in one day almost the entire Klironomean and Terranean militaries were wiped out and the complete dissolution of the two civilised realms of the north was all but assured. Within five years Klironomea was gone, and to this day no-one has come close to restoring it.


    That''s the man you revere. A boy who had barely hit manhood, who lost the only battle he fought in during his reign, and allowed the greatest nation the northern world had ever seen to completely collapse. No, not collapse, his actions led to the single greatest disintegration of a polity in known history. That''s who you want to emulate?


    No. I thought not.


    There were four Barracks-Kings, and their reign lasted a combined eighty-five years. Of their number only two members of that house were good men, men who understood what Klironomea needed to thrive or at the very least keep moving forwards. The rest were either bloodthirsty warlords or childish idealists who believed that they could mould the world in their image. We are well rid of their kind; I only wish the price we had to pay for their downfall was not so steep.


    Of course there were still scions of that dynasty who fought on. Most famous amongst these usually illegitimate claimants was that of Ser Wulfgard, who campaigned in lands that were rapidly coalescing into what is now Licotemos in the name of his cousin, the fallen King Harald the Second. Ser Wulfgard has become somewhat of a folk hero amongst the lowborns of Licotemos, for the bastard grandson of King Godwyn IV swore loyalty to his cousin Harald even after the latter''s death, leading outlaw bands and waging a campaign of Guerrilla warfare against house Perytlos who had seized control of central Licotemos in the years following his cousin''s death. His campaign was only ended after two decades of ceaseless banditry and fighting, though his men tried to carry on his fight. According to popular myth he used a longbow once gifted to him by his royal cousin, though if this story has any basis in fact I would be highly surprised. Stories and tales of grandeur designed to keep the men and women of the lower rungs of society hopeful and docile. A foolish tale, and a fitting end to an even more foolish dynasty.


    Now? Klironomea lies rotten and dead, a corpse of a nation consigned to the annals of history. There can be no ''new'' Klironomea. This, the Heptarchy, this is what Klironomea is now. What else could there be? Great conquerors and mighty kings from the pages of legends are nothing when compared to the pragmatism and ruthlessness of modern lords and kings. The people see the Barracks-Kings as the greatest leaders Klironomea has ever had, wilfully forgetting that there was a reason they were the last rulers Klironomea ever had; ambition and avarice rotted their conquests, and they were never content to enjoy the fruits of their victory, allowing them to putrefy as they chased the next ''grand triumph''. What useless, self-destructive fools they were. Even the greatest of their number were only seen as grand due to the very specific circumstances in which they came to power, and the political climate surrounding Klironomea. If they lived as kings today they would be seen as tyrants and fools, more fit to run a Dathanian statelet than the venerable lands of the Klironomoi.


    Time changes many things however, and the opinions of the masses are certainly one of them. They are hailed as heroes and underdogs, as valiant warriors and great leaders, when in reality they were as cruel and fallible as any other king. Kings are not gods. Kings are not all-knowing.


    Kings are puppets, and they dance as their lords wish them to. Any who don''t are swiftly replaced, and a new king takes their place. All that ever chances are the colours of the strings that bind them, and the hands that manipulate their movements.


    If ever a king were to break out from his puppet masters and try and rule for himself... well, the continent would consume itself in war once more. A tragic fate, one that we must desperately try to avoid, unless of course it is we who wear the crowns.


    That is what is at stake here, my son. What we do now in these next few months will decide our family''s fortune. The boy you are to face in battle, this young man still uncrowned, will never accept peace with us as soon as the first blow is struck. He hates the nobility, arrogant young fool that he is, and if we do not strike him now we risk allowing him to gather his strength once more and invade us on his own terms. We need to enact our plan now as best we can. Circumstances may not exactly be conspiring against us, but the longer we wait the more real such an eventuality becomes. Strike fast, and strike hard. Keep him guessing at where exactly your next move will fall, but never be out of reach of the other section of our forces. This war will make a man of you, my son. A real man. When you get back you''ll marry and begin learning to rule properly.


    Did you think I was so stupid that I didn''t notice that you never attended your lessons as a child? Your mother allowed you to run wild, but she is gone now. Yes, you will be attending studies. Yes, you will get married to a woman of my choosing. You had your time to pick; for the son of a lord to still be unmarried at thirty is humiliating.


    I am not a cruel man. If you find a woman of high standing over the course of the campaign then by all means, wed her and bed her if you like. Indeed, if you can find a noblewoman in Teleytaios then marriage to her would go a great way to solidifying our hold on our new lands, once they''ve been conquered.


    That is, if you can find any Teleytaian nobles still in the kingdom. The prince you''re to fight may have been lain low for a while but he certainly does not lack teeth.


    I''ve said all I need to say to you. This is your moment to prove yourself to me. To our family. Do not let me down.


    And keep the notion of ''legends'' out of your head from now on. Go.

 Cardinal Sin VI: A Call to Order

    <u>Cardinal Sin VI: A Call to Order</u>


    <u>The Fourteenth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    Saints, but he hated these meetings. If he had to listen to one more puffed-up Archbishop give some self-centred speech highlighting an issue or transgression so small that it would make even Admeta scoff then he was going to ride to the coast and take the first boat west to some place that wasn''t a tinderbox waiting for a spark.


    Not that there were many of those left at the moment.


    He sighed a little and slumped on his throne at the dais. The five of them, the cardinals and Adikos himself that was, were seated in a raised position in the senate building that had once been used by the speaker of the senate and the consuls, should any have been in office of course. Sat in the chair of the First Consul was Adikos himself, the grand throne raised above all others. Sin sat in a smaller throne to his right, Spyridon to his own right, whilst Admeta and Trios were to Adikos'' right. He sat there, vaguely aware that his master was somewhat amused by his boredom, and tried his best not to just stand up and leave. People expected him to be bored, that much was a given, but he still needed to be present here.


    There was an order to such proceedings, after all.


    The old senate building was a magnificent and huge monument to the democracy that had come before, having originally been used as a colosseum during the reign of the Aegan Empire and the Terraneans who conquered them. It had been the only building with enough seats to hold so many landholders and men of importance at once, and so where it had originally only been used as a stopgap before a true senate could be built it had transformed over time to fit the new needs of the burgeoning republic. A raised stage some fifteen metres off the ground was built in the centre to allow those proposing motions and laws to speak to all their peers at once, then a magnificent roof had been built over the top, then the benches had been replaced with far plusher seating, etcetera. The building was beautiful, but where once elected representatives, landholders, business owners, and freemen had sat, there were now only men of the cloth. Bishops, Archdeacons, Inquisitors, Abbots, even Paladins sat around within the circular building, though it was folly to pretend that any of them spoke for the people outside these walls.


    Still more had been added to the old colosseum since the establishment of the theocracy; bureaucratic offices here, withdrawing rooms scattered around there, a small barracks for guards just over that way... the senatorial building almost resembled a city within a city. It certainly housed more people than some of the villages Sin had been to as a kid.


    "I concur with the delegate below." Sin heard Admeta call out. He didn''t really know what was being spoken of, but he also didn''t really care. It wouldn''t be anything good, he knew that, so what did the specifics matter to him? Admeta continued unabated. "The centralising of the monasteries will enable our great theocracy to better administer to the spiritual needs of the rural parts of this realm. Whilst my dear friend and colleague was perhaps overzealous in his desire to ensure unity in this land through admitting every monastery to the Order of Saint Brassica, the suggestion of the delegate below is one that has my enthusiastic support in the days to come, and I hope that others will see the merit in such a plan as well."


    With that she stopped and sat back down, a look of deep satisfaction on her face. Ah, she was using Trios'' bungled attempt to centralise power to provide a ''compromise solution'' to the old guard. Likely a compromise that gave her exactly what she wanted, but they wouldn''t know that.


    As if sensing that he hadn''t been paying attention Spyridon leaned over, whispering the delegate''s plan in his ear.


    "The delegate put forwards the idea of sponsoring or creating ten or so monastic orders, and allowing all of the monasteries in Aegos to choose which one they would rather be a part of. Admittance to one of the orders would be mandatory of course, but they would at least have the illusion of choice."


    Sin hummed a little, discontented.


    "That won''t be popular amongst the independent monasterial delegates, nor the backbenchers of the old guard. The paladins probably won''t like it either. That said the newer generation of clergymen, as well as some of the established orders that will grow in power and influence if this goes through, are likely to support it. As will the inquisitors, I think. I''ll have to talk with the representative of the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon after this; the order operates out of Athio, and so theoretically should listen to me and vote against this motion when it comes to the floor. The trouble is that they''re likely to be one of the sponsored orders alongside the Monastic Order of Saint Brassica, so they might try and ignore my prodding anyway."


    Spyridon nodded, seeming to agree with his observations.


    "Well, good luck on that front. I always found the Order of Saint Khidon to be rather more intimidating than most monastic orders, what with the deep scarlet robes and vows of silence, but then I guess that''s why they fit in at Athio so well. No offence, but it''s a really creepy city. Ah well, you know the order better than I do."


    "My thanks to the most holy delegation! Next on the agenda is a proposal from her Holiness, the Cardinal of Thermanthus."


    There was a great deal of murmuring as Adikos announced the next in line. For all the history of the senate those in the box were not permitted the ability to propose laws themselves. For sure, it was easy enough to get around such measures by having a lackey or stooge do it for you, but it seems that Adikos was keen to do away with even the pretense of impartiality in his rulership.


    Admeta stood from her throne and smiled at him and Spyridon before walking down to the floor of the colosseum and then up the stairs to the raised speaking stage. When she spoke her voice was poised and graceful, but the content of her words were, in his opinion, far from pious.


    "Holy delegates, I come before you today to bring light to an issue that has plagued our state since its inception: the weak minded and feeble who stand amongst the ranks of our armies and cannot stand to act in our name!"


    There was a few seconds of feet stamping and orderly papers being waved from around the colosseum, mostly from her supporters and the inquisitors, which wasn''t at all a surprise.


    "The fact of the matter is this; many of the members of our watchman forces have struggled with the weight that their new and holy task has taken on their minds. They feel too much sympathy for the impious and the pagan, and as such the rates of suicide and suicide by desertion are only growing amongst the ranks. We need to ensure that the defenders of the peace in Aegos are not subverted from their holiest of tasks, and so to that end I propose that the city watches of all the great cities of this theocracy should be centrally administered from Aegos and, more importantly, placed under the direct command of the Aegan Inquisition!"


    There was silence for a few seconds, which afforded Sin a little time to think on what had been said. He''d hardly gotten over how fucking evil the ''suicide by desertion'' comment was before the last line of her little opening statement had thrown him completely off track.


    There was a great deal of shouting from around the senate building now, the old guard along with a great many other delegates shouting that this was preposterous, that it was unneeded, that it was dangerous! Members of the inquisition, who initially had been stamping and waving their orderly papers in the conventional show of support in these walls, instead began to shout back at those who had interrupted that if they had done their jobs properly this wouldn''t be a problem, that the inquisition wouldn''t be needed, that they were the only ones capable of enforcing discipline amongst the ranks of the watches and keeping desertion at a lower ebb.


    Sin just closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. At least this session was turning out to be more interesting than he''d thought. Adikos raised his hand from his throne with a look of thunder across his face, and all fell silent once more. With a flick of his wrist he gestured for Admeta to continue, and so continue she did.


    "As the hallowed book reads, ''to err is human, but to forgive is divine''. We cannot presume to act at the same level as divinity! Those who have turned their back on the faith and their sacred duties must be punished! As this contagion is, at its core, based in the soldiery of Aegos, my proposition would see an eventual rollout of inquisitorial oversight amongst the armies of Aegos as well. Inquisitorial oversight for the guards might be termed a ''trial period'', a test to see if our friends and esteemed colleagues of the inquisitorial orders are up to the challenge. I, for one, have no doubt in their abilities to perform this task at its fullest, but such things require care, hence the proposed trial period."


    Sin relaxed himself in his chair, almost lounging, trying to appear as unbothered and unconcerned with the affairs of the council as he possibly could before speaking.


    "Cardinal Admeta," he started, his voice a bored drawl, "don''t you think that such matters are a little trifling to justify handing total oversight privileges to the inquisition? There are few things soldiers hate more than someone watching over their shoulder, the officers more so."


    "That is true, Cardinal, however was it not you who said to me on these matters ''A needle in a haystack can still kill a horse'' when we were but acolytes?"


    Sin nodded stiffly, conveying nothing but his false agreement. He couldn''t remember saying that, but it was highly likely that her memory was better than his when it came to these things anyway. He didn''t want to see the military turned over to the inquisition but fuck it, it would only serve to make the soldiery hate the theocracy more. That or it would just kill off all of the officers with enough brains to actually think. Either way, it would probably be good for him in the long run.


    If I could sneak some of the officers targeted into Aegos that would certainly give me a leg up.


    After a few more seconds of silence he nodded at Admeta once more, signalling that she should continue, and seeing that he would not stand up against the motion those in the council opposed to it jumped from their seats in uproar once more.


    Saints, he couldn''t wait for this to be over.


    <hr>


    By the time the session had ended the hours had already began to slip into the gloaming. Sin knew there was to be a banquet later today, something to celebrate the fact they''d all been able to gather together for so long a time, despite the fact that it hardly felt like something worth celebrating to him.


    "Cardinal Sin."


    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    A familiar voice came from behind, that of the man who had practically raised him, and he had to stop himself from jumping a mile.


    "Yes."


    His voice came out as a squeak, and he stopped to clear his throat. He''d squeaked.


    He was Cardinal fucking Sin.


    And Cardinal fucking Sin did not bloody squeak.


    "It is good to see you''re already pondering the events of the day, my child. When this trial period inevitebly gets voted through we will surely see a vast improvement in the capabilities of the men under our command. I trust you will not attempt to subvert such a course, if and when it is decided upon?"


    Sin swallowed heavily and shook his head.


    "Of course not, Archcardinal. It will be as you command. Should you feel any of your subordinates to be... lacking, then please do not hesitate to allow me to ''improve'' them. I serve at your command."


    Adikos smiled at him with his sickening smile, and Sin bowed his head in reverence so he didn''t have to look at the man''s satisfaction face any longer than he had to.


    "Good. I am glad to hear your convictions remain as strong as ever, Sin. Every cardinal in our great and holy state, though amongst the purest men and women that live, are still not without sin. All harbour impurities in their hearts and doubts in their minds, but not you. No, not you, my child. You are as pure as a mere man can be, which whilst impressive by itself is made doubly so when one considers the daemon that has made a home in your mind. Most men would have broken under the weight of such sin unbound, but not you! Even on the day you arrived back in this city I saw the bloodied discipline and the fresh wounds across your back; you are resolute in your conviction, your wish to never let the daemon dictate your life and your ways. You are pure, Sin, in a way that most are not. I will be relying on you a great deal in the decades to come, and should you prove yourself worthy you may one day find yourself sat upon the seat I now hold as my own."


    "Me, your Holiness?"


    He filled his words with as much piety and reverence as he could, hoping that his master would not be able to tell how disgusted this conversation was making him.


    "Yes, you, Sin. Trios is a bumbling oaf who few would mourn should he falter and fall, and whilst Spyridon may have a good heart he cares not for the new realities of our nation. He is soft, effeminate, almost weak. That leaves only Admeta as one that can boast a similar level of competence when compared to you, and... well, you were the one that fought on the frontlines against the renegade General Thrax, not her. It makes sense that you should be the one to succeed me."


    He bowed even lower, moving to his knees and prostrating himself.


    "You honour me beyond words, your Holiness. I have spoken to Spyridon recently about his ''softness''. I hope you will forgive me if I have overstepped my boundaries, but I offered him my assistance when it comes to enforcing loyalty and unity amongst the islands of the Most Devout Church. They are closest to the lands I oversee, and so I thought that my cooperation and coordination with him would allow for more effective measures to be undertaken in the more remote parts of the Rocks of Aercad."


    Adikos nodded, seeming very pleased at this news.


    "Good. Your initiative is most welcomed, Sin. Be careful not to neglect the needs of your own lands outside of Athio; you have made the Sleeping City magnificent, of that there can be no doubt, but you need to ensure that we do not risk famine again."


    "Of course, my master. Is there anything in particular you would have me do in this instance?"


    Adikos nodded at him as he looked up, his skin crawling at just how easy it was to slip back into being the Archcardinal''s favourite prot¨¦g¨¦.


    "I do. If the reports given to me are correct there is a great deal of farmland that now lies barren and empty thanks to your... efficient measures. Consolidate these lands, seed them with the pious and the true, and let the work of the humble farmer continue with renewed efficiency. The remaining vineyards, be they of the grape or the olive, may be burned away and rebuilt for humbler agricultural purposes. Their produce is that of excess, that of sin, and must be burned away."


    Sin nodded, not at all intending to do any of what the man had just said. He almost had to stop himself from laughing at how funny it was that the man believed he''d killed those farmers. He wasn''t sure where exactly each of the groups he''d gotten out of the city had gone, but he knew the broad strokes and he knew that they were all alive. At the end of the day that was the important bit, made all the sweeter by the fact that Adikos actually believed they were all dead!


    "It will be as you decree, your Holiness. I shall not fail you."


    His old warden nodded dismissively at him, and bid him rise to his feet before turning to walk away.


    "Good. See that you defy your name once more, my child. Dismissed."


    Sin resisted the urge to roll his eyes, having been waiting for a joke about his name this whole conversation. In the name of Harald, he needed a drink.


    <hr>


    Saints, but this banquet felt as though it had gone on forever. Adikos and Trios hadn''t been in attendance tonight, which was a small mercy, and to the surprise of many it had been Sin who was selected to sit at the head of the table in the Arch-cardinal''s place. Admeta had sat to his right, which was at least as uncomfortable for her as it was for him, and Spyridon was sat to his left, which was somewhat more tolerable. Spyridon and Admeta had talked across him for most of the evening, which he didn''t really have a problem with since it stopped people from trying to talk to him, but he did have to make sure he didn''t seem too suspicious of Admeta. He''d really expected her to try something tonight, to challenge him to a debate of wills and wits before the banquet so she could take the head seat at the table, but she''d been perfectly cordial this whole time. Perhaps he was simply being paranoid, after all it had been two years since last they''d spoke and it was possible that she was genuinely just trying to reconnect, but he doubted that greatly. With the amount of spies and informants he knew that she had in this city she must have heard Adikos state that Sin was his favoured successor earlier today, and so something would surely be forthcoming from her. Whether it would come in the form of a dagger in the night or some more subtle means he didn''t know, but given that Trios had already tried to have him killed on the road he was surprised it hadn''t happened already.


    Surprised, and a little disappointed to be honest. He wanted something to spice up his life here, something that would give him a reason to be standoffish and act against his fellow Cardinals. If nothing happened then he wouldn''t be able to act against them in the eyes of the clergymen in this city, and if he couldn''t get any of their support for such actions then he was as good as dead.


    In all his musings he hardly heard Spyridon finish giving a toast to his left, a toast in his name no less, and he readied his glass to join in with the toast when it was done.


    "To our continued and renewed partnership! To you, Cardinal Sin!"


    Spyridon''s voice was very deliberately not amused as he raised his glass in a toast, since Spyridon wasn''t supposed to enjoy Sin''s company anymore, but Sin could recognise the suppressed genuineness in the words. The two of them were entering into a renewed partnership after all, just not in the way anyone here suspected. Well, he hoped no one suspected it anyway.


    He looked at the remaining heeltap in his glass and swirled it around a little, admiring the deep red colour as it left a faint trail where it flowed. Not many regions of the world had moved on from metal goblets for the supping of wine, but here in Aegos such glass drink receptacles were the rule instead of the exception. The cut-lead glasses that he and Spyridon held were particularly high-quality examples of such craftsmanship.


    The two of them drank from their glasses, smiles coming across their faces as the last of their subordinates and peers left the hall. It seemed like that was the end of the evening, finally. He wasn''t a fan of most of the lickspittles and lackeys, for though they might not have approached him thanks to both his reputation and the permanent scowl on his face both Admeta and Spyridon had been engaged in conversations with many of them all night, meaning that he had needed to sit there in the middle and listen to them all without throwing his fucking silverware at them and telling them all to shut the fuck up. Still, it was over now and the others were all gone. He nodded his goodbyes to Admeta as she left for the night, then when he was sure they were alone save only the servants he gestured towards an antechamber off to the side of the banquet hall, Spyridon nodding when the man caught his gaze.


    When inside Sin walked to lounge on the windowsill, staring out at Aegos in the twilight. It was still a beautiful city despite all that had been done to it, and that was a pleasant thought. Spyridon followed behind, his mostly-full glass in one hand and a small beaker in the other. Tonight''s meal had been good, or at least the food had been, but the company was... less tolerable.


    "It was awfully nice of Admeta to try and make amends with us like that. She gave me this beaker of wine before she left as well."


    Immediately Sin''s suspicions were raised at this, but he did his best not to alert his friend. If his suspicions were correct, if he could play this correctly, things could go very well for him indeed.


    "Well, I''ll have some. Your glass is still nearly full, but I''ll have some now if it''s alright with you."


    Spyridon nodded, moving to pour out the drink.


    "Sure. Why do you think she wants to make amends now, when she was so clear in her dislike of us before?"


    Sin shrugged, choosing not to tell his friend that he was certain she was very much not trying to make amends with them at all.


    "She probably wants to try and get our support for this proposed centralisation of the monasteries. If all four cardinals support it then she''ll be able to go to the voting session and present it as a fait-accompli."


    Spyridon nodded.


    "Maybe, yeah. That makes more sense than a sudden and drastic change of heart."


    Sin raised his glass mockingly and drank again. Ah, yep. That was exactly what he''d expected from a wine gifted by someone who hated them both.


    "You wouldn''t like this wine, Spy. Too sour for your tastes."


    Spyridon looked a little put out, but nodded.


    "Well, I''ll leave that for your judgement. I always did have more of a sweet tooth when it came to drinks."


    "Heh, it''s a pity there''s none of that bramble-fruit wine you always liked. You''d be hard pressed to find something sweeter than that."


    Spyridon laughed a little at that, and Sin used the few seconds of quiet that brought him to think over what was to come. The wine he''d just drank was poisoned, hence his wish not to have Spyridon drink any, but that left him with a few options; the most logical course of action would be to stop drinking it now before the poisons became too dangerous, but if he could play this right... if he could get this just right and make himself very ill, he could spin this and have Admeta removed from the picture completely. It was high-reward, yes, but also high-risk; if he misjudged this even slightly there was every chance he would be dead. He had tasted this poison before, but not enough to have developed a tolerance. He thought, anyway; he had to admit he was having a little trouble placing the concoction. He probably didn''t have long left to think before his body rejected the substance violently, so he needed to think quickly.


    More importantly, he needed to know if Spyridon was in on this plot to kill him or not. Did he know that the beaker had been poisoned, or was he just the unwitting bearer of the gift and as such an easy scapegoat for the attempted murder? Sin didn''t know, and so he had to act as though he didn''t know that there was poison in this wine. He needed to allow himself to fall prey to the maladies that were sure to soon manifest, for that would give him the casus-belli he needed to deal with Admeta once and for all.


    "Spy? May I ask you a question?"


    His friend nodded, a little confused by the apparent severity of his tone.


    "Of course Sin! Why, what is it?"


    Sin was silent for a few moments, arms starting to tremble a little, and Spyridon looked at him in confusion and concern.


    "What''s the matter?"


    "This wine tastes odd."


    His friend raised an eyebrow at him. Not in a manner that suggested complicity, but in such a way that signalled genuine confusion.


    "Oh? Odd how so?"


    He smacked his lips a few times, trying to place the flavour. It was a poison, yes, but what sort... what sort was it... hopefully one that wasn''t too deadly. He wasn''t actually sure how much he''d drank anymore; his head was swimming, and it took a lot out of him to make sure his words weren''t a garbled mess when he spoke.


    "It tastes like... almost like almonds. Strange. I''ve never known a wine to taste like almonds before."


    "Sin... Sin, you''re bleeding. Your nose is bleeding. Sin?"


    Spyridon was looking at him with quickly mounting horror as he began to sway on his feet.


    "Sin, are you alright? Can you hear me? Sin?!"


    He held up a finger in a ''please stop'' motion, staggering his way to a table and supporting himself on that. Wait, I was sat down a moment ago, wasn''t I? When did I get up? Saints, his muscles ached. How? He hadn''t been doing anything strenuous, had he? No, he''d been poisoned hadn''t he, that had to be why.


    By the Boy-King, he thought as he dropped to the floor, I really shouldn''t have risen to the bait on this one.


    Spyridon let out a panicked shout as he dropped, rushing to the door and calling for guards, calling for physicians, and shouting "Poison!" as loud as he could. Sin really wished he would stop; Spyridon was nice, but he was being really loud at the moment and Sin really just wanted to close his eyes and go to-


    No. No. He couldn''t do that. He''d just ingested poison, somewhat willingly as well. He couldn''t let himself succumb to it. He was Cardinal fucking Sin, and he needed to live to help those he had sworn to protect. He''d gambled by ingesting the poison, yes, but it was a calculated risk. He couldn''t afford to lose, not now. He just needed to stay awake a little while longer, just long enough for a physician to reach him and look him over and make sure he would be okay, and then he could collapse.


    If he fell asleep right now then he would die, but he was Cardinal Sin and he was not prepared to fucking die yet. He would stay awake long enough to survive, and then he would sleep. After that? Vengeance. Vengeance. Heh, that felt like it would be a long way off.


    "Saints," he croaked out weakly through a rapidly drying throat, "why did I take that risk?"

 Cardinal Spyridon I: Deicide

    <u>Cardinal Spyridon I: Deicide</u>


    <u>The Fifteenth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    Well, this was not what he''d wanted to happen.


    Sin had warned him that there had been an attempt on his life before arriving to Aegos, and despite genuinely believing him all of that had become so distant in Spyridon''s mind when they reached the city. It wasn''t like anyone would be brazen enough to call down the wrath of both Cardinal Sin and Archcardinal Adikos when they were in the same city, would they?


    Evidently that assessment had been wrong. He''d needed to re-evaluate a great many things in the wake of this attempted killing, though luckily it seemed he was above suspicion. It was a selfish thing to admit, but his first thoughts upon seeing his friend hit the floor was that the blame would be his to shoulder, but that had never happened. He''d explained the situation to Adikos after seeing Sin to the internal hospitaller ward, praying to the First Saint that the old man wouldn''t see him as a suspect in what had been an attempted murder of his ''star pupil''.


    As it turns out Adikos had been more worried about the blow to the perceived unity of the theocracy than he had been with the actual attempted murder. In fact Spyridon was fairly certain that, even if he had been the one who tried to kill Sin, Adikos would have helped him cover it up. The old man had been fuming at the botched killing, yes, but he wasn''t worried about it. That was the key difference. If he were worried then he''d need to do something about it, but the Archcardinal never acted on the impulses of anger. He''d not raised himself to the head of Aegan politics and gathered the support necessary to dissolve the republic without a level head and a calculating mind. Someone would be punished for what had been done yesterday, but that didn''t mean it would be the people who actually deserved it.


    "A message from Cardinal Admeta, your Holiness. She wishes you to meet with her."


    Spyridon''s immediate thought was to dismiss the invitation out of hand; she''d just attempted to kill Sin and maybe himself as well, after all. However Sin had been right in some of his words recently, specifically when he said they needed to take risks and walk into traps. If this was a trap, which it probably wasn''t but it didn''t hurt to be paranoid, then he''d need to make sure it snapped shut on thin air.


    "Inform her I will arrive shortly. Thank you, child."


    The servant bowed deeply before walking swiftly away. Right, how was he going to do this? What would Sin do? Sin snorted. Sin would probably walk in there without a care in the world even if there were two-score men with blades beyond the door; his friend wasn''t exactly the best model for rational thought. He was hardly a model for any kind of thought, to be honest. Not in a way that Spyridon would ever be able to understand, anyway.


    He changed into a more casual set of robes and began the short walk to the quarters of Cardinal Admeta. He''d always liked Admeta when they were kids, but the two of them had engaged in what might charitably be called an argument after the civil war. He couldn''t even remember what it had been over, probably a mix of things. Yes, that was right. It had been a great many things that they disagreed upon, and it had all exploded out of them both over the course of that night. They''d argued about the course the theocracy was set to take, over the public execution of dissidents, over a hundred issues both minor and major, and then of course there was their disagreement over him. Over Cardinal Sin.


    When Sin had stormed the walls of Thermanthus, thus returning the city to the hands of the theocrats, the paved roads had been slick and red with the blood of the faithless and the faithful both. Sin himself had been wounded, but with the capture of the city the civil war was over. Admeta had wanted Sin to be held up as a model soldier of the theocracy, placed in direct control of all the armed forces in the new state. Spyridon had wanted his friend to return to quiet contemplation and healing. They''d shouted at each other and pointed fingers, blaming each other for all their ills over the unconscious body of their closest friend besides each other. Neither of them got their way in the end, Spyridon supposed. Adikos had decreed he was to reign over Athio, and so it was done. Knowing what he did now Spyridon wished he''d supported Admeta''s plan to have Sin take control of all the soldiers in the theocracy; this nightmare would have been strangled in its cradle if Sin had held that much power so early into its existence.


    It was in that hospitaller tent that the bonds of shared hardship and love that had held the three of them together for so long finally shattered and splintered into pieces. Neither of them were there when their friend woke up. Admeta had gone back to Aegos and he had made for his new lands on the Isles of Aercad. Things hadn''t ever been the same since then.


    And yet he couldn''t afford himself the luxury of looking back. There were too many ''what-ifs'', too many things he could have done differently, too many things that he just wished hadn''t turned out the ways that they had. He had to keep looking forwards, no matter how hopeless the future seemed.


    Before he''d reconnected with Sin that future had seemed very bleak indeed, but at least now there was a glimmer of hope shining in the blackness, a sliver of silver light breaking through the clouds and guiding the way forwards. The future didn''t look so bleak now that someone had been courageous enough to defy what had seemed so certain, and not only had they defied the powers that be but they had been doing so for two years!


    Sin was an actor, Spyridon knew this, but he''d never really seen it used for anything other than funny skits and little pranks when they were teenagers; it had always been little more than a tool to make someone laugh, to cover his tracks when he''d been mischievous. He''d never understood what Sin meant when he''d said it was a very useful set of skills to have. Now? Now he understood very well. Now he was seeing just how far one could be taken with acting and brazenness, with lies and trickery on a scale that almost beggared belief. His friend, his colleague, was at the heart of a web designed to topple the very nation he had helped build. It was a web that consumed him, a web that would strangle him alongside the prey he hoped to ensnare, and yet he had spun it all the same. A thousand lies, a hundred plots, ten-thousand disappearances and one young man sat at the centre of it all.


    And not once had he been found out.


    Spyridon couldn''t do that. He hadn''t the skills, hadn''t the willpower, hadn''t the courage to do that. That was just another reason that Sin had always been the best of them, had risen to the top of their class despite not even knowing how to read when first he''d arrived at the cathedral-school. He was everything that a leader needed to be.


    Everything except patient.


    He''d done a lot of thinking on his friend''s actions these last few days, less since last night but that was to be expected, and had come to the conclusion that he really lacked patience. Yes, he''d been doing this for two years without overplaying his hand, but an effort such as the one he would embark upon would take a lot more than two years. His friend wouldn''t stand for that, this much Spyridon knew. He''d try and act at the first opportunity, provided that said opportunity wasn''t doomed to total disaster. Apparently he had a batman back in Athio named ''Hawk'', and Spyridon really wouldn''t be surprised if that man were the only reason Sin had been as level as he was. Without him here the Cardinal of the Sleeping City had certainly been rather reckless in his actions, though not ever putting his schemes at risk of actually being discovered.


    As that though came to an abrupt end he found himself outside Admeta''s rooms. He knocked quietly and, hearing the almost excited call of "Enter!" from inside, pushed open the door.


    Within the room was a grand patchwork of holy icons and symbols along the walls, almost pushed to the side by the more secular items of opulence that took the central position in the room. A dresser and wardrobe of ebony wood stood off to one side, a silver mirror next to them, and at the rear of the room next to a truly grand balcony was a very large bed.


    Admeta never had been one to ignore the comforts she could find.


    "Spy, it''s very good to see you again. It has been some time since last we spoke."


    He nodded politely, hands clasped behind his back.


    "Indeed it has. Much has happened since then, I am certain you will agree."


    He really needed to bring up the whole ''poisoning'' thing, but he couldn''t force the words out right now. He didn''t know what she might do.


    Admeta raised an eyebrow at his obvious reluctance to speak before shaking her head a little in amusement.


    "Much has happened, and yet the three of us are about the same as ever. You, me, and our dear friend Sin."


    Spyridon swallowed, stepping further into the room and looking around a little more, mostly just so he wasn''t looking at Admeta and giving himself away too much. That was something you had to do whilst pretending, wasn''t it? To pay attention to something else and act unconcerned?


    "I suppose you could say that, yes."


    "Sin''s still the actor and soldier, all discipline and confidence without the mind to put it to use properly. I''ve got a good mind and plenty of confidence, but I admittedly lack the discipline he does. Then there''s you, and though you lack confidence you display both discipline and brains rather well. Your discipline is a very different sort to Sin''s, that much is true, but you are disciplined nonetheless. That''s why Adikos wanted the three of us to work together; we make up for each other''s shortcomings."


    This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    When she finished speaking Spyridon swallowed hard, and at last turned to her and confronted her for what she''d tried to do. His words were rushed and heavy, though he did not raise his voice. The words he spoke may have been a little frantic, but none could say he''d lost his temper.


    "So why? Why did you try and kill him? And me, for that matter. Why try and kill us?"


    Admeta raised an eyebrow at him again, standing a few inches taller than he did and as such looking down at him. Spyridon knew he was far from intimidating, but he still needed to know regardless.


    "I never tried to kill you. I knew you''d never try and drink the wine. I knew Sin would survive as well, probably. If he died I''d have been sad, yes, but not as sad as I may once have been. There''s too much work to do."


    "You really do believe in what we do, don''t you?"


    She smiled a little at him, for despite the words he had just uttered amounting to treason she seemingly held no malice towards him.


    "Of course I do. Aegos is being made pure as we speak, and soon all of Dathan will follow behind us. I just needed Sin to fall momentarily so that the Archcardinal will act rashly and endanger his own position. It isn''t you or Sin that I want dead, not truly and not yet at least, but Trios."


    "But I don''t understand! Trios has been your ally at the holy court this entire time! Why do you want him dead?"


    Admeta was silent for a long while, but just when Spyridon was about to repeat himself she spoke up again.


    "I do not like Trios. I find the man to be rude, incompetent, misogynistic and feckless. But all of that means nothing next to the real reason I want him dead; I want him dead because he would support Adikos if me and the Archcardinal ever came to blows.


    "Of the four Cardinals it was Trios who genuinely supported Adikos past the civil war. Can you honestly say you hold any positive feelings towards the Archcardinal?"


    Spyridon swallowed hard.


    "O- of course I do. He raised us and-"


    "Bullshit!" Admeta shouted, slamming a fist on the table between them. "He had us beaten and starved, and that was when we were trying to be good! If any of us spoke out against him, if any of us- do you not remember the fucking cells under Saint Mikah''s Cathedral? Because I do!"


    Spyridon shuddered where he stood as unwanted memories flooded into his mind, memories of darkness and hunger and fear. How could he ever forget those cells?


    "I remember them." He whispered. "You don''t need to remind me of them again."


    "I''m going to kill Adikos, Spy. But the only way to kill him is to remove him from all of his allies, to render him powerless and impotent whilst I increase my own hold over him. I believe in the work we do here, Cardinal Spyridon, but I do not believe in that man."


    "But what does this have to do with me and Sin!" He cried in frustration.


    Admeta chuckled a little.


    "Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with you. No offense to you, but I don''t think Adikos cares much for either of us. Sin, on the other hand... if Sin were to be badly hurt, as has happened, Adikos would have to act. Sin was always his favourite pupil; as soon as that little street rat was brought into his class it was like a candle had been lit in Adikos'' mind. He''ll lash out and try and ''use'' the crisis to dispose of elements of the theocracy he has grown to hate."


    Despite calling Sin a street rat, there was no malice or hatred in her voice when she spoke of him. Instead the words were filled with a warm and almost wistful tone. She may not have hated them or wanted them dead as Spyridon had first feared, but she still genuinely believed in and supported the burnings and the killings. She might not have been a bad person to him and Sin specifically, but she was still very much a bad person. Affable, but far from good.


    "Like Cardinal Trios and the old guard?"


    "Just so."


    "So that''s it then? Sin needed to be hospitalised and I needed to be a murder suspect so that Adikos could use the opportunity to kill off Trios, who in reality is probably his only supporter amongst the cardinals and as such will isolate him without him knowing it."


    Admeta pulled a face that suggested she was mildly amused, shrugging as she looked at Spyridon.


    "That''s the gist of it, yes, though when you break it down like that it does seem rather far fetched. Besides, you''re going to be fine. You''ve not done anything to stand against the glorious task we undertake, so why should I seek to harm you? You''ve weeded out the non-conformists, shuttered Aegos from the outside world, and completed the tasks you were bid. You''ve been rather good in your role as an enforcer of the regime. Unenthusiastic, yes, but we don''t have to like the things we do, we only need to do them. You understand that, and I commend you for it. There are many out there who follow their hearts instead of their minds and souls. You might lack courage, but you are still capable of doing the right thing. That takes guts by itself."


    Spyridon did his best to force down a grimace at her words, but at the same time her words had given him a sense of resolve that she definitely hadn''t intended for them to give. The truth was that he hadn''t tried to do the right thing yet, and as much as he may have hated what he''d done he was only marginally better than her because he''d still done it. Well, not anymore. He did lack courage, but maybe he was capable of doing the right thing regardless. Sin had told him before not to act before they left Aegos, but before he''d collapsed last night Spyridon could tell that he''d been getting antsy. They''d been told that they''d only be away from their seats of power for a months, two at the most, but already they''d been in Aegos for four months with no sign of being dismissed anytime soon. Sin would snap soon and feel the need to act, Spyridon was sure of it. He''d just need to try and do the right thing as well.


    "Deicide, Spyridon?"


    Admeta gestured to the free chair on the other side of the small table, game board already set and ready. He nodded slowly and took his seat, readying himself for a game of strategy whilst they talked.


    "Tell me, would you prefer ivory or obsidian?"


    "Ivory, if you would be so kind."


    Admeta nodded to him and gently turned the board so that the darker pieces were on her side of the table, then gestured for him to begin.


    "Footsoldier D to D4."


    "Footsoldier E to E5. It seems there''s a little risk here already, isn''t there Spy?"


    He squirmed a little as she used the old nickname that both she and Sin had used when they were teenagers. Sin still used it now, but Spyridon didn''t mind that seeing as he now knew that Sin hadn''t tried to kill the innocent since then. Sin hadn''t, Admeta had.


    "There''s always risk in these games. Footsoldier D to E5."


    Admeta smirked a little, removing her small obsidian piece from the game board. He wasn''t sure exactly where she''d gotten an actual board of ivory and obsidian pieces for the respective armies, but he couldn''t deny the quality of the carved pieces he was looking at.


    "That much is true. My own Footsoldier D to D6."


    Spyridon raised an eyebrow at her.


    "More sacrificing of your own men? And to what end, I wonder? Ivory Footsoldier D to D6."


    "Angel to D6. This is a game of action and reaction, Spy. What might seem to be a foolish move is ofttimes little more than a concealment of your true intentions. If you can predict how your opponents will respond to your actions, you can predict how and when they will fail."


    He wordlessly moved his own Angel to take hers, moving it to D6 despite knowing that such an action would cost him his own Angel as well.


    "What are you saying?"


    "I want to go back to a previous point of conversation: did you think at the time that you and Sin were the targets of the wine you were given? Of course not! Trios was."


    Spyridon whipped his head up to look at her, confusion and cold dread flowing through him. He wasn''t sure why he felt this way, for she''d already explained in brief why she''d done what she did, but there was something in his gut that told him he very much wouldn''t like the rest of it.


    "What do you mean?"


    "Footsoldier C to D6. Now we are both without our Angels on the board. Our most prized pieces, thrown away just as readily as we threw away a couple of our footsoldiers. Now where''s the sense in that? I knew you''d sacrifice yours to take down mine, and yet I allowed it to happen anyway. What benefit could that serve to give me?"


    "No more speaking in riddles, Admeta. What are you getting at?"


    Admeta was silent for a few moments before flicking her eyes up to meet his own, her voice low and filled with pride as she spoke.


    "Did you know that Trios has been placed under house arrest by the Archcardinal?"


    "But he''s your ally!"


    "Indeed, he is. And he''s still got a fair amount of power. We''ve both got an Angel on our side of the board, a powerful piece that can see either one of us to victory. Here''s the thing though: I can play just fine without mine. You can''t. You''ll flounder and panic, wondering at what my next move will be. The Angel on your half of the board is worth infinitely more to you than mine is to me, for yours holds your only chance at victory. And yet he lies still at the moment. When he wakes up he will act rashly, of that I have no mistake. Do you think you can keep him from faltering and falling, Spy? No, of course you can''t. None of us ever could. That was our greatest failing, not his. Sin should have sat where Adikos sits now, and we both know it well. We should have stayed by his side. This is our fault, truly."


    Spyridon just stared at her for a moment, taking in what she''d said. He didn''t know if it was intended as a warning or a boast, but he knew he had to take note of her words either way.


    "Horseman to B3."


    The game carried on for another ten minutes or so, Spyridon deep in thought but with his attention split between both the game and the words of the woman who had once been one of his closest friends. He was losing, that much was clear. It wasn''t a large imbalance in pieces on the board, for they both maintained a relatively even amount of pieces, but in their positioning; Admeta''s pieces were in a far batter place to act than his own were, each on of them positioned to support one another in subtle ways. Spyridon could plan his next move well, but Admeta could come up with plans that stretched several turns into the future and predicted his own moves as well. He knew that Sin would have been able to do the same, for he was her equal when it came to such matters, but he was not Sin. He was Cardinal Spyridon, the most lacklustre of Adikos'' three students and the one for whom none of this had ever seemed right. He wasn''t able to handle this sort of thing with the same degree of skill as his two old friends were, and he knew it well.


    Eventually he couldn''t take it any longer. He couldn''t just sit here and dance around the point any longer. He needed to know why he was here.


    "What''s all this about Admeta? You invite me to your chambers, you offer me a game of deicide, and you tell me with veiled words that you see Cardinal Sin as your opponent and do not fear his retaliation. Why am I here?"


    The game paused for a moment as the two of them locked eyes and stared at each other. Spyridon wasn''t intimidating, far from it, but he channelled as much sternness as he could into his glare to try and get her to talk. Eventually she did, but she didn''t seem worried in the slightest. Instead she seemed... amused.


    "Oh, nothing much. Well, save one thing: I just find it very interesting that the voice of the internal reformers, the squeamish and soft Cardinal Spyridon of Chytos, has suddenly reconnected with the figurehead of the hardliners. The notorious butcher, the infamous Cardinal Sin of the Sleeping City. An odd partnership, don''t you think? Now what could have brought upon that partnership I wonder?"


    She gave him a pointed look and a cocksure smirk, and though he didn''t know what exactly she knew he wasn''t willing to sit here and entertain this farce any longer. He didn''t know her anymore. She wasn''t the person she once had been, and as much as he wished it were otherwise as it was with Sin, he knew that he needed to let go of what had been and look ahead at what could be. At what had to be. He rose from his chair and stood by the table for a moment.


    "I think we''re done here."


    "Indeed: dragon to C1. Checkmate. Now if you''ll excuse me Cardinal, I have a meeting with the Chief Inquisitor at the Cathedral of Saint Aurea."


    She stalked past him and out of the room, leaving him stood at the table staring down almost in disbelief.


    Oh, Sin, he thought to himself as he closed his eyes, I hope you know what you''re doing.

 Cardinal Sin VII: Saint Khidon Watched, Amused

    <u>Cardinal Sin VII: Saint Khidon Watched, Amused</u>


    <u>The Fifteenth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    His eyes shot open as he bolted upright in bed. He was alive. His little gambit had paid off, for he was alive and now had a casus-belli to find Admeta and have her arrested, maybe even executed if all was good with the world. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and stood on his feet, gladdened that the action didn''t result in any aches or weakness. He must have only been out a day or two, thank the Saints, and so the initiative was now in his hands. He didn''t know what had happened in the days since his poisoning, nor did he particularly care to know. By his reckoning almost everyone in the outside world could fuck off and die while he dealt with this shitstorm, but with his clarity quickly returning he also realised that the events of the last day or two were vitally important for him to know before he acted rashly.


    "Father! I mean, your Holiness, your Cardinalship, I-"


    The servant stepped backwards and stopped stumbling over their words at the level stare he gave them. It wasn''t quite a glare, it didn''t have enough malice for that, but it was certainly a dark expression nonetheless.


    "My cane and my clothes, boy. A pail of water, a rag, and some soap as well."


    The servant swallowed, clearly uncomfortable whilst speaking to him.


    "Your Holiness, I- I should really go and inform the other cardinals that you have-"


    "You will do no such thing!" Sin snapped out, vitriol oozing from his words. "Do as I ask, boy! Do not displease me!"


    The servant made a squeaking noise and nodded his assent fervently before scampering off as fast as his legs would take him. He didn''t particularly like raising his voice like that, but now wasn''t the time for pleasantries and niceties. Now was the time for readying himself and then for acting, as fast as he was able and not a moment later.


    He washed quickly and dressed quicker, flexing his muscles to try and warm himself up for what he was now going to do. He thought for a brief moment about calling for Spyridon, but stopped himself. Better not to involve his friend in this next course of action.


    When he was ready he picked up his cane and strode with purpose out of the medical chamber he''d been lain in, ignoring the exclamations from those he stalked past in the corridors. His destination was known to him, his purpose singular, and as he made his way to the men who would enact his plan for him he forced down a grim smile. He was Cardinal Sin, and in circumstances such as this Cardinal Sin had a face that dared those who gazed upon him not to turn away in fear.


    After ten minutes of stalking through corridors he reached the internal barracks of the senate building and, ignoring the protests from the guards at the doors, he burst into the room. Guardsmen who had been stood around in small groups or sat at tables stared at him with a mixture of surprise and fear, and as he gazed around he sniffed at the air as if he were a hound searching for its prey.


    "Who is in command of this barracks?"


    There was silence for a few seconds, but before he made to continue speaking a voice spoke up in heavily accented, though perfectly fluent, Dathanian.


    "I am, your Holiness. Captain Dessano, at your service."


    The man knelt before him. Dessano, huh? Given his name and accent it seemed as though he was more likely to hail from one of the Tildan principalities rather than any of the Dathanian statelets, not that Sin particularly cared where the man had come from. At the end of the day he just needed the captain to do as he was ordered by him, and not to crumble under pressure when faced with a second cardinal.


    "I was nearly killed, Captain."


    The captain nodded in a manner that suggested he was uncomfortable with what was being said.


    "I was informed, Cardinal. When I heard of what had happened I prayed for your recovery, as did my men. It is good to see you have recovered."


    "Captain Dessano, this is the second time someone has attempted to kill me since I left Athio. I will not wait for a third such occasion before acting. I know who wants me dead, I know who tried to have me killed, and if you are interested in restoring the honour of yourself and your men then you will do as commanded and apprehend these criminals."


    Captain Dessano swallowed hard again, though there was a hint of relief in his eyes; there was a clear path forwards for him to take, a method that would ensure he was not seen as incompetent or, more dangerously, complicit in the attempt on Sin''s life. His face worked for a moment as he realised something, a confused aspect to his voice as he questioned Sin.


    "Twice, your Holiness?"


    Sin nodded, a bitter and grim smile on his face.


    "I was accosted on the road by a man professing to be sent by Cardinal Trios, who attempted to kill me. The arrogant blackguard was not sufficient to see me dead, though I spared him his life. Only very recently myself and Cardinal Spyridon were given a beaker of wine by Cardinal Admeta which was poisoned, though Cardinal Spyridon did not drink it and the poison failed to kill me. I am a Cardinal of the church, child, and as such my word is as good as theirs. Under my authority, you will arrest Cardinal Admeta of the Most Devout Church of Aegos. I command it."


    The captain of the guard swallowed hard.


    "Your Holiness, I- such an order is-"


    Sin slammed a fist down onto a standing table next to him, a few half-empty cups of drink rattling around and falling over as a result of the action.


    "I command it! She wanted me dead to place the inquisition in charge of your organisation, Captain. She doesn''t have the support at the moment to make it so, but if I were dead and the guard turned out to be incapable of apprehending my killer she would have the case she needed. Do you want to be under the command of the inquisition, Captain?"


    Captain Dessano swallowed hard again, shaking his head whilst his men looked on in fearful silence. There must have been two-score men in the room, perhaps more, but all remained silent as their captain spoke with him.


    "I- It will be as you command, your Holiness. We are at your disposal. I ask only that you remain by our side as we apprehend the criminal, for only the word of a Cardinal may speak against another Cardinal. In that same vein I do not believe we will be able to apprehend both of them. If you insist then we will, but that would certainly overstretch the watch."


    Sin nodded gravely, maintaining eye contact with Captain Dessano the whole time.


    "You will have my support in this matter, Captain. I will walk alongside you."


    "We will ride, if it will please your Holiness. The men will walk behind and alongside us, but we will ride."


    Sin made a noise of acquiescence and stowed his cane in the holder across his back. There was no need for it if he wasn''t going to be walking at the moment.


    "Men of the Aegan Watch, under the authority granted to me by his Holiness, the Cardinal Sin of Athio, I order you to apprehend and arrest the criminal Cardinal Admeta of Thermanthus for the crime of treason against the Most Devout Church of Aegos. Soldiers, ready yourselves!"


    The captain''s words, though with an undertone of shock, were so full of conviction and fervour that Sin realised the man must have known the inquisition was soon to be breathing down his neck and as such he was acting to ensure such oversight would never come to pass. He was not exactly desperate, but there was certainly an amount of relief on the captain''s face as his soldiers donned their armour, hefted their shields and spears, and readied themselves to march on the location of Cardinal Admeta.


    A horse was procured for the captain, a second for Sin himself, and as the two men mounted side by side a runner came up to them, panting for breath.


    "She''s in the Cathedral of Saint Aurea, Ser! She''s not looking like she''s moving out anytime soon, and there are no other guards with her!"


    The captain nodded with a satisfied smile on his face before turning to face him once more, the action very clearly a wordless request for permission to act. Sin nodded once, unaware that the man had sent out runners to find Admeta but still glad that the captain had thought to do so, and then spoke.


    "Now seems a good time in that case, Captain Dessano. You will have my gratitude for this. I need good men under my command. Good men. Honourable men. Men who stand by their words. I will not forget your assistance on this day."


    Captain Dessano smiled shakily at him.


    "I am glad to be of service, your Holiness. Now, soldiers of the Aegan Watch, move out!"


    At those words and a gesture from the captain, the sounds of forty sets of feet marching in time rang out through the streets of Aegos. It was not the first time such patrols were sent out, far from it, but it was far larger than normal. That alone gave bystanders pause, not to mention the fact that he was leading the procession on horseback alongside the Captain of the Watch. There was little way he was going to be able to keep this quiet, he realised, and if he couldn''t keep it quiet then he was certain to be in for a rather awkward meeting with the Archcardinal later.


    That didn''t matter at the moment. He could deal with whatever penance Adikos laid out for him later, but right now he needed to make sure Admeta was out of the picture, if not permanently then at least for a few moons. Saints only knew he''d been in Aegos longer than expected already, and it wasn''t looking like he''d be able to go back to Athio anytime soon.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    He wouldn''t have been surprised if Adikos wanted to try and keep his Cardinals in the capital alongside him permanently, to be honest. The man would be able to keep an eye on them far better if they were in arms reach, after all.


    The ride, or march for the majority of the men, to the Cathedral of Saint Aurea continued in silence. Well, as silent as a march could be. The men of the watch were all dressed in the classical standard, each man wearing a muscle cuirass, spaulders, and pteryges as a part of his uniform, not to mention the array of helmets. Most helmets were simply iron recreations of the ancient Doronan type-helmets, though there were a few in the style of the similarly ancient Dionassian and Kallitrian helmets. None of that was important at the moment, but Sin enjoyed looking at them a little all the same. Surely he was entitled to a little amusement before he took part in the arrest of his equal within the church? He had only woken up from an assassination attempt an hour ago, after all.


    The cathedral was easy to reach, for it towered above the skyline of the city in a way that only three other buildings did; the senate building was far too large and distinctive to be mistaken for the Cathedral of Saint Aurea, and the other two cathedrals were built in rather different architectural styles, and so even if he''d been completely new to this city and wasn''t being accompanied by people who knew it like the back of their hand he felt confident that he''d be able to find it himself. Within half an hour they were there, a smattering of people being moved aside by the body of guards as he rode up the steps alongside Captain Dessano. The captain waved four of his men towards the cathedral doors, and with a little force the mighty oaken doors were rapidly opened. Forty men of the Aegan Watch marched into the room, spears and shields in hand, and quickly moved to secure the exit and entry points to the main chamber of the cathedral.


    Stood in the middle of all this with a surprised and bemused expression on her face was Cardinal Admeta, and though he loathed to say it he had to give credit where it was due; Admeta didn''t look worried in the slightest to see him moving around at the head of a column of armoured men having just survived being poisoned.


    "Cardinal Sin, to what do I owe this pleasure?"


    "I get no pleasure from this visit, harpy!"


    A figure to Admeta''s left caught his eye, and Sin recognised him at once. He stared down at the Chief Inquisitor, who was stood next to Admeta apparently having been in conversation with her. The vile, though in fairness disgustingly competent, man smirked up at Sin and nodded, seemingly knowing which way the chips were falling. He waved a hand back at his personal retinue of guards, ordering them to be at ease.


    "The Inquisitors of the Most Devout Church have no stake in this fight. Do what you will, and do not seek to involve us."


    Sin nodded at the man in acknowledgement, then signalled to Captain Dessano that now was the time to say what needed to be said.


    "Captain Dessano, the charges if you would?"


    The captain gave him an acknowledging glance before he trotted his horse forwards a few steps, speaking in a strained and yet determined voice to the target of the watch.


    "Cardinal Admeta, you are under arrest on the charges of treason and two counts of attempted murder, in that you did poison Cardinal Sin and did attempt to poison Cardinal Spyridon. Have you anything to say in your defence?"


    "I never attempted to poison Cardinal Spyridon. The wine was far too sour for his taste."


    Sin had to stop himself from laughing and breaking the mood, for he had to admit that he did genuinely find that statement pretty funny, especially given the deadpan way she''d said it.


    Admeta turned to Sin, a calm smile on her face that told him she still felt herself in control of the situation. Mad bitch. Probably read my amusement somehow.


    "Besides, I am your friend, Sin. I am your sister in the faith. Why would I wish to see you dead when your work has been so effective?"


    Saints, with friends like these maybe dying''s not the worst of outcomes. If she''s ever able to truly be called my friend again then I really have fucked up.


    "You fear me, Admeta. Not in the way most do, but you fear me for what I represent. You fear me for the challenge I pose to your ascension. Well let me tell you this, Cardinal Admeta. I always end up on top. I always end up the victor. From the slums of Aegos to the back alleys of every city in Dathan I''ve had to claw and scrape and fight just to survive, so if you think that your pitiful attempt at an assassination attempt was good enough then I''m happy to inform you that you''re mad. I''ve been surviving for a very long time Admeta, and now I''m one step from the top. I''m not going to let you beat me, old friend. Cardinal Sin always wins."


    Admeta stepped forwards, an expression that fell somewhere between a snarl and a smirk on her face.


    "We''ll see about that, Sin. We''ll see about that. Captain Dessano, I will come quietly. I do hope you understand what you''re doing, Sin. My friends won''t simply allow this slight to go unanswered."


    Sin snarled down at her from atop his horse as two of the guards moved forwards to shackle Admeta, who held her hands out and didn''t so much as try to step out of the way. She was shackled, and he was tired. They were done here.


    "I hope they don''t, Admeta. I''ll take great pleasure in rooting out the corruption that surrounds you. Root and stem, I''ll cut out the rot from around you. Believe me when I say I have no intention of brooking disobedience from your self-serving ilk."


    He turned to face Captain Dessano, who had stood by almost enraptured by the conversation between Adikos'' two favoured heirs.


    "Captain, we''re done here. See her to her new chambers. I''ll be with you shortly."


    The captain of the guard nodded, signalling for his men to form back up and escort Admeta back to the barracks. The men of the watch did as he commanded without even a whisper of discontent at their task, a telling sign of just how well they''d been trained. Or how much they fear the inquisition having oversight privileges over them.


    As Admeta was led out the Chief Inquisitor clapped his hands slowly, Sin having forgot the man was stood there for the entire event. He turned to face the ruthless man, stony-faced and grim.


    "Well played, your Holiness. Tell me, were any of those charges real, or were they clever fabrications of your own?"


    Sin chuckled a little.


    "Real. I haven''t the imagination for such things, Chief Inquisitor."


    The man smiled widely at him, the face making him look like a particularly dangerous mountain lion who''d just scented blood. Strangely enough Sin got the idea that it wasn''t him that the man was dreaming of offing at that particular moment, but Admeta, which was odd by itself since Admeta was the one proposing that the inquisition''s powerbase should be increased by a not insubstantial amount with military oversight privileges. No, the man has a different game of his own, Sin thought to himself. Whatever it is I''m unsure, but it''s something else nonetheless.


    "No, I don''t believe you do, your Holiness. That''s why I respect you. Not many men could do what you''ve done."


    "There are many who could cow a city and its surrounding lands into submission, Chief Inquisitor. I have done no more than perform my duties to the best of my abilities."


    "But you and I both know that isn''t what you''ve done, don''t we Cardinal?"


    For a brief moment Sin feared that the inquisition, hell, the Chief Inquisitor, knew about his treachery, but luckily he was proved wrong almost as quickly as the thought had come to him.


    "And what is it that I''ve done, Chief Inquisitor?"


    "Why, you''ve become a one-man inquisition! Had it been anyone else who''d ordered my agents from their city I would have thought them a treasonous fool, but when you ordered it I acquiesced at once. You know why? Because I knew that when you asked for something it was never for your own benefit. No, you ordered the Athian Branch of the Inquisition disbanded and its agents reassigned because you knew it was a waste of resources. You already ensured that the dissidents have disappeared, that the populous is too frightened to do anything about it, and that the taint of corruption can never take root in Athio. Despite your corner of Aegos being the one place that the Inquisition has no agents, it is the perfect example of what Aegos could achieve if under harsher leadership. Hells, you''ve even been able to centralise most of the monasteries in your lands into the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon. Good work on that one by the way, love the imposing uniforms and vows of silence, that sort of thing really helps them to shine as an example of what the brothers and sisters of the faith can become if guided properly."


    Sin nodded, an artificial grin of his own forming across his face to mask his distaste for the other man. It was interesting, however, that at no point had the Chief Inquisitor mentioned dissidents being killed. ''Disappearing'', yes, but not killed. Perhaps the man was a little cannier than he was letting on?


    "I am glad you think so, Chief Inquisitor. Out of all the corrupt and the greedy here in Aegos, I am glad that there are at least a few men whom I can trust to act in the best interests of the Most Devout. Your pardon, but I must be going now. I have been away from my duties for too long already as a result of the attempt on my life, and I will not shirk my work any longer."


    The Chief Inquisitor nodded at him, a look of satisfaction on the thin man''s face.


    "By your leave, your Holiness. Please feel free to coordinate with me at any time. Assistance with our line of work is always heaven-sent, wouldn''t you agree?"


    "I do, Inquisitor. Good day."


    He turned to walk out of the cathedral, his horse having been led back with the guards to the barracks some time ago. Ah well, he had his cane for a reason, didn''t he?


    It seemed like it was time for a leisurely stroll through Aegos.


    <hr>


    "Sin, what the hell have you done?"


    His welcoming party back at his quarters was a little less enthused than he''d been expecting, but then it seemed that the news of the day had travelled faster than he had. It was unsurprising of course, given how slowly he''d meandered his way back into the senate building and then his quarters, but he''d still hoped that Spyridon would seem a little more happy to see him up and about.


    "I''ve done what I had to do. Needs must, Spy. I drank the poison she gave me because I knew it would give me the reasoning I needed to have her put behind bars. I forged a few connections with the guard, and the Chief Inquisitor wished to speak with me. Our conversation was really rather enlightening; I think in a twisted way he wouldn''t even care that I''ve been doing the things I''ve done, since it still lowers the power of the non-New Church followers in Aegos."


    Spyridon looked at him, concern and anger across their face. To be honest, seeing anger on Spyridon''s almost permanently demure features did give him a little bit of pause, but only for a short moment. He wasn''t liable to be cowed by anyone save perhaps the Archcardinal himself.


    "Alone? What if it was a trap?"


    Sin scoffed.


    "The Chief Inquisitor hasn''t risen to his post by lacking a working brain, Spy. He''ll know that if anything happened to me while I was alone with him then Adikos would be furious, and none of the Inquisitors that work for the Chief Inquisitor bear him any personal loyalty. They''d be happy to sell him out and watch him crackle on the pyre if it meant they got a shot at his job. Besides, I got the impression that he was more amused at seeing a Cardinal who wasn''t afraid to bare their teeth for once when faced with their equal. No offence."


    Spyridon lightened up a little at that, rolling his eyes at the last comment.


    "None taken. Just... be careful, Sin. Adikos will hit the roof when he finds out what''s been done. He won''t particularly care for the details, only that this was done very, very publicly. Don''t try and play the hero. You''ve done enough of that recently."


    Sin raised an eyebrow.


    "Oh? And me acting like a creature of darkness that hides in shadow for two years is your idea of dashing and heroic, is it?"


    "I''m being serious, Sin! If anything happens to you in there, if something goes wrong and you die, this plan of yours will take a blow that it can''t recover from!"


    That made him laugh. Not bitterly or acerbically, just a full-bodied hearty laugh.


    "Oh Spy, you couldn''t be more wrong! You can''t defeat a hero by killing them, Spy. That''s what the stories all forget. The evil tyrant kills the hero and everything falls into darkness once more, is that what you think will happen? Is that what you think the world is, Spy?"


    He took a deep breath, smiling a kind and genuine smile at his friend.


    "The true strength of the heroes of old wasn''t in the deeds they performed in life, but by what they left behind when they died. When the villain strikes down the hero all they do is inspire another to take up the hero''s mantle, to pick up where their predecessor left off. And if the hero should be defeated in battle, and the people crushed underneath the tyrant''s heel once more?"


    Silence hung in the air for a moment as he searched for the right words to end out his little tirade. It was a comfortable silence, a welcome silence, and he was almost sad to break it when he found his words. Almost.


    "Well, maybe their children will have better luck. Goodnight, Spy."


    His friend smiled back at him warmly.


    "Yeah. Maybe. That doesn''t sound so bad, I guess. Goodnight, Sin."

 K?til IV: The Northern War

    <u>K?til IV: The Northern War</u>


    <u>The Eighteenth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    River Isanar, The Frozen Trails, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Krakevasil, the last two moons had been fun.


    K?til couldn''t help but smile as he put his sword through the groaning form of the wounded man beneath him. He was a reborn man now, tied to the power of his god as much as any druid was. He may not have been able to hear his god''s voice, but he knew for a fact that he was indeed destined to stand by the Raven-God''s side. He was better than the others. All the others. He was reborn.


    Of course it wasn''t only his newfound connection with the Raven-God thanks to his runic marks that was making him enjoy life a little more right now. No, not at all.


    The war had begun in earnest, and he was at the forefront of every skirmish. Some he won, some he lost, but in all of them the foe followed them south. Sometimes they even set off before him and he needed to follow them instead, but that was no cause to complain. He''d much rather be the pursuer than the pursued, no matter how big the advantage arriving first and having time to prepare gave him and his boys was.


    The last two months had seen him back on the frozen trails that ran parallel to the river Isanar, and given the amount of times he''d had to ford the river in full armour it was a miracle he hadn''t almost drowned yet. The summer rains had mostly subsided, so there were far more suitable fords than there had been when the river had been a rush a few months back, not to mention the fact that they weren''t transporting the gravely wounded this time so there was far more mobility in his little force.


    He boasted of a few hundred men under his command, perhaps four-hundred, scattered along the western riverbanks. There were a few little islands and islets that they would have to take control of as well when they moved further south, carved out of the land by the passage of the winding river over the long centuries that the Isanar had nourished the northlands, but that would more be a job for parts of the actual army. As of right now his instructions were just to keep the enemy engaged and fight them along the river, instructions that he was more than happy to carry out.


    A little bloodshed was good for the soul after all.


    There was another reason he''d been rather more content recently, but that was of a more... private nature. To have found a woman who was not only touched by the Carrion-King, but also by greatness, was amazing by itself. Add onto that the fact that she was his equal with steel, that she had been willing to carve runes into his person to help him fulfil his great destiny, and that she seemed just as... intrigued by him? Well, how could he not be happy?


    He''d need to tread lightly around father about this subject, and the rest of the druids as well. Their coupling was never going to be without complications due to their statuses, what with him being the son of the Great Jaerl and her being a prospective high-flyer in a mystic order, but the two of them were fine enough with keeping their unions a secret for now. Important conversations were for the southern folk and their strange ways, not a true man and woman of Scelopyrea. They''d do as they pleased, try to keep it under wraps, and talk it out when the war was over and won. Probably. Father wouldn''t be pleased, he seemed to have rather oddly done a turnaround on Svaltha these last few months and been rather opposed to her presence, but this was one thing K?til was unwilling to compromise on with his father. This time he would have his way, and some grumbling notwithstanding his father had mostly respected his decision. K?til was glad of that; he had no wish to grow distant from his father, not with how well the man had treated him all through his life. His father was a good man, better than most, and he very much wished to have his father remain as a part of his life as he moved forwards onto new and exciting things.


    As pleasing as such trails of thought were, they weren''t needed at the moment. He cleared his mind and brought himself back to the present, looking over at a few of his men who it seemed were finishing off the last of the wounded.


    The druids had been very clear on that matter. No captives. No thralls. No surrender. If an enemy threw down their weapon, they were to be killed. If they were wounded in the battle, they were killed. If they stood and fought then they, of course, would need to be killed.


    Such brutality in warfare seemed to have been conducted by the foe as well, who had left more than a few of his lads broken and dead behind them. The actions of the foe in the killing of the wounded had enraged his own men so much that they''d probably have done the same even without the orders from the druids. He''d had to stop himself from pointing out that they''d done the same thing and the foe may simply be reacting as they had, but that would only have fallen on deaf ears. He didn''t care anyway. He had his own jobs to do, and caring for the wounded soldiers of the Eyvindottir was not one of them.


    "Strip the dead of weapons and armour and load it all on the carts. If they''ve got valuables then nick ''em and keep quiet about it or you''ll need to give them up to your chieftains, like me. There''s few men who wanna give up their own treasures to their rulers, that''s for sure. Do it quietly and I won''t ask any questions, on the condition that anything inscribed with runes is brought to me. Any man who does so will be rewarded."


    He smiled a little as he heard the grunts of assent from his men. Syren was somewhere to the south getting the next ford ready for the skirmish that was inevitably going to fall upon it, and therefore couldn''t be with him at the moment, but the men and women under his command had been trained well. They were good fighters. Not exactly what he''d call ''good people'', but probably as good as was likely to arise out of such times.


    "And the dead, boss?"


    K?til sniffed the air, and for some reason as if on instinct his gaze turned north.


    "Burn the bodies," he said, the words spilling forwards before he''d even realised what he was saying, "I don''t want anything else getting to them."


    He''d surprised himself a little at his words but couldn''t deny the pull, or rather pushback, he felt when thinking and looking to the north. The great northern mountains were still shadowed by that mass of black cloud, and he had no intention of finding out what was causing such a phenomena. With any luck his men would put his words down to not wanting the bodies to attract predatory Umbra, which was true, but he didn''t want to have to explain to his men that his commands were the result of gut feelings and barely understood hunches.


    That said, given how he''d caught some of his men looking north with the same look of unease he''d no doubt sported these last few weeks he wouldn''t have been surprised if they accepted his reasoning without question. There was something, or someone, up there. The Jotun must have known it, for why else were they moving south? The Brythonian traitors to the west must have known it, for why else would they have closed themselves off even more than they normally did? It seemed now that the Scelopyrene knew it, for now even he felt his gaze fall uneasily upon the north on occasion.


    Maybe it wouldn''t be a bad idea to begin moving south of the Aenir?


    He shook his head at the thought of such superstition overtaking his senses. He was K?til Dyfedson, not some frightened child. There was nothing left past the northern mountains save shadow, frost, and ash. Nothing could live up there.


    "You got it boss. Best to keep the Direwolves away, and no mistake."


    K?til nodded at the man in acknowledgement. He had no idea about the names of the people under his command at the moment, save one or two of the veterans he''d commanded since before the debacle with the two Jotun at the caravan, and he hadn''t really the inclination to learn them. They were dying off and being replaced too fast for him to really grow attached to any of them. Instead he maintained his little inner circle; he preferred it when it was just him, Svaltha, Syren, and Krai. They were his true friends, real companions with which he had formed a strong bond, and as a result they were the ones he tried to stick with.


    Syren was away at the moment, yes, but Krai was still somewhere in this field. He''d been wounded again recently, having taken a spear to the shoulder, but luckily his heavy chainmail had protected him from the worst of the blow. The young man''s shoulder was badly bruised, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. Thank Krakevasil for good craftsmanship and a well fitting gambeson, and let there be no mistake on that.


    "Oi, K?til!"


    The rapidly approaching voice of Svaltha broke him from his musings on the whereabouts of their other friend, and he turned to face her with a grin on his face as he took off his blood-stained helmet.


    "Svaltha. What brings you to this neck of the woods, I wonder?"


    She rolled her eyes at his sarcasm, gripping his forearm in a warrior''s handshake.


    "My answer remains the same as the last half-dozen times you''ve asked."


    "And that is?"


    "Bloodshed, as always."


    He snorted at her jest.


    "How was your meeting with your superiors? There''s a few rumours going around, but no-one knows what the druids have been getting into a frenzy about recently. Well, if anyone does know they don''t want to speak of it. I can''t say I blame them either, but I was hoping you''d be feeling generous enough to share this information with me."


    She smiled at him with a wolfish grin and... and something in her eyes that he couldn''t quite place, something almost akin to frenzy, if well-hidden. Excitement, but excitement in a rather more dangerous way than normal. Well, that was normal by the standards of most people. The two of them seemed to wear that particular brand of excitement around each other a lot these days.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    "I think I''ve been more than generous enough with you recently, Chieftain. I don''t remember you complaining about the parts I''ve shared with you before now."


    He swallowed hard at her double-entendre, knowing that whilst the conversation did sound like him asking about druidic happenings she had managed to twist it into a rather more... intimate conversation. It wasn''t what he had originally been asking about, since he was interested in learning what exactly had the elders of the druidic orders in such a worried state at the moment, but he wasn''t going to complain about where this conversation had gone. This promised to be rather more fun, after all.


    Still, at the moment he had a job to do, so he got his mind out of the gutter and moved to direct his men towards the building of the pyres.


    "Come on Sval, there''s bodies to burn. Not afraid of a little burning flesh, are you?"


    She scoffed at him as if he''d gone mad.


    "Me? Of course not! It smells rank and there can be no mistaking that, but that''s what hemp flowers are for."


    He couldn''t help but look back at her and pull a confused face, but he''d be lying if he said he weren''t a little intrigued.


    "Are you... are you suggesting that we inhale burning hemp flowers from the funeral pyre of our foes? Because there''s little chance of us having any other fires in the immediate future."


    She shrugged at him, smirking.


    "Do you for a second believe that Krakevasil would find it distasteful? No. The God of Slaughter would find it amusing rather than blasphemous. So are you in or what?"


    He huffed out a genuine laugh whilst shaking his head in disbelief at what he was about to say.


    "Fuck it, sure. It''s not like we haven''t already done some terrible things already. You do recognise how fucked this is, right?"


    "We''re Scelopyrene, K?til. Morality is for southerners to pine over and debate. We have our limits, true enough, but loyalty is all that matters up here, not how tasteful your actions are."


    "And don''t I know it. Well, anything to distract from the foul smell I guess. Oi! We want a pyre, not a haphazard pile! And I told you to strip them of- sorry Svaltha, I need to sort this mess out."


    He gave his partner an apologetic smile, which she waved away with an amused smile.


    "Don''t stop working on my account. There''s yet more blood to burn from those corpses, so get to it."


    He gave her a mocking salute as he began to walk towards the heap that currently constituted what would become the newest pyre along the banks of the river Isanar. Krakevasil, he was having fun recently.


    <hr>


    "So, you wanted them burned."


    Svaltha''s voice cut through the silence of the tent. Just by her tone it was clear that it was not a question, but a statement. It took him a few moments to gather up the willpower to break the silence himself in response, but eventually he did.


    "I did."


    "May I ask why?"


    "I take it you won''t accept ''keeping the Direwolves and Nesters away'' as an answer?"


    She laughed a little, a sound that he''d found he rather enjoyed these last few months.


    "K?til, you and I both know that I know you too well for that. We both know very well that Direwolves aren''t likely to scavenge for corpses in half-frozen earth when there are warm bodies around."


    He smiled a little. She wasn''t wrong, but then when was she?


    "No, they won''t."


    "So why then?"


    He remained silent for a little while, unsure how to put his reasoning into words. Luckily he never had to, for it seems she felt much the same way.


    "You think there''s something out there, don''t you?"


    He nodded a little, but the motion was barely a movement given that he was still led down with his head on a few furs.


    "I don''t know why, but I do think there''s something out there, Sval. I''ve seen... I''ve seen and heard of omens. Bad ones. Something dark is coming. ''Your kind will not understand for many years yet'', that''s what one of the Jotun said to me when I asked why they were moving south. Just by that it sounds like whatever this thing is may still be far away, but when I look north..."


    "I know," she said, carrying on as he trailed off, "I feel it too. My god tells me not to try and see what lies beyond the northern mountains, for he wants no part in whatever lies up there. Given the beginning of the Jotun''s exodus south and the pervading unease we all feel when we stare for too long at the north... yeah, I think something''s out there. I don''t think we''ll know of it for some time yet, but it''s out there. There is some other news I''ve been... I haven''t been keeping it from you, I just haven''t really known how to word it delicately."


    "Svaltha," he said, grinning a little, "when have I ever cared about delicate?"


    She snorted, sounded like she was about to make a jape, then stopped herself for a moment. When she spoke she had returned to the more serious tone of their conversation so far.


    "You asked me earlier about news from the druids."


    He turned to face Svaltha, her features framed by torchlight as she rested beside him beneath the furs of their shared tent. It was his tent really, but given that she was a druid it was only proper she be allowed the pick of any man''s tent she wished. It just so happened that she picked his while he was still in it. Strange, that.


    He smiled a little, but then forced his mind to focus on the here and now so he could answer your question.


    "I did. There are some... troubling rumours going around."


    She nodded at him, her sombre face rather at odds with the expressions they''d both worn the last few hours. Krakevasil, but they were still covered in a sheen of sweat from the rather exhilarating ''exercise'' they''d already indulged in tonight.


    "The Omen was spotted off of the Bay of Seals a moon or so ago. She was hailed but her captain said nothing, just began sailing towards the west."


    K?til blinked a few times. The Omen? Wasn''t that-


    His eyes widened a little as he put two and two together. That wasn''t possible, he hadn''t been seen in years, almost a decade! How could he have- no, he couldn''t of survived sailing into that accursed place.


    H e was speechless for a long while, and when he did speak his voice was hardly a whisper. His eyes were wide with a mixture of reverence and fear, and despite all the prowess he may have been able to boast of, all of the glory he''d earned, he still felt a very real sense of danger as he uttered out the only words he could physically force out at the moment.


    "Uncle Hreidar..."


    Svaltha nodded.


    "Aye. It''s your uncle, all right. He... no-ones sure how, and your father, I mean the Great Jaerl, blew up in a fierce rage when he learned of his brother''s whereabouts. When he calmed down a little he reminded his court that Hreidar''s exile still stands, doubly so now that he''s returned from... from the Cursed City. ''If he sets a foot on Scelopyrea he''ll find it cut off'', I believe those were your father''s words."


    K?til nodded slowly, taking this in. Uncle Hreidar was alive. He''d hardly known the man before he was exiled, but he''d learned enough from those around his father to know that the man was dangerous. Was wrong. Hreidar Ost?inson had been the youngest son of Ost?in himself, and was the runt of the litter. He''d wanted to prove himself the equal to his older brothers, and had declared that he was going to sail into Gorratar itself to learn the lost secrets of the Sotenari Empire. There had been a great deal of shouting and fighting back and forwards between Hreidar, his siblings, and their father on that day. Everyone had known that Hreidar was a sick and twisted thing, but what he''d done before leaving...


    The day before he was set to leave he was discovered in an act that had made K?til genuinely sickened upon hearing about, and then he''d apparently boarded his ship with the vilest runts he could find for a crew and sailed off on his quest. K?til and Svaltha had talked only that day about how morality was for southerners, that they had no such qualms over committing abhorrent acts, but the things that man had done... even a god so drenched in gore as Krakevasil must surely have seen him as evil. That had been nearly a decade ago, and no-one had seen him since. Well, until now, apparently.


    "How did he get past Anatolikoi without anyone noticing him? The Omen isn''t exactly a missable ship."


    "I don''t know," Svaltha replied, a very real measure of concern in her voice, "the men of Suergaard should have seen him and reported in, but according to the druids in that region they never caught wind of him at all. It''s as if he just... appeared out of the seas."


    He shuddered a little as she continued.


    "Still, I can''t see anyone offering him refuge in the entire northern world. He''s a vile man, viler than any other, and there''s no-one left who might trust him in all the land. The things he did to his sister... Raven-God protect me, but he''s not right. I doubt he could even be called a human anymore."


    "He always was more monster than man, at least according to my father. Don''t bring up father''s sister. It still sends him into a truly black rage, especially since she never even had a name for him to mourn her by."


    Svaltha nodded at him.


    "I have no intention of bringing up that subject. What of your other uncles?"


    K?til shrugged.


    "My last uncle, my last true uncle, that monster doesn''t count, died a few years back. So did my aunt. Of the eight children Ost?in the Great sired it seems only two are left."


    "How did they die?"


    He stared at her for a little while, eyes narrowing, before he smiled when a realisation hit him.


    "You think he had a hand in their deaths, don''t you?"


    Svaltha turned away a little, cheeks going pink.


    "Maybe. It just seems odd that he''d wait until the last of his siblings save only your father died before making his return to northern waters."


    "Well, I don''t think it had anything to do with him."


    He thought for a little, a few thoughts coming to him, but he tried to shake them away. No, uncle Hreidar had been away that whole time... hadn''t he?


    "Uncle Rogar was killed in a raid on the mad Count of Mytenaeopolis. He survived the crossbow bolts, but the poison they were tipped with was too fast-acting to save him from. Uncle Osvald sailed into the Great Ocean and vanished, probably shipwrecked and drowned. Maybe he even met one of the great serpents, but that''s besides the point. I don''t really remember the other two uncles, or my older aunt. They died when I was too young."


    She nodded at him slowly.


    "Do you miss them?"


    He scoffed.


    "Of course I do, they were family! Rogar could wield a boarding axe like no-one I''ve ever met, and Osvald was the best helmsman this side of the Drakespine mountains! It''s bloody impossible not to miss them, especially with a war like this rapidly heating up. If Hreidar really was in these waters the two of them would be out their to avenge their youngest sister as soon as word got to them of the Omen''s return, and I''d be damn well tempted to join them too."


    "You''d find much support, Chieftain." Svaltha moved to prop herself up on one elbow, giving him a rather distracting eyeful of her chest that, despite the serious tone of their conversation, he couldn''t help but be drawn to. She leaned in a little, conspiratorially, and spoke in a hushed and whispered tone. "Krakevasil dislikes that one. Our god whispers to those touched by him of Hreidar''s return, of how he styles himself ''Chosen''."


    K?til worked his face for a moment in confusion.


    "Chosen?"


    His partner nodded.


    "Yes. ''Chosen''. Chosen of what or who, we don''t know. What we do know is he is not Krakevasil''s chosen."


    "Maybe the chosen of the treasonous gods of the Corvid Pantheon?"


    Svaltha scoffed at his musings, and on reflection that was a stupid thing to say. The weak-willed traitor-gods of the Brythonians wouldn''t have the spine to back one who stood against Krakevasil. Even if they did, no god would lend its strength to such a monster. Treasonous or not, the Corvid Pantheon would not stoop that low. He shook his head.


    "No, that''s not right. Well, at least if he goes by the name ''Chosen'' he might distance himself from my grandfather''s legacy. I''ve heard stories of where he went, stories of Gorratar. The magics used there were terrible and black, or so the stories go."


    Svaltha nodded at him.


    "I''ve heard much the same. I''d be surprised if there were anyone alive the world over who hadn''t at least heard one story of the horrors contained within that place. No sane man should ever wish to learn what secrets lie within those silent halls, and if they should succeed and learn from those ruins..."


    She shuddered a little, and K?til pulled her flush against him. They''d talked enough of old ghost stories and misbegotten traitors for one night.


    "Come on, enough of all that. There''s still plenty of time till the morning."


    Her serious expression faded almost immediately into a wolfish grin.


    "Again? Try not to be too tired tomorrow; there''s a long few months ahead of us."


    "That there are," he said in a low tone, his mouth an inch from her neck, "so we''d better make the most of tonight while we can."

 Svaltha IV: Leave Our Masks

    <u>Svaltha IV: Leave Our Masks</u>


    <u>The Twentieth Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>River Isanar, The Frozen Trails, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Krakevasil, but this was hopeless.


    She was supposed to be a druid, and indeed in title she was, but druids weren''t supposed to act like this. Druids didn''t fawn over lovers that were barely kept secret, nor did they swoon at the heroic actions of another. Okay, in fairness to her she''d done less swooning at heroics and more at acts of unspeakable violence and brutality, but the annoyance held all the same.


    She was in far too deep with K?til, and the worst part was that she didn''t want it to stop.


    She had to admit, however begrudgingly, that the last few moons had been fun. Hell, ever since that ambush along the frozen trails things had been fun. No more stuffy bastards in robes making her recite a whole bunch of old tales for uncaring ears, no more nights spent learning how to scheme as the southerners did. No. She was able to do everything her way now, the northern way, and that way happened to include a whole load of fighting.


    It made sense really. She''d been chosen specifically to get close to the son of the Great Jaerl, to become a trusted advisor to the young man. Which she had.


    It just so happened that he''d managed to get close to her as well.


    If the druids hadn''t foreseen this sort of thing happening she''d be very surprised. There were so many layers to their plots and schemes that surely they had to know the two of them would end up desiring one another, especially given their proclivities to fighting and the shared enjoyment that came from knocking each other into the dirt.


    There had been markedly less sparring between the two of them as of late, but true to K?til''s word they''d been on the warpath the whole time. She wasn''t really meant to be fighting against the forces of the Eyvindottir given that she was a druid and was thus meant to stay out of secular issues, but none of her superiors had yet admonished her or even so much as mentioned it, so she took that to mean she was fine to continue. How could she turn down the prospect of yet another skirmish to fight in, yet another face to savour as it contorted in its last moments. Her god would surely never forgive her for excusing herself from such beauteous combat.


    "You ready for the next one, Sval?"


    She grinned at K?til as he walked over to her, helmet under his arm and sword across his back.


    "Course I fuckin'' am. How''s about you chieftain? Reckon you can keep up?"


    He snorted at her.


    "Can I keep up? Funny, I seem to recall I won last time. And the time before."


    She shrugged at him, unwilling to give in to his baiting.


    "One time''s a fluke, the second is luck. You''ve got no chance of beating me a third time, since that would take skill."


    He rumbled out a low laugh at that.


    "Oh, it is fucking on. Careful you don''t get yourself hurt now. I hear there''s some Shieldmaidens amongst the enemy this time. You don''t think you''re outmatched, do you?"


    She chuckled at his teasing tone.


    "I''m many things K?til, but never outmatched."


    K?til smiled at her, clapping her on the shoulder, but she couldn''t miss the concern he tried to keep out of his voice when next he spoke.


    "Of course you aren''t! Still, be careful out there. Those boar spears are especially lethal to those in light armour."


    She nodded at him.


    "And their bear spears are designed to pierce the heavy mail and scale of a huscarl. Keep your shield handy, K?til. We both may end up needing it if there really are Shieldmaidens amongst the foemen this time."


    The two of them were silent for a moment, just nodding, before their smiles both came back seemingly of their own accord. The two of them would never be outmatched, not if they stuck together, and especially not if Krai and Syren were around nearby. The four of them together could take on the whole fucking world, or at least that''s what it felt like at times.


    "Not to change the subject, but have you heard anything since about... well, my uncle?"


    She shook her head as she fastened her knife-belt in place.


    "Nothing. I''m keeping an ear out on any matters you may find interesting amongst the druids, but that one most of all. The fact that they''re saying nothing at all tells me more than it would have if they were discussing it openly. They''re either at a complete loss or it''s above even initiated druids like myself, for the ears of the elders only."


    She stood still for a moment, brow working as she chewed her lip a little in thought. It didn''t escape her that K?til watched her mouth as she did so. Honestly, men.


    "Tell a lie, I think I did hear a little something a day or two ago. I can''t remember if I mentioned it to you, but the Omen was seen sailing westwards after it was initially sighted. It''s only been a few nights, but she''s already been sighted off the coast of Hedinskye."


    K?til seemed taken aback by this news, and she wasn''t surprised. That was what, eight, nine-hundred miles away? Either way, it was a hell of a distance to cover in so short a time. She''d certainly never heard of a ship sailing fast enough for such a thing to be possible, but then she got the impression that Hreidar Ost?inson and his ship weren''t exactly... they weren''t exactly ''normal'' anymore.


    "Well, here''s hoping the mongrel northmen kill him on sight. If they don''t then the Brythonians certainly will when they get their hands on him. They''ll kill any of us on sight if our ships don''t fly clear trading colours, and even then it''s a bit touch and go. For someone so infamously violent as him... I don''t particularly care for ranged combat, but if one of their great longbows can nail him to his fucking mast then I''ll send whoever manages it a barrel of the best wine I can plunder myself."


    Svaltha nodded her agreement at K?til''s words. Any ranged combat outside of thrown weapons was cowardly and dishonourable, but if it killed that bastard then she felt confident her god would forgive it. She''d practically been raised on stories and faetales of that man''s misdeeds, and she had no desire to see what more he''d get up to if left unchecked.


    She sighed a little and rolled her shoulders to release some of the tension that was building. She may have enjoyed it immensely, but several moons of combat was enough to tire anyone. The entire north was now embroiled in war, and she knew that the druids were beginning to wonder whether it was worth even bothering to draw the two sides into a single huge battle, for at any given point she knew that there were more than a dozen skirmishes with several hundred fighters on either side fighting all along the river Isanar. And it really was along the whole Isanar as well; the mightiest tributary of the Aenir was now pink with foaming blood, all the way from Isan''s Rock in the north down to the ruins of Murkmire where the river met its elder brother, the Aenir. Thousands battled day and night on a front that seemed completely stagnant, neither side being able to do so much as push across the river at fording points without being swiftly and brutally pushed back. Whilst their section of the line had seen a great many victories recently that was mostly because they were letting the enemy come to them as opposed to trying to cross over into the east of Scelopyrea, which would probably go about as well as it had all along the rest of the line.


    Men fought, men died, blood was spilled, the river Isanar was choked with bodies at narrower fords, and the cries of dying men and women could be heard by the thousand all across Scelopyrea.


    Krakevasil was feasting as he''d not feasted in a thousand years.


    "Right then," she said to no-one in particular, "we''d best get ready."


    <hr>


    A few hours later the foe had been upon them once more. Axes were thrown, javelins hurled, and steel met steel in yet another vigorous and frenzied clash. There might have been two-hundred of the bastards this time, and just as had been discussed earlier there were a few bands of Shieldmaidens scattered about amongst the regular chaff of the foe''s forces, stiffening their resistance and their resolve.


    The Shieldmaidens really were either loved or hated depending on where you were. If you were from the east of the Isanar, in the realm of the Valkyrie-Queen, they were the heralds of a new order and the protectors of her reign. If you were from the west, if you were from the lands that had sworn themselves to the Great Jaerl, then they were the opposite. They were a violent fifth-column, never to be trusted without the most rigorous scrutiny. Every Shieldmaiden, regardless of whether she''d sworn herself to the Eyvindottir or not, was now seen as being in league with her, and as such they were mistrusted throughout the west of Scelopyrea.


    Ironically, that mistrust just drove more of them into the open arms of the Valkyrie-Queen of the east.


    Still, Shieldmaidens or not, it didn''t matter. They would fight her and she would kill them, and a flashy title with a few extra bits of armour wouldn''t change that.


    As the battle had truly begun in earnest she''d found herself picking up throwing axes from those who had died around her and putting them to good use, one in three finding their mark as foes charged towards her before suddenly dropping like puppets who''s strings had been cut. She killed four or five men and women like that, a savage grin on her face all the while as K?til stood alongside her, hurling javelins with such force that one man who was unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of his throwing was sent flying several feet back, the javelin lodging itself in the damp sod of the earth around them.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    She cursed as another man physically threw himself at them, and quickly made to cut him down as he fell. She never got the chance.


    With a speed that was belied by even his usual fast acting, K?til sent another javelin afly and caught the man square in the chest mid-jump. Once again a man he''d stuck with a javelin went flying backwards, this time landing squarely in the rush of the Isanar around the ford they were fighting over. She watched for half a second as the foaming rush turned pink, then red, then brown. The body, held in place by the javelin which must have gotten caught on some rocks or otherwise managed to impale the riverbed in a shallow, was tugged at both ends causing it to bow.


    It would be interesting to see if that one was still there when the day was done.


    Svaltha laughed as she lodged the curved tip of her sacrificial blade in the neck joint of a Shieldmaiden''s armour, the woman''s throat being ripped clean from her neck with a savage pull back as Svaltha immediately readied herself for the next opponent to come and face her. Already she''d drenched herself in gore in this skirmish, as had the young man she''d swore to follow, the two of them covered in blood and guts from head to toe with very little of it being theirs. It was in moments like this, standing back to back with K?til against a great many foes, that she felt her affections towards him most strongly. She couldn''t deny it and nor could he, not that either of them had any plans to speak about the depths of their feelings aloud, but in battle they were as one. None could come between them, and none could rend them asunder.


    "Your left, Sval!"


    K?til''s voice called out from just behind her, and almost as soon as the words had left his mouth her vision was obstructed by the bottom half of his shield  with what looked like a boar spear peeking through the treated wood. She grinned at him and nodded her acknowledgement.


    "Cheers, chief!"


    He grinned back and, with an underarm swing, bisected the offending Shieldmaiden who''d very nearly brained her. Viscera sprayed in a wide arc as his sword sailed upwards, and almost as soon as she had an opening she darted forwards and tackled a third Shieldmaiden to the floor, the impact jarring her a little as she slammed into the armoured woman but knocking her opponent down nonetheless, leaving her completely defenceless when the sacrificial blade made itself known to the foe once more.


    K?til pulled her up and slapped her on the back whilst grinning, the two of them looking out over the small battlefield. K?til must have taken his helmet back off at some point, signalling that this battle was soon to draw to a close since he didn''t like fighting without it on, and was also set to be yet another victory for their forces, the most recent in a long string, which gave both of them the cause for more than a little celebration. Well, K?til  more than her she supposed, what with him being the commander along this section of the river line and the one who actually had a stake in this war, but she was never opposed to a little celebration from time to time.


    Or every night.


    Still, whilst the day was not quite done it was clearly wrapping up. Until now most of the forces they''d fought had been the more common Scelopyrene infantry, those being a mix of hunters, raiders, and the occasional band of actual warriors. To see some of the heavier infantry of the enemy in the mix was rather new, and it made her wonder what the two of them might be seeing next. The Shieldmaidens were the Valkyrie-Queen''s answer to the more classic huscarls favoured by the Great Jaerl, her last remaining foe, heavy infantry with good mail shirts and skirts, with metal vambraces and greaves along with a series of other small pieces of armour. They weren''t quite as heavily armoured as the huscarls, but they were more mobile and just as formidable.


    Well, she said that the Great Jaerl and Valkyrie-Queen were foes. Dyfed''s words from her meeting with him a few moons ago still rang through her mind on occasion. Something else was happening here, not that she knew what it was. The Great Jaerl might even have been bluffing for all she knew, and things may have still been going according to plan. There were too many unknown factors for her to start trying to piece together the specifics, so instead she''d mostly contented herself with the knowledge that she was doing her part to raise Krakevasil, even if it wasn''t what the druids had originally intended. She was spilling blood, and was that not what her god demanded of her?


    A voice carried on the rustling of the stalks of grass along the riverbank told her that she was right. Krakevasil wanted blood and he wanted it now, and though the other druids may have been planning a great and terrible sacrifice in the coming moons it was her who was giving him what he wanted at the moment. She''d given him blood, sacrifice, and a champion now adorned with his sigils. Even if her elders failed, she felt confident that she had already won.


    That was the important thing. Winning. She didn''t want to be on the losing side again.


    Thinking back to her original point she wondered a little on whether or not she might see some horsemen soon as well. K?til and his little band of huscarls were technically supposed to be mounted, but with the terrain being as boggy and uneven as it was they''d all forgone their mounts and elected to fight on foot instead. Maybe some of the foes they''d already fought were supposed to be mounted but had ended up making the same decision? It made sense; the summer rains and snows had turned the ground little more than a lake of mud in some places, thick and deep enough for a man to lose his boots in. Or to drown in for that matter, especially if he were armoured. About the only places that could possibly have worse mud than this at the moment must have been the marshes around the ruins of Murkmire, and whoever had to fight in the gutted shell of that city she did feel sorry for. Not even fighting could be fun in so miserable a place as that.


    Luckily for her, and for him, K?til seemed to have very good footing, so there was little risk of him meeting so unremarkable an ending as that.


    If it wasn''t horsemen next then maybe it would be a Lesser Jotun? Whilst the big bastards hadn''t really had any interest in the spats of the ''little folk'' since Jotunheim it would make sense to start seeing them appear on the battlefield about now; they were migrating south towards the southernmost reaches of the northern Archic mountains, and if either of the rulers that controlled Scelopyrea between them offered food and booze in sufficient amounts then it would make sense that a few outliers from some of the tribes might try their luck in battle alongside the northmen. They hadn''t much to lose, after all.


    Fighting giants was a prospect she had mixed feelings about. K?til had fought them before whilst she quite deliberately had done nothing to help, as per the instructions she had been given as she''d started this mission, but she knew that even he wasn''t keen on facing them down again. He''d already earned the title ''Jotunslayer'', but given that he hadn''t exactly been flaunting it she suspected he hadn''t much intention of putting his skills to use again.


    It made sense. He''d confided in her whilst they''d taken the scenic route back to the warcamp that he''d fully expected to lose at least half of his men, and had damn near lost his life in the process when one of the big bastards had clipped his side. He''d been left with some nasty bruises, but no major injuries. Those bruises had all but vanished by the time that they''d all gotten back anyway. He''d avoided being struck down by them once, but if there were more than two, or even if they were supported by a substantial number of humans, they''d be much harder to take down. You''d have to be focused on both the giants and the regular foes at the same time, and splitting one''s attention like that wasn''t exactly conductive to staying alive in a heated combat zone.


    "What you thinking about there?"


    She blinked back into the moment, looking up at K?til with a smile.


    "Nothing that important. Just wondering what we''ll be fighting next."


    He smiled back at her and slunk an arm around her shoulder, squeezing her a little.


    "Probably not horsemen, it''s too muddy for that. It''s bad enough for heavy infantry like myself. What conclusion did you come to?"


    She put an arm around his waist and squeezed a little in return as she replied. The two of them weren''t exactly being discreet, but no-one had been stupid enough to ask them about it yet. If anyone cared at all that was; they weren''t prudes and virgins like the southerners after all.


    "The same as you just did. I thought we might end up seeing one or two Jotun mercenaries on our side or amongst the forces of the Eyvindottir in the coming months given their migrations southwards."


    "That would make sense. Enough herbivorous food or strong booze and they''d surely come from miles around. That or the promise of purpose-built weapons and armour, fit for giants and yet wrought by human artisanry, just as it was in the old times. That might draw some of them to our side, especially the Smithsons. They''ll no doubt be pleased to have some good steel once more, even more so than most since they''ve only had scraps of old steel or iron to work with. It''s a miracle any of them even have steel weapons anymore, given that most surely must have rusted into nothing over the centuries."


    Svaltha shrugged, letting her arm drop from K?til''s side as she readied herself to charge back into the fighting. She wasn''t a smith, just a druid and a fighter. She heard the sounds of K?til going through the same motions as her as his arm fell from her shoulders, and she watched as he wiped the worst of the gore off of his blade with a rag he''d probably torn from the shirt of a dead man or woman.


    "Come on then, I''m still in the lead by my reckoning, and you don''t want to admit that I''m more skilled than you yet, so you need to catch up."


    She scoffed at him.


    "I''m three behind you, that''s all. I''ll bridge the gap and then some, just you watch. Besides, we both know that-"


    All of a sudden there was a knocking sensation at the walls of her mind, a feeling real enough that she almost thought she''d been struck on the head. She''d known this sensation before, she knew what it meant, but it had never been this strong before. Why was it so strong?


    "Sval? Svaltha, are you-"


    "He calls to me." She responded swiftly, dropping to her knees and coating her hands in bloodied mud. "He calls, and I need to answer."


    She could just about make out K?til nodding in a mixture of relief and reverence as her senses began to fray once more.


    "I''ll stand guard. Not that I should need to; no man of the north would strike down a druid in communion."


    "Guard me all the same."


    She was just about able to garble the words out as she lost control of her vocal chords, eyes rolling back into her skull as the voice of her god commanded her once more.


    <hr>


    "You have done much, child of slaughter."


    The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, from within her mind and beneath the very soil her physical body knelt upon.


    "I wish only to serve you, oh Bloody One."


    "Your union with him will bring about more bloodshed than any other northman could hope to hold a candle to, but you face the wrong way."


    She swallowed hard. This was by far the clearest she had ever heard her god, hell, she could almost see him. He was a hazy form in the fog of her mind, so very hazy, but he was there nonetheless.


    It was Krakevasil. She had seen him. It was a feat few could boast of, fewer still living to tell of it from what the records said, and yet she felt no fear at all for her fate.


    "The wrong way, Lord of Carrion?"


    "You look east," the voice boomed out in a strangely comforting tone, "but the true foe sails west. Your elders are fools, child. This plan of theirs is folly. But then you''ve known that for quite some time, haven''t you? Take the son of the Lord of Lords, ensure that when his father makes the right decision he acts not against him, and make sure the Jotun stand with you."


    "For what end, Mighty God?"


    Though his form was so vague and shapeless she swore she could almost make out an animalistic snarl on her god''s features, and what looked like gnarled branches protruding up from his head.


    "Go south. Follow your Horse-Lord cousins to the east. The lands of the southerners is ripe for plunder, ripe for your taking. The north soon will fall, but the south is bounteous. Kill he who calls himself the ''Chosen'', shun the mountains of the north, and tear down the six traitor gods. I will stand with you all once more, but you are the catalyst. Ensure that you and the warrior who stands beside you mate for life, and keep his friends close. The path you walk is narrow, but the reward is salvation. I hope I do not have to repeat myself?"


    She shook her head fervently, her very being shaking violently as she fought through the fear and reverence she felt to commit every word he''d spoken to memory.


    "Oh, one last warning." Her god called out even as he faded. "The Crow walks amongst the southerners once more, but he is not alone. There is another there, one I do not know. A young godling. Ensure that one never ascends to join the treasonous pantheon."


    She nodded almost in desperation, the presence of her god in so clear and raw a form for such an extended period of time clearly taxing her body and mind beyond its limits.


    "It will be as you command, mighty Raven-God. I swear it to you."


    The god gave her a final, terrible nod of the head, and then everything fell away to blackness.

 Lore Chapter: Triarios and the Cult of Anawroth

    <u>Twentieth Day, Eighth Month, 871 AD.</u>


    <u>Lykourgos Sperakos, Prince.</u>


    <u>Kingdom of Teleytaios.</u>


    <u>Aenirhen.</u>


    <u>The River Keep.</u>


    My Dearest Lyk,


    Well, this certainly seems to be a change, doesn''t it? Me writing about a kingdom of the Heptarchy whilst you ask for advice on the writing of a book, I mean. Well, I know that yours is certain to be more of a treatise than a historical work such as mine, however my point still stands. I agree with your reasoning last letter, and I must say that if anyone is qualified to write a piece on the governance and stewardship that goes into ruling then it surely is you.


    I also find myself agreeing on the ''other'' point you raised in your last letter. Though I will not write much, just as you did not, please know that I could read in between the lines perfectly well. On that personal front, far removed from the stresses and duties of rulership, I know we have much to discuss. Whilst most of that discussion will have to wait until we talk in person once more, I know that we do not really need any solid words for what is to come. We have known each other more than long enough for that sort of thing, I would like to think.


    Though I could ramble on about that particular prospect, and no doubt will once we are finally together once more, I recently went on a trip to Triarios at the invitation of the King himself. He wanted me to see the forges his family had built, the lives of his people, etcetera. He wanted us Polaerans to tell the world that Triarios, whilst still a stratocratic feudal society, is not the kraterocracy it once was. Survival of the fittest is no longer the mantra of daily life, and instead newer ideas are beginning to take root. It''s taken them eight-hundred years longer than everyone else to get moving on that front, but better late than never I suppose.


    On this trip I also got rather intimate with the inner workings of the Cult of Anawroth, and have included my notes and observations on this sect of the church in case they might be of any use or interest to you in your own writings. I am aware that circumstances may soon put that plan by the wayside, but when the dust has settled you will be able to continue with it anyway.


    With all else said, I will now relay to you why I was pleasantly surprised on my travels across Triarios. Further personal notes will be included below, as always, and I can hardly wait to see you again. I pray the moment will come sooner rather than later, but there is no way of knowing with such things.


    The Kingdom of Triarios is, and has been since its founding, the most militaristic nation in the world. A land of rolling hills and unending rivers of ore, the people who live here are well suited to the lives they have chosen.


    In the aftermath of the Aauta Pass and the death of King Harald II, those legions who had not been at the disastrous battle maintained their positions in the lands between Dathan and Tilda, ensuring that a follow-up strike would never occur. Of course we now know with hindsight that the Terranean military had been mauled just as badly as that of the Klironomeans, but aside from scattered reports the surviving legions had no way of knowing this. When it eventually became clear that the enemy was not coming their commanders seized vast tracts of land in what had once been Klironomea, the two legionary commanders wedding their son and daughter together to found a royal house based around their shared martial legacy. Commanders became the fathers of royalty, officers became lords, and soldiers... well, the soldiers remained soldiers, but in Triarios a soldier is held in far higher esteem than a civilian. A few decades passed, and Triarios as we know it was formed.


    There is strangely little to say about Triarios when it comes to war, which seems odd given that it has defined so much of their history. Their armies are the most professional in all of Klironomea and perhaps the world, but they tend to bicker amongst themselves and lash out at the Tildan princes and merchants to their south in search of wealth rather than look towards the conquests of land. Then again, the last time they tried such a thing ended up with an entire army disappearing in the Owkrestan mists, so maybe they don''t want to push their luck again.


    Regardless of the reason, much of Triarian life is focused on internal affairs. Their economy is predominantly agricultural, especially around the fertile Arthaxan Plateau, though mining and metalworking makes up a large portion of their wealth in the rest of the nation. I will go into more depth on their metallurgy later, for I find it fascinating and telling of the evolving deeper character of the Triarian nation.


    House Sigiros is the ruling family of Triarios, and has been since the dark days of the Year of Desolation. In the aftermath of King Harald II''s death there were a great many opportunists and vultures who sought to gain an advantage in the chaos that was sure to come, and none acted faster than the men and women of what would become house Sigiros. Two men, each in charge of one of the last two remaining Klironomean legions, one with a son and one with a daughter. One hurried marriage held before their legions later and house Sigiros was born.


    They quickly took advantage of the forces they wielded, using their children as figureheads as they seized control of every major crossroads, bridge, and ford in the core of what would become Triarios. Minor castles and forts were seized, usually with only the threat of arms rather than a siege, and tributes and tithes poured into the camp around which the legions had been stationed for a little over two years. Inns sprung up around the walls of the camp, then chapels, then half a dozen smithies. You can see where this is going; in a few years, or decades depending on who you ask, the capital city of Triarios was formed around this encampment. I will delve more into the capital after this, however.


    King Thrytas sits atop the Triarian throne and has done for a decade at the time of writing. He is a moderniser of industry and a supporter of the Cult of Anawroth, though much like his more recent forbearers he seems more keen to reform Triarios itself than to strike outwards once more.


    King Thrytas has two living sons, his young daughter having sadly fallen to the black grave in childhood. The two princes, Kyrtos and Kyrian, are as adept in matters of both business and war as their father. They help with the running of the royal conglomerate handling metalworking industries, as well as keeping a hand on the running of the various royal estates around their kingdom. Whilst they may be more at home when dealing with martial matters they are far from stupid, and any threat they make should not be taken lightly. They are loyal to a fault, especially towards their father, and would make for either excellent allies or fearsome enemies.


    The banner of house Sigiros shows two white swords with red fullers, one pointing upwards and one downwards on a red field. As far as I am aware every member of house Sigiros keeps this sigil as their own, save either bastards or adopted members of the family who invert the colours of this sigil.


    On that note, house Sigiros is unique amongst the royal families of the Heptarchy for its history of adoption. If ever the number of living family members grows thin, or if a member of the family believes a friend, ward, or even lowborn to be worthy, then the head of the house may accede to a request that the proffered candidate be made a member of the family.


    This custom is shared amongst most Triarian noble families as well, for despite their warlike nature, or maybe even because of it, they see blood as lesser than character. If someone is worthy enough, loyal enough, or even just beloved by the family, then they may be consensually made a member of the house. I think it is a wonderful custom, and implore the other nations of the Heptarchy to consider the merits of such a custom as well.


    The capital city of Triarios is Stratiopolis, a utilitarian and foreboding place. The city started its life as an overgrown military camp, and it shows. Large straight avenues, organised districts, defendable chokepoints and passageways. The walls of Triarios are second only to those of Sygomidopolis itself amongst the cities and towns of the Heptarchy, and the ballistae mounted on its towers are some of the largest and most modern in the world.


    At the centre of any other great city in the Heptarchy lies a palatial district; a grand edifice of bureaucratic offices, palace wings, and royal gardens. Not Stratiopolis. At the heart of the Triarian capital lies a district given over entirely to military uses; it''s palace is more of a fortress, the gardens are replaced by drilling grounds, and instead of bureaucratic offices one can find row upon row of armouries and barracks.


    Around the east and north of the city sits a sprawling array of workshops, manufactories, and inspectorates making all the surplus equipment that a modern army could ever need. Whilst the production of arms and armour is slowly moving out of the city and into new purpose-built manufactory towns, everything from ropes to barrels and saddles to breeches are made here. Despite falling on hard times recently due to the aforementioned relocation of smithing facilities the workshops of Stratiopolis still remain some of the largest in the world, and their output would certainly be a huge boon to whoever controls it. Even if it were sacked rather than taken, the hundreds of warehouses filled to the brim with stock would surely make a tidy profit for anyone who could surmount the great defensive works of the city.


    Further south lies the homes and squares that house the many thousands of workers that labour in the city, their lives surprisingly comfortable for living in a stratocratic feudal state. Whilst the people may have few rights and might be uprooted on the whims of their local lord or king, they still enjoy a relatively high standard of living when compared to the inhabitants of most other great cities. Indeed, Polaeriopolis is perhaps the only city in the Heptarchy that can boast of cleaner streets and lower rates of poverty.


    The benefit to having a war economy that never tires is that no man will ever lack for work. Stratiopolis is a city of soldiers, yes, but it is also a city of unceasing activity.


    The final region of note in the city lies in the west. The western portion of Stratiopolis is home to a great many chapels and shrines, as well as the Sacred Grounds where the legionaries of the Cult of Anawroth are trained. This personal army of the church often butts heads with local guard forces, and at the directive of past monarchs the west of the city is ran autonomously by the Agiathos Yperoxi Anawroth.


    Within this western district there a grand cathedral. It is not grand in terms of size, nor in terms of artistry or prestige. It is grand for what lies around it.


    When Triarios marshals its legions and marches off to war every single soldier that follows the Cult of Anawroth will purchase a spear with their name engraved on the head and place it at the walls of the cathedral. This might mean thousands of spears for the greatest wars that have been fought, and it is a tradition that has been followed ever since one of the first Triarian monarchs laid her spear down at the walls of the cathedral and swore it would remain there until she returned with the world in thrall.


    Of course the world is very much not in thrall to Triarios, and so many soldiers have now placed their own spears at the cathedral walls that no-one alive today even knows what the lower half of the outer walls of the cathedral look like anymore. One day, when Triarios sits comfortably in an empire which stretches the length of the continent, those spears will be taken away and probably melted into statues. Those spearheads at the bottom of the pile, those rusted and crushed things? They''ll probably be kept as souvenirs by the pious or the wealthy. As for the walls? They will finally see sunlight once more.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Throughout the rest of the nation Triarios also boasts a rather large mining industry. Though not quite as expansive as the Nordican copper mines, and equally as lacking in rare metals such as gold, the iron and coal mined in Triarios sees extensive use not just as items for trade, but also for the Triarian military. Even along their coastline such resources are abundant, for the ironstone found in the dense clay of their shoreline can be burned with charcoal and smelted into wrought iron. Such methods are beginning to fall by the wayside with the introduction of a new innovation, however: the finery forge.


    There are some records of such forges being used as far back as the Time of Ending in Sothena, but even on the last civilised remnants of that continent such things are no longer viewed as a necessity. At least, that is what the people of Sothettar say. Regardless of the veracity of their denial, Triarios has built some of the most expansive ironworks in the world centred around these models.


    Much of the wrought iron produced here is sent to crucible forges at the same worksite, whereupon the work of turning wrought iron into steel is carried out. The wrought iron is packed into a crucible with charcoal, and is heated until melting once more. I am no metalsmith, but I can recognise an effective approach when I see one.


    As a result of the implementation of these methods the foundries of Triarios are some of the most modern in the world, their forges able to churn out hundreds of spearheads and helmets a month. Where a blacksmith may take a month to forge a dozen swords the Triarian forges can churn out that same number in perhaps as little as a day.


    The people who own such ventures have started to grow wealthy indeed, and none have capitalised on this more so than the royal family themselves.


    In one large conglomerate they have grouped several of their largest iron mines together, and at roughly equidistant points between these mines along rivers and waterways they have built their new forges powered by waterwheels. Now the mines, iron smelters, steelmaking facilities, coppices, charcoal burners, and manufacturing smiths may all be located within ten miles of each other. This has enabled Triarios to really move to the forefront of industry, at least where weapon, armour, and toolmaking is concerned. With the advent of war seeming ever more likely across the continent it seems strange that, for once, the Triarians look as though they might be the ones to try and stay out of it. They make too many weapons for their own hands to use now, but there''s plenty of profit to be had in selling the surplus abroad, perhaps even to both parties of whatever conflict they''re interested in.


    And just like that, with the application of a little potential profit, the warmongers become the peaceful ones. What the Cult of Anawroth makes of that I don''t know, but it is foreboding if nothing else. I do not believe the royal family will brook any threat to their new enterprise.


    As previously stated the majority of Triarios is nestled into a series of hill ranges and flatland valleys, broken up by small rivers that meander to and fro. There is a portion of deep forest land in the west stretching from across the Owkrestan border, but aside from that there is remarkably little woodland in the kingdom. Most settlements are located upon hills that give commanding views of the countryside, and stretching across the southern border with Tildan there is a series of watchtowers acting as an early warning system in case of an invasion. A substantial force has almost never marched up from Tildan into Klironomea in the modern age, but whenever one does it tends to find more than it bargained for waiting in the Triarian hills. The people of Triarios may not be quite as adept at guerrilla warfare as their Owkrestan neighbours, but they are more than capable of harrying the foe from their borders to Stratiopolis itself, all the way from border to border if necessary.


    A key part of Triarian life can be seen in its religious makeup. Somewhere around half of the Triarian citizenry worship under the guidance of the Old-Church, whilst three-in-ten are a part of Anawroth''s Cult. Of the remaining section of the population, some two-in-ten people, half follow the New-Church and the remainder a litany of the smaller cults and sects. Stratiopolis mostly follows the New-Church, as is the theme in the large cities of Klironomea, but as mentioned above even here the Cult of Anawroth keeps a major presence. A large portion of the countryside likewise follows the teachings of the Angel of War, resulting in an unbroken swathe of lands that neither follow the New or Old churches matched in size by none other in the Heptarchy.


    As mentioned previously there is a great cathedral to Anawroth in the capital of this land, obscured by thousands of spears. There are few churches to Anawroth, for he would rather his followers pray on the field of battle. Instead there has been a recent move towards the creation of a series of monuments depicting the Angel of Battle and Wrath, head held high and sword even higher. These tend to be statues of marble or bronze, depending on where in the kingdom you are. If the statue is in the east, closer to Kortheros and Dathan, then it''s likely to be made of fine marble and crafted with artistic precision. If it''s in the west nearer to Owkrestos then it''s more likely to be made of bronze, less artistic but still with its own rustic and somehow more ''warlike'' charm.


    There is a statue in the capital, right in the heart of Stratiopolis, which blends these two styles perfectly. A man made of marble with wings and a crown of bronze, colourless all over save the bronze, and yet somehow still looking alive. It looks truly magnificent.


    Anawroth might not care much for the monuments built in his name, but they certainly show the world that whilst Triarios is still the most militaristic nation in the Heptarchy it is also not without its own artists and sculptors. It is not without culture, despite what the stereotypical thoughts of this land may be.


    I personally have had my eyes opened by my visit, and am glad to have been invited by his Grace.


    In times of war Triarios can call upon somewhere around thirty-thousand men to fight in the name of their Angel. Of these men four-thousand are armsmen, and some of the best in the world. Of the four-thousand half of them are dressed in plate armour and armed with billpikes. The Triarian Legionaries, as they have become known, are the single most elite body of heavy infantry in the world. The counterpoint to this is a relative lack of longbowmen, for only one-thousand Triarian soldiers have mastered the longbow. Triarios does also maintain a siege train of a thousand men, and so are able to bring a great number of field artillery and siege weapons to bear whenever needed.


    There are few, if any, knights in Triarios. It is not a nation for the ''honourable'' or ''chivalrous''. In Triarios wars are fought to be won, not sung about. Instead they rely on lowborn levies to make up the rest of their armies.


    To compensate for their relatively low numbers of Longbowmen-at-Arms, Triarios ensures a stockpile of several thousand crossbows for use by its levied forces. Whilst lacking much of the range and rate of loosing that the Longbow has, the crossbow is a simple and easy-to-use weapon that anyone can wield with some degree of skill after about a week of training. It isn''t the best ranged weapon, but it certainly helps to make up for the lack of professional ranged soldiery.


    To hazard an educated guess I would say that there would be perhaps four-thousand crossbowmen in a fully raised Triarian levy. There would also be a similar number of light horsemen, a mixture of both mounted spearmen, swordsmen, and bowmen. The rest would simply be lightly armoured swordsmen and spearmen, forming the bulk of any frontline.


    A formidable fighting force, if rather lacking in heavy horse, but then Triarian doctrine descends from the heavy-infantry focused forces of the old Klironomean legions, and so is to be expected.


    The kingdom of Triarios does, at first, appear to be a savage and almost barbarous place. Common knowledge holds it to be a place of war and violence, of constant struggle and backwards infighting, but this could not be further from the truth! Triarios is a place of industry and professionalism, not rampant bloodlust. Whilst the people of this proud land have been slow to advance in some places, they have more than made up for it with their progress in others.


    The Cult of Anawroth is not by itself a separate faith from the mainstream Old-Church, after all, Anawroth is often taken as the personal deity for soldiers, bandits, brigands and knights. What can make it dangerous is its tendency to completely side-line the other members of the Angelic Pantheon. The Cult of Anawroth in its purest form rejects the other Angels as being weak and fickle, and elevates those who worship Anawroth above all others in society. Only professional soldiers and knights are permitted to worship Anawroth under the gaze of the extremists, resulting in highly militarised societies with a martial culture, though one that also tends to discriminate against large portions of its population in a survival of the fittest setting. Whilst the mainstream cult, that is to say those who have taken Anawroth as a personal deity, is both legal and a pillar of the faith, its extreme form is combatted wherever it may spring up, with the exception of the Kingdom of Triarios, as here historically the state religion has tended to shift back and forwards between the Ybridica Agiathos and the Agiathos Yperoxi Anawroth every few decades.


    Now, that is not to paint all followers of this cult with the same brush. Many people within the cult have lived alongside those who maintain their faith in the Old-Church for years, and as such have no real qualms with coexisting. It is only the truly extreme sections of this faith that call for enforcement of their beliefs, or else the expulsion of the ''weak'' from society.


    As another example of coexistence between the moderate followers of the Cult of Anawroth and other branches of the faith, the followers of Anawroth also venerate several Klironomean militaristic figures through history, finding common ground with the Ichorian Cult over their veneration of both Harald II and his right hand man in Dathan, Agia Lycaon. The Child-Emperor of Tilda, Agia Abiah, also receives their veneration. This helps them keep down tensions along their southern border in times of peace. The difference between how the Cult of Anawroth and the other sects view these figures is that, in the Cult of Anawroth, these figures are not venerated as people to worship, but rather people to emulate. A small distinction to many, but an important one nonetheless.


    Speaking of ancient figures, the Book of the Martial Saint also has an interesting passage which mentions a strange and dark figure. This figure, known as ''The Lamb'', crops up in mythology occasionally across the known world, but few legends surrounding this strange figure have survived in a form that we are able to understand today. The passage I speak of reads as thus:


    "And lo, I witnessed the one that marked the end of the end. The men-folk crowded and bowed and scraped at its feet, begging for the end. Brave heroes wept as they curled up before the great beast, for the lesser daemons they had fought now seemed as pure as Angels when compared to the horror that lorded over them now. THE LAMB had reigned over the kingdom of men long ago, so long ago that all men who yet lived knew not its name, only that it was THE LAMB.


    Emerging from the fog that begged for death did the mighty ANAWROTH stride, resolute in the protection of all the warriors and people of Anamanesis, but his brother-king cast the beast back into the abyss before the duel could commence."


    What is not mentioned in this passage, but is later on in the book, is the belief held by the followers of Anawroth that a final cataclysmic duel will one day take place between Anawroth and the Lamb, though who will be the victor none can know until the deed is done.


    Though every sect of the church tends towards militancy, the Cult of Anawroth take it to the next level. Where other churches may have Patriarchs that give sermons on the battlefield, the patriarchs of Anawroth fight at the front alongside groups of howling zealots and disciplined forces. They are a church in name only, resembling an army more than anything else. They do not hand out alms for the masses, save the soldiery, nor can one expect to receive communion in any place that isn''t a theatre of war.


    Whilst typically one of the smaller sects of the church, the Agiathos Yperoxi Anawroth has carved out its own niche in Triarios. Small wonder, really. A nation founded on war must find a suitable deity to justify it, though as the decades roll by his grip on Triarian society grows ever weaker.


    I hope you enjoyed some of my writings, Lyk! Triarios truly was nothing like I was expecting, and if I were not so busy I would like nothing more than to sit by your side and talk to you about it in person until the sun rose up, as well as discuss a hundred other topics besides. Still, I hope that the sketches and diagrams of the Triarian royal forges I made are of use to you, or at least interesting.


    I do not like to say it, but I do not think my father has long left. I think that, in around eighteen months, I will be sat upon the throne of Polaeros. It is a sobering thought, and means that I will be ceasing my travels for the foreseeable future. Hey, any chance I could leave you my throne and carry on travelling instead?


    I jest of course, but it is a tempting thought nonetheless. You''ll make for a better king than I anyway; I''d much rather act as an advisor than a king. Still, needs must, and I have my duty to see you.


    I apologise for being unable to write more here, but I am afraid that I''m running out of space. I was able to include the most important things I needed to say to you in the first part of my letter however, so I will not fret too much. I hope to see you soon, dear.


    Remain ever in my thoughts,


    Prince Alekos Virgilos.

 Seventh III: The Mists of Summer

    <u>Seventh III: The Mists of Summer</u>


    <u>The Twenty-First Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    The Woodsroad, Eastern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    It wasn''t outside on the training ground that Seventh had found Rhema, but inside his tent. He was still hacking away at dummy of straw and wood, but for some reason he was choosing to do it inside rather than out in the purpose-built training area. Sometimes they really didn''t know what it was that ran through their friend''s mind.


    Suddenly an axe whizzed an inch to the left of their head, a gentle breeze rustling their hair, and with a ''thunk'' the bladed edge of the weapon embedded itself into a second straw dummy next to the entrance that they hadn''t even known had been there.


    "Rhema," they said in a faux-exasperated tone as they let the shock run through them and out of their system, "you can''t expect to bludgeon and carve your way through every problem. Violence isn''t always the answer."


    The prince grinned at them as they walked over, tugging at the haft of the axe a few times so that he could wrench it free.


    "You''re right; violence isn''t always the answer. But nine times out of ten, it is a bloody good guess."


    "Shit, I can''t argue with that. When did you become so wise?"


    "I''m still waiting on the day that I gain wisdom. The Angels knew I''d be too powerful with wisdom on my side. Anyhow, I got you good there, didn''t I? Figured you''d need a little shock to your system after meeting with your boss again; you''re normally pretty out of it when those chats finish."


    They rolled their eyes fondly at the prince. He displayed remarkable maturity at times, and yet still he managed to pull things like this out of nowhere and have it make perfect sense. Still, they hadn''t flinched this time, so they must have been getting better at predicting Rhema''s ''unique'' form of greeting.


    "He''s my mentor, not my boss. And they''re lessons for that matter, not chats. That makes it sound like we''re middle aged fishwives."


    Rhema snorted, then looked them up and down. Seventh didn''t move as he did so, but they couldn''t help but notice the hint of concern in Rhema''s expression when he''d finished.


    "So, how was it?"


    How was it? It had been a lot, in all honesty. They''d stared into the soul of a man who''d watched the world tear itself apart more times than they could count, a man who had once tried to change things and held genuine convictions in how best to help the world, but who now was reduced to making sarcastic comments whilst living in resignation for whatever the future held. It wasn''t that he was rude or mocking when he questioned why on earth Seventh would bother trying to help change the world of men, rather it more seemed as though he were genuinely confused. After trying and failing to better the world so many times Seventh guessed that maybe his mentor had simply been worn down. The man had tried a great many times to intervene, as had his friends who were now scattered and lost, and in all honesty it did seem that any sort of positive outcome was very rare indeed.


    The initial goal may have been achieved, the darkness staved off, but in the process the roles that his mentor''s kinfolk played had just inspired newer, more destructive branches of religion and philosophy to take root. Entire ways of life centred around war, around slavery, around death; not at all what had been intended, but it was what had come about as a result of their ''divine intervention'' all the same.


    Seventh dearly hoped that, when they tried to change the future, nothing like that happened.


    They came back to as Rhema poked their cheek, staring at them with a confused expression.


    "Hello? Anyone in there?"


    Seventh swatted his hand away whilst giggling a little.


    "Ah, sorry about that. I''ve been tormented with visions of a future that must never come to pass and things that must not be, so you can imagine that I''m pretty busy at the moment."


    They made sure their voice came across as sufficiently humorous, for there was every chance Rhema might take their words at face value instead of as the sarcastic joke they were meant as. Luckily, judging by the tone of voice he got in response, Rhema had cottoned on pretty quickly.


    "Damn, that sounds like it sucks. Good luck with that though, all the best."


    Seventh couldn''t help but snort at that. There was something about Rhema that just cracked them up.


    Thinking on Rhema, for some reason, brought back thoughts of the young man''s soul. Rhema was absolutely coated in wild energies, and it was clear that his heart belonged to the wilderness in its entirety. His brother, on the other hand, did not seem that way at all. Prince Lykourgos seemed stern and dutiful, not at all given over to impulse and wild abandon. But then they had looked closer, had delved deeper. Lykourgos'' soul held much of the wild in it as well, just like his brother, but it was masked. Caged. It was there, but it had been painted over and almost forgotten about. Seventh wondered if the elder of the two princes even knew how wild he truly had the capacity to be, how feral he might be driven if he were pushed just a little too far. A part of them wanted to see what would happen, what it would be like to see the normally composed and stolid royal lose their composure and turn into a rabid hound like Rhema was want to do in battle, but the majority of them wanted the exact opposite. They''d caught a glimpse of his Grace''s wild spirit at the gallows and watched two-score men and women hang. That was... it was different to a battle. That was something else entirely.


    Rhema went wild in battle because he found it freeing, perhaps even fun. Lykourgos went wild because he''d been backed into a corner, because he or someone he deeply cared about had been grievously harmed. Rhema was dangerous because he allowed himself to be freed from inhibition, but of the two of them Lykourgos could be far more savage. Their mentor had showed them a vision of a stag drenched in gore, standing atop a mountain of weakly writhing serpents and wolves whilst a doe lay silent behind him, having long since bled out. Visions were still something they struggled to understand, but that one felt rather clear in their mind. The eldest prince would never abandon his duty, the tasks he believed that he had to complete, but the second someone he loved was harmed then bringing the culprits to justice would become his duty. Just who that doe was they was unsure, but it the rest was clear enough in their mind.


    And, just like their mentor had said to them, Lykourgos always did his duty. Even if he needed to cross the Drakespine mountains through a tide of blood knee-high, he would do his duty.


    Seventh had made a mental note to ensure that the part of their mind that wanted to watch the composed royal lose his shit and go wild was sufficiently quelled. It was too dangerous for so powerful a man to lose himself like that.


    Rhema must have noticed their thoughts had turned darker, for they smiled softly at them and nudged their shoulder.


    "Hey, what''s up? The old man giving you shit again?"


    ''The old man'' in this context of course referred to his mentor, Hydran. Seventh knew that was not his real name, but the man had asked them not to speak it aloud and, just to make sure they didn''t accidentally get muddled up and blurt out the wrong name, they''d taken to calling him by the name he''d asked for even within their own head.


    "Nothing like that, for once. He''s backed off a little now that he''s realised I''m still mad at him for his mishandling of trust on a number of things that you don''t need to know about."


    "What? Come on, you can tell me!"


    Seventh laughed at Rhema''s over-the-top whining voice. It was clear that he was putting on his voice to try and cheer seventh up, and credit where it was due because it was working, but this was genuinely something that didn''t concern Rhema. They cared about their friend deeply, and trusted him equally as much, but there were some things it was better for them not to know.


    The history of their kind was one such thing. Hydran had been rather... intensive, with the lessons he''d given about the downfall of their kind in the distant past, leavened by no small amount of very obvious personal bias and opinion. To the man''s credit he had at no point tried to pass his personal version of events off as fact, and had in fact made sure that they understood what he was telling them was how everything seemed from his point of view.


    The sentiment was noble, but the fact that he was the only person Seventh could learn this from rendered it pretty much moot. After one particularly heated argument stemming over the actions of one of their mentor''s brethren Seventh had taken a step back from the lessons, refusing to sleep for about three days to get the message across that they did not want to be bothered in their own head at the moment. Their mentor had, seemingly, acknowledged and respected that particular notion.


    He might have been forceful at times and several millennia of life followed by one of sleep hadn''t exactly left him with the best grasp on interacting with others, but he was making an effort. Seventh had to, if begrudgingly, concede that point to the man. What he lacked in tact, he made up for in a willingness to listen. He might not admit when he was wrong, but he would at least listen and learn from his mistakes. Seventh got the feeling that he was relearning several millennia of people skills over the course of a few months, and sifting through memories to think on what was acceptable now. It was easy to forget that when their mentor had only been a few millennia older than them slavery was seen as the norm across the world, and those nations that didn''t have entire sections of their society dedicated to keeping men in chains were few and far between.


    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    The world had changed much over the course of their mentor''s long life, far more than that example could possibly get across, and so it made sense that he was a little out of his depth at the moment when it came to interacting with people.


    "Speaking of your mentor," Rhema began, interrupting their thought process, "you said you''d ask him if you could tell me his name. Have you?"


    "I said I''d tell you the name you''d know him by, not his true name. And he... well, he said he had no reason to keep it from you. He did tell me to make sure you didn''t go around telling everyone, and in his own words ''I know his first instinct will be to tell his brother. Put his mind at rest by telling him that his brother knows already''. So yeah, would you like to know who he is?"


    "Of course!"


    "Rhema," they said as seriously as they could, "I need you to understand that when you know who he is, you won''t be able to unknow it. I won''t be able to dull the effect that learning this has on you, for I don''t have the experience that he does. I mean, I could try, but I might accidentally erase any memories of your childhood before the age of ten."


    "Oh, fucking could you?" Rhema said, his tone dry and yet obviously joking, "I fucking hated every moment of that shitshow."


    "Rhema."


    The prince rolled his eyes at them, though Seventh couldn''t miss the fondness behind the motion.


    "Okay, okay, Angels you''re uptight about this. He must be real important then, huh?"


    Seventh nodded.


    "Yes. He''s- well, he goes by many names across the world, and has doubtless gone by many more that no-one besides himself remembers. To you though, and to your brother, he is Hydran."


    For once, Rhema was totally silent. The prince stepped back once. Twice. His mouth opened and closed a few times, words seeming to die in his throat before passing his lips. When he did speak his voice was strangled, almost reverent.


    "You mean- you mean that Hydran? As in Angel of the Seas and the Stars? That Hydran?"


    Seventh nodded.


    "I do."


    "And if he''s your kinsman then... Saints, you''re-"


    Rhema seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts, a wide grin coming across his face.


    "Wait, are you seriously telling me that you, my best and closest friend, are a fucking Angel?"


    Seventh nodded slowly, wondering where Rhema was going with this. He was certainly taking it well, not that they''d really expected-


    "You do understand how much more ammunition this gives me that I can use to flirt with you, right? Like, you do understand that? I can now call you an Angel and not only fluster you but have it be factually accurate. This is fucking perfect."


    Seventh did their best to stifle their laughter, but they didn''t succeed. Of course, out of all the revelations to take from this, the one that Rhema stuck with was the fact that he would now be able to flirt with them in an improved manner.


    "Somehow it doesn''t surprise me that, of all the things most people would have killed to know in that sentence, you care more about the implications this has on you flirting with your best friend."


    "I like to think I can focus on the important things in life, thank you very much."


    Seventh shook their head, still giggling a little, as they made to continue talking.


    "Well, at least you''re honest. In all seriousness though, that''s who he is. As a few ground rules if you do happen to speak with him, there are a few things you probably shouldn''t bring up: his brethren, his children, and prophecy. The first two he lost, some more literally than others, whilst the third one really rubs him the wrong way for some reason."


    "And you know this because he told you?"


    "Nope," they replied with a sigh, "I know because I have brought up all three of them with him in the wrong circumstances. That was not a fun conversation."


    Rhema snorted, hand rising covering his face a little. Seventh might not have been able to say it much, but they would be eternally grateful that it was Rhema who had woken them up and not anyone else. Most people would have seen them as a threat, a witch, a daemon, and tried to kill them outright. Even worse would be someone recognising them for what they really were; a changeling. Basileous, no, Hydran, had told them not to think of themselves as such, had told them that the word had been used as a derogatory term or slur aimed at those Angels who had been raised by or bestowed upon other races by the Angel that made them. In a way it was like a twisted form of adoption, and whilst Hydran had derided those that may have seen ''changelings'' as being any different than ''normal'' Angels he did acknowledge that it was a pretty loaded term with a lot of history.


    Not that any of that history had much relevance anymore.


    Still, their mentor had made it perfectly clear that the fact they were raised by humans was a good thing; in his words they lacked the arrogance and complacence of his ancient kin amongst the heavens.


    Still, he had conceded that it was a bitter thing, knowing that there was now an Angel alive who had never once seen the heavens. Not only that, but they never would. Seventh didn''t know much about the history of their kind, but they did know that there were very few left. Very, very few. They knew this for a fact, just as they knew that the true home of the Angels was no more. It was a sobering thought, knowing that one would never see their home, but it at least seemed that his mentor shared their pain. He''d seemed really rather torn up when he''d admitted that he couldn''t remember his home anymore. He''d tried to make another home down here, but... well, that hadn''t gone well. He''d flown too close to the sun, and that was putting it mildly. It was shared moments of mourning such as those that really made Seventh realised just why his mentor was the way that he was.


    It didn''t excuse him for being a generally cryptic dick though. They weren''t going to let him off the chain for his poor attitude just yet.


    So yeah, all things considered they were glad that they happened to be awakened by the one person who managed to be completely unfazed by just about every curveball they threw.


    "Yo, you''ve gotten lost in your head again. I''m not that boring to talk to, am I?"


    Seventh blinked and dragged themselves out of their mind for what must have been the third or forth time this conversation, whereupon they smiled apologetically at Rhema.


    "No, of course not. Hell, you''re one of the like... three people that I enjoy talking to on a regular basis. Maybe four. Even so, you still sit at the top of that list."


    "How flattering. You''ll make me blush, Sev. Who else is on that list?"


    "There''s you, there''s your brother, and there''s Ilias."


    Rhema raised an eyebrow.


    "My brother and Ilias. Not your mentor?"


    Seventh shrugged.


    "Your brother is a rather interesting human, and I don''t think it''s possible for anyone to hate Ilias. Hydran is the ''maybe'' on that list. He''s interesting to talk to, but I don''t know if many of our conversations are particularly enjoyable. But that''s enough of that for now; not to pry or change the subject, but have you... you know, seen her again? Since the Suthdaal I mean?"


    Rhema''s face darkened a little as he nodded slowly. Seventh wouldn''t admit it, but seeing Rhema acting like that had genuinely scared them a little. Rhema could be reckless, and he hadn''t exactly been left with the soundest of minds, but seeing him actually trying to... Seventh didn''t really know what Rhema had been trying to do, save make the image of his sister go away, but the method by which he''d gone about it was about as unhealthy as any they could imagine. They wanted to be there to help their friend with this issue moving forwards, and had meant what they''d said when they''d happened across him hammering his head into the stone wall.


    They didn''t want their friend to be hurting, especially not when they could do something to help.


    "I haven''t, not really, but I still... I still feel like I do, sometimes. You know, like half a second, corner of your eye sort of thing. I haven''t had a headache like I did last time, and yes I am keeping an eye on that sort of thing. It was my headaches that heralded my downwards spiral when I was younger, and now that I''ve had one that bad again I know that they must be tied to this... hallucination."


    Rhema shivered a little, his eyes going distant for a moment before he spoke again. His voice carried anger born of sadness, of confusion, letting them know just how frustrated he was with this whole situation.


    "I don''t understand, Sev. I know she isn''t real, I know she''s gone and dead and buried beneath the Westcoast Church, so why does it feel so real? Why did I see her? I can- I know I''ll see her again, she told me as much, but then that was a hallucination and not real so I don''t know if- was that something to discard? To ignore? Or was that my mind trying to warn me, to allow me to prepare myself?"


    Their friend shivered a little more despite the temperature being quite warm, so Seventh did the first thing that came to them. Slowly and deliberately so as to allow their friend to back out if he didn''t want physical touch at the moment, they settled into a hug with Rhema. He was a head taller than they were, allowing them to very comfortably nestle into his chest and rub small circles on his back.


    "You''re strong, Rhema. I know you can get through this, through anything, and come out on top of it all. That doesn''t mean you need to do it alone. I can help you with this, even if all I can do is try and keep you company after the fact and ground you if and when it happens again. I promise that you''ll be okay."


    Rhema hugged them back tightly, and Seventh did their best to politely ignore the almost-shed tears that their friend was hurriedly swiping away with his free arm. Seventh led him to sit down on the edge of the bed in the room, still hugging him, and once they were seated the prince spoke once more.


    "I, uh... I''m still on the lookout for the two of them, you know."


    Seventh furrowed their brow, confused.


    "Them?"


    "Turnkey and Aenethar. I''ve spoken with the Master of Silver more than once, and he''s told me he''ll keep me informed if he gets any word of their whereabouts. I know it might seem like I''ve forgotten about them, but I haven''t; I''m going to hurt them for what they did to you, but the war means that I''ve needed to put such things to one side for now."


    A small smile crept over their face. It was nice to have Rhema''s support in such things, not that it was ever in question.


    "You might be waiting a long time, in that case."


    "What do you mean?"


    "Do you really think your brother is content to stop at the end of this war? Do you think that this will mark the end of his march?"


    Rhema stilled for a moment, a huffed laugh escaping the prince''s throat before he spoke.


    "Yeah, that''s true enough. We might be at war for quite a long time, Sev. Don''t think even for a second that I''ll ever have forgotten what they put you through though. There are many things my... sickness, such as it is, makes harder for me. Memory might be one of them, but that''s something I''ll never let myself forget. Not until justice has run its course."


    "Well for what it''s worth, I appreciate it. A better person than me would probably tell you not to bother, that you should let go of what they did to me. I''m not willing to do that. What if there''s someone else like me out there? My mentor never knew I existed until he met me, since he can''t use his mystical senses very much anymore. There might be others out there that neither he nor I know of, and I don''t want people like that to get anywhere near them."


    They were silent for a moment, and Seventh moved themselves even further into the side of their friend, nestling between his arm and his side.


    "I don''t want them to get me again. I don''t want people like that to exist in this world. How can people be so twisted as to cut open the still-living even after recognising them as divine? I don''t understand?"


    "Nor do I," Rhema replied, the prince tightening his arm a little to pull them closer still in what felt to them like a very grounding move, "but if that''s what you want then I''ll do it. By myself if I have to, but I''ll do it nonetheless. People like that don''t deserve to live."


    They huffed out something that was halfway between a laugh and a scoff. There was plenty that didn''t need to exist in this world that did anyway. Or maybe that was just the cynicism of their mentor talking?


    Either way, the path forwards for them was clear. They would be content to remain by Rhema''s side and enjoy the next few decades, because they wouldn''t last forever. The responsibility for safeguarding this world would be theirs to bear one day, but for now they still had so much to learn. Even their mentor, as critical and harsh as he could be, would not deign to force them into a role they weren''t ready for yet. One day they''d stand by his side and face down darkness, knowing full well it was a fight they could never truly win, but at this moment there was nowhere they''d rather be than by the side of their greatest and closest friend. Rhema had done so much for them, and they for him in turn. If they stayed together over the years then Seventh had little fear for what the future would bring.

 Cardinal Sin VIII: Two Black Hearts

    <u>Cardinal Sin VIII: Two Black Hearts</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    His meeting with Adikos was going to be a stormy one, that much he was sure of. In his own mind he knew that he had done the right thing, even if she''d been set free with a slap on the wrist rather than any true punishment. The display had earned him some allies in the form of the Aegan Watch and the Chief Inquisitor, so that was something at least. None of that really made him feel any better about the meeting that he was about to endure, however.


    "Cardinal Sin. His Holiness, Archcardinal Adikos, will see you now."


    Sin nodded to the secretary and made to stride into the chamber.


    "Oh, one more thing." The secretary said. "Your cane. Leave it here."


    Sin froze for a moment, weighed his options and, realising that he didn''t really intend to kill Adikos here today, acquiesced to the secretary''s request.


    "Thank you, Cardinal. You may now enter."


    He strode into the Archcardinal''s office with as much steel in his spine as he could muster. The office was a grand thing, toned down a little since the theocracy had been established, but still with marble walls and golden ornaments adorning tables and surfaces. There was even a noose of golden thread hanging from the ceiling, as if the First Saint would have cared at all for the colour of the rope around his neck whilst he swung.


    The office looked grand, yes, but the Archcardinal himself just looked... well, he wasn''t imposing, not with how thin he was, but certainly intimidating. There was a fervour behind his eyes, a gravitas when he spoke, a measure of surety in all that he did. His mitre and ornate robes were carefully laid out to one side on a chaise longue to one side. He was wearing a far plainer set of white robes at the moment, a stark contrast to the black and crimson of Sin''s own robes, and yet of the two of them it was this old man who was the more intimidating.


    "What in the name of the First Saint were you thinking, Sin?"


    Sin swallowed hard, taking a step forwards and then moving to kneel on one knee.


    "I- she attempted to have me killed, your Holiness. Worse still, Spyridon might have been caught in the volley and killed as well. I needed to see her arrested to ensure that there were no further attempts on my life whilst I smoked out the rats who''d been supporting her in this endeavour and seen them repent."


    "Nevertheless, you arrested the wrong Cardinal. Trios was the one you should have arrested. Killed as well."


    Sin blinked a few times in confusion. He hated Trios, yes, and the man had tried to kill him before, but in this instance he was likely to be at least mostly innocent.


    "But Trios was not the one who attempted to kill me, your Holiness."


    Adikos scoffed.


    "Does it matter? You''re Cardinal Sin, my favourite successor. The only man in all the Aegan hills who could countermand your words is me, and if you were to have said it was Trios then I would have backed you to the hilt."


    "Admeta was the one who tried to kill me."


    Adikos shook his head and spoke in a tone of warning.


    "It was not Admeta."


    "It was, your Holiness! She intended to-"


    "IT WAS NOT ADMETA! The first rule of governance, Sin, is to never let a good crisis go to waste! Admeta is influential, valuable even, but Trios? It has simply been said that he blackmailed her into committing such actions. As we speak he is being tied to a stake and burned. His co-conspirator as well, a Canoness who now languishes in a cell beneath the barracks. Admeta will be admonished in private for her actions, as should have been done from the start, Sin. Your little spectacle has cost us greatly in the eyes of the public, in the eyes of those who now sit in the senate.


    "They will look to the three of you as the future, my star pupils, but if you are seen to be at each other''s throats then knives will start glinting in the darkness. When there is a knife firmly lodged in your back, Imperator Thrax will cross the river Daedala and all of our work here will have been for nothing. He wishes for a return to the days of the pagan Aegan Empire, and I would not be surprised to learn that he harbours the pagan gods in his heart as well. Whether Admeta tried to kill you or not, Sin, is no business of mine. She will be sternly reprimanded, and I will ensure she knows not to try such actions again. As for you..."


    The Archcardinal glared at him, seemingly incensed by the public nature of Admeta''s arrest.


    "If you want to get her out of the picture, make sure to do it quietly next time. You should have gone to the inquisition with your information, not the watch. They could have handled it discretely, had her bundled here to meet with you and myself. I will forgive you this time, for if what you say is true then her actions no doubt warranted an extreme response, but I will not abide such public displays in the future, Sin. Not whilst you''re both in the capital with me. Disunity is a very dangerous face to show to outsiders."


    Sin nodded stiffly, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from ranting at the man about how she''d tried to fucking kill him and so he was more than within his rights to order such a thing, that he was the only one in this fucking city who was doing the right thing, and that he was-


    He took a deep breath to calm himself down. It wouldn''t do to lose his temper here. Not in front of Adikos. Not in front of Adikos at all.


    You could overpower him, the voice said. He''s just an old man, and here we are, alone with him. Kill him and have done with this.


    If I kill him, he responded within his mind, then I''ll be killed and Admeta will take control. Adikos is an evil man, but Admeta is ambitious, which is far worse.


    "Well, what''s done is done, I suppose. You will endure penance for this, my child, but only a light sentencing. A dozen or so lashes should suffice, followed by a day of ascetism. You are good, Sin. Pure, even. You merely need to be nudged onto the correct path from time to time."


    He swallowed hard, as though the action might physically force his revulsion back into the pit of his stomach.


    "Thank you, Father. I am sorry for displeasing you in this manner. I acted on impulse, and will take the punishment you have mercifully selected for me. Thank you, Father."


    Adikos nodded, smiling a sickly-sweet smile down at him, which gave Sin a moment to think things through properly  and to consider his situation.


    So Cardinal Trios was set to burn, and Admeta was to get off almost freely. Well, at least one of his main rivals had been dealt with permanently. It was a pity that the more competent of his two foes remained, but he''d take what he could get at the moment. Right now he had self-flagellation to endure, followed by a day of fasting. Far from the worst punishment he''d endured; memories of the cells under the Cathedral of Saint Mikah sprang unbidden to his mind, which he quickly did his best to ignore. He''d rather die than go back down there again. It was so cold and sparse down there that there weren''t even any rats to keep one company, just four dark walls of sheer stone and a book of penance that he couldn''t read thanks to both the darkness and the fact that at that time he''d only just come into Adikos'' possession, and so barely had his letters down anyway.


    That didn''t matter at the moment. Sin wasn''t going into those cells again, not if he could help it, and the old man bore him some level of twisted affection, so he counted himself lucky in that regard. Still, he could sense that his mentor wasn''t done, and as such he turned his gaze back up from the floor to meet the eyes of the man who had raised him from his early teenage years with as little fear in his eyes as he could manage.


    "I will be meeting with Cardinal Admeta after yourself, Sin. Depending on what she says to me, there may still be a trial. If there is, then you have full permission to bring forth your story in front of the Holy Courts. If there is not, then you will drop this matter until such time as it becomes relevant again. Am I making myself clear?"


    Sin nodded gravely.


    "Of course, Father. Your will be done."


    "Excellent. Onto further business, then."


    Sin nodded, rising to stand at a motion from the Archcardinal. The man moved to pour some heavily watered wine into a pair of glasses, and offered one to Sin. He took it with a respectful nod of the head, and waited until he was given permission before drinking. It wouldn''t do to be discourteous around the Father at the moment, not with how unstable the ground he was now stood on appeared to be. Adikos nodded at him, and only then did Sin begin to sip from his glass.


    "Firstly I must say that the Chief Inquisitor is most intrigued by you. I believe he wishes to begin cooperating with you as an equal, perhaps even a lesser. It is good that you have him on your side, my child.


    "Of course, what intrigues me more is that he fully expects you to vote against the proposal to increase inquisitorial insight, but on further reflection I believe he will order his own inquisitors to vote against it on your command, provided you support the bill to centralise the monasteries under a few select orders."


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Sin nodded stiffly, as though he were intending on voting for any of the bills. He had no intention of supporting the motion about the army, but if the Chief Inquisitor could be relied upon to ensure the centralisation of the monasteries passed... well, that would only help him in the long run. If one or both of these bills passed there would certainly be upsides for him, just... hidden a little. He would just have to get creative. Still, better that the army answers to him instead of a group of mind-addled zealots who couldn''t tell a drawstring from a drawbridge.


    "I''d be a fool not to, Father. The Monastic Order of Saint Khidon will benefit greatly from an influx of new monastic holdings. So long as I can ensure that their name is one of the few granted this new status the bill will have my enthusiastic support, though I will confess that the Chief Inquisitor is right; I do not intend to support the motion granting oversight powers within the military to the Inquisition. I mean no offence to the Aegan Inquisition, but I can see no way in which ideological officers outside the chain of command will help the combat effectiveness of the army. In my experience it is better to leave such things in the hands of the professionals, and take a more ''hands-off'' approach to dealing with dissent in the ranks. Order the officers to mete out punishment themselves if it becomes an issue, but do not rely on those outside the army to be able to keep discipline within it. It can''t end well."


    Adikos nodded at him, a ghost of a smile about his face.


    "You''ve always been an exceptional holy soldier, Sin. There are few matters in which I will defer my judgement to your own, but this is one of those few occasions. I trust that you understand the hardliners within the Most Devout Church will be... most displeased with your refusal. Many of them hope for your ascent when I am one with the Saints, and as such may see this as a ''betrayal'' of sorts."


    He swallowed, moving to look out of a window to compose himself but being sure to keep his voice level all the same.


    "I understand, Father. I am almost certain that any hardliners who may feel such a way will be mollified by the promise of several changes in their own favour."


    Adikos stared at him for a long moment, no doubt trying to get a read on him.


    "Changes like what, child?"


    Sin stilled for a moment, thinking on the spot for something that both suited the ''character'' he had formed around himself whilst also gaining the support of the hardliners without reneging on anything else he''d said today.


    "The destruction of the treasonous General Thrax would make for a good start, would it not Father?"


    He turned to see Adikos positively beaming at him, the mere sight of the man''s genuine and almost kindly smile making his gut churn in a deeply unpleasant way.


    "Indeed it would, my child. That would be a most wonderous start to any reign. Unfortunately I will be taking that opportunity from you, child. We move to cross the river Daedala this time next year, assuming the false Imperator does not attempt to invade us before then. Still, there is plenty of glory for you in the coming war, just as there are a million vile heathens and heretics beyond our borders. Dathan is ripe with opportunity for you, Sin. You need only ensure that internal opposition is crushed as ruthlessly as you have crushed dissent from the heretics within your own lands before you strike abroad, but then one so well-versed in the world of battle no doubt knows that already."


    Sin looked up and did his best to smile at his mentor, hoping the expression came across as genuine and emotion-filled instead of being corrupted by the internal turmoil that felt real enough to burst forth from his chest any moment.


    "Thank you for your words of advice, Father. I will do my best to heed them in the coming years and... and make you proud."


    The last words gave him pause, made him want to throw up, but he forced them out all the same. Luckily it seemed as though Adikos had mistaken his pause of revulsion for one of reverence, and as such simply continued to smile down at his ''star pupil''. By the Saints and the Boy-King, he wanted to leave this room. I want to be done here, please, let this be done and let me go.


    "Good. Then I believe we are done here. You are dismissed, Sin. See to your punishment tomorrow, but rest for today."


    He very nearly let out a sigh of relief at those words, but caught himself at the last moment. That would not do, not in front of Adikos.


    "Thank you Father. It will be so."


    With that he turned to leave the room, feeling as though he were sweating enough to fill a sitting bath. He made sure to walk with a little of his usual swagger, for he could feel that the eyes of his mentor were burning holes into the back of his head, but he was still a little out of it when the secretary pointedly coughed to his side, gesturing towards his cane. Sin gripped the walking stick as though it were a cherished childhood toy, then walked away as fast as he could without appearing concerned.


    Angels, but he hated Aegos.


    <hr>


    "So, I take it your brilliant scheme was successful in the end?"


    The caustically sarcastic tone of Spyridon told him exactly what his olive-skinned friend thought of his recent actions, but it served to do little more than raise his hackles at the moment.


    "What do you want from me, Spy? I gambled and lost, is that what you want to hear? Trios is or otherwise soon will be dead, so I''ll take what victories I can scrounge from out of this shitheap. Admeta is free a few weeks after her imprisonment, but that still postponed her own plans and wishes for that same amount of time. In this line of work I take what I can get."


    "Even if you nearly had to poison yourself to get an excuse? Even if it could have killed you?"


    "Especially if it could have killed me; if the actions are dangerous then I absolutely need to get whatever and as many morsels of goodness out of them as I can. This job kills you Spy, but I only need to outlast Admeta and Adikos. The rest is for everyone else to work out. For you to work out."


    And that was the truth of it. Since coming here, since being reminded of his place here, he''d almost completely given up on the idea of surviving past the death of the theocracy. Nonetheless, he had a job to do, and do it he would. What matter his death when a hundred-thousand more would breath freely as a result? He was Cardinal Sin, a symbol of fear and hatred. What need would a free Aegos have for someone like him?


    Better that he be washed away with the deluge of change, living on only as a faetale to frighten wayward children into behaving. "Behave, or Cardinal Sin will punish you", he could almost hear the crones say as they jabbed bony fingers at the chests of misbehaving youths. To be honest, that didn''t even sound too bad to him. It was immortality of a sort, wasn''t it? Besides, with how he''d lived his life so far he was prime faetale material, if he did say so himself.


    Spyridon spluttered a little, indignant.


    "What- you can''t just decide that it all ends for you with the Most Devout Church, Sin! You don''t get to make that call!"


    He snorted, mildly amused.


    "And you do? Come on Spy, talk to me. What''s got you so riled up today?"


    His friend spluttered a little more, pointing a finger at him.


    "You! You have! I''m tired of how casually you put yourself in danger, of how resigned to death you are. You''re my friend Sin, and I care for you deeply, but your constant resignation to fate is almost grating! You talk as though you care not for the life you now live, and at times it almost seems as though you would welcome death as brandy is welcomed by a drinker!"


    Despite the seriousness of the conversation Sin smiled at the comparison.


    "All travellers welcome the end of the road, friend."


    "You''re not just some traveller! You''re Cardinal Sin, one of the most powerful men in Aegos! If you die all of this-" the olive-skinned man gestured out of a window leading into the city, "will continue on indefinitely! Death, death and damnation for all! Punishments for crimes that exist only in the minds of the few in charge will continue to be the order of the day, and all who inhabit these lands will fade into the obscurity of the grave. How can you not fear death?!"


    Sin sighed a deep and tired sigh. Time to share yet another part of himself he''d kept secret for years to sate the emotions of another.


    "I became a patron of the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon for a reason, Spy. Death is just a path we all must walk, though no two paths are ever the same. What awaits at the end... well, we''ll all have to find out. Death holds no fear for me, Spy."


    Spyridon looked at him, a mixture of surprise and genuine fear on his face.


    "You- you''re a Khidonean. I knew you followed the Ichorian Cult already, but Saints above, you follow the Khidonean Heresy? Sin, that''s punishable by death nearly everywhere on the continent!"


    Sin just shrugged. Honestly he was more surprised that no-one had raised an eyebrow when he supported the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon, but then he supposed that they weren''t really ''Khidoneans'' at all; they, as were all monuments and churches in the name of Saint Khidon, were named for the ''sanitised'' version of the ill-fated Saint, the falsified version that the New-Church and Old-Church alike pretended had existed as opposed to the true Saint Khidon, the man who learned of the true nature of death. Even still, it baffled him at times that no-one thought to raise an eyebrow at this. Maybe they had but had never had the opportunity to voice their objections for whatever reason. Who knew?


    "Then it is a good thing I fear no end. Besides, I prefer the term ''Khidonean Doctrine'' as opposed to heresy. Saint Khidon was many things, but he was not the apostate people believed him to be. His words were feared for they were uncomfortable truths, and indeed they still are. Few who now live understand his teachings, myself included, but I have continued to hold what I learned when we were younger in my heart. Would that I had the time to study his teachings more, but such things are indulgences I can ill afford at the moment. One day perhaps, before all of this comes to an end, I will have been able to learn more. I would be most interested in relaying his teachings to you one day, not as an attempt to convert or convince you, merely to discuss such theologies with you. You cannot say you''ve never been intrigued by sects and doctrines of the faith other than the one you were raised in, can you?


    Spyridon shook his head, seemingly in disbelief.


    "Saints, I thought I knew you."


    "Well, you did. Just not all of me. I didn''t survive this long by sharing everything with everyone, Spy. In fact there''s only one other person alive right now that knows about what I''ve just told you, so you should feel privileged."


    His friend groaned and let his head fall into his hands. Fair enough, that was a relatively large revelation to drop on someone. What was annoying was how this had side-tracked them both from the main topic of their conversation.


    "I still don''t like your lack of care where your own mortality is concerned. It''s... it''s grating, because I know you can do so much more just by living a little longer."


    "Look Spy, it''s not that I don''t care if I die or not. Believe me, I do. The fact of the matter is that if I were afraid of death then I''d never be able to get people out of this man-made hell and away to relative safety. We need to work without fearing the end, otherwise we won''t work at all. Please just trust me in this, Spy. I know what I''m doing, even if it looks like I''m fumbling along and clutching at straws. I know what I''m doing, so for the love of all the Saints please don''t get mad at me for taking risks. In the last two years I have never once acted without carefully considering my actions, without measuring out the steps I take with meticulous accuracy, and if I want to continue moving forwards I need to know that you aren''t going to turn around and sell me out when the going gets rough. I need you to trust me, Spy."


    His friend shuddered out a rough breath, then settled into a breathless and almost silent laugh.


    "Fine. I don''t like it, Sin. But I''ll trust you. For better or for worse, I''ll trust you. Just stop trying to make light of your death, for Saints'' sake. It''s driving me mad."


    Sin nodded, moving over to the wine cabinet in his friend''s quarters and pulling out a bottle Spyridon hadn''t even realised he''d put there.


    "You want any?"


    The man looked between Sin and the wine, then back at Sin, then at the wine, and finally back at Sin again.


    "You were very recently poisoned by wine."


    "Yes. This is from my personal stash, hidden in your room for emergencies. Do you want any?"


    "You''re not going to be able to eat tomorrow because of your penance. Won''t you be badly hungover all day?"


    "Probably. Do you want any?"


    Spyridon looked at him for a few seconds as if he''d grown a second head, then sighed and hung his head a little while nodding.


    "Yes please. I''d like some."


    Sin smiled. He might not be exactly who his friend had once thought, but he liked to think he was close enough. Who could profess to look inside the mind of another and see their true self anyway?


    Saints, he was looking forwards to this drink.

 Svaltha V: Destiny Refuted

    <u>Svaltha V: Destiny Refuted</u>


    <u>The Second Day of the Eighth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Dyfed''s Warcamp, Hoarsoil Valleys, Scelopyrea.</u>


    She was fucked. Completely and utterly fucked. Not even the good kind either, but the regular shitty kind that just made her feel awful and highlighted just how terribly everything was going at the moment.


    I just want one season without something upending my life, I swear to Krakevasil.


    Everything she thought was good and right in the order of the druids had been shown as being false by the one worthy god, and it was her responsibility to ensure that whatever ruin might be brought about by the very schemes she helped to put into place would be stopped in its tracks. She wasn''t stupid, she knew she couldn''t do it alone, but she had remarkably few people to turn to. She couldn''t go to the druids, who might see her message as a trick or a threat to their power. She couldn''t tell K?til, for he still didn''t know she''d been planted to try and ensnare him and she didn''t want to risk alienating him if he did find out. The situation with the others was much the same.


    That was why she was here instead. She''d ridden away from the battle-line, alone, back to the Great Jaerl''s warcamp, and asked for an audience with Dyfed Ost?inson once more. It had been granted, but that didn''t mean she was excited for this. The Great Jaerl was a... he was an intimidating man, and there was no-one in all of Scelopyrea who would say otherwise. The two silent guards were at the entranceway to the tent, as seemed to be usual, and whilst they dwarfed her in size they were each a head shorter than the Great Jaerl himself.


    And the last time they spoke he hadn''t exactly been a pleasant conversation partner.


    Still, he did seem to mistrust the druids, and he was one of the most powerful men in Scelopyrea. Probably the most powerful man, seeing as the only person with enough power to rival his own was a woman and not a man. Not only that, but she was a... companion, for his son. That had to count for something, right?


    But all of those thoughts were just excuses, and she knew it. She just wanted to put off having to speak with him for a few moments longer. Still, she couldn''t put it off forever, and so with a deep breath and a muttered prayer she steeled herself and walked with purpose up to the tent, the two guards moving aside before she''d even introduced herself.


    That gave her a half-second of pause, but she quickly shook it off and carried on. Perhaps word of her coming had been given to them ahead of time?


    With the briefest of nods she made to enter the tent, neither of the guards acknowledging her as she pushed aside the flap and looked around the room. It was all but the same as how she''d left it, though she was more than confident that a few of the trinkets around the room had changed. She didn''t know the significance of any of them; a small dragon carved from jade, a piece of driftwood with a prayer carved into it that had been silvered over, a book with a title in one of the southern tongues, maybe Klironomean but she had no way of knowing since the only word she could read said ''Jotun'' on the front, that sort of thing. She was certain that different items had been around the room earlier, but she couldn''t remember what any of them had been. Not that it was important at all, probably.


    "Druid Svaltha. You asked to speak with me once more."


    She steeled herself once more and spoke to the huge man, puffing herself up to look as confident as she could, no matter the fact that she''d hardly felt less confident in her life.


    "I did, Great Jaerl. I could think of no-one else to trust with this, and given the fact that your previous comments indicated that you knew my kind were up to something I figured you would be the most receptive ear to what I had to say."


    Dyfed looked at her, curious and yet strangely grim. It seemed the last few months had made him tired, but certainly far from weak.


    "I see. Well, let''s hear what you have to say in that case."


    "I''ve spoken to our god again, only far clearer than ever before. He told me much, and I need someone with both the will and the power to act on what he has said."


    Dyfed raised an eyebrow at her.


    "Many in your order speak to your god. Many more claim to have spoken to him for their own gain. Why should I trust what you have to say?"


    "Because..." She thought hard for a moment. Had she misjudged the situation? Would he not believe her after all? "Because the druids are wrong."


    There, she had said it. It almost hurt her to say, to have spent so long wishing to be on the winning side only to find out that in doing so you were to be responsible for catastrophe and then have to admit that out loud, but it needed to be said.


    Dyfed looked at her for a long moment as if trying to work out what exactly she was, who she was, his stare once more turning almost supernaturally inquisitive. When he did speak again his voice was measured and intent, and something in his tone told her that not only did he believe her, but she had his absolute and total attention.


    "You say you spoke to Krakevasil. All in your order speak to him, but you claim this to have been something different. He delivered a revelation or two to you, didn''t he?"


    She nodded at K?til''s father, the Great Jaerl staring at her almost as intently as he had back when they''d first spoken properly in what seemed at the time like the most terrifying conversation she''d had.


    Seeing her god so clearly had blown it out of the water since then.


    "Whilst I always have time for one who speaks to the Lord of Fresh Carrion, I am curious as to why you have come to me with this information. Aren''t little things like you supposed to go to your elders with information like this? Did you not think your actions would go unnoticed by your peers, or did you realise and simply not care?"


    "I did realise, mighty Jaerl, and whether I care or not is irrelevant. I spoke to our god, and he spoke back as clear as I''ve ever heard him. I saw him as well. With my own eyes, I swear to you that I saw him. The words he spoke to me... I couldn''t go to my peers, to my elders. He told me so many things. So many things in a voice like... in a voice like the eruption of a fire-mountain beneath glacial ice. All deep rumbling, so clear and yet obscured, so near and yet so distant. Ashen wings upon his back, tattered and torn like worn leather stretched too thinly over bone. Feathers that seemed to rot and malt even as I looked at them, falling as ash and snow. And his... and antlers that struck forth from his head, four of them, two more at his shoulders, twisting like the hands of a haunted oak, as though they were not antlers but grasping skeletal arms."


    She hadn''t been able to see him through the fog at the time, yet even as she spoke the words she knew they were true. Was her mind simply trying to fill in the blanks, or was her mental image of him something else? Was it truly the visage of a god? She certainly thought so, and damn anyone who said otherwise.


    She took a deep breath and forced her mind to surface again, stopping herself from getting too lost in thought. She had a message to relay, and her voice had taken on a hint of hysteria as she recounted his visage. That would not do.


    "They''d never believe me, I know it. That''s why I came to you."


    "Your words... your conviction tells me you truly believe all you say. Few have seen the Raven-God and lived to speak of it when they came to once more." The man rubbed his chin with his right hand. "Krakevasil doesn''t want you babbling to the other druids then, I take it?"


    Svaltha shook her head, which earned her an almost gleeful grin from the large man opposite. As quick as it appeared the grin went away, Dyfed visible working his face as he passed a hand over his features to put on a more professional guise once more.


    "Sorry, I shouldn''t take heart in personal petty victories when the stakes are so high. Carry on."


    Svaltha nodded and made to continue speaking, struggling to keep her voice from tightening as she remembered the events of that day.


    "He told me that we face the wrong foe, that the true enemy sails west. He told me that the plan of the druids was folly, and would lead to the end of us all. He told me their meddling must stop."


    Dyfed raised an eyebrow at her.


    "And what exactly were those plans that the druids had made?"


    She swallowed hard, instinct telling her to be quiet and reveal nothing. If she told him then she''d never climb the rungs of status amongst the order, but... but what? She was already betraying the order in their eyes, even if it had been the words of her god that had driven her so. Nothing she could say would convince any of them that she wasn''t lying, that she hadn''t just grown fond of her life at the Great Jaerl''s court. They''d carry on with their ambitious plans regardless, plans she once believed in wholeheartedly but had now come to see as folly, so would it really make a difference to her if the powers that be knew she''d betrayed their confidence?


    "The plans," she started with a final, shuddering exhale before she broke any chances of becoming an elder, "involved driving you and the Eyvindottir to a single, cataclysmic battle. A true fight to the end, with every combatant in all Scelopyrea involved. When the day was over the stragglers would have been killed by the Jomsravens. The hope was that the amount of blood spilled, the amount of fresh death in the fields, would see Krakevasil returned to us once more."


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    Dyfed nodded gravely, as if taking it all in. It was a good act, but she knew in that moment that he''d already known most of this already. She didn''t know how, but he knew. That means this must have been a test of loyalty for me then. A little opener to see if I would be willing to, if begrudgingly, dole out the secrets the orders have kept.


    What a pity it was that she now knew the plans to be useless so close to their fruition.


    "Well, thank you for letting me know about that. You needn''t worry about those plans from your superiors, however. It''s going to look like we''re playing along with it, but our friend in her own warcamp across the river and I have a little ''agreement''. You''ll not know what it is until it happens, but it will soundly destroy any hopes of a plan like the ones the druids wished to enact both in their own eyes and the eyes of every fighter on the field of battle. We can search for newer foes, just as you say our god told you to. We will march south and cross the Aenir, carving out new realms for our people there. I trust you understand that such wars will be greater for our god than any battle between our own kind up here?"


    "There is much blood amongst the southerners. Warm blood. A plentiful harvest. It is his will."


    Dyfed smiled at her.


    "Ah, you do understand. Excellent. If that is the case then I think you''ll find a lot less people watching you around my son. Do keep making him happy, won''t you?"


    She nodded, doing her best to take it all in. He seemed to have a solid enough plan to her, even if she was being left out of the finer details. That didn''t really bother her, truth be told; she''d spent most of her life amongst the druidic orders, so being left out when it came to important details was sort of par for the course in honesty. Not only that but it seemed that the Great Jaerl was... supportive? Of her and K?til? He was at least ambivalent, that much seemed certain, but she had no wish to start treading on the Great Jaerl''s toes at the moment. He might have started to trust her a little more as a result of this information, but she wasn''t going to assume that such trust would be permanent, or even particularly robust. She would be trusted only as long as she remained a useful plant in druidic circles.


    "And the druids? How can you be sure they won''t just start scheming again?"


    Dyfed grinned, but he had a far-off look in his eyes. He was either weighing options even as he spoke or thinking on a memory, she wasn''t sure which.


    "As for the druids... there are plans in place on that front. I will bring the druids to heel. So will she."


    "She? You mean-"


    "I do. Things were already in motion before you brought this to my attention, child, but your message has only served to reinforce my convictions. A fair few of the godtouched may need to be put to the sword for profaning the words of the Bloody One, and some new appointees will need to take their place. You seem good for the role."


    Just like that it felt as though her world was falling apart again.


    "Me? I don''t- mighty Jaerl, I haven''t the skills to stand atop the order! I''d be torn apart in days!"


    Dyfed shrugged, a grunt leaving his throat as he did so.


    "By your own tales you have been selected by Krakevasil in a way that few have. I am not stupid Svaltha, if I may call you by your name, for I know that the more ambitious of your brethren will not be swayed by righteousness and those values they swore to uphold. You know who it will be good enough for?"


    She shook her head a little, mind racing too fast to really slow down and try to consider an answer to his question at the moment.


    "The Jomsravens. I don''t know how they work out if your kind are telling the truth or not when it comes to the word of Krakevasil, but if they believe you then you''ll have nothing to fear. Well, so long as you keep a few of them in the room with you at all times. You''ve got an opportunity here, girl. You''re not profaning your oath either, since you''re not siding with me here. The Eyvindottir and I are in agreement on this matter. It is time the druids returned themselves to an advisory position, and stopped their plays for power. It is the right of rulers to rule; the faithful are simply there to uphold the faith. Do you understand what I am saying, child?"


    She did, vaguely. Very vaguely. She got the broad strokes of what he was saying, but at the moment she was simply too overwhelmed to really take everything in. Just a few minutes ago she thought she was throwing away any chance of a career, and now she was being told that there was a very real chance she would rise up the ranks astronomically fast because she''d actually tried to follow the word of her god?


    By the Raven-God, she needed to lie down for a bit.


    <hr>


    Despite her wishes, there hadn''t been any time for lying down. Well, not much anyway. She''d snatched an hour or two of rest after that meeting before mounting a fresh horse and beginning the ride back to K?til and her other friends on the frontlines. She didn''t know what this revelation meant for the skirmishes that ran the length of the... subcontinent? She''d heard that word used before for big regions of the world, but she wasn''t sure if it was right in this instance. The skirmishes ran the whole length of Scelopyrea, that much she was sure of. The only regions where the fighting seemed to have not yet reached were the northernmost regions of Scelopyrea, those perpetually frozen regions between the northern mountains and Isan''s Rock.


    Not that there was much worth fighting over up there anymore.


    Then again, it wasn''t like there was much worth fighting over anywhere in Scelopyrea. The only real cities that had ever sat in the region were either gutted and burned or rotten and crumbling, and neither of those cities had particularly been the envy of the world even at their heights. So that begged the question, what had driven the Great Jaerl and Valkyrie-Queen to war? Aside from the druids of course?


    Power. This war, and all the posturing and petty wars before them that had led up to it, was just a war for power. Power in its rawest and most undiluted form, power that came from oaths of loyalty and the words that men and women spoke. This wasn''t power from riches, nor even from strength of arms despite what one might think when looking at the battle lines.


    This was a war for power waged with the respect that each sides combatants had for their leaders. If one side lost the respect of their warriors then they would be impotent and useless, plain and simple.


    But given the hints that the Great Jaerl had dropped both in her most recent meeting and their previous one she knew that he had a plan of sorts, a plan that involved working with the Valkyrie-Queen instead of against her. Did the Valkyrie-Queen know? Was she going along with it just as he was? Maybe this plan was hers to begin with, and the Great-Jaerl was the one going along with it instead. She didn''t know, but what she was certain of was that it would be a death knell to the plans of her kindred.


    Which meant she had to ensure it went unimpeded.


    To let her kindred know of this decision would be akin to a self-levied death sentence in and of itself, so it was absolutely imperative that this all went under wraps. Fortunately she was still regarded as an important ''in'' on the son of the Great Jaerl, and given the ''uniqueness'' of her assignment she was still allowed a great deal more autonomy than most druids. Hell, she was actually a full blown druid now, not a novice, which meant that a goodly number of her peers weren''t even able to shadow her anyway. Things should be fine, and provided nothing much changed things would stay fine.  There was just one small problem.


    She really liked K?til.


    Now she knew that a statement like that was unnecessary, obvious even, but it still made her job both far easier and far more difficult. K?til liking her was a godsend, since he almost always defaulted to her advice when it came to anything that wasn''t directly connected to commanding his men. Her liking K?til back complicated things, not least because people were expecting the Great Jaerl to form a marriage alliance with one of many foreign realms using him as a bartering chip. Aside from that, she was a druid. Druids didn''t go in for this sort of thing. They lived to advise and to serve, to commune with their god and ensure that the rulers of the north held to his wishes. They did not start pining and lusting after the closest thing the north had to nobility. It didn''t matter that he was a good leader and fighter, it didn''t matter that he had a strangely endearing awkward manner when they were alone when his confidence was allowed to drop just a little, and it certainly didn''t matter that the two of them felt as though they''d been made for each other. It just wasn''t traditional.


    Further complicating matters was the fact that Krakevasil himself had told her to ensure that she and K?til would ''mate for life'' or something like that, and whilst she certainly found that to be a rather entertaining and enjoyable prospect there was still the fact that the rest of her order was unlikely to be quite as happy for her. Still, the relationship was exactly what she wanted, and she suspected he did as well. The two of them had spent most of the last few moons either fighting, fucking, or drinking, sometimes a combination of all of the above. She''d genuinely wondered one night if she''d already died in battle and had gone to some quiet corner of the Krakewald as her reward, that''s how happy she was at the endless bloodshed and drinking in their personal lives.


    Hey, the two of them knew what they both liked, what was so wrong with that?


    Ah well, she''d cross any bridges that she needed to in regards to their coupling when the time came. She was content to let it be for a little while longer for now. Who knew, maybe this plan that the Great Jaerl had might enable her to pursue this link a little tighter? For now though, she would wait.


    Svaltha had always been very good at waiting.


    So when she was stopped along the road back to the battle-lines she wasn''t too worried, nor was she impatient. She wanted to keep moving, yes, but she was fine to wait. Treating a stranger well was important; you never knew who they were, and so they might be rather important in your future. An old superstition, but all superstitions had to start from somewhere.


    "Ho, stranger! Any chance of directions?"


    The voice that stopped her was lively, almost jovial were it not for an undercurrent of something stiff and false that immediately raised her hackles for some reason she couldn''t understand.


    "Directions to where, stranger?"


    "Jotunheim," the voice called back, "the city of the giant folk."


    That gave her pause, just as his voice continued to grate on her mind. Krakevasil, but this man... she would not say he scared her, for he had done nothing to warrant scaring her, but something about him certainly alarmed her. His smile was a little too wide, his face slightly... off. Wrong. He didn''t look particularly bad, just... different. There was something about him that set alarm bells ringing in her head for no conceivable reason. She banished the feeling as best she could with a shudder and made to answer his question, which was odd by itself. Why would anyone want to go to a charred ruin in the north?


    "Head as far north as this trail will take you, ignoring any turnoffs. You''ll come to a fork about a hundred miles north of here; stick to the lefthand path and keep going. The trail will disappear abruptly, but follow its rough direction and sweep the snow off the ground if you want confirmation that you''re still on the trail; the ground is still scorched by dragonfire  for a league around the ruins."


    The man gave her a nod and a bow with rather exaggerated motions, but where with anyone else she might have thought they were just doing it as a display of friendly humour this felt more like someone... someone trying to act human. She shook herself again to banish such thoughts. God, K?til would laugh his ass off if he could hear her thoughts at the moment.


    "Well, that''s most helpful, stranger. My gratitude. Any other advice for a lonely traveller on the road?"


    She did her best to ignore how ''inhuman'' the man looked and instead focused on answering his question. Many things were real in this world, but this man opposite her was unmistakably a human, even if he didn''t ''feel'' like one.


    "Avoid the Isanar," she found herself saying, "the entire river and its banks are awash with blood. You don''t want to get caught up in that unless you''ve got a stomach for fighting."


    The man chuckled heartily at that, but if anything the action made her feel more uneasy about remaining here.


    "I''ve got more of a stomach for blood than most, girl, but I''ll heed your advice all the same. No point getting distracted when I''ve business to attend to. Give my nephew my regards, won''t you?"


    Svaltha made to tell the man that she didn''t know who the hell he was, so how the hell would she know who his nephew was, but when she blinked he was already gone. For a moment there was the faint sound of a cloak flapping in the wind, but then that too was gone. Fuck, he was certainly quicker than he looked.


    "Huh. What a weirdo."


    She still couldn''t keep herself from shuddering when thinking of that truly odd man, but oh well. Maybe the shivering was unrelated? It was a little colder than it normally was this time of year after all, not that she''d noticed before now with the constant fighting and the ''warm bed'', so to speak.


    Either way, it was probably nothing.

 K?til V: The Meadows Afire

    <u>K?til V: The Meadows Afire</u>


    <u>The Eighth Day of the Eighth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Dyfed''s Warcamp, The Isanford, Scelopyrea.</u>


    "Getting slower, boss!"


    Syren grinned at him from across the little patch at the camp that he''d claimed as his own. Currently it was being used as a sparring ground, for the skirmishes of the last few weeks had subsided and he''d grown bored of waiting around to fight again. Sparring wasn''t quite the same as a proper fight, but using south-coast rules it was about as close as you could get.


    "He''s getting rusty."


    The cocky yet completely exhausted voice of Krai called out from K?til''s side in response to Syren''s needling, his two friends wearing equally smarmy grins on their faces.


    "Very funny boys. I don''t see you volunteering to fight out resident invincible man, Syren?"


    Krai snorted to his left and Syren rolled his eyes in an exaggerated manner.


    "That''s cause Krai never runs out of fucking energy or luck. He might look like he''s about to keel over and die next to you, but I guarantee that if you ready yourself for another round he''ll somehow be as ready as ever. The man''s a fucking animal I tell you."


    "You''re damn fucking right I am! Nothing on this planet ''ll kill me, just you wait and see. I''m gonna live for fucking ever!"


    Syren and K?til locked eyes with each other, conveying ''this fucking guy'' in a silent message. Krai was fucking great to be around, especially when nerves were as high as they were at the moment. Even K?til wasn''t ashamed to admit to being anxious for the coming weeks. The skirmishes along the river had mostly died down and warriors from both armies were making their way to this one point; it was the longest ford in the river, no to mention one of the shallowest. Most of the year the flatlands surrounding it would be flooded, rendering the passage untenable, but for a few short months every year the Isanford was a godsend for the inland traders and military forces of the northern folk.


    Any amount of heavy rain could turn this field into a watery mass-grave, but for now it would suffice as the field of battle for the greatest confrontation the north had seen since the southern folk invaded under their warrior-king Godwyn a thousand years ago. The Great Jaerl, his father, was finally going to face off against the Valkyrie-Queen of the eastern Scelopyrene. The clash that everyone in the north had been waiting nearly a decade to see was finally coming to pass. The Isanar, having spent the last few moons choked with the dead and the dying, would finally see one last effort by the men and women of the north to see who truly deserved to rule this land.


    K?til had little doubts that it would be his father who won the day.


    Yes, the forces were relatively even in composition and size. Yes, father and the Eyvindottir were each other''s equal. Yes, the terrain was flat and empty and not at all conductive to innovative tactics or finely-planned ambushes. None of that mattered. The Great Jaerl was his father, and his father was the greatest man the north had ever seen. His father would carry the day here, he had to, and K?til would do anything he could to help make such a thing happen. K?til himself was blessed by Krakevasil a thousandfold more than any man in the forces that opposed his father, the runes that now littered his chest in a thousand small strokes and scars could attest to that. He still had his little amber talisman as well, for it couldn''t hurt to keep a hold of any blessing that his god saw fit to bestow upon him, could it?


    The warcamp was truly huge. His father had not only called all his forces down to this field some twenty miles north of the ruined city of Murkmire, but had also uprooted his warcamp and brought the non-combatants here as well. There were more fighters than K?til had ever seen in one place here, with thousands of animal-hide tents and dug-outs before the flats by the river. Further back by the treeline he knew that a makeshift stable had gone up in a number of hollows in large trees and small caves where steeds could be tethered and kept safe from the elements, and a few small pens had been erected in which war-dogs could be housed. They weren''t as well-bred as the Brythonian wildhounds from Aurinsay, mostly being mongrels with a few drops of either wildhound or wolf blood running through their veins, but they were about as good as Scelopyrea could offer.


    Looking over all of this K?til couldn''t help but liken the warcamp to a mobile city. It might not have looked it, but there was an order to how everything had been placed, for it wasn''t just a giant sprawl. There were cooks and blacksmiths amongst the tens of thousands of men out there, as well as thralls, wives, children, families, animal herds, healers, brewers; if it existed in the north, it could be found in this camp. At the centre was what father had called his ''administrative centre''. It was a collection of tents that had been obviously made to a higher quality than most, not to mention the fact that they were a hell of a lot bigger. His father''s feasting tent took centre place, but around it were a great many other important lodes; war-rooms, personal tents for father himself and his inner circle, tents for druidic liaisons, etcetera. It was there that the business of war and strategy was discussed, but also matters of statecraft and other southern concepts that had crept their way north in the reign of father''s father. He''d never had the chance to meet Ost?in, but by all accounts the man should have been the one to unify Scelopyrea. It had been tragic that he had died like he had, more so that he''d left father to pick up the pieces and unify the region himself, but K?til couldn''t really complain; if father hadn''t been the one to start unifying the north then K?til wouldn''t have had the chance to go and search for glory in battle up here.


    It was strange to think that so much of Scelopyrea was concentrated on this field at the moment. It was even stranger to think that just across the ford a second warcamp of a similar, perhaps even larger, size existed. There were bloody totems and grim effigies scattered around the camp, some with druids sacrificing thralls or unlucky prisoners to Krakevasil so that he might bless them in battle. Bloody fools, K?til thought to himself. Why would the Raven-God care for the blood of a half-dozen slaves when maybe a score of thousands will fall in the coming nights?


    More and more of their forces came in daily from along the river. There was still fighting going on in some places, mainly in the ruins of Murkmire, but even there it had mostly died down. This was to be the calm before the storm, the waters receding before the tidal wave hit, and all knew it. People mustered their strength and trained till they dropped hoping for an edge in the coming fighting, others took this time to relax and enjoy themselves given that they might be dead soon, and others still tended to the wounded so that they might be well enough to stand in line with spear in hand come the dawn of the battle. Not that anyone knew exactly when the battle would be, save his father and the Eyvindottir of course, but it had to be soon. It just had to be. No-one wanted to fight a battle when autumn rolled around with its storms and winds. More men would die to the elements than to fighting, especially when supplies started to run thin. So many men could only be mustered together for so long up here, after all. The men of the south might be able to keep huge armies mustered together for years at a time if needs be, but even they with their fertile and verdant land would find themselves short on food after a few missed harvests. Up here? This many men could stand together in one group for maybe six moons before food grew scarce, maybe eight moons if the men could be stopped from wasting any and twelve if the dogs and horses were used as extra supplies.


    His point was that, just from a logistical standpoint, the battle had to be soon.


    "K?til? Earth to K?til, you there?"


    He blinked a few times, realising that his mind had run away from him, and smiled sheepishly.


    "Sorry, I got lost in thought for a moment. I''ve never seen a warcamp as big as this before."


    Syren smiled wryly, nodding his agreement.


    "I know. Can you believe that the southerners have cities of brick and stone ten times the size of this? It beggars belief."


    "We''ll have them soon enough," Krai cut in, "ain''t that right boss? First the Eyvindottir, then the south. We''ll have them for our own."


    Something passed over Syren''s face at Krai''s words, but before K?til could comment on it the look was gone. Probably just a trick of the light.


    "We will. It''s our due, after all."


    Syren stopped and sniffed the air, prompting K?til to do the same. Smoke. His stomach gurgled a little, causing him to look at his companions with an amused smile.


    "Ah, the time must have slipped away from us. Must be about time for an evening meal, I think."


    "Sounds good to me, boss. What we fancying?"


    That was a good question. A by-product of the warcamp being more like a mobile city was that there was just about every sort of food he could imagine within its confines. There was of course a variety of stews made from root vegetables and once-cooked meat, steaks and cuts of venison and goat, and for the more well-to-do parts of Scelopyrene society like himself there were even pies containing half a dozen types of game in a rich gravy. To go with it there were cheeses in a variety of colours and from a variety of different milks; there was cheese made from cow''s milk, goat''s milk, and even mare''s milk amongst the camp. There was fish, vegetables, fowl, mutton, game, and even a few types of food from the south that K?til had never even heard of before the camp had convened.


    "What about that orange and honey fish? That was fucking good last time."


    Syren bobbed his head a little as if to say ''maybe'' before adding in his own opinion.


    "There''s a woman up in the north section of the camp that does good root mash with boar and apple sausages and a beef gravy. That''s gotta be worth a try, surely?"


    Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    K?til snorted. The three of them were stood here after having spent probably six hours sparring, they were all exhausted, their anxieties were still building in anticipation for the battle to come, and here they were discussing food. Moments of calm like this were nice, but by the Raven-God did it feel odd at the moment.


    "I''ve got an idea. There''s a huscarl by the east of the camp, a little area near the river. He''s got a couple of thralls from Tildan, you know, the southern peninsula. They make a thin bread with a white sauce made from garlic and cream, as well as a few other things, then put cow or goat''s cheese on it and bake it over a fire on a flat iron. You can have whatever you want on it, for a price of course. If neither of you have had one of them before you''ve gotta try one; it''s the food of all the gods I tell you."


    Syren raised an eyebrow and Krai nodded.


    "I know exactly the place you''re on about, boss-man. Syren, if you''ve not had one we need to go there tonight. Trust me, you''ll fucking love it."


    Syren, outvoted, shrugged while smiling.


    "Well, if you two say so then I''ve gotta see what the fuss is about. Sure, lets get that for an evening meal. I could eat something a little different to normal I guess."


    "Then it''s settled. Come on, I know the way."


    The three of them made sure they had a couple of coppers each and began walking down the hill which housed the more privileged sections of the camp and made to head towards the riverbank. After a few minutes of silence Krai, seemingly bored, poked him in the side.


    "So, how long till that girl of yours gets back? She took off almost as soon as she got here, something about being summoned by her elders, wasn''t it?"


    K?til cuffed Krai round the back of the head as Syren tried and failed to mask a snort of laughter behind a cough.


    "Don''t call her that so loud, you little shit. And yes, Druid Svaltha is meeting with her elders. She''ll be back soon."


    Krai rolled his eyes, focusing far more on the first part of his words rather than the second.


    "Come on boss, the two of you ain''t exactly discreet. Here, Syren, you were in a different skirmishing camp than us, weren''t you?"


    "Yeah," began the reply from his alleged friend, "I was about eight miles south of you."


    "More''s the pity for you then; you could probably still hear the two of them rutting like dogs from your station."


    Syren let out an exaggerated noise of understanding.


    "Oh, so that''s what I was hearing most nights! I thought there was a dying Boarsow the next valley over."


    K?til turned away, running a hand over his face with the vain hope that it might hide some of the red on his cheeks.


    "A pair of bellends, the both of you."


    Krai clapped him on the shoulder while Syren grinned.


    "Nah, we''re glad for you, honest! She''s good for you."


    Syren snorted again.


    "Yeah, and she''s certainly good at putting you in your place when it''s needed. It''s been a nice change, watching you get knocked down just as often as the rest of us."


    "Syren, I cannot stress this enough, you''re a twat sometimes. You do get that, right?"


    His friend turned around and grinned at him while walking backwards.


    "You fucking know- oh, shit-"


    K?til burst out laughing as his friend, still walking backwards, tripped on what looked like a dead tree root and tumbled down the hill. It wasn''t too steep unfortunately, but K?til would take what he could get.


    "Come on you little shit, get up."


    Walking down to his friend K?til held out an arm, Krai doing the same on the opposite side, and Syren used them to pull himself back up. K?til and Krai dusted him off a little, but the fall seemed to have done little more than dirty his hands.


    "That''s what you get for arrogance."


    Syren rolled his eyes, still smiling.


    "Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the lift up."


    K?til smiled.


    "No problem. You''ll probably wanna wash your hands off in the river before eating, unless you want the shits tomorrow. No idea what''s been going round here."


    Krai grunted what was probably supposed to be a noise of agreement, but otherwise stayed quiet. Now that they''d collected Syren from off the floor they got back onto the actual path, which was little more than a muddy trail with regular wooden planks laid over the top of the ground to provide a solid surface to walk on. Some of the areas of the camp had taken to laying wood shavings and chippings over the ground for the same affect, if a little more time consuming in terms of preparation. K?til didn''t really care for the ground being solid or not, but not having mud suck off his boots every few steps was admittedly quite nice. Maybe it wouldn''t be too bad after all if this calm lasted a little while longer?


    <hr>


    "What do you think will happen?"


    K?til looked over at Syren. The three of them had gotten their food and washed it down with some small beer, and were now sat around a smouldering firepit in a tentative silence.


    Well, they had been anyway.


    "What do you mean?"


    "He means do you think we''ll all survive. Do you think we''ll come out of the other side in one piece?"


    K?til did his best to give an easy grin to his friends. He''d been worrying about the same thing recently, to be honest.


    "You''ll be fine, Krai. Like you said, there''s nothing in the north that can kill you."


    His friend slowly dragged his eyes from the embers in the firepit and turned to face him with a wry smile on his face.


    "Everyone runs out of luck one day, boss. Even me. This''ll be the largest battle in... maybe ever in Scelopyrea. If ever my luck was to run out, it would surely be here."


    "Of all the times to die, Krai, there could be none greater for a warrior. If you cannot escape thoughts of your death, at least take some solace in that. The three of us will be alongside one another on the field; I''ve specifically requested it of my father. We''ll watch each-other''s backs and come out alive."


    Or at least we''ll die together. He didn''t voice those words, but he knew that his friends had thought them as well. They were men grown, and had been for some years now, but this was something beyond any of them. This was beyond any man of the north full-stop.


    Krai nodded slowly, as if genuinely considering what had been said.


    "I guess that''s not too bad. Yeah; there''s plenty fights worse to die in than the greatest battle the north has known. Thanks, boss."


    "Don''t sweat it. We''re friends, that''s what we''re supposed to do for each other."


    Syren smiled a little at him.


    "And ain''t that the truth. I hope I make it out with you both, but if I don''t please know that serving in your huscarl band, K?til, and alongside you as well Krai, is all I could have asked for. Here, a toast to us! To the best fucking warband the north has ever seen, and to surviving this fucking great battle!"


    K?til and Krai roared out a cheer, lifting their own tankards high before drinking deeply. The three of them were still young, true, but they were all damn good at what they did. K?til felt confident that, out of everyone who stepped out onto the battlefield whenever it commenced, they would all come out alive. They had to. He wasn''t going to let them die and get away from him that easily, after all.


    "Here, you two ''ll be made huscarl chieftains by the end of it. That''ll be a fucking sight, and no mistake."


    "If it''s all the same to you boss, I''d rather just stick as a huscarl. Leading ain''t my strong suit."


    K?til raised an eyebrow at his friend.


    "You sure, Krai?"


    The man nodded, smiling widely.


    "All that thinking stuff is for you two. You know, tactics and strategies and the like. I''d rather stay at your backs and keep to the killing, if it''s all the same to you."


    Syren snorted.


    "Well I''m certainly not going to turn down a step-up, though I''d be lying if I said I didn''t agree with you a just little bit, Krai. Fighting''s the most fun part about being a warrior, not planning and scouting and making sure your men dig latrine pits far enough away from wherever you''re getting your water from. That''s all boring."


    K?til nodded in mock consideration.


    "Ah well Syren, if you don''t want the promotion either-"


    "Oi, I never said that, back off! I''ve earned this promotion!"


    K?til snorted.


    "You haven''t got it yet, Syren."


    "Well, I''ve had to put up with you for this long, so I''d say that''s already earned me a new title in advance."


    Krai broke in.


    "What about ''Arse-Kisser''?"


    Syren turned to the third member of their little band, mock fury across his face.


    "Shut your fucking mouth, you invincible coil of shit."


    The three of them all but broke down laughing after that, just happy to be enjoying each other''s company for a little while. Below them, down on the flats below the hill they were atop, the warcamp bustled with the noises of slowly winding-down evening life. In a few hours the only people awake would be the sentries and those thralls given menial tasks that would carry them through the night, and for the most part the north would be silent. It was a strange feeling, staying in a place like this. He wasn''t sure if he liked it or not. He loved staying out in the wilderness, being close to nature, to the wild, but he''d be lying if he said that the convenience of having any service he could want within walking distance wasn''t appealing. In one afternoon he could get his sword repaired at a weaponsmith, see an armourer about checking his mail over, and visit a war-carpenter to inquire about a new shield. All of that wouldn''t even take him an hour, meaning he''d still be able to go and look through the rest of the ramshackle marketplace and see if there was anything else that took his fancy; jewellery, trinkets, talismans, there was everything down there. Small wonder the southerners liked their cities of stone so much.


    Soon enough more men and women would arrive at this camp, swelling it to even greater proportions. Such a thing would have seemed impossible to him only a few short years ago, and yet now he was certain that this sort of thing had its place in the world. It wasn''t that the cities of the southerners had made them soft, it was their godless societies that had led them astray. He''d heard some of the warriors up and down the camp saying something about tearing the cities of the south down and camping in the ruins, but now that seemed a rather foolish idea. Why not just kill the leaders of the southerners and take their people in thrall, allowing true warriors to live in the cities and palaces of that rich and verdant land without opposition? There would be none of the petty intrigues and squabbles that proliferated the world of the southern fools, only good men with good, stout hearts, who knew their places in life and were content to support the northern way of things. It was, after all, the right way of things.


    Maybe it would be good to start looking into the way the southerners ran things. If the rest of their ideas had as much merit as their cities then there surely had to be some worth in looking into them at least? Father probably knows a lot about this sort of thing, K?til thought to himself. He''s always had an interest in foreign ways, in the ideas they live by. The only foreign ways K?til had ever bothered to look into were those of the Skonisnomas to the east, since he''d spent a few springs and summers with some distant cousins across the northern Archic mountains in those verdant, ruin-dotted plains. That was where he''d learned a few of their fighting techniques; he couldn''t stomach archery, for it was a coward''s profession, but he could certainly see some merit in their lightly-armoured, lightening-fast raiders. Their heavy lancers as well, for that matter. Still, they weren''t southerners. They had no cities, no real unifying force or written law. Their civilisation, much like the Scelopyrene, revolved around raiding whoever you could and keeping honour in the deals you made.


    Still, off all the things the Scelopyrene needed to be taught, companionship and comradery was not amongst their number. The brothers he had by his side were living proof of that. Krai was as stalwart and enduring as any mountain, and equally unmovable; K?til knew that if any man saw fit to try and kill him Krai would be the first man to stand in the way of the falling blow. He was a warrior, as enduring as any from legend. Then there was Syren, and what more needed to be said on that front? Syren was quick, both with his mind and on his feet, with a sense of genuine loyalty so rare in those K?til had been forced to interact with alongside his father that it still sometimes took him aback. If Krai was the mountain then Syren was the personification of the trailing wagons that followed in the wake of marching boots on campaign; he seemed odd at a glance, almost superfluous and unnecessary, but Krakevasil save the man who ignored the grinding cogs of planning and supply that kept an army moving. He may have seemed odd or out of place, but he was fucking vital to all that K?til did.


    It was good to have friends such as these, and though anxious the future may have made them K?til knew that not one of them would ever flinch from their destiny. They were northmen, straight and true, and when the Rook came for them they would spit in his face and walk backwards towards the Raven, just as their ancestors had so long ago. Death would not hold their spirits, only war would ever bear that privilege, and with that knowledge he was content that these were the friends besides which he cared not if he died, only that they lived, for he knew that they would think the same.

 Lykourgos VIII: Two Bastards Crowns

    <u>Lykourgos VIII: Two Bastard''s Crowns</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Eighth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    The capital of Owkrestos had fallen with surprisingly little fanfare.


    The city was old and venerable, but it was little more than a shell of what it used to be. Symon, having both taken the city before and arrived at the warcamp on horseback with a few dozen of his best men only a few days ago, had led the assault to take it again. According to him there had been guards on the old routes he and a few of his men had used to sneak into the city a few years ago, but in his own words he''d "Improvised a way for the lads to get through", and that had been that. Lykourgos didn''t know what exactly it was that Symon had done to get his men into the city, but whatever it was it had been damn effective.


    Well, he said it had been effective. With how few men were in the city to stop him Lykourgos wasn''t really sure if he''d have needed to do anything at all. The walls had been sparsely guarded, and according to some Owkrestan deserters the streets beyond were barely patrolled. Stagspring was his, but the once great city was still gutted from the last time it was stormed by the Starlings a few years ago. With Symon at the walls again it was child''s play to get inside since he''d already done it before, only this side they were fighting against King Aleksandar and not for him, not to mention the fact that the garrison was still a paltry and undermanned thing.


    It hadn''t taken long for Stagspring to fall, and with the fall of Stagspring the only fortified location that could be any real impediment to his efforts was that of Blacktree Hall, the home of house Blackoak. It felt strange to Lykourgos that the man who''d started this war was still fighting from within the confines of his castle, but the king he had sought to depose once all was said and done was already gone. What few men remained had put up some admittedly stiff resistance in the face of overwhelming odds, but with the Owkrestan nobles taking their retinues and men to their home castles in order to prepare for his coming there was nothing the beleaguered garrison could do to stop his forces. Not for long anyway, for Symon and one of the younger Lieutenants had come up with a plan.


    There had been an exposed sewer grate large enough for four men to walk through side-by-side near the city, though any attempts to cut through or batter down the grate had been fruitless. Well, until the young Lieutenant had gotten an idea.


    A pair of scorpions with small winches had been hastily assembled and lined up some forty paces from the grate. A pair of siege-hooks attached to lengths of rope had been modified to be released from the small artillery pieces, and then they were loosed into the sewer. When they were winched back they pulled tight against the grate, and though it held firm the winches had been good and strong. The second there was a bit of give from around the edges of the grate men with strong chisels and good workman''s hammers began to chip around the loosening parts of the grate, and within two hours the work was done.


    The Owkrestans didn''t let this go unchallenged, to their credit. Repeatedly Owkrestan skirmishers let loose with shortbows whilst the men with chisels and hammers worked, but casualties had been relatively light.


    If Lykourgos had been in command of them he''d have ordered the skirmishers to cover a few men with bills or billhooks, who would cut through the rope attached to the hooks and release the pressure from the grate for a time. But then if he''d actually known about what this Lieutenant was planning he would have ordered them to substitute the rope for a length of chain, so he supposed that really there were things that could have been done better on both sides of that small skirmish.


    When the thousand under this Lieutenant, who Lykourgos was admittedly looking forwards to rewarding given their ingenuity, got into the sewers alongside the Starlings they were set upon by Owkrestan guards and armsmen, and in the darkness with their backs to the light the going was very tough for his men. Still, despite the casualties they took they''d pushed through the sewers and then, under the command of the Starlings amongst their number who knew the city well, regained their whereabouts and made for the gatehouses along the city to let their comrades waiting beyond the walls into the city.


    A few hours later and the battle was won.


    There hadn''t been any grand procession, no glorious march to herald his victory this day. Instead he''d simply taken a brisk walk through the already ruined streets of Stagspring. He was attended by nearly a full score of guards including both Eros and Dreamwulf, for he wasn''t going to tempt fate that brazenly, and the whole time he was walking all he could hear were the sounds of his men singing and celebrating their victory here.


    "Blow the trumpet on Mount Aeyli,


    for the Kings are all brought down,


    who once ruled with peace and iron,


    and wore their fortunes on their crowns!"


    He couldn''t help but grimace a little as they sang their songs. He knew that his complete and total victory was all but assured, but there was still a sense of emptiness rather than fulfilment. Until the war was completely over he couldn''t afford to feel elated or jubilant. In taking Stagspring he''d done what no-one born outside of Owkrestos had managed in centuries, unless one counted Symon''s Starlings, but it wasn''t satisfying. There hadn''t been any real struggle, no real risk, not since the armies of house Blackoak had been scattered like chaff on the wind. That had deprived Owkrestos of half of all its fighting men, including most of its best, and as such the Teleytaian armies hadn''t encountered a single unified force since entering these lands.


    And yet all the same he couldn''t bring himself to feel accomplished.


    Not in a self-deprecating way, but more because of a niggling sense of anxiety that had lodged itself in his mind like a burr. He''d been prideful after the succession crisis, and that hadn''t gone well.


    No, he''d much rather wait until all of this was finished with before he began to celebrate. It would be safer that way. Besides, there was still much work to do at the moment. Much, much work. The first thing he needed to do was... well, was to talk with the young King Aleksandar. Apparently the boy hadn''t left his chambers in days, at least since Lykourgos'' banners had come into view from the city.


    He snaked his way through the halls of the Huntsfort, the walls strangely barren and austere for a castle built at the heart of a city of silver. His bodyguards gradually peeled off as he approached the room he''d been told to look in for the boy, and the singing of his men continued unabated outside.


    "Ere''s garments were rejected,


    and they''ll find them nevermore;


    Erevan is fallen, is fallen, is fallen,


    Erevan is fallen to rise no more!


    Erevan is fallen, is fallen, is fallen,


    Erevan is fallen to rise no more!"


    The word he''d heard from servants about the castle was a little concerning. The boy had been rejecting his meals, claiming that he hadn''t the appetite for food anymore. It might have been something to mention at some point, when all of this was finished with.


    Lykourgos had walked into the young former King''s chambers, and found him staring impassively out of a window overlooking the surrounding area.


    "I came to find you when all was said and done," he''d started, "but you weren''t in the royal chambers."


    That had earned them a small shrug from the boy in front of him.


    "I never liked how big my father''s room was. It all seemed far too much for a child such as myself to look after."


    He''d stayed silent for a moment, knowing that the boy wasn''t just talking about the bedroom.


    "It''s over, then?" The child had asked.


    Lykourgos had nodded, waited until he was invited to sit, then sat down next to the King. Angels above, he remembered thinking at the time, he''s barely older than Ilias.


    "It is."


    "Did I do well?"


    "As well as could have been expected, considering your strength was gutted by Lord Blackoak''s invasion shortly after your own civil war ended."


    Now they were in the present as the young royal nodded, but Lykourgos couldn''t tell if he''d heard him or not. There had been a deep sadness in the child''s voice when he next spoke, sadness tempered by resignation, as though he''d always known his fate in life was to simply be overthrown at some point.


    "As was yours. That doesn''t seem to have stopped you."


    Lykourgos shrugged, unsure if the child was able to see just how different their situations had been.


    "Teleytaios was left stronger by her internal struggles. Owkrestos was not. That''s the main difference between our two kingdoms."


    "I was a puppet. There was nothing I could have done, save what I offered you. If you''d have accepted I''d have been indebted to you for the rest of my life."


    He nodded sombrely at the child. He''d had those same thoughts when they''d first spoken outside Copseshield.


    "I know. The offer you made was one of the best ones you could have, and I''ll not fault you for that. If my victory over house Blackoak had been less total then I''d probably have accepted, or at least negotiated further. As it stands the factors were outside your control. You did what you could."


    The young king opened his mouth to speak, but he seemingly cut himself off by clutching at his stomach as it gurgled. Ah, so it seems the rumours were true. He has secluded himself here.


    "You''re looking a little thin, your Grace. I''ll send for some food to be brought here."


    He made to stand so that he could act on his words, but the young king''s arm shot out and grabbed the sleeve of his shirt, shaking his head.


    "I haven''t much of an appetite at the moment. The churning in my gut makes the thought of eating repulsive."


    Lykourgos hesitated for a moment before sitting down again. Better to wait a little longer before broaching that issue again. The deposed king may have been his enemy in the war that had all but ended, but he had no reason to just let the boy starve himself.


    "If you say so." Lykourgos took his seat once more, drumming the fingers of one hand on the windowsill. "Are you certain you''re alright?"


    "What difference does it make to you?" The child spoke back, no anger in his voice but certainly a level of resentment. "I rejected your offer. I''m to die soon anyway, aren''t I?"


    "Of course not. You''ve done nothing to deserve death. Besides, we''re distant cousins."


    "Through a woman who died before I was born and, as far as I''m aware, never once met you either."


    He nodded to concede the point. Aleksandar here was far too young to have met his great-aunt, and seeing as she''d never wished to meet Lykourgos, her own grandson, as a babe due to his bastardry, it was likely she''d never have wished to meet this bastard royal either.


    "Blood joins us all the same. We''re family, if distant."


    The boy huffed out a silent laugh. Lykourgos didn''t blame him; his words felt weak at best.


    "You know, I grew up on the songs and stories of my people''s past." The child had begun, not once looking away from the window. "We were never like the other six kingdoms in the heptarchy; the blood of the Skraelings flows strong here, and in some places it never truly went away. Songs of the Great Hunter and the White Stag, of the Mist-Kings who reigned over fog and night. Songs of Cromdaw''s Rebellion and the Last Stand of the Wild-Kings of Dampstone, and of course my favourite, Derry''s Ten."


    This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Lykourgos had just nodded, uncertain how best to respond. After a few minutes the young boy had spoken again, but now his voice was cracking and he was threatening to lose composure.


    "I always dreamed that one day they''d sing songs about me as well. I guess I''ve got my wish now; I''ll be immortalised as the King who lost Owkrestos. All Hail!"


    He gestured wildly with his arms in what Lykourgos surmised to be a mockery of a salute.


    "Aleksandar," he started softly, "you did what you could. Your men, despite being vastly outnumbered, put up a stiffer resistance than most have on this campaign. You''ve done well. Your people will remember you as a king who went down fighting, but it doesn''t have to end there. You turned down my offer before, yes, but I''m putting it forwards again. Perhaps you''ll not be a member of the inner council, but I want someone who knows Owkrestos to help me make sure I don''t disrespect the cultures present here. You can still fight for the rights of your people, but with words instead of steel. Your people are my people now, and I never want to harm my people. I''m not a tyrant, Aleksandar. I''m just a bastard, the same as you."


    The child turned to look at him, a smile on his face that, whilst still so very tired, was not quite as bitter or resentful as the ones that had come before.


    "If you say so. There''s not much of a choice for me in this either way, is there? If you promise to keep the rights and customs of my... I guess they aren''t my people anymore... if you promise to keep the rights and customs of your new people without impediment then... then you''ll have my formal letter of surrender on your desk within the hour. Just... be kind to my people, please."


    Lykourgos nodded solemnly.


    "Of course. No good king should harm their subjects."


    With that the child turned to stare out of the window once more, and by the end of the day the war would legally be over. It would just be a collection of motley nobles and upstart town gentlemen looking for autonomy to contend with now.


    "Ilias," he called to his servant, who had been patiently waiting outside King Aleksandar''s chambers this whole time, "find some food for our friend in there, won''t you? Something light, preferably. He hasn''t been eating these last few days."


    Ilias shot a worried look at the closed door, then wordlessly nodded and scurried off. Ah, he thought to himself, of course Ilias doesn''t want anyone to starve. He knows hunger far too well already.


    If Lykourgos had his way no-one would need to go hungry again.


    <hr>


    Angels, but the tide of paperwork never ended.


    He was lucky in a way; Lord Brathaxe had drilled the fact that paperwork was most of a ruler''s lot very early in his life, so he at least had experience with things like this. He''d sent for a report on the state of the Owkrestan treasury, including the treasuries of the various lords around the kingdom, but that would take a few hours to arrive yet. He needed that to look though what sort of financial gains he could expect from his new lands, as well as just what each of them made. He had little doubt that, amongst the new lands that were to be his, there would be a great many regions filled with orchards, grain fields, clothiers, vineyards, and perhaps even a few more specialised industries besides. As well as that he knew that Stagspring sat on a vein of silver, and that there was a smaller seam of gold near the Owkrestan border with Triarios on the far side of the kingdom. Even if nothing else came to fruition then at least the two of them would be welcome additions to the Teleytaian economy.


    Many of the mountains and hills that made up the highlands between Teleytaios and Owkrestos hadn''t ever seen a prospector, since the region was plagued by border skirmishes and was generally seen as a backwater with little worth looking into. Now that the skirmishes were set to be ended permanently maybe it was time for some new mining expeditions to be sent forth?


    Of course, first and foremost he needed to see to his military supplies. His men weren''t at risk of running low on food at the moment, so there was no need to worry on that front, but there were other concerns. Arrows were one of them; seeing as his forces had been travelling without a baggage train there hadn''t been any camp attendants and servants to hand. That meant no fletchers. On campaign, arrows were traditionally bulk-packed in barrels and transported in wagons. Longbowmen might be issued with three sheaves of 24 arrows each to carry into combat, and if the battle seemed as though it would be particularly lengthy or intense then runners could always be sent to bring up the reserves of arrows from the wagons. That system worked fine enough, but Lykourgos hadn''t been allowing his supply train to keep up with him. There were plenty of arrows stockpiled here in Stagspring, and while they would do fine in a pinch they were all broadhead arrows, not the bodkin points that were preferred by his forces. Not only that, but the broadhead arrows here were almost all made from wrought iron, not steel. He''d have to slow down a little, perhaps waiting a moon for his supply lines to stabilise themselves before the war continued if he wanted to replenish the quality ammunition available to his forces. On the other hand, there weren''t exactly many men in heavy armour in Owkrestos, especially not anymore. It couldn''t hurt too badly to keep going, not now that the war was winding down into its final months.


    Aside from arrows there were of course other supplies to consider; whetstones for blades, oils to keep armour clean, leather for stitching up broken backpacks and the like, etcetera. He''d hardly gotten through the logistics report from one of his Lieutenants stating that the poor material some of the men''s tunics were made from had caused unexpected levels of wear, and that replacements were thusly needed, before another stack of papers found their way to his desk.


    "Apologies, your Grace," an Owkrestan clerk nervously stated as they clutched their hat in their hands before their chest, "the document is extremely lengthy, but you asked for the last five years of tithe and taxation reports, as well as the harvests, from across Owkrestos. We''ve tried to keep the document as concise and succinct as possible, but-"


    Lykourgos held up his left hand, finishing a note he was making with his right. For a few seconds the sounds of a quill scratching against paper could be heard over the silence, then he set down his writing utensil and turned to face the anxious clerk with a small smile on his face.


    "That''s quite all right, thank you. Please set it down besides the pile dedicated to forestry and royal hunting grounds, then leave myself and my retinue be."


    The clerk nodded and moved the pile from where he had initially set it down to a new location on the table.


    "Of course, your Grace. Honoured to serve."


    With that the very nervous clerk moved out of the room, and Lykourgos tried to stifle a chuckle. It made sense they were afraid of him, since they had no idea what he was like yet, but when they heard that most of them would be keeping their jobs and positions they''d probably warm up to him a little more.


    No nobles though. Especially not Blackoaks. He had no intention of repeating the mistakes of his forbearers by trusting either of those groups again.


    As the clerk walked out Ilias walked in, a small letter in his hand with a wax seal on the envelope. A royal wax seal. The seal of the king of Owkrestos. Lykourgos smiled sadly.


    "It is done?"


    Ilias nodded whilst smiling back, though his smile was far happier.


    "Yep. I got him some food like you requested, then stayed to make sure he ate some of it at least. After that he asked me to stay since he was nearly done with his letter, and then told me to take it straight to you."


    The cupbearer''s looked a little confused as to exactly why he''d needed to take this letter here, but he was still cheerful.


    "What exactly is this letter, anyway?"


    "This," Lykourgos replied, gently setting the letter on his desk without opening it, "is a letter of complete and total surrender from the former King Aleksandar Wyldlarch to me. As of him writing this letter he is the King of Owkrestos no longer. I am."


    The letter rested gently atop a stack of papers, and he had to fight down the temptation to break the seal and check the contents of the letter, for it was worth more to him with the seal intact for now. He''d need to send this letter back to Anaria, back to his capital, with the seal in place so that no-one could say he''d tampered with the contents of the letter before it had been read.


    With the amount of paper on his desk he was surprised that the wood hadn''t given way in all honesty. Setting the document he had been working on to the side, he picked the next one out of the pile. Ah, now this one promised to be good. ''The State of the Royal and Noble Treasuries of Owkrestos''. It wouldn''t even take him that long either, since this was all just pure liquid assets as opposed to speculations on harvests and tithes. If he took the total figure, and compared that to the rough estimates for total yearly income for the Owkrestan crown...


    He flipped through the new document to find the page that held the information he was looking for, then grinned. In terms of liquid assets he had around three years worth of Owkrestan wealth as one lump sum. If he were to deal with unrest, then maybe a tax rebate for... two years seemed good, yes, a tax rebate for two years, that would take the edge off of the worst of the agitation that being under a foreign conqueror brought. That would mean he missed out on two years worth of income from his new subjects, yes, but that was offset by the fact that he had three years worth of it in the treasuries strewn across this realm. The last of those three years worth would likely be good for both repairing the damages his invasion had brought about and, hopefully, covering any shortfall that the chaotic interval between the changes of administration was certain to bring.


    As he flicked from page to page of the new document there were certainly some sections that stood out to him more than others. The levies for one, which would likely take a few years to recover from the war, but most interesting was that of the new crownlands he''d just come into possession of.


    Lykourgos couldn''t help but raise an eyebrow when he looked over just how much pastoral land he now owned. To the people who had once owned the little farmsteads it wasn''t much, since they only owned a small percentage of the whole, but Lykourgos now owned all of it. The Owkrestan crown and nobility had owned around half of all the agricultural grounds in the kingdom, some six-million hectares, and of that land a little under four-million hectares were grasslands that saw to the raising and breeding of livestock. Sure, he knew that he would be far richer come the end of his campaign, but this was a veritable gold mine by itself! It might have seemed trivial or pointless to many, but not to him. Pork, mutton, beef, and goat were all valuable commodities in a continent of the hungry and the poor. Those estates would make for a good secondary income to bolster his own coffers, and with the right application of investment there was a good chance they could be worth more than the crownlands he possessed back home.


    "Nasos, would you mind coming here for a moment? As you were raised to be a clergyman you must have some experience in matters of administration, yes?"


    His friend walked over placing a hand on the chair he was sat on and gesturing for him to continue with a smile on his face.


    "I''d like you to take this large document detailing what the crownlands and noble-owned lands of Owkrestos were used for, then cross-reference it with these tithe averages. Lets see what exactly we''re working with and how productive these lands are."


    "Of course, your Grace. Shouldn''t be too difficult, since I''m just reading two sets of lists then doing some basic arithmetic."


    Lykourgos raised an eye brow as he lifted the truly huge document off of the table and handed it to Nasos, the preacher letting out a ''oomph'' as the weight of the text hit him.


    "Okay," his friend said, "it still shouldn''t be difficult, but it might take a while."


    "You''ve got all the time in the world," Lykourgos replied, "and when I''ve finished looking over the logistical reports I''ll help with it as well. I''d rather it be done accurately than done quickly."


    Dreamwulf raised an eyebrow above a milk-white eye.


    "Lot of paperwork, I take it?"


    Ilias snorted besides the bodyguard.


    "Like you wouldn''t believe. I didn''t know books could be made that big."


    "It''s not a book, it''s a document." Nasos replied with a cheery smile, dropping the document on another table father back into the room, next to where Dreamwulf and Ilias were stood.


    "What''s the difference?"


    Lykourgos answered in a dry tone without looking up from his own stack of papers.


    "Books are fun to read."


    "And this isn''t?"


    Ilias'' tone was teasing, almost sarcastic, and Lykourgos was acutely aware of the mischievous smile that had spread across the cupbearer''s face even without having to actually turn around and look.


    "Ilias," he replied, his own tone a mix of his previous dry inflection and Ilias'' own snark, "why don''t you take this stack and find out for yourself? There''s plenty of paperwork to go around."


    Ilias spluttered a little, though whether his indignity was real or not Lykourgos wasn''t sure.


    "Why doesn''t Dreamwulf have to help?!"


    Lykourgos set his quill down slowly and purposefully, dragging his gaze from the numbers on the page to turn in his chair and look at the young servant with as pointed a stare as he could muster.


    "Ilias. Dreamwulf doesn''t have to help because he''s a delight to be around. Also, he''s blind."


    "And I never learned my letters and numbers before I lost my vision!" The bigger man helpfully supplied in a voice that was probably too cheery for the subject matter, but then it was helping to keep him from doing administrative work so that probably helped a little.


    According to the next document he now had fishing rights over the fens and rivers of Owkrestos, since that monopoly normally went to the houses Fenmarch and Fengrove and both of those were soon to vanish from the map. Not much of an important source of income, but a source nonetheless. As he continued working his way through the seemingly endless stacks of paper on the desk he allowed himself to pay a little attention to the conversation his friends were having behind him. He liked listening to the three of them talk and bicker amongst themselves, for there was something calming about their voices as he worked.


    "You were a farmer once, weren''t you Dreamwulf?"


    "Used to be, yeah. Nothing as big as what you''re saying this is though."


    "Well," Nasos replied, "this isn''t just one farm. This is like... several thousand farms. Maybe tens of thousands of farmsteads."


    "Angels... I didn''t know there were that many out here."


    Though he didn''t look over at his three friends gathered at the smaller table further back into the room, Lykourgos did keep an ear on their conversation. He smiled a little at the genuine wonder in Dreamwulf''s voice; a lifetime spent north of the river Einar meant that he wasn''t well versed in the scale of the world beyond what he knew. Nasos clearly thought it was endearing if the fond tone of his voice was anything to go by.


    "Hmm... what exactly was it you were a farmer of? And how large was your farm, for that matter?"


    Dreamwulf was silent for a moment, probably in thought, and so the only sounds that could be heard was the scratching from a pair of inked quills on parchment as well as shuffling papers. That and Ilias'' bored huff.


    "Truth be told it wasn''t that large. I ain''t certain whether it really counted as a farm, to be honest. It was more of an orchard now that I think ''bout it."


    "Ah, so you''re an arboriculturalist?"


    Lykourgos snorted at the silence from his other two friends, and he didn''t need to turn around to know that they were staring blankly at the preacher.


    "Listen, Nasos. I''ve got no idea what the ''ell that word means. I will, however, agree with you. Mostly ''cause I think you''re nice, but you also learned all these fancy words so you probably know better than me."


    Lykourgos couldn''t help but shake his head a little at the little back and forwards going on behind him. If nothing else it at least made paperwork a little less mundane.


    Though he''d never been coronated and as such could not yet be called a king, he now wore two crowns atop his head.


    Two was a good start, but he wanted more. Duty demanded more. And what duty asked of him, he would do. There was no choice but to continue marching onwards.

 Lore Chapter: The Bastards Wars

    <u>Seventh Day, Third Month, 872 AD.</u>


    <u>Alekos Virgilos, King.</u>


    <u>Kingdom of Polaeros.</u>


    <u>Polaeriopolis.</u>


    <u>The Seeker''s Palace.</u>


    My Dearest Alek,


    It was so very good to hear from you again. I must confess to being glad that you covered Triarios yourself in your last letter, for whilst I am more than aware of how their kingdom runs its affairs my distaste for their methods would doubtless seep through in my words as it did with my contribution to your text about Licotemos.


    Yes, I am doing well. As well as one can at the moment, anyway. Seeing you here would doubtless raise my spirits, but we all need to do our duty to weather the coming storm. That has been the mantra of my life, or at least it feels that way at times.


    Ah, enough of my woolgathering. I will confess that I have few solid plans for my own writings as of yet, merely that it is intended to be a treatise on effective rulership. I have little intention on writing such a subject to completion for quite some time yet, as the coming years will no doubt prove a font of knowledge on this subject through experience, but still I have been compiling notes on examples of leadership throughout history that prove how not to rule.


    Most recent amongst my readings is that of the Bastard''s Wars, a subject in history I tried my best to ignore throughout a goodly portion of my childhood due to the stigmas around bastardry as a result of the wars, as you no doubt recall from our years spent in tutelage together. I wish now I had looked into it in more detail and not just viewed the bare minimum to please our tutors, for the subject has fascinated me immensely. The wars are about as well documented as they can be for being so long ago, but still the names of every bastard who fought in them are lost save only those who fought in the Great Rebellion, or the Eighth Bastard''s War. The rest are referred to plenty of times, but only ever as ''the bastard'', ''the nth pretender'', etcetera. Therefore I believe this to have been a deliberate choice by the monarchs of the past, a way of trying to convince people that bastards never prosper.


    Pricks.


    Before the reign of the Barracks-Kings and the Manic King before them, there was the Interregnum, a six year long period of chaos and anarchy in Klironomea. Before the Interregnum, there were the kings of house Stagmore.


    House Stagmore boasted the longest unbroken line of kings in the history of the Kingdom of Klironomea. It isn''t that hard to imagine the amount of children, legitimate or otherwise, that such a feat required. Of course a large house means security for the future, however if one of those children were to grow too ambitious, too bitter, or too popular, then outside powers had a tendency to take notice.


    Eight times did a bastard scion of the Stagmore dynasty rise up and attempt to overthrow their kin, and seven times were they vanquished. Some rebellions were born of outside influence and greed, others an attempt to combat injustice and help out the downtrodden. Whatever their purpose, it mattered not. They all ended the same way.


    As an aside, the Bastard''s Wars should not be confused with the ''Interregnum'' that followed shortly after, wherein the many bastard children of King August VII fought like rabid hounds over his kingdom after the good king died with every wife he ever took providing only stillborns or dying in childbirth. Yes, that war involved a great many bastards of the Stagmore dynasty. No, I don''t understand why it isn''t classified as the Ninth Bastard''s War. Even so, I thought that clarification worth mentioning.


    The first of the Bastard''s Wars began in the second century Before Desolation during the reign of King Arwald II. One of his bastard sons, influenced by a great deal of Terranean money and mercenaries, rose up in what nowadays are the border regions between Triarios and Owkrestos. He waged a four-year long campaign against his father and trueborn siblings, but was eventually cast down at the walls of Kingstonopolis, where he was the first man over the walls and the first man to die.


    The Second Bastard''s War began relatively soon afterwards. A few years after the defeat of his bastard son, King Arwald II passed away. The throne passed to his eldest trueborn son, King August IV, the man who had defeated his older bastard brother in the first Bastard''s War. This time it was no son who rose up, but a nephew. Following a botched assassination attempt just after the coronation of his uncle the young bastard rose up in rebellion with all the opportunists and gamblers who would follow him. Once more did Terranea provide gold for the hiring of sellswords to the young bastard, but they seemed to understand that this time there was little chance of the bastard winning. In the first war there was a very real possibility that the throne would fall to the first bastard, but this one had no hope. Terranea just wanted to probe Klironomea''s defences, to weaken them somewhat. What they found certainly pleased them, though they knew they''d likely have to wait a little before trying anything else.


    The Terraneans were always good at waiting.


    The Second Bastard''s War lasted less than two years, the head of the rebellion being unceremoniously slain in battle somewhere outside Corthraxiopolis. Accounts differ on the manner of his death, but all agree that it was rather more ignoble than that of his predecessor.


    The third to strike at the banners of the trueborn kings of Klironomea was, if the histories can be believed, a son of the first bastard to rise in rebellion. According to what we know he was hidden away by his father before he embarked on his rebellion, with the promise that the throne would be his once his father had won it.


    Of course his father did not win, and as a result the boy was hunted across Klironomea by the ''honourable'' knights of King August IV, who had struck down the forces of his father originally. When King August IV died he did so without issue, and after a brief period of courtly gridlock the throne passed to the weakest candidate there. Why the weakest? Well, because the nobles who''s choice it was had a vested interest in ensuring their king was the sort of man who could be pushed around by them.


    King August V came to the throne in one-hundred and sixty-eight BD, and no sooner had he sat the throne than the son of the first pretender rose up to depose him. Once again the pretender had Terranean support, but this time it was far more extensive than before. Armies marched from Tilda, Dathan, and Ibaenea in support of the rebel, their forces scoring a series of victories though not advancing deep into Klironomean territory for fear of becoming overstretched and losing what gains they had made. As a result the pretenders found themselves cast down once more by the trueborn members of house Stagmore.


    This war played out concurrently with the First Kliro-Terranean War, and though the bastard pretender who was a staunch ally of the Terraneans was killed outside Haestinghen the Terraneans cared not. They had secured the transfer of a series of border territories and ports along Klironomea''s southern coasts for their own, not to mention a litany of valuable trading rights, and so they counted the fall of their ''ally'' a success. Opportunistic hellspawn.


    Still, one cannot help but be impressed by their pragmatism. Impressed, and repulsed.


    The next decade and a half was filled with peace in Klironomea. August V passed away peacefully, and his son took the throne this time with no bickering or quarrelling from his siblings or nobles. No-one wanted another war like the First Kliro-Terranean War, and that had only been possible thanks to the Third Bastard''s War. He reigned for twelve uneventful years, which must have felt like a divine-sent gift to the war-torn lands of the Klironomoi. If only his son could have boasted the same achievements.


    The reign of King Lykourgos I was a litany of disasters. The eleven years he sat the throne were filled with rampant corruption, constant internal wars between the nobility, and a religious war incited by the Church of the First Saint as they looked to uproot the last remnants of the old pagan faiths. The Dragon''s Waltz certainly didn''t help things either; a great many reptilian monsters descended from the mountains and rose from the earth, vying for power and for ownership of towns and cities across Klironomea, seeing the people and items held within as their ''hoards''.


    Amidst this chaos rose the next four rebellions.


    The first of these three was the greatest and most well-intentioned. The Forth Bastard''s War was the only one to be ignited by a woman rather than a man, and with an army of men and women loyal to her she fought tooth and nail against the militant sects of the church. She wanted to stop the bloodshed, to unite the people against the very real threat that the drakes and ampitheres represented. For a time she was successful, her armies protecting those who would otherwise have been burned either at the stake or at dragonmouth. Her own father, despite knowing that she was protecting his subjects, condemned her for taking up arms without his permission. She was labelled a traitor to the crown, and her army were now seen as rebels.


    Three years after her crusade of protection began she was dead. No-one knows what killed her, but as callous as it sounds at that point it hardly even mattered. With her dead the army of righteousness she had led fell apart. Their cause seemed lost, but one of her brothers who had fought alongside her refused to let her efforts be in vain. The Forth Bastard''s War may have ended, but the Fifth was only beginning.


    This new pretender, the brother of the fallen woman who had defended her people, rallied as many men and women as he could. Primarily these soldiers were either veterans of the Forth Bastard''s War or refugees from towns subjugated and starving under the auspices of the scaled ones, and rose up once more. Her body was not yet cold when her brother took up her mantle and continued her work, though he did not busy himself with breaking the militant sects of the church as she had. His focus lay squarely on the dragons, and despite knowing that he would be condemned by his feckless and hedonistic father just as his sister had been for taking up arms without permission he set out across the land to purge the dragons and drive them back to their mountains.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    To the amazement of all he was largely successful. More than a hundred of the great monsters were put to the sword by his forces, and though the cost in lives was steep his great purge marked the beginning of the end for such terrible creatures. Hundreds died to kill just one of the monsters, and in the cases of some of the greater beasts thousands, but that mattered not. He always found his numbers replenished by fresh volunteers from those towns he liberated, and soon enough every dragon from Anaria to the western hills feared his name. His last great battle was a stunning success for humanity with dozens of the fire-breathing monsters slain in the western hills, but the battle was so apocalyptic that to this day the hills are simply known as the ''Wastelands of Drakefyre''. He finally met his end in the seventh year of his campaign where, after having slain so many dragons, he was finally killed by a knife in the gut.


    He had grown popular, you see. Too popular. People looked to him as a beacon of stability in a time when so much was wrong with the world, a time when old certainties were being washed away as sure as sand on the tides. The poor loved him, for though he was hardly a reformer by any stretch of the imagination at least he was not lording over them like dragons did. The nobles of the lands he cleansed loved him, for many had lost family, lands, and settlements to the rampages of the fire-breathers.


    The only places he was not loved were in the churches and in court; the church remembered the campaigns of his compassionate sister, and had no intention of allowing him to turn on them. As for court, his own father feared his popularity. He feared that this phoney war, this farce that was really little more than a man leading an army against dragons, really would become a true Bastard''s War like those before had been. Still, it was not to be. With his assassination the Fifth Bastard''s War was at an end.


    The reign of King Lykourgos I is a tapestry of disasters, as I have said, so is it any surprise that there are still two more Bastard''s Wars to come during his reign?


    The Sixth Bastard''s War ran in direct opposition to the Forth and Fifth. Where they had sought to curb the powers of the church and the dragons respectively, the Sixth Bastard''s War aimed to made the Drakotheous Agiathos, the Cult of the Ampithere-Worship, the sole legal church in the empire. Headed by a raving zealot of a man the forces of the Sixth war butchered and burned all in their path, shattering armies both royal and rebellious in nature. Eventually they arrived at the walls of Anaria himself, and it is said that when King Lykourgos I saw the size of the host now arrayed before him he retreated back into his palace and told his advisors to meet with the zealot who was in charge of their forces, one of his own bastard sons, and let the boy know that he was willing to convert so long as he could keep his throne.


    His son agreed, and the Sixth Bastard''s War came to an end. Though technically inconclusive, I feel confident that most would call this a victory for the forces of the sixth pretender. For nearly a hundred years the Cult of the Ampithere-Worship would reign supreme over both the Old-Church and New-Church, a fact which both sects remember all too well.


    A year later the last crisis of King Lykourgos I''s reign would begin. A forth bastard, one apparently fostered with a Scelopyrene tribe, led a vast host of barbaroi south into Klironomea. Once more the walls of Anaria were besieged, only this time the howling zealots of the drake-church were fighting on the side of the king, not against him. The battle was fierce, the fighting bloody and without even the pretence of civility, and the people cowered knowing that whoever won would turn on them next. On one side was a mass of howling barbarians, on the other valiant and skilled warriors, but the thing is that no-one can agree on which side was the one and which was the other.


    It didn''t matter anyway. Both the bastard who had led the Sixth Bastard''s War and the one who had led the Seventh were killed in the fighting, in personal combat no less. That is if you believe the histories and legends anyway. King Lykourgos the First lost his life in the battle as well, though I fear few would call such a thing a tragedy.


    What was a tragedy was what came next. The last of the Bastard''s Wars, the Eighth Bastard''s War, in some circles even today it is known as the Great Rebellion. It is the exception to the rule of these wars, for it was so monumental in Klironomean culture and politics that it is the single most documented series of events pre-Barracks-Kings. We know the players in this game, have read the stories and heard the tales.


    This is the story of Prince Loukas and his sister, the Princess Violeta.


    King August VII was not a bad king; he ruled for over forty years, much of that time a period of stability and peace save only an embarrassing defeat in the Second Kliro-Terranean war. Despite the relative peace of his reign, things would soon begin to spiral out of anyone''s control.


    The Eighth Bastard''s War was a conflict that began when the bastard prince Loukas Stagmore rose in rebellion to supplant his father''s rule, for the poor and the lowborn had been pushed to the brink and extorted for all they had. Injustice was commonplace and double-taxes being paid, as both the royal tax collectors and the petty-nobilities own taxmen demanded the common folk pay their taxes in full to them, decrying the other as illegitimate but coexisting nonetheless. This was the result of a particularly nasty spat between the king''s royal council and his nobles, though neither was willing to ratchet up tensions any further. On top of this the Old-Church was being increasingly looked down upon by the authorities, and many of its adherents feared a crackdown against their beliefs. Prince Loukas was his father''s heir, since the elderly king''s every wife had only ever given him stillborns with the exception of a single daughter, and by all accounts the two genuinely counselled their father to stop listening to the holier-than-thou lickspittles in his court, but they found themselves rebuffed at nearly every turn.


    The common folk rose in revolt due to this ''double-tax'' alongside a good portion of the Old-Church and around one-in-ten men of the professional Klironomean soldiery. All told there were six factions that made up the revolt: three peasant leaders, two Legionary officers, and a priest had secured positions of prominence. Each knew they must work together to overthrow the king, but none could choose which of them would lead the revolt. As a result the leader of the religious faction of the rebels, a younger bastard of house Stagmore, put forwards a solution that all found agreeable; he would contact his brother, who had always done his best to look after the poor folk of the kingdom, and offer him leadership of their united forces. The leader of the most extreme of the peasant factions grumbled and grit his teeth a lot, for he was another bastard of house Stagmore by the king''s uncle, but relented. He was Argil Stagmore, and he was dangerous if not for his own prowess then for the ideas that he preached. He argued for a true republic, like the old states of Tilda and Dathan before the Terranean Conquests, but eventually relented with the hopes of convincing his half-brother to compromise with him when he helped him take the crown.


    Opposing the rebel forces stood the royalists, led by Ser Ilias Gagros. Ser Ilias gathered up a great army of knights and lesser lords, almost entirely heavy cavalry, with the aim of smashing the rebels to the side. When the Forth Legion marched to join him, he decried the idea of relying on lowborn soldiers in support and instead rode away with his many thousands of men, leaving the Forth in the dust. When riding through Haestinghen along the Woodsroad towards the great forests his forces were joined by a similar, though smaller, contingent of knights and petty-nobles under the command of another royal bastard. Prince Arwald Stagmore, widely noted as being borderline psychotic with an insatiable appetite for women and men both, led an army of around two-thousand knights and nobles alongside Ser Ilias. Ser Ilias viewed the Prince of sixteen as little more than a blunt object, but the so-called ''Nobles Militia'' he had rounded up contained exactly the sort of soldiers the old knight wanted in his service, so onwards they went.


    It should be noted that the royalists were as fragmented and factional as the rebels; there were half a dozen different cliques and groups hoping to assert their dominance over their erstwhile comrades, united only by their wish to see the lowborns and rebels ground into the dirt. There were men fighting for the status quo, men fighting for an absolute monarchy, there were those who wished for a return to true feudalism and those who wished to limit the power of the king but saw the rebels as going too far. On both sides there were three bastards and a trueborn of house Stagmore. Of all eight, only one would survive until the end of the war.


    I wish I had time to go into more detail on the events of the Eighth Bastard''s War, but this letter has grown long enough as it is. A following letter will elucidate on the Great Rebellion at a later date, but for now I think I have laid the groundwork for a section on the Bastard''s Wars for use in an eventual book on rulership.


    The Great Rebellion is a topic so rich with history that I am certain an entire section of my writings will be devoted to its happenings, causes, and effects. It deserves far greater detail than the rest in my opinion, though I am not against retelling the stories of some of the more interesting stories, the fifth and sixth especially. Still, the Eighth Bastard''s War is something that I will certainly write to you about in greater detail in a future letter. I hope you are not against this, though you always have enjoyed listening to me ramble on about whatever it is that is catching my interest at that moment, so I think I''ll be okay on that front.


    The Bastard''s Wars have done more than anything else in history to highlight to lords and ladies the dangers of trusting their ''baseborn'' children, shunning them in favour of their trueborn brothers and sisters. I have always found this deeply unfair, not least because I have been subject to such prejudices in the past. Many other bastards fought against the pretenders, and yet they have been buried by history! How is it that the bastards who rose against their ''betters'', if such a term can even be used in half of the rebellions, are remembered, and yet those who fought to protect their trueborn siblings are lumped into the same category as them? How can that possibly be fair? Many of them were great heroes who rallied the forces of their trueborn family members, who dealt blows to the enemy that no-one else possibly could have, and yet they''re shunned for their sibling''s treachery despite their heroics! I can think of no greater injustice for these forgotten heroes, and if possible I would do almost anything to see their names and deeds restored in the pages of history. They deserve no less.


    Things are growing yet tenser at home. Every time a messenger calls to see me, every time a missive comes in from the capital, I feel as though my gut is churning with dread, my mind swimming in a black pool of anxiety. I feel so terribly nervous, for I know war is to break out any day now. My father has not been seen in public in a great many weeks, months if my brother is to be believed, and I can almost smell the oily smoke of war drifting in on the winds. The time I warned you of is coming, Alek. A succession crisis in Teleytaios may not seem like much, but I guarantee that the coming years will see the status quo upended across the entire continent. I know not what birthed this feeling, nor do I understand why I feel so strongly about it, but I know it to be true nonetheless.


    A storm comes to Kliskorios, my dear, and you must promise me you shall live to see the sun once more.


    It will be good to see you again in the flesh. I have yet to see you since we... what I mean to say is that we have conducted our correspondence through letters for so long that the mutual decision we both made in regards to our happiness was done without our meeting face to face. It will be so very good to see you again now that so much between us has changed. I will not write any more on that subject in this letter, but I know you know to what I refer.


    I hope you keep yourself well in these trying days as you take the reigns of power. I would trust you with anything you turned your mind to, and rulership is certainly not an exception to that statement.


    Your friend, now and always,


    Prince Lykourgos Sperakos.

 Lykourgos IX: A Choirs Reprise

    <u>Lykourgos IX: A Choir''s Reprise</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Seventh Day of the Eighth Moon, 873 AD.


    Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    Today had started much the same as most days had this last week, and as many were likely to in the coming moons.


    Paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.


    Some of the matters he needed to deal with were rather important and sweeping, such as the matter of internal trade monopolies and the relationship between the patriarchs of the church here in Owkrestos and back home. Patriarch Olyver held nominal control over them, seeing as he was the head of the Conclave of Patriarchs, but that didn''t mean his peers across the rest of Klironomea had to just ignore their distaste for his firebrand speeches and unwillingness to compromise. Well, his unwillingness to compromise unless there was some ''leverage'' you held over him. That had worked pretty well.


    Other matters were so miniscule in importance that it was almost laughable. Really, why was he the one expected to sort out whether or not a pair of runaways married by an Owkrestan captain who''d performed a sham wedding ceremony aboard his ship in Teleytaian waters were actually bound by their vows? Surely that was something for the clergy or the clerks to debate over? Hell, he''d be quite happy with literally anyone waltzing in here and telling him that they''d take care of this sort of thing.


    At least when all the matters were looked through he''d have cemented his control of Owkrestos. Whilst the major settlements and the regions around captured holdfasts were certainly within his purview there was likely to be a long-running and continuously elusive rebellious movement against his rule in the more rural and wild places of Owkrestos. Still, he''d expected such a thing. The rural types would be won over in time when it became clear to them that he had no intention of treating them any differently than his Teleytaian subjects, and as for those die-hard rebels who refused all sense and continued their fight from within the deep woods?


    Well, the Umbra were always hungry, and they were always lurking in the dark places of this world. They''d sort the problem out for him in time.


    If the day had continued on with mundane activities and thoughts such as that then perhaps he would have been rather bored by the time he went to sleep, but as it happened today was not going to be the same as all the rest. Today there was a fire.


    The sounds of pounding footsteps echoed outside the room he''d taken as his office, and so immediately he leapt to his feet and made for the door. When he opened the door he was greeted with perhaps a dozen or so servants running with buckets and pails, their expressions ranging from grimly determined to anxious and fearful.


    "What is it? What''s going on?"


    A passing servant hurriedly stopped themselves, the usual nerves displayed by his Owkrestan servants seemingly overruled by panic at something else.


    "There''s a fire in the eastern kitchens, your Grace! It''s all hands on deck in the palace!"


    Lykourgos stilled at once, hand coming to his mouth. He hadn''t the time to think on what to do, so instead he did the first thing that came to mind. He turned to the young man guarding his door and began giving him orders.


    "Eros, take a score of my men and help set up a bucket chain from the kitchen to the wells!"


    "But your Grace, I-"


    "Now, Eros!"


    Eros'' protests fell on deaf ears, for Lykourgos was set on making sure this fire was contained. He didn''t know exactly how bad it was, but if it meant that all of the servants were being roused and summoned then it had to be either expansive or at least was at risk of expanding greatly. Neither of those particularly filled Lykourgos with confidence; the Huntsfort was far from the greatest royal residence even when it had been at its height, and it was far from being at its best point at the moment. Twice in the last half-decade had it fallen to an invading army, the first of which resulted in a sack, and the neglect it had suffered from its previous royal occupants wasn''t exactly helpful in keeping it well-maintained. The last thing this small palace needed was a fire gutting it from within.


    Besides, Lykourgos really needed to make sure the documents contained within these walls were kept safe and secure. They were crucial to his efforts when it came to understanding just how much he now possessed in these lands, as the resulting information would effect his plans greatly when it came to determining everything from sustainable army sizes to the amount of development he could afford to ensure both here and in Teleytaios. There were plenty of estates to be made here, yes, but the renovations in Anaria weren''t exactly going to be cheap. Any wealth he could gain here was to be useful for one thing or another in the future, and he didn''t want to miss out on any of it because of some fucking cook-fire.


    "Understood, your Grace! Leaving at once!"


    Eros, spurred on by the urgency of the situation, bolted down the corridor and towards the guard''s quarters. Lykourgos smiled a little as he watched yet more servants run down the hall. Yeah, he had the feeling everything would be fine. There were a series of wells not too far from the cookhouses, not to mention the stream that ran next to the Huntsfort. It wasn''t like they were in a desert at any rate. No, where the fire was concerned everything would be fine. He moved to sit back at his desk, and continued reading his papers. Duty stopped for no emergency after all.


    Perhaps less than two minutes later the door burst open, and almost immediately the prince was on his feet. Perhaps by instinct he readied himself for bad news, for news that the fires were spreading or that a cookhouse had collapsed with his guards inside it, but that news wasn''t what he received. He didn''t receive any news, actually.


    "Explain this intrusion immediately!"


    His words went unheeded as three men stalked into the room, eyes glassy and faces plain. More important than any of that were the daggers in their hands. Fear jolted through him, and for a moment he was back on the walls of Anaria with the traitorous Lieutenant Isen, but he snapped back straight away. This was too dangerous a situation for him to think on the past.


    Luckily for him, ever since that day on the walls he''d never been without a dagger at his belt. He pulled it out and readied himself to fight, making sure to move in such a way that the three men weren''t able to surround him. He wasn''t totally successful, but at the very least he kept them from coming from three directions at once.


    "Guards! Guards! Intruders!"


    Of course, there weren''t likely to be any guards outside at the moment. Eros had taken those nearby and ran to help with the fire. Hm, that must have been coordinated. It''s likely they predicted how I would act, how I would send my bodyguard away to deal with this issue. Concerning. Of course, this whole series of events was concerning, not just the fire. He should probably be focusing on the three vagabonds, not on how they were able to light the fire or their motives. He had yet another assassination attempt to make it through before he tried to play detective.


    The dagger in his hand was lightweight and well-made, but those in the hands of the intruders appeared equally so. That was strange, given that they looked no better dressed than a peasant on the street, their clothes not fit for a servant in the palace. The three men should by all means have stuck out like sore thumbs amongst the halls of the Huntsfort, and yet it seemed no-one had thought their presence worth noting. Then again, he supposed, if they looked like servants then they''d have been summoned to deal with the fire alongside the rest. That was one reason and, if he was being honest, his armsmen weren''t renowned for their fashion when out of armour. These three men seemed the right build, if a little reedy, so it was also possible that the servants had just assumed they were soldiers of his. Angels, why do I never learn to keep a guard with me at all times?


    Two of the men sprung towards him at the same time, but he was able to counter them by moving to meet one of the two men shoulder-first, moving past the man''s dagger and ramming into him with as much force as he could muster. Without stopping to think he threw his head backwards and then forwards into the face of the somewhat stunned man he''d ended up next to, the top of the prince''s forehead colliding with the space between the vagabond''s nose and eyes. The impact left him seeing stars, but at the very least he''d been prepared and the other had not. Not only that, but he''d struck the man with the hardest part of his head against the man''s weakest, so if he was seeing stars then the vagabond must have been feeling a hell of a lot worse.


    As much as he''d have liked to take a second to plunge his dagger into one of the two reeling men he knew he hadn''t the time, for the third was rapidly approaching and one wasted second would have meant death. He wheeled around and just about moved out of the way of the glinting steel that was sailing towards him, using the man''s momentum against him by tripping him, grabbing the back of his head, and slamming it into a stone wall in one swift motion. The prince''s dagger sank deep into the stunned man''s back, and he wrenched it out with a satisfying twist.


    He quickly moved back again, aware that the other two men were now back on their feet. He''d gained the advantage over them, for they had lost the element of surprise and had lost one of their number. He just needed to repeat what he''d already done and he''d be safe.


    With a few sidesteps and dodging motions, and more than one flick of a blade that connected with thin air where a person had been but a moment before, he found himself in the very centre of the room behind his desk again. The two men were in front of him, though at the rear of the room, and Lykourgos realised that if he could make it to the door then he could-


    He turned and looked at the door, then heard the thunk of the crossbow bolt as it struck his shoulder. He hissed through his teeth as he was jerked backwards, the dagger falling from his hand and sailing through the air as a result of the motion as his arms flailed.


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Ah, he thought as he felt the force of the blow hammer him backwards, there was another man outside. Time seemed to slow for a crawl as he worked out just what to do from here. He''d taken out one of his assailants an injured, albeit lightly, two others. The injured two had daggers, and the man at the door had a crossbow. The crossbow would take a little while to reload, but now that he was disarmed Lykourgos didn''t really have a way to get past the man short of ramming into him shoulder-first as he had the first assailant and hoping for the best. At least if he could get out of this room then he''d be able to go and get help instead of just trying to take them all head-on.


    "Guards!" He shouted again, his voice loud and booming and above all controlled. Panicking in a situation as precarious as this was tantamount to inviting disaster. "Murderers!"


    He hoped his shouting might, if nothing else, buy him another half-second as the three remaining vagabonds moved back a step on impulse thanks to the volume of his voice. His first priority was to pick his dagger back up, and the next was to get rid of the crossbowman at the door before he could reload. Angels, but he hated days like this. Why couldn''t people trying to kill him be good and decent about it by meeting him in battle?


    He dove for his fallen dagger as one of his assailants swiped at him once more, immediately regretting it as he felt the bolt shift against his muscles causing his side to explode in pain. He gritted his teeth and scrambled up from the floor, dagger in his hand once more and mind focused on the three assailants around him.


    "You''ll need more than that to kill me."


    The crossbowmen smirked an ugly and mocking smirk before raising the crossbow once more. Lykourgos readied himself to dive out the way, as though he were fast enough to somehow get out of the way of a speeding crossbow bolt, but at that moment there was an almighty tearing noise as the blade of a billhook erupted through the space where the crossbowman''s nose used to be. There was a sickening crack as the billhook was wrenched to the right and the man''s head split almost in two as he fell, connected only by a thin hinge of scalp and skin.


    Before Lykourgos and the two remaining vagabonds was an absolutely fuming Dreamwulf with a feral snarl on his lips. One of the vagabonds let slip a noise that might have been a disgruntled or surprised exclamation, and it was that noise that seemed to seal his fate. The blind man wrenched his billhook free and, as though he knew exactly where they were with only his hearing, without so much pausing he turned to the further of the two men and hurled his billhook like a javelin. The bladed implement sank deep into the vagabond''s ribcage as Dreamwulf threw back his neck and roared like some manner of ancient beast, enraged and dangerous. If Lykourgos hadn''t known better he''d have said that there must have been some sort of magic or mysticism granting the blind man such awesome combat prowess, especially in the face of his disability, but there was no divine spirit at the back of his friend. No; Dreamwulf was just that good.


    The last man brandished his dagger at Dreamwulf and made to advance on the now weaponless man. Lykourgos had little doubt in his mind that Dreamwulf would be able to overcome his foe even without a weapon, but he still wasn''t willing to let his friend take on the last attacker by himself. A small glint caught his eye from near the door as he looked for a way to help his friend, and when he recognised what it was he immediately knew what he had to do.


    Lykourgos scrambled across the floor and grabbed the discarded crossbow from where it had fallen when Dreamwulf had first made his entrance into the conflict and, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder, hefted it to fire. The bolt caught the last remaining assailant in the leg and sent him down on one knee before he collapsed to the floor.


    "Here," Lykourgos cried, tossing his own dagger along the floor and towards Dreamwulf, "there''s a dagger by your feet."


    The blind man felt around a little before his hand found the handle of the blade, and he nodded his thanks to Lykourgos. A few moments later and the last vagabond lay dead, the prince''s dagger lodged in his throat.


    Angels, he was only supposed to do a bit of paperwork today.


    "Right, that the last of ''em?"


    Lykourgos panted a little, adrenaline beginning to wear off, as he responded to his bodyguard.


    "Yeah, that was the last of them. Thank you, Dreamwulf. That could have gone poorly."


    The bolt in his shoulder stung, but not so badly as to signal a dangerous wound. He slowly pulled himself back together and made to stand on his feet, supporting himself against the doorframe by leaning on it with his uninjured shoulder, and tried to force his legs to stop shaking quite so much.


    "Angels, that was exhilarating. At least it broke up the boredom of paperwork a little."


    Dreamwulf snorted, walking across the room and feeling around a little before pulling his billhook from the chest of the vagabond it had impaled.


    "That''s one way to look at it I ''spose. You seemed to be doing alright afore I got ''ere."


    There was a certain measure of sarcasm in the man''s voice, and Lykourgos couldn''t help but feel a little chastised by the man''s tone. It wasn''t unkind at all, just worried and exasperated.


    "Yes, I know, I know. I need to stop sending my bodyguards away whenever there''s an emergency."


    Dreamwulf nodded at him to continue.


    "''Cause?"


    "Because," he sighed, "every time I do someone tries to kill me."


    "Well, at least you can admit it."


    Despite the state he was in Lykourgos couldn''t help but smile. Dreamwulf''s dry yet gentle teasing tone was working wonders at steadily bringing down his adrenaline.


    "I should probably send for someone to clean up this room. I think the dead fuckers are starting to void their bowels."


    "Trust me your Grace, they haven''t voided quite yet. Believe me, I''ll know when they do."


    Lykourgos chuckled dryly. Yeah, that was a fair point. Out of the two of them it would be Dreamwulf who smelt it first, what with how his other senses had strengthened to compensate for the loss of his eyes.


    "Still, I''d rather they were cleared out of the way. Say, why were you coming down here anyway? As far as you knew Eros was with me, and you weren''t scheduled to take over from him for a few hours yet."


    Dreamwulf just shrugged.


    "Eros passed me on the way, told me what you sent him off to do. I figured someone should be guarding your door while he was gone. Glad I showed up, are ye?"


    Lykourgos snorted and laughed despite the pain in his shoulder. His breathing was shaky, but that was more from exhilaration than any real damage.


    "Yeah, not by a fucking small amount either. That could have gone ugly real fast. I- hss-"


    The prince hissed as his shoulder moved a touch, disturbing the bolt.


    "That''s wedged in there hard. Fuck, that hurts."


    Dreamwulf turned to face him, his amusement giving way to concern as he wiped some of the vagabond''s blood from his face.


    "Wait, you''re hit? How badly?"


    "It was the uh- one of them had a crossbow. He got lucky with a shot at my shoulder. The quarrel''s still in there. Angels, it fucking stings. Nothing too bad, I assure you, but it stings nonetheless."


    "Yeah," Dreamwulf replied with more than a little incredulity, "I know it does. I''ve been hit by one of those things more than once, yer Grace. Here, you wait here and try not to move, I''ll get Nasos. He''s got some fancy tool for this sort of thing I think, something from Polaeros. That should sort you right out, and no mistake."


    Lykourgos nodded, then verbalised his assent for such a course of action, bidding Dreamwulf to "please be fast this is fucking painful" before the man left, a pair of guards taking point at the door having been drawn to his chambers by the commotion. This would now be the... what, the forth assassination attempt on him? There was that time at Seastream with the zealots, that time outside the walls of Ousdaal, and of course the most successful was Isen on the walls of Anaria, and now he could add one more failed attempt on his life to the list.


    How delightful.


    <hr>


    Dreamwulf returned in short order with Nasos, the smaller man bustling around and quickly establishing a small workstation for himself and his tools. Lykourgos took a long swig of the proffered strong wine as Nasos set to work, first taking out the shaft of the bolt before filling the wound with honey.


    "The honey will help prevent infection whilst I work. This will be used to extract the bolthead in your shoulder."


    The presbyter-come-healer brandished a strange metal implement that looked like a pair of threaded tongs with a central threaded shaft. When inserted into the wound, which fucking stung more than the bastard crossbow bolt did, Angels fucking help him, the device was used to pull the bolthead back out of his body. Afterwards Nasos cleaned out the resulting open wound with some of the same strong wine that Lykourgos had just drank and wrapped it firmly in a bandage that he procured from... from somewhere, Lykourgos had been too busy squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth to notice any of the specifics.


    "A marvellous tool, this arrow extractor. Invented by the Polaerans a few decades ago for the purpose of, well, extracting arrows. Crossbow bolts are a little tricky but it''s pretty much the exact same process, so luckily for you I know what I''m doing here."


    The man continued on with his work for a little while, broken only by the occasional phrase muttered under his breath, and before Lykourgos knew it the bolt was out of his shoulder.


    "And that should be it, your Grace. Try not to put too much pressure on that shoulder when sparring, since it might be rather painful. Apart from that though you''re likely to make a full recovery in a very short amount of time."


    "At least this time I won''t be asleep for two moons, because that might drive me mad."


    The preacher chuckled before wrinkling his nose a little, then looked around the room and gagged. Guess he was so singularly-focused on his work that he never really took in the dead people, even though he had to step over one to get in the room.


    Lykourgos smiled at the preacher a little, then rolled his eyes as the man turned to look at him with a pleading expression on his face.


    "Yes, yes, I''ll send for people to clean the area up, don''t worry. Four more cultists dead and... well, not buried yet but you get the point, surely aren''t that distressing to come into contact with?"


    "No, no," Nasos agreed, seemingly recomposing himself, "I just wasn''t expecting it when I came back to. I was too focused on you, your Grace."


    "Me? Well, I''m flattered."


    "Here," Dreamwulf cut in with a slightly confused expression, "I figured you''d wanna try and keep one of them alive, for questioning and all that. Any reason you wanted me to kill the last ''un or was it just reactions?"


    Lykourgos huffed out a humourless laugh.


    "I caught their eyes after the fight. They were glassy, and filled me with unease. I started to get a small headache when I looked at them too long. It''s them again. It''s the Choir."


    Dreamwulf''s lip curled up almost on instinct.


    "I see. You aren''t allowed to send Eros away if I''m not here anymore, yer Grace. It ain''t safe for you."


    The prince just nodded, too tired by the events of the last hour for even his legendary stubbornness to protest this erosion of autonomy.


    "That sounds reasonable. Fuck, I could go for a mulled ale right about now. In fact I could go for literally anything if it could settle me at the moment."


    Nasos, seemingly ignoring what Dreamwulf and Lykourgos himself were saying, pawed about in the pocket of the crossbowman who''d been at the door. Lykourgos watched as the presbyter read for a moment, then raised an eyebrow as the man began speaking.


    "There''s a note here, your Grace." Nasos'' voice was low, somewhere between fearful and resigned. It was not a pleasant tone for so kindly a man to have to wear. "I think it''s for you."


    He held out his hand so that Nasos might hand him the note. The top was soaked with blood, but the message itself was still intact.


    ''You''ll survive today,'' the note read, ''but then we weren''t sent here to kill you. Just to remind you we''re still out here. You can''t forget us, Prince of Violets. You know some people we desperately want to meet. Yours truly, The Choirmasters.''


    He sighed a little and closed his eyes, exasperated. How could it be that just as he was beginning to give up his interest in the occult, the occult was taking an interest in him? That hardly seemed fair.


    "Dreamwulf, make sure the guards are on the alert, and ensure Ilias gets this note to Elikoidi. I don''t care which rat''s nest he has to drop it off at so long as he knows it''ll get back to Anaria. We need to be ready."


    There was quiet for a moment as Nasos tried to make himself as small as possible, seemingly having worked out that Lykourgos wouldn''t take well to the message.


    "Why? What does it say?"


    Dreamwulf''s voice cut through the silence of the room, and Lykourgos turned to look at the blood-stained and imposing man with a grim smile, no matter that the man couldn''t actually see it.


    "It says we''re still at war. It says they aren''t done with us yet. Most of all, it says that Elikoidi has a lot more work ahead of him. They don''t want me to forget them? Fine. They''ve tried to kill me twice now, and they''ve tormented an Angel. I already wished to build a prosperous and strong kingdom, but now that kingdom will be dedicated to the eradication of these fucking parasites. I''ll remember them, but I''ll make sure all who come after us won''t have to."


    "Now that," Dreamwulf smiled, "is one hell of a fucking plan."

 Lykourgos X: Honeyed Words

    <u>Lykourgos X: Honeyed Words</u>


    <u>The Ninth Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    The hour was growing late, and still the prince trudged on through an endless tide of dull work. If he didn''t know any better he''d say that the Owkrestans were piling on all the mundane work they could in the hopes that he''d throw his hands up in frustration, shout "Fuck it!" at the top of his lungs, and just go home. He knew better though; he had the clerks and administrators of this realm by the balls, and none of them were particularly keen to act against him. He hadn''t been harsh with them, far from it in all honesty, but it was clear that the people here were still getting used to their new ruler. He didn''t blame them, for it often took years for the worst of the unrest to die down and potentially generations for people to truly accept their new overlords, but it did make his life a mite annoying at times. Ah well, when he filed away the right papers and wrote the missive that would exempt his new subjects from taxes for two years they''d probably start to care for him a bit more. Well, enough to avoid rising in rebellion against him anyway. That was the main thing he wanted to avoid, for a rebellion fought on Owkrestan terms would be an absolute nightmare to slog through.


    One way to ensure long-term dominance of Owkrestos, and the rest of Klironomea when the time came for that matter, could be had in his grip over religion. The various cults and sects of the Church of the First Saint were organised into a labyrinth of ranks and hierarchies all running parallel to each other, and don''t even get him started on the inefficiencies of the lands under their purview. It wasn''t that the church didn''t know how to turn a profit with their lands, for they most certainly did, but rather the fact that the lands they held were disparate and small in scale; instead of a few counties under their control across his kingdom they held thousands of tiny scraps and patches of land that made knowing exactly who was to tax which region hell. If he could simplify those issues then he''d be able to cement his kingdom as a true power, built to last through the ages.


    The trouble was, that required working with the Church rather than against them. Lykourgos wasn''t one for compromise, nor was he particularly pleased to have to treat with his rivals and fellow powerbrokers as an equal, but there was no way he''d be able to hold this over the Church and have them accept it without some serious negotiating. No matter how much blackmail he had over Patriarch Olyver, the man wouldn''t agree to such a thing.


    Or would he? Maybe he wouldn''t accept it all at once, but if Lykourgos could offer the man some support and an increase in his influence over the Conclave and Church as a whole...


    As of right now the Conclave of Patriarchs, based in Anaria, held nominal control over all of the Old-Church and the churches of Klironomea in general. Nominally. In reality the church tended to remain split along national borders. Despite that fact there were still appearances to keep up, and so the various Patriarchs of all the Old-Church, as well as the more ''Klironomean'' side of the New-Church, came together to choose one amongst their number to speak for them all. In this instance Olyver had been the one to rise to such a position. A layman might think piety and adherence to the scriptures were what decided the leader of half of Saintdom, and to a certain point that was true, but there was also a great deal of blackmail, backstabbing, and backroom dealings involved as well. Olyver had gotten in because he was an energetic firebrand, yes, but the man must have had some dirt on the other Patriarchs for them to have so readily accepted his ascent.


    Lykourgos shrugged, deciding he didn''t really care why the Conclave had picked him. The man could be worked with, and that was all that mattered. The Owkrestan clergy hadn''t been all that receptive to being under the actual control of the Conclave and its leader in Anaria, and so long as the clergy were unhappy the people would be unhappy. The higher echelons of the church in Owkrestos weren''t going to budge on this matter, not when it was their power and influence that would be curbed, and so Lykourgos decided that he''d have to start with the lower rungs of the church in Owkrestos. A few donations to local churches here, a few visits to shrines and monasteries there, perhaps a couple of letters being sent out...


    Patriarch Olyver had lent his men to the campaign. It was only fair that Lykourgos try and help the man out with this.


    This thought brought him back to his what had started this whole line of thinking; the hierarchy of the Church allowed for too much autonomy outside the Conclave, and those members of the upper-clergy could act with impunity when you got out of reach of Anaria. Perhaps... perhaps some real change was in order after all? What if the Conclave weren''t just a group of influence, but an actual, legal entity? Now that would certainly interest Olyver, he was sure of. If the Conclave was standardised, if there were say, one Patriarch for each of the great cities of Klironomea, then Olyver would be able to better project his authority to faraway lands. Of course, that raised the issue of status; though he may have been the head of the Conclave, Patriarch Olyver wasn''t any higher legally speaking than his peers. He''d have to talk about it with Olyver in person, since this was certainly more his purview than Lykourgos'', but some new title or rank separate from his station as a Patriarch might be needed in the future.


    He wouldn''t be able to act on the grander parts of such a plan at the moment, but he certainly could at least make notes of them and start making sure the Archdeacons and Bishops of Owkrestos began to see Patriarch Olyver as their leader, not whoever the current most influential Archbishop or Patriarch in Owkrestos was.


    Helping out Patriarch Olyver was only the right thing to do, after all. Lykourgos was a good, pious man, and if that just happened to ensure that the Church''s support of him was a little more... enthusiastic, than it had been until this point, then he certainly wouldn''t complain.


    <hr>


    The sun had all but set at this point, so he made to light a candle to give himself some light so that he may continue working. He''d been given a few beeswax candles as a gift from the king of Triarios recently, though why he wasn''t sure. Beeswax candles were far more expensive than simple animal fat or tallow candles, that was true, but a trio of them was hardly to be considered a particularly stately gift. Still, they''d certainly see some use now, so he''d count his blessings where he could.


    That was odd. One of the candles felt... different. He hadn''t been sure why the foreign king had deigned these candles to be a good gift for him, but as he picked up the three candles he realised exactly why; one of them was a lot lighter than the others, and sounded... hollow, when he tapped it against the table. He snapped it in half, curious, and sure enough inside the candle was a hollow chamber containing a rolled up piece of parchment. Clever bastard. I''ll have to take note of that technique. Maybe pass it on to Eli, see if he knows it.


    The lettering on the parchment was small, so he needed to squint a little to read it, but he could make out the words easily enough despite the minor smudging.


    To My Fellow Monarch,


    The business of rulership is a tiresome one, is it not? How many endless petty indignities must we put up with before we can claim our rights? The rewards of such patience far outstrip the negatives, I am sure you will agree, but in this instance I''d like you to know that being reckless and taking a leap of faith will net you a reward greater still than that which you''ve carved out of Owkrestos with your own steel.


    Do I have your attention? I should, for the offer I present to you is truly one of a kind. My sons took a little convincing, but they''ve both come around. My lords do not know I send this letter to you, nor do I intend to tell them. If you''d like to make a deal with me, I suggest you don''t let them know we''re to meet either.


    My condolences for the death of your father. He had his flaws, but then so do all men. He is one man I am pleased to never have to face again in the games of the court. My condolences as well for the death of your sister, though I gather she''d gone quite mad in her last weeks.


    Pleasantries aside, for I know you care not for my words of politeness, make sure you take me up on the offer I present to you. I will tell you nothing of it, and I will offer you nothing in context. All I shall give you are instructions. I will be waiting for you, alone, in a small inn on the Owkrestan border with my lands. I will wait there a week from the tenth. If you don''t come to meet me I shall be very disappointed.


    My grandfather began to take Teleytaios in a new direction. He was of no relation to me by blood, for he adopted my father when the man was in his adolescence. Still, the ingenuity he held, the ability to recognise that Klironomea was changing, has been passed down through the generations. For you and your father, this change manifested in the wresting of power away from the lords. A very, very lucrative prospect, of that I have no doubt. For my family, change has come another way. Business. We''re businessmen as well as kings, and as someone as well read as you must know we''re very good at both of those tasks.


    There''s only one problem for my family going forwards: we aren''t at all fond of the idea of losing our positions.


    Knowing this, and knowing that you hold grand designs of your own, I wonder if perhaps our goals might be made to align. I heard of the work of your brother, of the fate that befell the Old Oak, and it gave me more than one idea myself. I should greatly like to visit the monument he made in the centre of Blackoak''s old castle. Perhaps your brother will have earned his own moniker before the year is out? ''Iron Oak''. How''s that for a prospective name?


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I''ve rambled enough in this letter without saying much. Apologies for the secrecy in getting it to you, but you of all people know well how much secrecy is worth for men of our station. I look forwards to meeting you shortly.


    Kliran''s sons made a dinner of the Skraeling,


    now he walks again ''midst his people like a daydream.


    So dress as a sellsword and make it like a drayman,


    head to the inn of the Evergreen Layman.


    Yours, a fellow Monarch and prospective business partner,


    King Thrytas Sigiros.


    Despite how serious the letter read, Lykourgos couldn''t help but smile as the foreign ruler parodied a few lines of a popular song to close out his letter. That sort of gave him an idea of just who he was to be dealing with before he''d even met the man. He''d known King Thrytas was a savvy businessman, hell, everyone knew that the Triarian royal family had started sliding into ''merchant guild-come-syndicate'' decades ago, but it seemed like the man at least had a sense of humour and a flair for petty dramatics.


    Seeing as Lykourgos had been dealing with Elikoidi for the better part of a decade he figured he''d be pretty alright when it came to talking with this man. ''Dramatics'' were practically his friend''s middle name.


    Speaking of Elikoidi, this was probably exactly the sort of thing his friend would call him foolish for considering. Well, Elikoidi probably wouldn''t use the term ''foolish'' exactly, probably something far more vulgar, but still. It wasn''t... it wasn''t a sound idea. It could easily be a setup for some sort of ambush, hell, Lykourgos had seen to the death of an Owkrestan lord on the road not four months ago. There could easily be half a dozen men on the road to kill him off, and whilst he was good with a sword he couldn''t exactly fight six well-armed men at once. Splitting one''s concentration in a fight was always a risk, but he''d be forced to if someone came down the road for him.


    Then again, maybe he was overthinking this. After all, he wasn''t sure if the inn was even in Triarios, so he may have been staying in Owkrestos the whole time for all he knew. But he supposed that, if the last few weeks had proved anything, it was that there were people within this land who wanted him dead just as much as, if not more than, any foreign kingdom did. Still, he had to admit that this letter intrigued him; the King of Triarios wanted to enter into a deal of some sort with him, did he? The last monarch who''d wanted to make a deal with him had lost his crown, but King Thrytas seemed rather... confident. The man was acting like he had Lykourgos'' number down already.


    Well, he thought to himself, the man must have a knack for that sort of thing. The Sigiros family haven''t maintained control of both their kingdom and their business rivals this long without the skills to differentiate a potential friend from a potential foe. That''s just common sense.


    He looked at the letter again, committing the words to memory, then stood from his desk and made to find his friend, Romanos. If anyone would go wild at the prince''s sudden disappearance then it was to be him, so it was probably in everyone''s best interest if he went to tell the knight now. As he stood from the desk he felt his legs wobble a little, and his head go light, but the feelings quickly passed. He pressed a hand to his stomach as it gurgled a little.


    I knew I forgot to do something earlier.


    Well it was a little late for dinner, but he hadn''t the intention of going hungry so he decided to head to the kitchens first anyway. He could call on Ilias and have the lad grab him something, but seeing as he was to be up and moving about anyway it couldn''t hurt for him to go and fetch something himself. Besides, the boy was still running errands for Elikoidi, so was in the rather difficult position of trying to balance two roles at once. Lykourgos had no intention of making it more difficult for him.


    He moved down to the kitchens at a leisurely pace, and whilst he had expected to find a few people down there no matter the hour he was extremely surprised to see who else but Romanos, the knight giving a rather stern glare to the young former king Aleksandar.


    "There, I''ve eaten something, can I go now?"


    "I''d really rather you eat some more. You''ll fade to nothing at this rate."


    Ah. It seemed that the boy was still struggling with eating. Still, judging by what had been said it seemed Romanos had at least been able to get the lad to eat something, so that was definitely promising. With any luck he''d be back to normal in no time at all, and with enough time and a full stomach he might even come around to realising that what Lykourgos was doing was for the best. The child hadn''t been overtly hostile to him, but had made a show of deliberately avoiding Lykourgos since sending off his official letter of surrender.


    Lykourgos wasn''t too fussed, in all honesty. The kingdom was still his, no matter how petty the former king wanted to be about his loss. The legal side of things was done, as was the military part, and so whilst he had no wish for any harm to befall the boy it really didn''t matter how cordial Aleksandar wanted to be moving forwards. He was the only one with anything to lose, after all.


    "I hope I''m not interrupting anything?"


    "Your Grace! Nay, I''m only trying to get your ward to eat a little more before he wastes further. May I ask why you''re down here."


    Lykourgos smiled at his friend a little, noting that Aleksandar seemed to be trying to pay him no mind.


    "Of course. I was coming to find you, but I realised when I stood from my desk that I''d forgotten to eat today. I was so enwrapped in my work that... well, I simply hadn''t remembered to eat today. So I decided to stop down here first, get some food, then come and find you. It''s a pleasant coincidence for you to be here as well."


    Romanos smiled at him and nodded, then called out to the cooks.


    "Get the prince his meal! He''s had a long day, so make sure it''s hearty."


    Lykourgos shook his head in amusement, then Romanos turned to him and continued speaking.


    "Well, what was it you originally wanted to come and see me about? I take it there''s no harm in... other people, hearing of it?"


    Angels, but Romanos was terrible at being subtle. Aleksandar must have noticed it as well, for he rolled his eyes in frustration and annoyance and made to leave.


    "Actually, I was just about to leave anyway."


    Lykourgos held up his hand, and didn''t quite miss how the boy started at the gesture as though he''d been gravely offended. I guess a lifetime on the throne, even as a puppet, doesn''t make one pleased to be on the receiving end of so blatant a command.


    "Stay, if you would. You might be able to offer me some advice on this matter as well."


    The boy nodded reluctantly and turned to fully face Lykourgos, arms crossed and foot tapping.


    "Alright. What is it?"


    Lykourgos sighed as he took out the note.


    "I recently received this message through hidden channels. The seal and signature is that of King Thrytas Sigiros of Triarios. He asks to meet with me in private, no guards and no retainers, just me and him in some tavern in the middle of nowhere."


    Romanos'' brows furrowed, and the man visibly worked his mind to try and work out just what the Triarian was trying to play at.


    "From... the King of Triarios? Meet him alone? Where?"


    "Yes, yes, and at an inn called the ''Evergreen Layman'', to answer your questions in order."


    Romanos shook his head.


    "I don''t like this. There have been three attempts on your life to date-"


    "Four. Don''t forget Seastream."


    The knight rolled his eyes good-naturedly, then amended his total.


    "Four attempts on your life to date. Three of those, counting Seastream as one, you survived only through outside intervention. Elikoidi, Ilias, and Dreamwulf respectively. I know for a fact you''re planning on going through with this, but for the life of me I can''t work out why you think this is a good idea."


    "Call it a gut instinct. Here, read it through for yourself."


    Lykourgos smiled at Romanos'' evident confusion as he handed his friend the note, doing his best to ignore how fuming young Aleksandar looked. It made sense that the boy would be upset, for where he was once a king now Lykourgos was being treated with by foreign royalty in his stead.


    Given how the boy had lived life as a puppet Lykourgos doubted he''d ever received a message from a foreign royal before. Father hadn''t bothered attending his coronation, calling it a waste of time. Father had instead assisted the noble houses of Owkrestos in preventing house Blackoak''s consolidation of power. Nowadays Lykourgos wasn''t so sure that was all father had intended with his support for Aleksandar''s regency; father might not have been the greatest statesman to have lived, but he surely must have recognised that by keeping the regency council of the king strong and setting them at odds with house Blackoak Owkrestos would be kept divided and without a strong leader. For as long as the noble houses of Owkrestos had maintained their games of power grabbing and deceit they had been forced to focus their energies on maintaining their own positions at court, leaving them with a society ill-prepared for the wars on the horizon and a weak ruler to guide them.


    Yes, he thought to himself before getting back on track, I think father probably realised all of that quite well.


    "It seems I am to meet with him in a rather quaint location; he wants to meet me in person at a small tavern on the border between Owkrestos and Triarios. He tells me not to bring anyone with me, and that he''ll do the same."


    "Lykourgos, you cannot mean to go through with this? Did you forget that nought but a week ago a group of ruffians and vagabonds tried to kill you?"


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at the knight, smirking a little.


    "I don''t think I''m liable to forget anytime soon, friend. But he''s not a part of the Choir, at least as far as we know. Besides, I''m curious; what is it he could possibly want to meet me for that he didn''t feel comfortable enough to share in this letter? What needs to be said that cannot be said in the presence of his lords, or my councillors for that matter? What is it he wants to meet with me in person for? I am intrigued by what he says, and intend to meet with him. Alone."


    Romanos opened his mouth and made to speak, but strangely enough he was cut off by the young ex-king of Owkrestos.


    "If you really are intent on doing this, at least take a few guards and trusted men with you for the better part of the journey. You may want to do right by Owkrestos and its people, but many will still see you as a conqueror, especially as you travel through the fens. You may have staved off an attempt on your life last week, but if you travel completely alone your bodyguard won''t be there to save you."


    Lykourgos desperately tried to bite down a smile as his... prisoner? Ward? What was Aleksandar now exactly? He tried to bite down a smile as Aleksandar advised him on how people might be trying to kill Lykourgos in his name. As if sensing his amusement the boy grumbled and turned away, muttering under his breath.


    "You told me to advise you on the Owkrestan people, and I''m advising you now by telling you that they won''t be pleased with the ascent of a foreign noble to the throne. You''ll need to watch your back, at least for the next few seasons. Rule well and they''ll forget you''re a foreigner by the end of the next year, but if you don''t they''ll remind you with arrow and bolt. So it''s in your best interest to stay guarded for now and to rule well for the future."


    He nodded at the kid. It wasn''t a bad plan, and by agreeing with it the boy might start trusting him a little more, since he''d have listened to his idea.


    "Alright. Romanos, I''ll be going alone, but I want you to send a band of knights that will hang back when we get a mile or so from our destination. I want them in plain clothes, like the Starlings. I''ll take them with me for my own safety, for even my stubbornness can''t deny the target on my back forever, but we aren''t making a show of this journey. Plain clothes and a small entourage, no more than four men and no barding for the horses. I know it isn''t perfect and you''d rather there were more of them with me, but this is as good a compromise as I can think of. Does that work for you?"


    Romanos didn''t look enthused, but he nodded anyway.


    "Your will be done, your Grace."


    Lykourgos nodded at him and smiled as a plate of food was brought out for him. It seemed he had a meeting to prepare for.

 Svaltha VI: The Greatest Battle that Never Was

    <u>Svaltha VI: The Greatest Battle that Never Was</u>


    <u>The Eleventh Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Dyfed''s Army, The Isanford, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Last night had been tense. More than tense, in honesty. For a week proceeding this day there had been feasts every night, both in the Great Jaerls tent and amongst the common soldiery below, but last night''s had been... subdued. It had felt less like a feast and more like a funeral. In a way she supposed it had been; by the end of today she had no doubt that a great many of these men and women would be dead.


    Or would they?


    The Great Jaerl had been bellicose and loud, but not about the battle. He was adamant that he was going to duel the Valkyrie Queen, duel her and best her. If there was any man that could best such a fearsome woman then it was surely Dyfed, but likewise if there was any woman who could best the Great Jaerl then it would surely be the Eyvindottir.


    His proud and belligerent demands for a duel had been answered in kind by the woman who commanded the other army across the field, but Svaltha did find it all a little... strange. Given the commands of the Raven-God that still rattled through her head she hoped that what she believed was about to happen was true, that the Great Jaerl''s half-mocking comments made towards her about him not being a puppet for the druids were made with true intentions and not a false confidence.


    There couldn''t be a battle today, no matter how many might have wished otherwise. Krakevasil wished it not.


    Strangely enough even her friends had been rather subdued last night. She and K?til had still maintained their customary ardour, and of course when his mind was on her his thoughts were singular and pleasing, but almost as soon as they were finished he''d retracted in on himself a little. K?til was a fine warrior, a great one that she doubted she would be able to defeat in a true fight to the death when armour and weaponry were considered, but any man could be laid low at an inopportune moment. It only took one mistake, one bit of bad luck, and everything could come to an end.


    She got the feeling, however, that he wasn''t actually thinking about that. She got the feeling he was more worried about her, and of course his brothers by his side. Krai and Syren were good men, honest and true to their word, but they weren''t K?til. Again, they were excellent fighters and were likely to have each other''s back till the bitter end, but there was no telling when exactly that bitter end might come. Would it be from an axe-stroke or the swing of a sword in the brutal melee, in which case they would be able to protect each other and watch their backs? Or was it more likely that their end would come as a hailstorm of javelins, stopped only by quick reactions and good luck? She didn''t know, but she did know that it must have been weighing heavily on the spirits of the three boys she had become so fond of.


    It had been easy enough to read Syren, for the man wore his heart on his sleeve, but Krai was... Krai was different. She doubted anyone outside of their little circle would have known something was up with him, since he still seemed as jovial and happy as ever, but the three of them knew better. His words came out too forced, his mannerisms too exaggerated and false. He was trying his best to put their minds at ease, to show them he was fine, but none of them were falling for it. The four of them were scared, and there was no shame in admitting that. Anyone who claimed that it was shameful to admit fear was a fucking idiot, because though they may have all been afraid they were still here on the frontlines of a fucking war. They were afraid but they were still here, because with Krakevasil as their witness, none of them wanted to let down their friends. That wasn''t who they were.


    Svaltha dearly hoped that the Great Jaerl''s gambit was going to pay off here. If what she suspected was going to happen succeeded, if battle was avoided, then the plans that she had once supported wholeheartedly and even helped put into motion could be stopped dead. If his gambit failed and the battle was allowed to continue...


    The north would be bereft of warriors for generations with nothing to show for it.


    "Sval, you alright?"


    She turned to Krai and nodded stiffly, a motion which he repeated.


    "About as fine as I can be right now. How about you boys, what are we feeling like?"


    "Like I''m about to shit my guts out." Came Syren''s deadpan tone, resulting in a small bout of chuckling from the rest of them.


    "Yeah, that makes sense to me. It''s not exactly a stress-free situation, is it?"


    K?til snorted next to her.


    "That''s one way of putting it. Father''s going to duel her before the battle, and even though I know he''ll win I can''t help but feel anxious. Fucking nerves. He''ll still win though, I know he will."


    Svaltha nodded, keeping her thoughts on that matter to herself. K?til hadn''t shied away from telling people that he ''knew'' his father would win, but that was just a whole lot of bias. Ost?inson and Eyvindottir were evenly matched, and almost everyone knew it.


    "Whatever happens, this''ll be a fight to remember. People have been wanting the two of them to fight for Krakevasil knows how long, and now it''s going to happen. What do you think will happen when the battle itself begins though?"


    She looked over to K?til, trying to judge his mood as the man rubbed his chin in thought, helmet held in his free hand.


    "The most obvious thing would seem to be a frontal heavy cavalry charge; the ground is flat and has mostly dried these last few days thanks to that sunny spell we just had, so the conditions should be perfect for heavy horse. Of course the enemy would likely be doing the same, and if they met in the middle then they''d do little more than form the centre of the melee. If they were to strike without meeting each other however... well, the infantry would be fucked."


    "That wouldn''t include us, I take it? You know, since we''re removed from the main body of the horsemen."


    Krai''s voice was added to the mix, and his question prompted one of her own.


    "Yeah, that''s a good point. Well fearless Warchief, would we be charging with the rest of the cavalry?"


    Syren snickered off to the side, because he was childish like that whenever she called K?til by his title.


    "Yeah, what we doing boss? Why are we right in the middle, so far from the other horsemen on the flanks?"


    "In case she pulls some shit." Her companion spat off to the side. "In case she tries to pull some fucking trick on father. If she does then we ride in as fast as these fucking steeds will take us and we stop him from getting killed, or at least avenge him if we can''t stop it from happening. That''s why we''re here."


    She exchanged a worried look with Syren. The last thing that any of them needed was for K?til to try and intervene in the coming duel. That was something no-one, no matter which side they were on or how much admiration they may have had for him, would stomach.


    "If she pulls any trickery," Syren started slowly, "then we''ll intervene. That''s only if she calls on her soldiers to intervene on her behalf. We don''t move in otherwise."


    K?til turned to look at Syren, and though his face was angry it did seem as though he had softened a little, since his voice had lost the worst of its edges.


    "Of course. If she calls in her own soldiers. I''m just... worried for him."


    Krai nodded in understanding.


    "Your father is to fight a duel which will herald a battle to decide the fate of our homeland. I''d be more surprised to find that you weren''t worried."


    That earned a snort from K?til, and she shot the one-eyed young man a grateful look. She was worried as well, not that anyone could know why. Her god had... she''d seen things beyond simply his commands. Whether it was intentional on his part she knew not, for it was just as likely to have been detritus from the unravelling mind of a god seeping into her senses as it was a deliberate choice to show her what was to come.


    The visions had been blurred, her mind''s eye half-obscured and the shadows dark, but she''d seen... something. Something dark. It wasn''t ready, not yet, but within their lifetimes it would be. A war was coming that was far greater than this, and just as he had before in the earliest sagas of her people Krakevasil wished to see his people to safety, south of the Aenir. To call it ''safety'' would be folly, for when the great enemy came there would be nowhere that remained safe, but it would be far safer than remaining up here. No, Krakevasil was too fractured to aid them in battle as he once had, but at the very least he could guide them to safer lands in which to weather the coming storm.


    Of course he couldn''t guide them to these lands if all the warriors were dead, could he? That''s why the plan of the Druids had been folly. Warriors would be needed in numbers unparalleled though the long history of their people, and so it was better to conserve their strength and rampage through the south before settling into their new lands. The Skraelings had been conquered more than a millennia ago, and had grown soft and weak under their Klironomean overlords. The Scelopyrene would remind them of their roots. Of the gods they had abandoned. Yes, the other gods of the Corvid Pantheon were traitors who left them all to die, but the Skraelings had betrayed the betrayers. How could their remnants be trusted in their current state?


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    They couldn''t. That was the plain and simple truth.


    "Hey, do you think that-"


    "Oi, quiet up you three. It''s starting."


    Svaltha looked up, and it seemed that Krai was right. The flatlands meant that pretty much everyone in the front lines would be able to see this duel, from the lowliest foot soldier to the greatest commanders in both armies. Svaltha watched as the Great Jaerl, flanked by the two guards that seemed to shadow him at all times, strode to the centre of the field. As they did so, the Eyvindottir approached as well. She was tall, perhaps as tall as the Great Jaerl, and the great raven-spear she held in her hands looked like it would be able to skewer half a dozen men in one go. The two fighters wore heavy-chain, though the suits looked like they fit tighter than normal, and they forwent coifs or helmets. They wanted their armies to see them, to know it was truly them, and so were willing to even give themselves a disadvantage, or at least that was how it seemed.


    The Eyvindottir herself was flanked by a pair of shieldmaidens, who seemed to be of a similar disposition as the huscarls behind Dyfed. The two sets of guards stopped seven paces each from the centre point, allowing the two leaders to meet in the centre and converse in person.


    "No hidden weapons." Dyfed''s voice boomed out as he rolled up his chain sleeves.


    The Eyvindottir nodded, mirroring the motions.


    "No hidden weapons."


    With that they reaffixed their mail sleeves and clasped forearms, a mark of respect they both felt they owed the other, and talked. She closed her eyes, opened up her senses almost without thinking as though prompted by outside force, and heard their subdued conversation with almost perfect clarity.


    "So, here we are at last."


    "Indeed. Here we are."


    The Eyvindottir sniffed the air a little, as though a hound searching for something.


    "The Jotun were right, I see. I do smell magic on you, or rather from your blood. How is your boy?"


    "He''s mighty fine, I can assure you of that. We both know what has drawn us here, do we not?"


    The woman smiled at Dyfed, seeming almost excited.


    "Well, I see you''re just as excited as I am for this. I''ve been duelling both of these fine shieldmaidens at my back at the same time these last few moons, but even that sees me winning far more often than not. I''m looking forwards to finally meeting my equal on the field."


    Despite the distance Svaltha was certain she could hear the low rumble of the Great Jaerl''s laugh, and when he next spoke she was almost sure he was grinning widely.


    "I can say much the same. These two boys at my back are some of the best fighters I''ve known, but knocking the two of them down at the same time has gotten tiring. You, though? You''re the one person I can think of who''ll be able to match me. As much as I know the Druids will hate what is to come, so to do I know it''s the right move to make. Are you ready to begin?"


    The Eyvindottir visibly smiled and nodded, a feral grin slipping over her face as she hefted her raven-spear with both hands. Dyfed too readied himself, his huge greatsword slipping free of its sheath and into his right hand whilst his smaller arming sword moved into his left. The two greatest combatants the north had seen in so very long were ready to fight, and almost forty-thousand men and women waited on the field with bated breath to see who amongst their leaders would carry the day. Svaltha knew that most of the soldiers in both camps would have had arguments or placed bets on who of these two figures was the greater, but she very much doubted that money was on the minds of anyone at the moment. The soldiers would want their leader to win, since the loss of their leader would be such a blow to morale that a great many of their lesser comrades would surely turn tail and flee. Of course the two figures were great commanders as well, and so not only would their loss be a blow to morale but also to the tactical acumen of their respective armies.


    Despite the bravado and lust for glory that had brought many to the field on this day there couldn''t have been many who were hoping to die.


    Then, in a single swift motion, the Valkyrie Queen surged forwards. Her raven-spear was aimed squarely at the Great Jaerl''s neck-guard, and though the blow was forceful it was turned aside by the hulking man''s greatsword. His arming sword made to stab at her side as the Queen''s blow was turned aside, but in a single fluid motion she was able to turn the momentum of the Great Jaerl''s parry against him by using it to swiftly crack the haft of her raven-spear against the hand holding the arming sword, turning that blow aside in turn.


    Already she found herself in awe of their capabilities, their reactions speeds and mindfulness of the other''s moves, how quickly they were able to turn their opponent''s own moves against them. Oh, they were certainly evenly matched.


    The Great Jaerl tried for a great overhead swing, but in the half-second it took him to lift his greatsword the Valkyrie-Queen struck forwards once again at his exposed front. Though the man''s arming sword was as quick to the parry as ever she was able to bring the haft of her spear around to block the overhead strike in less than a moment. Lesser men and women would have been felled at every single step of this duel, but these two were not lesser men and women. They were Great Jaerl Dyfed Ost?inson and Valkyrie-Queen Thjodhild Eyvindottir, and none could possibly come close to their prowess in all the northern world.


    With what seemed to be lightning fast speed from both combatants a flurry of blows was exchanged, each movement seeming so fluid and powerful that it almost seemed like a dance. Every fraction of a second their movements seemed as though they could have been weaved into the tapestry of fate itself, because by Krakevasil did the two of them manage to turn combat into an art form. She''d seen amazing things in her life, not least of which being her god, but somehow this duel seemed to be the only thing that could possibly hold her attention in this moment.


    She''d seen giants fight over the ruins of her convoy, she''d seen them slain by a true warrior, had carved the runes of her god into the flesh of her lover, and had been blessed with the actual visage of the Lord of Slaughter, but this moment was something special. This was... this was blessed. Blessed in a way that most of the north had forgotten, blessed in a way that had been abandoned for so long that most could no longer remember when exactly it had fallen by the wayside. This was not blessed by Krakevasil in his guise as the Lord of Slaughter. This was blessed by Krakevasil in the guise of the Hero-Maker. This was a duel of honour, true honour, not honour for blood''s sake. This was what Scelopyrea had forgotten, but now it would be relearned.


    As the Valkyrie-Queen''s spear lashed out once more and the Great Jaerl caught it on his pauldron she felt a strange sense of elation from the back of her mind. This was what her god had wanted this whole time; the Raven-God hadn''t wished for an army of howling zealots and mindless savages, he''d wanted heroes as in days of yore. An army united in purpose and deed, but also in the pursuit of becoming the perfect warrior. Krakevasil wanted this, and the relief that her deity felt flooded through her mind and body as if it were her own. The two combatants were not just the greatest fighters Scelopyrea had seen in generations, nor were they simply the leaders of two vast hosts poised to unite the region.


    They were the heralds of a new age. A better age. An age soaked in blood and war, yes, but not mindless war. They heralded war with purpose, war with intent, war with the goal of improving their people''s lot. It was to be war for the noblest and purest of reasons, and in that moment she felt as though her elation might never truly subside. Whichever one of them died out there, it was to be a new age nonetheless, and that was all that mattered.


    <hr>


    For hours she stood there, a single woman amidst some forty-thousand rapt faces just stone-still, unable to look away. She doubted she''d have been able to if she wanted to, not that she wished to miss even a fraction of a second of the legendary bout before her. Twice now the Great Jaerl and the Valkyrie-Queen had called a break on their duel to rehydrate before continuing, but apart from that they''d not stopped this whole time. Strangely enough it had been crystal clear water that the two of them had drunk from, the same waterskin as well, which differed from the customary ale. She supposed that neither of them wanted to risk alcohol clouding their senses at the moment, not even an extremely weak small beer. Well, she had no real way of knowing that, but that was what the runner had been asked to fetch and the two combatants hadn''t shouted him down, so she was pretty sure that her assumption was right.


    Parries, thrusts, counterattacks, guards, ripostes, the two of them were a flurry of movement that could hardly be kept up with when watching, let alone what it would have been like to get involved.


    Despite the two of them being locked in combat for everything they wanted, despite everything that was at stake, Svaltha got the curious feeling that neither combatant much cared for the outside world right now. The two of them had spent so long as the best fighters in the north that there hadn''t been any real excitement in fighting anyone anymore, but here on this field, they''d found excitement once again. She got the feeling that, at this moment, the potential battle didn''t interest them in the slightest. Not the armies, not the fact that the winner promised to unite all of Scelopyrea, and not even the hollow words of the Druids that had driven them to war.


    Right now, they only had minds for their duel.


    A pair of particularly savage blows met between them, and they both pushed on their weapons to try and gain some ground. When they realised they were just too evenly matched, they stopped and stepped back. The two of them circled each other a little longer, weapons readied, and then something peculiar happened.


    With a single nod being exchanged, the Great Jaerl and Valkyrie-Queen tossed their weapons to each other, swapping them in one swift motion. After this they smiled, then laughed, then clasped forearms in a warrior''s greeting once more and hugged as though they were old friends.


    "People of Scelopyrea!" The Valkyrie-Queen belted her voice across the battlefield. "We are divided no longer!"


    "We are as one, here and now!" The Great-Jaerl continued. "With our marriage this land is made whole! Let the south tremble at our coming, for we will be undefeatable!"


    Svaltha let out a breath she didn''t know she''d been holding in. Battle had been avoided. The Druids had been outplayed by Dyfed and the Eyvindottir, and whatever schemes the Druidic Orders may have made were sure to melt away like autumn ice. The northern world was spared a bloodbath, and yet Svaltha was certain that war would not be far away. With Scelopyrea united there were a multitude of directions to spread, to expand and seize. They were mighty and united, and none would be able to stand against them.


    Still, she hadn''t expected them to fucking marry. That was certain to result in some... complications, where K?til was concerned. Looking to her right she could see the barely concealed anger on her man''s face, anger at a stolen chance for glory and at his father for taking it from him. Well, it would pass. K?til''s anger always did. She would just need to convince him that this was a good thing, that it was both what Krakevasil wanted and that he would now be able to seek glory against the kings of the south. He could lord over their cities of stone and burn their villages of thatch to ashes as he so pleased, and take tens of thousands in thrall. He would come around, and probably only in a few days once she worked her ways on him, but she''d need to make sure he was placated for the moment until the anger passed. He was a good man, but could be rash at times with his lust for combat.


    She knew that feeling all too well.


    Still, his anger clearly wasn''t shared by most. Both armies were letting loose with raucous cheers across the field, many of them probably glad that they wouldn''t be fighting their family members who had picked the other side this day. Svaltha just remained silent. Whether she had done enough to prevent the ruin of Scelopyrea or not, she didn''t know. She hoped so, even if what she had actually managed was very little. It was out of her hands now.


    Swords were sheathed and shields slung across backs. Ale was procured, and in quantities she''d never seen before for that matter. People from both of the armies met in the middle of the field as comrades, despite the fact that mere days ago they''d have tried to kill each other on sight. Shieldmaidens engaged in drinking games with huscarls, brothers and sisters who''d been apart the better half of a decade thanks to choosing different sides in this war met once more and made amends, and the sounds of merriment must have been able to be heard from the island of Hedyn. Yes, old certainties were melting away, but she knew that one thing for certain:


    The northern world would never be the same again.

 Seventh IV: The Mists of Winter

    <u>Seventh IV: The Mists of Winter</u>


    <u>The Eleventh Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Blacktree Hall, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    The siege train had caught up with them as they''d marched on Blacktree Hall, and so their journey had taken longer than they''d initially expected. They suspected that Rhema was a little annoyed with the fact that they could have been days into the siege by now, but at the very least he''d cheered up a little when Seventh had pointed out that he wasn''t going to be the one under siege this time. That was something for the prince to enjoy.


    As for them, they were just happy to have avoided being anywhere near Stagspring when the Cult of the Choir had made itself known there with an assassination attempt that was always going to fail and a note that proved they knew as much.


    Well, the note claimed they knew anyway. Seventh wouldn''t have been surprised if that note was just insurance in case of failure to make them seem more threatening and menacing than they actually were. Fear was the sort of thing that a borderline insane cult who were dedicated to deiphagy needed, for they weren''t likely to attract many worshippers to their ranks and so would need to make sure that the outside world either wrote them off as a faetale or else feared them like any man feared a direwolf in the night.


    The note, written in Prince Lykourgos'' own hand and dedicated to them just as much as it was to Rhema, stated that the Choir would be hunted down and destroyed wherever it was found. As soon as the wars were over the Master of Silver''s extensive ratpacks would be tasked with finding the dens of these vile cultists so that they might be smoked out by the knights and armsmen of the realm. They were criminals to be hanged without a trial, or else simply put down like rabid dogs where they were found.


    If Rhema had already been fuming at the Choir for what they''d done to them before, now he was truly furious at them. They''d kidnapped Seventh themselves, and according to his Grace the Prince Lykourgos this was the second time they''d attempted to end his life. Three men with daggers and another with a crossbow had injured him, but he''d given them a good enough fight for Dreamwulf to make his way there and cut down the remaining vagabonds. If nothing else it was a good thing that the prince was alright, but Seventh got the feeling there had been something left out of the message. Given how prone Rhema could be to... rashness, Seventh wouldn''t have been surprised if Prince Lykourgos had elected not to mention any wounds he''d received at their hands.


    Seventh shuddered involuntarily as they recounted the note they''d received from the main force at Stagspring a few days prior. It had been corroborated by a rumour spread by someone who''d joined the army in one of the small supply columns that occasionally merged with their force. They''d said that, apparently, Rhema''s older brother had endured yet another encounter with the Cult of the Choir, who must have seemed at this point to have a penchant for appearing out of thin air. Well, that was what it felt like at least.  That had been their first piece of news about this event, and when they got the other message from the eldest prince it had only confirmed what they had already been told. Since receiving those messages they hadn''t really left Rhema''s side at all, not that the prince seemed to mind that much. If anything Rhema was probably happy that Seventh''s first instinct when thinking of ''safety'' was to ensure they were close to him. There are certainly worse people to have looking out for you, they thought with a smile. I mean, this is to be a perfect example of just what Rhema does to show others how he protects people.


    At the moment they were stood outside the walls of Blacktree Hill with Prince Rhema and a small contingent of the Teleytaian armies, and to be perfectly honesty they had more than a little excited anticipation welling up inside them at what was to come. Here stood the greatest castle in Owkrestos save only Stagspring itself, the last real bastion of opposition to the rule of house Sperakos in these lands. They''d been privy to more than one quickly rattled off idea courtesy of the prince next to them, and they were more than a little intrigued to see which one it was he would end up going with. Would he have the castle dragged down stone-by-stone, ensuring it could never threaten Teleytaian domination in Owkrestos again? Would he leave it standing and turn it into a great barracks for the soldiery of these lands who swore loyalty to him and to his brother? He might even turn it into a great prison, dedicated to holding the worst members of society within its heavily guarded walls. Seventh didn''t know, but the not-knowing was exciting to them! There was so much that might happen here!


    The siege train had caught up with them, as per Prince Lykourgos'' orders, and Rhema was now in charge of making sure that Blacktree Hall would be remembered as a lesson to anyone harbouring thoughts of treason.


    "Bring down the walls," Rhema started with an uncharacteristically flat inflection, "they''re tall and they''re thick, but bring them down all the same. Tunnel beneath them to make them collapse if you have to, but preferably we''ll be done sooner than that. How soon can you have the trebuchets up?"


    Lieutenant Marren set his mouth into a thin line, making a so-so motion with his hands.


    "A few hours perhaps, but no more than half a day. For all of them to be set up it''ll take the full day."


    "Can you have the trebuchets begin firing as they''re built?"


    The man nodded.


    "Of course, your Grace. The first stones will be launched within two hours. If you wish I can have the carcass shot prepared to-"


    "Yes and no," Rhema began, cutting off the Lieutenant, "get the shot ready, but don''t launch it. I have an idea for later. Dismissed, Marren."


    Lieutenant Marren hammered a fist into his own chest in a display of respect, then trotted off on his courser back to his men. God, he was an odd man. Not a bad man particularly, but definitely odd. There was something about his obsession with his creation that made him seem... almost too excited to use it. Again, he didn''t seem like a particularly bad man, just one that was a little... strange.


    "Your orders for the rest of us, your Grace?"


    "I want a palisade up before the trebuchets. If this siege does go on longer than a few days then any good defending commander would certainly order a sally to torch the trebuchets, since they''re to be the biggest threat to the castle. I want to make sure there''s no chance of that happening. Aside from that I want sentries set up all around the castle and parties going out to secure local food and water sources. There''s no point allowing any roaming Blackoak soldiers outside the castle to torch their crops and poison their wells, especially seeing as my brother is going to be the one who owns this land soon enough. Let''s try and keep the surrounding lands out of this conflict if we can though; they''re likely to be more valuable to my brother than yet another castle is. I want small garrisons sent out to any local villages and roaming outriders and squirebands to ensure that any of the enemy''s forces still out there are hunted down and either surrender or are killed. Lets do this quickly and lets do this properly!"


    Seventh couldn''t help but smile as Rhema rattled off orders. He might not have realised it, not truly, but he had learned a hell of a lot this last year. Twelve moons ago he''d have never been able to truly order an army around like this to command a siege, but now he was gaining some experience and putting to the test what he''d learned. Perhaps more important than that, he was using what he knew to make logical leaps in judgement and try to predict the enemy''s moves. He''d recognised that the trebuchets were probably the biggest threat to the castle of the foe in a prolonged siege, and so he was putting himself in the shoes of the enemy and recognising that he would try to neutralise the trebuchets and so they needed to be protected.


    He was growing into his role as his brother''s right hand, and soon enough it seemed the Grandmaster and the Master of Silver might have some competition when it came to the reigning prince''s favour. That would be amusing to see, not that they could really see either of them really doing anything other than drawing Rhema into their endless bickering. The two advisors were well-meaning, and they couldn''t see either of them ever seeking to betray either of the princes, but they had their flaws all the same. After all, they were only human. Good humans, but humans nonetheless.


    God, that sounded more cynical in their mind than they''d intended. Heh, I guess my mentor must be starting to rub off on me a little after all. Cynical old villain.


    That was enough thinking about their mentor for now. Basileous had given them more than enough to mull over recently, and they weren''t keen on driving themselves up the wall trying to untangle the fucking web that the man seemed to live in at the moment.


    No, there were better things to focus on right now. Already soldiers were busying themselves with assembling the camp behind them, and soon enough the first of the trebuchets would be slinging stones into Blacktree Hall. The castle had onagers on the walls, but they were so thoroughly outranged by the trebuchets that there was absolutely no way they would be able to pose a threat to the siege camp. Blacktree Hall would fall, and it would fall soon. The venerable and rich Lord Aertax Blackoak would find himself dead soon enough, if he hadn''t already taken his own life in shame that was.


    Strangely enough Seventh was pretty sure that his attempted invasion had been the best thing that could have happened for Rhema and Lykourgos; the elder brother had made no secret that he harboured ambitions of conquest and so would have ended up at war here eventually, and because of the invasion he''d been able to defeat half of the Owkrestan army without losing the home-turf advantage and was neck-deep in Owkrestos itself before the rest of their armies had even begun to muster. As for Rhema, it had given the younger prince a chance to learn what it meant to lead in the field, and to not only show the world that he was his brother''s loyal subject but also a force to be reckoned with by himself. All things considered Lord Aertax''s invasion was possibly the single greatest boon the two princes could have asked for in regards to their immediate futures, though the Lord himself probably didn''t think that was the case.


    Well someone had to lose in all of this, they supposed, and it isn''t like I want whichever side Rhema''s on to lose. I''d much rather stay with him and have him on the winning side.


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    Somehow they knew that, so long as the two brothers stayed loyal to one another, the victories would continue on for quite some time.


    <hr>


    The next two weeks came and went with very little news to be spoken of at all. Seventh had mostly just acted as Rhema''s shadow, the same as normal, and tried to keep their head low whilst Rhema met with his fellow commanders and tried to make sure Blacktree Hall fell as soon as possible and with as few casualties as possible on their own side. In the daytime Rhema led meetings and hosted his commanders, at night he stood with his men on patrol and fended off any raiding parties that were attempting to breach the palisade they''d all constructed, and the trebuchets had bombarded the castle''s walls the entire time. The trebuchets were large and the stones they launched massive, but Rhema had been right; the walls of Blacktree Hall were very thick indeed.


    Still, no matter how tough the gates or how thick the walls, all fell sooner or later. Blacktree Hall fell swiftly, all things considered, though the head of the family seemed to have been crushed as the great tower fell with him inside. Of his children, Ser Aerna and Lady Aena, their had been no sign. Must have bailed before the castle fell. Seventh didn''t blame them particularly; they must have known that to stay here was a death sentence as soon as news reached them of the death of Lieutenant Isen at the Sodden Field. The rest of the war was a forgone conclusion in their mind; Teleytaios had a strength that Owkrestos lacked, and what little they did possess had been dithered away in Teleytaios itself. This was a war that Owkrestos could never have won, and it was folly for Lord Aertax to believe otherwise. Maybe if things had gone as he''d planned, if Lykourgos had been killed by Lieutenant Isen and Teleytaios had fallen to chaos then his gambit would have succeeded, but when Isen failed to kill the prince any sensible man would have called off the invasion.


    Lord Aertax had been prideful though, and so he had attempted to go ahead with his plans anyway. Fat lot of good that had done him.


    They walked through, or rather over, the ruins of the now collapsed main gatehouse of Blacktree Hall. Most of the castle had taken damage in one form or another, but this gatehouse was almost completely gone. They stepped over what looked like a particularly sharp shard of metal left behind from the smashed portcullis and, making sure that their cassock didn''t get caught on any debris, continued moving forwards. Rhema and Lieutenant Marren walked slightly ahead of them, and all around them armsmen and other assorted soldiers bustled and hurriedly moved. The fighting for the castle was mostly over, and it seemed strange that Rhema hadn''t charged in headlong this time, but the guards weren''t taking any chances when it came to making sure the defenders were truly down for the count. They hadn''t the wish to slip up and embarrass themselves in front of the crown prince''s brother, not with how their position as the favoured military branch seemed to be on the line.


    They walked past the gardens and through the courtyard, coming to a doorway that would lead them into the half-collapsed central keep of the castle. They were admittedly a little worried for their safety in such an area, since it didn''t exactly look stable, but almost as though Rhema was having the same thoughts as them a few attendants assured the prince that the rest of the central keep should be fine, since damage seemed to be limited to the eastern side. The rest of the central keep was therefore structurally sound, and with a flourished gesture Rhema bid both Seventh and the Lieutenant to enter.


    Rhema seemed to know where to take them, almost as if he''d been to this castle before, and before long Seventh found themselves perhaps six or seven floors up in a half-ruined castle with the banners of its previous occupants cast down to flutter to the floor.


    The three of them were silent for a while, which was nice when in the company of Marren since the man never seemed to stop talking outside of official settings, and they looked out over the castle. The wall of this room was either smashed open or had been built as an open balcony, and since damage was supposed to have been limited to the other side of the building Seventh was really hoping that this was indeed a poorly-designed balcony. The only real thing of note in the courtyard below was a great steel maypole, something that might have been used for harvest ceremonies and the like in times of peace, but to Rhema this was evidently all he needed to see.


    "Lieutenant Marren," the prince started with a calm voice that only barely hid the manic excitement brewing beneath the surface, "pile up some carcass shot around the steel pole, if you please. I have an idea."


    Nearly two-score barrels of carcass-shot were piled in the main courtyard around what looked like a great maypole, and then it had been covered in wood and set ablaze. From the balcony overlooking the courtyard Rhema watched the blaze alongside them, and when it was burning so hot that Seventh felt like they were drowning in a wash of heat a long trail of soldiers began to cross through the room, discarded weapons in their hands and piled in their arms. One by one bundles of swords, spears, and arrows were hurled at the maypole and into the blaze, wood and leather burning away to nothing as steel and iron melted against the metal pole at the centre of it all. Gradually, over the course of several long hours, the melting iron and steel began to take form. Well, not really; it was the definition of formless, all jagged and melted edges against a maypole that looked almost like a candle losing its wax. More and more weapons were thrown onto the mix, then more, then yet more, until all the weapons of their slain Blackoak foes were tossed into the maw of the roaring inferno. As Seventh had that thought, the thought that the fire might be a maw, for a brief a moment the flames licked up in such a way that the edges of the blaze were ringed with fiery teeth which closed in on the centre and then exploded outwards as they met. Then they blinked, and the fire was simply a fire once more.


    Huh, that was weird. I''ll have to ask my mentor if that was something I did or if it was just a trick of the light.


    It was probably nothing, but you could never be quite sure with things like this. Well, they couldn''t anyway. It wasn''t like there was some written guide on their powers or anything like that. Well, there was actually, but it wasn''t in a language they understood. They''d asked their mentor about it before now, and whilst he''d not been unhelpful he had told them that, should they wish to read it, they''d need to learn to speak the language first. Hydran was willing to teach them the archaic language it was written in, but he''d stressed that it would take time, and time was something that Seventh would rather spend ''galivanting with princes and learning to fight''. The man wasn''t wrong, but it was still a rather annoying part of their life. Still, they''d have plenty of time to learn. These wars were now, but they had all the time in the world to learn what it meant to be an Angel later.


    It wasn''t like their powers were going anywhere after all. They hoped. Unless some great tragedy befell them like it had their mentor, but the chances of that happening were almost nil. There were no other Angels left to tear down their mentor''s work anymore, and none to eye their emerging powers with jealousy as they all once had with his. They powers shouldn''t be going anywhere anytime soon.


    They watched the fires wax and burn alongside the prince they had sworn to serve, and for the first time in what felt like months, took off their blindfold. Here was a moment of truth. They''d been learning from their mentor how to stop themselves from accidentally driving someone mad, and this was their first time testing it out in the open. There was no risk of Rhema being driven mad, not with the tolerance he''d built up to their magics, but the soldiers who passed through would certainly struggle mentally if they didn''t keep themselves in check.


    Orange light danced across the inky blackness of their eyes, and it took them more than a few seconds to realise that Rhema was no longer staring at the fire. He was staring at them.


    "What is it?"


    The prince blinked a few times, probably not having expected them to break the silence.


    "Nothing really, it''s just- it''s nice to see you without the blindfold on in public for once. The fire reflecting in your eyes really looks good on you."


    Seventh snorted.


    "Rhema, you thing literally anything about my eyes looks good on me."


    "Okay," the prince started whilst wagging a finger at them, "that might be true, but fire looks especially good."


    "Better than the pale glow of magic?"


    Rhema made a ''hmm'' sound for a little while, as though he were genuinely trying to answer the mock-question. Gods, but he could be hopeless sometimes.


    "Not quite. Nearly, but not quite."


    Seventh smirked at them and forced a dozen or so tiny blue-white sparks to dance across and around their eyes, delighting in how utterly speechless Rhema seemed to be made as a result.


    "We- I mean, I- Angels, that''s-"


    "A good look on me?"


    Rhema nodded at them with a dopey grin on his face, and Seventh couldn''t help but smile back. There was something about Rhema that was able to just... put them at ease for a while. At any rate it was better than spending time with almost anyone else, that was for certain.


    "Yeah, something like that. Hey, Sev, I just wanted to say thanks for you sticking with me. You could have stayed in Anaria and been in comfort, or you could have gone with my brother and probably had some really cool conversations about magic and the occult, but instead you''re here with me. I don''t think many people have done that before, just Crowe and my brother. Thanks for that."


    They snorted a little, not at all in an insulting way, but because the idea that they''d have rather done anything else was just funny to them. Where else would they be if not here, now? They certainly couldn''t see themselves having an enjoyable time cooped up in the palace again, and for all they admired and respected Prince Lykourgos there was something about the man that scared them a little. At times he was like a string pulled taut, and they couldn''t shake the feeling at any moment it felt as though something within him might snap irreparably. In that regard Rhema was actually easier to relax around, for although he had a penchant for spontaneous actions and a sudden need to fight Seventh had never felt that Rhema had intended to harm them in any way. It had been Rhema who had saved them from the Cult of the Choir, and it had been Rhema who stayed by their bedside in the days afterwards. Where else would Seventh be if not here?


    "You don''t need to thank me for that, Re. You''re the most exciting one out of all of my options, so why would I bother going with anyone else?"


    Rhema snorted a little himself, then turned his gaze back to the fires. Seventh followed suit, and the two of them remained almost frozen and looking into the fires for the next... well, for quite some time.


    The fires continued to burn and blaze long into the night, but neither Rhema nor Seventh slept. It was captivating, mesmerising, beautiful, and even as the last of the embers faded to a dull grow long after the rest of the castle had gone to sleep, the two of them were still stood there staring at the place that the fire had been.


    Where once a great steel maypole had jutted up from the ground now there was only a jagged tree of twisting steel, an edifice to war and conquest. Sword-blades and spearheads were transformed into gnarled branches, arrows with their shafts and fletching burned away to feed the inferno were clumped together around the branches like leaves, and pearls of metal that had cooled and hardened before falling from the mighty tree of iron and steel were now as raindrops suspended in their fall. It was a twisted and ugly monument that marked the passing of the house that had seen to the attempted assassination of Rhema''s elder brother, the ones who had drawn Teleytaios back into war as soon as she''d just begun to recover from her last, but most of all it was a warning.


    Many would look on this as a monument to what became of those who stood against Teleytaios, but they knew that Rhema''s mind was set on no such thing. To Rhema, it would be a monument to what became of those who stood against his brother, and that would be more than enough for the princes. A personal vendetta squared away, and another rival to the ascent of Teleytaios burned to nothing. There were still those out there who bore the name ''Blackoak'', but most of those would be on the Isle of Exiles, that of course being Anatolikoi, or would have sought refuge with the Noble Sons Abroad. Whatever the case, they couldn''t see this statue, this... whatever this counted as, being ignored by those who sought to fight the princes in the future. Their mentor might find it tasteless, but...


    Well, he''d certainly seen enough to become desensitised to this. Besides, he was the one that wanted them to stay out of ''mortal affairs'', wasn''t he? As far as Seventh could tell, the man would probably raise an eyebrow and then scoff in distaste before moving on.


    The rest of the world would remember this place for quite some time, however. The manner of their victory was nothing special.


    The monument that Rhema left behind was.

 Lykourgos XI: Taproom Dealings

    <u>Lykourgos XI: Taproom Dealings</u>


    <u>The Fifteenth Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>The Soldier''s March, Owkrestan-Triarian Borderlands, Klironomea.</u>


    The ride to the Three Lambs inn took him only a few days, for he was travelling light and alone. At first he''d thought he might be headed to the wrong place, but according to a few locals when he''d asked around the ''Evergreen Layman'' had changed its owner and name some years ago now. Lykourgos supposed that King Thrytas must not have known before setting out, but it made little difference to him. He was hardly going to turn back now, not seeing as he was already here. Because he didn''t want to be stopped or seen along the road he wasn''t exactly regally-dressed either, and neither were his guards. They were wearing some light armour, mostly a dull studded leather like his brother''s battle-dress, since he didn''t want any of them to be completely unprotected, and they all carried blades on their person. He had all five of his on him right now, as a matter of fact. He looked... not poor, but certainly not rich either. He''d caught a glance of himself in a pool of clear water whilst riding yesterday, and he looked like a relatively average, if well-equipped and well-kempt, sellsword. The letter he''d been sent hadn''t left his pocket since he''d set off, for he was worried the Triarian king wouldn''t believe that he was Prince Lykourgos, but somehow he doubted that would be an issue. How many people were sent missives by a king unless the man knew who they were in advance?


    He came to a stop as the inn came into view, dusk settling across the land, and nodded at the men to his side.


    "Elanulo, make sure the men are ready to move at a moment''s notice. It''s unlikely we''ll be camping here or staying at the inn tonight, for one reason or another."


    "Your will be done, your Grace."


    The knight in sellsword''s garb banged a leather-clad fist to his chest in a gesture of respect and supplication, then turned to make good on the orders he had been given. He still had the guards with him, so he hadn''t completely disregarded all advice, but showing up with them to this meeting was likely to give off the wrong impression.


    He continued riding on and dismounted his mare swiftly as he drew closer to the building, patting the side of her mane affectionately as he flipped a silver crow to an ostler over at the side. The young man scrambled for the coin and diligently began shovelling fresh hay out into a small stall.


    "A feed bag for her as well, ostler. Oats. You''ll be tipped for it, don''t worry."


    The young man nodded hurriedly and made to see to Lykourgos'' mount, and so with an acknowledging nod he walked inside. The inn itself was nothing special, just a small taproom with a few tables off to one side away from the door and a wall of ale barrels at the far end. There was the faint smell of cooked meat wafting from a room towards the back, and a small stairwell leading up to what he presumed would be a small number of rooms for overnight stayers.


    "Greetings, traveller!"


    The voice of the innkeeper was jovial, but cautious. Lykourgos wasn''t surprised, for there probably weren''t many innkeepers that were happy to see sellswords in their taverns and taphouses. They paid good money and drank a good deal of booze, but they also had a tendency to make a nuisance of themselves and start fights. He had no intention of doing any such thing however, so he was certain the innkeeper would be put at ease soon enough. There were a few people sat at tables around the room, but not many. He counted five people sat at the moment, and another two stood with mugs of ale by the barrels at the other side of the room. He turned his gaze back to the innkeeper, who looked at him quizzically.


    "Bit frightful, are we ser?"


    Lykourgos let out an easy smile at the man''s joking tone. Places like this weren''t quite like the urban taverns he was used to back in Aenirhen and Anaria, but they certainly had a charm of their own after a long day on the road.


    "It''s been a long few days. Have you heard the news from the west?"


    The innkeeper nodded, folding his arms and resting them on the table as he leaned in almost conspiratorially.


    "Bits and pieces. ''pparently there''s some sort of a war going on, or ending as it were. Some prince from Teleytaios ''as finally ''ad enough of the Owkrestans and done ''em in. I ain''t happy for no war so close to my home, but if it can stop the bandits from constantly harrying us then I''ll be grateful for it, and Anawroth ''ll bless it. You''ve come from the west, ''ave you?"


    Lykourgos nodded, finding it a little amusing that this innkeeper still had no idea who he was, and hopefully never would.


    "Aye, I have. Just stepped out of the war, and I''m heading east to meet someone."


    The innkeeper just nodded.


    "Ah, the business of sellswords. I used to be a mercenary as well once, but when I got hitched my wife stopped me from heading out anymore. I''ve never feared a Tildan crossbow so much as I''ve feared her, and no mistake."


    The prince found himself chuckling along with the man despite the urgent business that brought him here. It was refreshing to actually have a moment to gather himself, especially after such a fast ride.


    "Anyway, what can I do for you?"


    "I''ll take a tankard from the top shelf if you''d please, innkeeper. Food as well; it was a hard ride. I''m looking to meet with someone, actually. A contact of mine said he''d meet me here."


    The two men weren''t contacts at all, and in fact Lykourgos had never met King Thrytas of Triarios in his life, but the innkeeper didn''t have to know that.


    "Oh, certainly! We do have someone here who said he''s waiting for someone to get here. He''s been in one of our rooms all day, you sit down and I''ll fetch him for you."


    Lykourgos smiled at the man.


    "Thank you. Best make that two tankards and two meals in that case."


    The innkeeper bowed his head a little, then left to go find the man who had called Lykourgos here. The prince sat down at one of the tables next to the rough-stone wall, unbuckling the straps that kept his longsword and scabbard across his back and propping it against the table by the hilt. His stomach gurgled a little as he waited, and despite himself he wished that the king, if indeed the Triarian King really was here, would just hurry up. Angels, he was hungry.


    After a few minutes lost in thought he was broken from his silence by the arrival of a man who looked to be around twenty years older than he was dressed in a very similar fashion. It seemed that there wasn''t too much trust between them just yet.


    "I see you travelled in much the same way as I did." He tried for an opener. The man, the king, smiled for a moment, looking more than a little amused.


    "Indeed. Angels, this must be a funny sight. Here we are, two sovereign heads of state, sat in a lowborn''s inn whilst dressed in a sellsword''s garb. There''s something I doubt the songs will tell of."


    "Where are my manners," Lykourgos replied as the drinks and food were brought to the table, "Lykourgos. Lykourgos Sperakos."


    "Thrytas Sigiros." Came the reply. "I have heard much of you this last year, young prince, just as I did five years ago. How blunt do you want me to be in this conversation?"


    "Your letter hinted at a few possibilities. I do not wish to beat around the bush at all; I wish for you to be as candid as you feel necessary in this moment."


    The king smiled conspiratorially at him and raised his tankard in cheers.


    "Okay, so as blunt as I can be. Let''s see then, how can I put this... Prince Lykourgos, you seem to be a rather good leader for your people. You''ve won against a numerically superior opponent in three wars now across your short life, and with the acquisition of Owkrestos and what I gather to be the piecemeal destruction of the Klironomean nobility you will only grow stronger. People see Triarios as a kingdom of soldiers, and they''re not wrong, but we''re also shrewd businessmen. I recognise a good investment when I see one. I would swear my kingdom to you as a vassal, forsaking my title in return for another."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow, doing his best to not show surprise. Now that was one hell of a fucking curveball. He''d expected some form of proposed alliance, something that might let him get the edge over the remaining kingdoms of the Heptarchy, not a flat out gesture of submission! He''d won the crowns of two kingdoms by force, and yet it seemed that the nation renowned for its military prowess was the one that was willing to flat-out give up before any conflict had even started. Still, he was getting ahead of himself, and there were plenty of other considerations to be made before he accepted an offer that was too good to be true.


    "Another title, you say? And what, may I ask, would that be?"


    Thrytas gave him a level stare as he continued to scarf down his meal, which was a little odd, but then Triarians generally were quite strange.


    "I''ll take the title of Grand Duke, and I wish for my family to rule as hereditary Masters of Iron, having complete authority over military matters save commands from yourself and the royal family."


    Lykourgos mulled it over. It certainly seemed to be a good offer, but offers as good as this were often too good to be true. This would give Thrytas a hefty amount of power in the decision making processes of the kingdom, but it would save him an entire war since he''d have the backing of the Cult of Anawroth and they answered to Thrytas, so if they signed a legal document saying this the only fighting would be against any feudal lords who refused to recognise him as their ruler and would thusly be seen as rebels. He absent-mindedly swirled the ale in his tankard as he spoke, his voice careful and measured.


    "And of course I presume yourself and your vassals would retain your current lands and titles, the exception of ''King'' notwithstanding?"


    The Triarian royal smiled at him in a conspiratorial manner.


    "I care not for what becomes of the lands of my vassals. If you accept this deal and permit me to seize the lands of the Arthaxan Platea from my erstwhile vassals, I would not only bend the knee to you but actively assist you in seizing and pacifying the rest of Triarios for yourself."


    Lykourgos squinted.


    "You''re willing to give an awful lot for a relatively small tract of land and a position on my council, your Grace. What aren''t you telling me?"


    To Lykourgos'' surprise the soldier-king laughed. Not in derision or disbelief, but genuine mirth.


    "You don''t understand, do you? I''m being genuine! I have no intention of ending up like the Old Oak, and dealing with the lords under my rule is quite possibly the most miserable part of my life. I''m sure you think much the same, else you wouldn''t have supported your father so readily in the Twilight Rebellion."


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Lykourgos stiffened slightly.


    "I would have followed my father regardless of his command. He was my father and their King. It was the duty of his vassals to follow him as I did."


    Thrytas smiled.


    "Now we''re getting somewhere. That''s the spark I wanted to see. Pomp and splendour gets you nowhere here, that much is true, but what people fail to understand is that it is not strength Triarios values most, but duty. Something in your eyes tells me you''ve always done your duty, no matter what. I respect that in a man. I value it in a King."


    Lykourgos nodded respectfully. He already knows I''ve accepted his offer, but he allows me to ponder regardless.


    "I take it you''re going to demand some sort of marriage alliance to seal this offer?"


    The man spat on the floor next to him and all but threw his crown at Lykourgos, the action attracting the attention of a few of the men in the room. When they realised exactly what was going on, exactly who they were, most of them were dumbstruck. Some looked like they might be weighing up exactly how much money the two of them had on them and whether it was worth trying their luck, but a nonchalant laying of his hand on the top of his longsword hilt and a glance in their direction seemed to stop any such notions almost immediately.


    "Piss on that. Marriage ties are for those who need an incentive other than duty to keep their word. Now pick up that bloody crown and you''ll rule three kingdoms."


    "Two and a half. You''d still control half of Triarios, as per our deal."


    The man rolled his eyes.


    "In your name. Now pick it up and tell me what''s next."


    "What do you mean?"


    The man grinned.


    "Nordicos or Licotemos?"


    Lykourgos smiled, hiding a certain measure of disappointment. This was the sort of man he wouldn''t mind maintaining as a lord under him: a power-hungry, ruthless, and morally bankrupt war profiteer. That''s why Thrytas wanted to give in so readily; he owned the largest war-goods trade in the country, and with Lykourgos'' not exactly subtle ambitions there would be a great many purchases made soon. Thrytas was set to become rich off of whatever wars came next, richer than all the tithes the title of ''King'' might earn him, and so he was willing to throw away his prestige and side by Lykourgos in the name of profit.


    And this was the sort of man Lykourgos was happy to keep as a lord. Perhaps he was little better than the kings who had come before him.


    He banished such a trail of thought. He''d never be as bad as them. Never. He was preventing a war with this, and nothing more.


    "All in good time, my Lord. All in good time."


    Lykourgos picked the crown up of the floor and set in on the table. The man put forwards his right arm and spoke.


    "So we have a deal? I throw my damnable vassals to the wolves to keep power and you get a kingdom, a vassal with a vested interest in watching it go from strength to strength, and the ability to strike at what''s left of the Heptarchy."


    Lykourgos clasped the proffered arm.


    "You''re one ruthless bastard, you know that right?"


    The man smiled.


    "Aye, that I do."


    "You- Your Graces," the innkeeper began, stumbling over his words and clutching his cap between his hands, "I did not realise that-"


    "No need to worry, your hospitality has been quite welcome. I am sure my Teleytaian friend here agrees?"


    Lykourgos nodded, chuckling a little.


    "I certainly do. Top shelf again if you wouldn''t mind, innkeeper."


    He turned to face Thrytas, and raised an eyebrow.


    "I believe it''s your turn to buy the drinks?"


    The man rolled his eyes, but did smile, so Lykourgos took that as a good sign.


    "I can send out someone to the next village to find wine, your Graces, you needn''t drink-"


    "It''s already nighttime, and ale will do just fine for us. Thank you for the offer, however."


    "Certainly, your Graces. I''ll- I''ll get your drinks for you now."


    Lykourgos nodded appreciatively at the man as he nervously waddled away, this entire situation seeming admittedly quite funny. Usually state business was conducted in grand palaces and magnificent halls of power, not in the front rooms of dimly lit taverns. Dragging his thoughts back to the present he looked back at his... he guessed now the man was his vassal, which definitely made this an interesting dinner.


    "So, I take it there are other points you wish to discuss."


    "Yeah. All of this will be repeated in a document which will be drafted with my oversight, so there will be something more binding than words for all of this, but I thought you might prefer to talk it out first. There''s much to be said for a few drinks and a hearty meal in negotiations."


    Lykourgos ate a few more mouthfuls of his meal as Thrytas spoke, trying not to laugh and cover the man as he chewed. The food itself was really rather good, better than he''d been expecting from this place anyway. A lamb shank seasoned with fistfuls of herbs in a rich gravy supplemented with mashed turnip and roasted leek wasn''t exactly a king''s dinner, but it served to satisfy him well enough. He might not have often eaten food like this, but he''d be lying if he said he wasn''t a fan of the odd piece of lamb. Judging by how quickly Thrytas'' plate had gone down Lykourgos suspected that he''d quite enjoyed it as well.


    Lykourgos suspected he knew what the other points were to be, most prevalent amongst them being the matter of the manufactories that had begun to form under the guidance of house Sigiros. Nominally speaking these places were a commercial venture, and as such that left them in a bit of a strange place where the matter of land ownership was concerned. It could and would be sorted in this conversation he felt, but he would be lying if he said he wasn''t hoping for a cut of their profits.


    The running of a kingdom was expensive work after all, and seeing as he hoped to make something more profitable and productive out of the vast tracts of agricultural land he had come into possession of he would need funds to make such an endeavour possible.


    "Now, onto the matter of the manufactories. As you are likely aware, several of these manufactories are located outside of the lands under my house''s direct control. Under the current conditions of the contract we are discussing, you would take ownership of them. This is not something my family can abide by. Still, we will recognise your claim to the land and will be willing to pay you in gold for them, not in the manner of purchasing a feudal demesne but instead as a business lease. You lease the lands to us in perpetuity, and we give you one-fifth of the profits on top of the taxes and tithes we will already be paying to you. Does that sound fair?"


    Lykourgos nodded slowly. It certainly seemed to be a good deal to him, though there was one thing that needed asking first...


    "It sounds fair to me, but I need you to clarify something for me first. You claim that you would own the land as a merchant might own a warehouse, and not as a lord owns a county, yes?"


    Thrytas nodded with a small smile, likely amused by his apparent paranoia. Still, he''d rather appear paranoid now than foolish in five years time.


    "I see. So whilst you would maintain nominal control over commercial matters and when it comes to the facilities your companies operate under, you would not control the military forces raised from there?"


    "Not in my capacity as a lord, no. I would wield some measure of control over them seeing as I''d have the position of Master of Iron, but I would not have their final loyalties. Those would lie with you."


    Lykourgos smiled a little, satisfied, but quickly smothered it. Smiling when negotiations went well wasn''t exactly the best tactic one could use, given that it only tended to embolden the other parties. Still, this new partnership was already seeming rather lucrative to him.


    "That all sounds amenable to me. I trust your foundries can make a sufficient quantity of billhooks and arrowheads in the coming year? Good ones too, bodkin point?"


    "And a great deal of armour besides. May I ask why you are asking such a question?"


    Lykourgos nodded at his new vassal. It seemed fair enough, especially given that Lykourgos was now to be both his king and his client.


    "I''ve come into possession of a lot of new wealth recently, and a lot of new lands. This gives me the ability to greatly expand the ranks of the professional forces under my command. As of the start of this conflict there were around six-thousand armsmen in Teleytaios as well as just under two thousand in Owkrestos. When combined with the armsmen of Triarios that should make what, somewhere around twelve-thousand? Two thousand of those belong to you directly, or so I understand it, but nevertheless I wish to expand the ranks of the armsmen. Another three-thousand before the beginning of the next war would mean that, combined with the knights in our combined realm, there will be a little over twenty-thousand professional soldiers forming the bulk of the army. That would enable us to take on any Licoteman peasant host or Kortheran levied army and win."


    The ex-king of Triarios smiled back at him, no doubt pleased for a number of reasons. Of course, as a Triarian, he was always pleased when professionalism was valued in armies, but there were other points to be considered as well. The first was that, despite now having sworn fealty to him, the equipment of those soldiers wouldn''t be free. Lykourgos would be surprised if the man didn''t try and get in his good graces by providing the equipment relatively cheaply, but there would still be a price paid.


    Of course, arguably greater than that was the fact that, when he was to be appointed as the Master of Iron, that would mean he was responsible for those men. Effectively, from his perspective anyway, Lykourgos must have been paying him to increase his own power.


    If that wasn''t a display of trust then Lykourgos didn''t know what was.


    "Excellent. Yes, I think our foundries and smiths can get that done for you. I think, with the monetary purchases you''ll be making, you might just have financed an expansion of my own armsmen. Yes, that money and my new lands should certainly cover it. Now there''s a deal for you, your Grace; purchase three-thousand and get another thousand for free. You''ll be well on the way to unifying these lands come the end of next year, and there can be no-one who would say otherwise on that front. Now we''d best be off, unless you want to actually spark a war when your lieutenants find you missing and jump to conclusions."


    "Won''t you be heading back east, towards Stratiopolis?"


    Thrytas shook his head, a strangely amused smile on his face.


    "Actually, I''ll be riding back with you. I think it would be rather good to show your new Owkrestan subjects that your power extends beyond their borders, would it not?"


    Lykourgos turned to look at the man. Surely he wanted to deal with his coming war at home first?


    "But your armies-"


    "Are being mustered by my sons, ostensibly in preparation for you to attempt an invasion across the border. As soon as you march east into the lands of my vassal lords they will seize the territories that we have agreed belong to me before marching west to join up with us."


    "Your armsmen and levies are your own, but any armsmen amongst your vassals who turns his cloak and joins our side will be mine to command."


    The Triarian nodded.


    "That sounds amenable to me. I don''t want any turncloaks amongst my forces anyway."


    Lykourgos snorted a little, amused by the man''s half-joking tone. He knew exactly where any who switched sides would be sent, just as he knew exactly where the armsmen of Owkrestos who had surrendered would go. Lieutenant Daniil. A thousand men who''d turned their cloaks was exactly the kind of command that someone too afraid to attempt treason would do well with, since he''d be paranoid enough to keep them in check.


    After all, if he didn''t then it was his head that was on the line.


    Still, Lykourgos needed to be wary of this man. Maybe he was just a pragmatist who''d seen the ways the wind was blowing and wished to maximise his power by the side of the new order, to be a part of the rising power that would otherwise come to blows with him. It was more likely he had motives of his own, however. Everyone had an ulterior motive when it came to games of power, and there were very few to whom that didn''t apply. Eli had mentioned before that he had the beginnings of a rat''s nest in Triarios, so perhaps that would provide some information in time. He''d have to ask his old friend about it sooner rather than later, he felt. He didn''t want to be left in the dark and risk another attempt on his life. Not when his rise now seemed so assured.


    "In that case it will be as you say. A portion of my armies will remain in Owkrestos so as to quell any unrest, whilst the majority will be led by my commanders into Triarios. I myself will not be joining them, as there is still far too much to do closer to home. I trust that will be acceptable to you?"


    The man stiffly nodded, seemingly a little displeased that Lykourgos didn''t want to lead his men himself but, in fairness, he wasn''t prepared to take a risk and walk into what might be a trap at the moment. Besides, he wasn''t lying, he really did need to do a lot of work here before moving on and doing anything else. The integration of the Owkrestan administration, or rather its establishment since any form of central governance seemed to have been abandoned in the last few decades thanks to a succession of truly terrible kings, would take a few years to complete in full, and so unrest was likely to be higher until the time that the integration was completed. The tax rebate should deal with the worst of that, though he wasn''t foolish enough to believe there would be absolutely no resentment amongst the conquered population. They would come around in time, since he had no intention of treating them any worse than those he''d ruled over previously.


    "In that case Triarios would be glad to assist you with the forging of a truly royal army. We were founded by the old Klironomean Legions, and we too remember the values of discipline and leadership amongst the soldiery. Yes, we''ll see to helping you with this. In that case I believe we have a deal, yes?"


    Lykourgos grinned and clasped the man''s arm, standing from the table.


    "I think we do. Gather your things and mount your horse, we can be at Stagspring in a few days if the weather is good and I''d rather ride through the night to make up some of that distance now. If you''re not too scared of a little night riding, that is?"


    The man laughed and clapped him on the shoulder with his free hand.


    "Ah, my boys will love you. Very well then, let''s be off."


    Lykourgos nodded and turned to the innkeeper, threw him a small pouch of golden ravens, and turned to leave. Right now he was in a very good mood, and there was little in this world that he felt would be able to stop that.

 Lore Chapter: Arms and Armour

    Hello, and good morning to you all. I see Master Ela is driving you hard? Good; good work Ser. Many of you know me already as Ser Romanos, Grandmaster of the Order of the Violet. From this day until your training is completed, I am to be your chief trainer alongside Master Ela here.


    Here''s how we start. I take it you''re all fans of jousting, of charging at your opponent with lance in hand atop your steed? Yes?


    Well, forget it. You won''t be learning how to joust here.


    Yes, I know jousting is seen as a knight''s sport and an honourable pastime. No, you will not be learning to joust over the course of your education. You will practice charges with your comrades, but you will not be jousting. Times are changing, and across most of the world knights have been unwilling to change with them. Not here. You''ll learn to fight, to kill, and to win. You will learn to do so honourably where possible, but you will learn to kill nonetheless.


    Of course, there are other aspects to your education. Your other tutors will see to them. In my classes, your mind should be focused on nothing more and nothing less than learning how to kill the man who''s trying to kill you and your comrades. The increase in numbers and versatility in battle for the armsmen as a fighting force across these last few decades means that now, more than ever before, we need to prove that there is still worth in being a knight.


    See, when the Black Grave first rolled around in eight-hundred and twenty, it killed off a goodly number of knights across the continent since they were gathered in large war camps in preparation for a crusade against the Al-Alema. When they died en-masse, lords and kings needed a way to regrow the ranks of professionals in their armies. They turned to the previously small detachments known as armsmen.


    When the kings and lords realised how effective they could be it was the first time people like us had any competition. We hadn''t changed in nine centuries, but we will now. That''s why I''m not going to be teaching you about courtly love and chivalry, nor will I teach you how to sit pretty in a saddle and ride at your friends until one of you falls off your horse. I''m going to teach you how to be a soldier. I''m going to teach you discipline without stifling your free thought. I''m going to teach you how to follow orders whilst still being able to act in the moment and respond to developing situations. I''m going to teach you to fight not for glory or for gold, but because that is what is expected of you. I''m going to mould you into the greatest force of heavy cavalry this world has ever seen, because despite the prowess of the armsmen on foot it is the knight who rules the field from horseback. That is what you will become.


    You will learn to emulate the stamina of Ser Titos, the Enduring. You will strive to reach the same prowess with your sword as Ser Dimitrios, the Ashen Lion. Most of all, you will learn to give yourself fully over to your duty, just as the Wandering Fox did centuries ago. Ser Akakios is the most important of our forebearers that you must learn from, for when the Wandering Fox heard duty''s call he would never leave it unanswered. That is the most important part of being a knight.


    Such tasks and standards may seem daunting, and they are. Luckily, the knight has a series of tools to help him throughout his endeavours. Your arms and armour will be your truest allies across your decades of fighting, so make sure you treat them well; you will clean them and see to their maintenance just as a priest might see to his flock, or a healer might see to the sick. You will do this because, as you may have guessed, when they falter so to will you. A knight must ensure that the tools with which he plies his trade are always kept in pristine quality; weapons, armour, barding, shields, your horse, all of it must be maintained to a high standard of quality.


    By the time you are initiated into our ranks you''ll understand that fact very well.


    Let''s start with armour. The armour you squires are wearing as of right now will consist of a gambeson and a full suit of mail. I know some of you will be disappointed that you won''t be given a full set of plate right away, but this is an important intermediary step. You need to learn to keep your mail and gambeson well maintained before the task of doing the same for plate is thrust upon you. Besides, the mail you''ll be wearing is already better protection than the vast majority of men fighting on the battlefield will have.


    As squire bands it will be your job to act as both a reserve for your seniors and also a solid group of light cavalry. You will be expected to ride down the fleeing foe and give chase to withdrawing sections of the enemy force. Mail armour will be more than enough for that.


    First of all, let''s talk about the most simple part of your armour: the gambeson. The gambeson is, strangely enough, one of the most important parts of your armour. It won''t stop arrows or a sword in the hands of a skilled opponent, no, but what it will do is dampen any blows you take. Getting hit with a weapon bloody hurts, and whilst most of you probably think that''s obvious you don''t realise just what that entails; your body might freeze up, you might find yourself paralysed for a moment, vulnerable to further attacks. A solid blow might even mean that you''re permanently unable to fight, be that through death or grievous injury. The gambeson helps stop that. With a gambeson on, the impact you feel will be heavily dulled. It''ll still be there, and it''ll still hurt like hell, but it should help you keep yourself on your feet. It should stop you from freezing up, or from crying out. A good gambeson is a good start to keeping yourself alive in battle.


    Next we have your chain. You''ll be looking to maintain a hauberk as well as a chain coif, not to mention the mitons on your hands and chausses on your legs. That''s the majority of mail anyway. It won''t stop repeated impacts with high force, nor one particularly skilful stab with a sharp weapon, but it will certainly give you a much greater chance of survival where fighting relatively untrained levies is concerned, since many of their weapons will be improvised things or family heirlooms, usually iron instead of steel. Since most of the men and women you''ll be fighting will be bandits and outlaws armed with such weapons you shouldn''t need to worry about lacking plate too much.


    There''s a misconception that plate is heavy and constricting, but that couldn''t be more wrong. See, a good coat of plate armour shouldn''t obstruct your movement at all. A lot of people see how big and bulky it looks and assume that such armour must be unwieldy or overly heavy, but that couldn''t be further from the truth! In reality a well-made suit of plate armour should feel as natural to wear as your underclothes, and should never weigh any more than twenty-five kilograms, and that''s at the very most. It''s not perfect and there certainly are things that can penetrate it, but as far as armour goes plate is the best of the best.


    So, when you''re going in to battle you''ll be wearing a gambeson, a suit of mail, and a coat of plate. If there''s anything that''ll keep you alive, it''ll be that. Not every suit of plate is the same however, and there is one that I know is so different from regular plate it may as well be counted as its own thing. I''m talking, of course, about the armour worn by the Order of the Bloody Cross.


    The armour worn by this order is the exception to the rule where plate is concerned. It''s big, it''s bulky, and it''s bloody heavy. This is because it''s ridiculously thick when compared to standard plate. The protectiveness it affords in battle is second to none, but as you might imagine this comes with a few major downsides: chiefly, you''re going to struggle with any attempt to ford rivers or fight in sodden fields. I know that goes for all plate armour, but it''s especially true with their dark plate. Second, there''s the weather to worry about. Wearing all that armour is damn stifling at times, so if and when they go on crusade they''re more likely to be cooked in their armour than they are to die in battle. The scorching summer sun in Ibaenea look upon men in such garb and smiles wickedly, for it knows that soon they will either have to abandon their armour or fall prey to it''s gaze.


    This also means, as you might guess, that they''re incapable of fighting on horseback. Even the mightiest draft horse would struggle to support a man and his armour that weighs that much, especially since the horse would likely have to be barded as well since the knight would be riding it into battle.


    There are other types of armour to take note of as well, though admittedly you''ll not be using them yourselves. Boiled leather is one such type, more common than chain and commonly used by sellswords who can''t afford anything better. Town watches and local militia garrisons usually have a few of these as well, but it''s still generally above what common levies can afford. Still, it''s lightweight and relatively tough, so there''s good reason that it''s one of the most common forms of armour amongst the lower classes.


    Apart from boiled leather there''s also scale armour and heavy chain. Scale armour consists of many small metal disks sewn over cloth or leather in an overlapping pattern, having a hypothetically similar rate of protection to mail. Still, the fact that it tends to see use in the conscripted armies of Dathan means that there''s little chance of you facing against them. We''d need to have marched the length of the continent for that.


    Finally there''s heavy chain. Heavy chain bears similarity to both mail and scale armour, consisting of either thicker mail ringlets or multiple layers of ringlets instead of the one layer like we wear. On top of that some suits of heavy chain even have small scales laid over the top of the outermost layer of mail, meaning the wearer is effectively wearing three layers of thin armour in some cases. They tend to be surprisingly well made for Scelopyrene craftsmen, made all the more surprising for the fact that the northmen aren''t exactly renowned for their smiths. That''s about the only place in the world I know of that makes and dons such armour, and even then it is only for their warrior elites. It''s too expensive for anyone outside of their huscarls to afford it.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Then again these are northmen we''re talking about; it''s more likely they get their hands on a suit by killing the last owner and taking it as the spoils of war.


    That''s about all you''ll need to know about the types of armour you''ll come into contact with, at least for the moment. You''ll get far more intimate with some of the types mentioned above over the coming years, but for now that''s all I''ll need to tell you.


    Next I''m going to talk about your shield. Yes, I know, some of you won''t be using a shield. I''m still going to go over it just in case, and for the benefit of those who will be using one. There are two main types of shield in Klironomea: the first is the roundshield, and the second the kiteshield.


    The roundshield is what many of you will practice using until you get a feel for the weight of it on your arm, for how it can obstruct your movements and slow you down. When you''ve got the hang of that, then you''ll move on to using the kiteshield. The roundshield is probably the most common, being used by levies and sellswords all across Klironomea. It is, as the name implies, just a common round shield consisting of a wooden body with a metal rim and boss, which are usually made of iron. You might find some that have been made with steel, but those are few and far between. These shields are normally made in military camps and in village smithies or carpenter''s shops, so they''re a relatively cheap bit of kit that will help the common levy keep himself alive a little bit longer. You''re all made of sterner stuff than that, though. You''ll be wanting kiteshields.


    The kiteshield is larger than the roundshield, and takes the shape of... well, a kite. An almost oval-like shape of good, treated wood, backed with leather and with a steel rim and boss. I don''t use one personally, but it''s an excellent bit of kit for a knight to use. Armsmen don''t go in much for shields, since they tend towards using polearms instead, but if you''re using a greatsword then there''s little harm in taking one of these alongside it.


    Speaking of the armsmen, let''s talk about one of their weapons; the billhook is a very deadly weapon, and woe betide any of you foolish enough to deride it for looking like a farming implement. It''s a dangerous thing, a blade of sharp edges and points set at the end of a good oaken pole the height of a man, it can outreach most weapons they come up against, and have methods for fighting a man armed with any other kind of melee weapon you can think of. They''re good weapons, and I want to put to rest any rumours or jokes about them being ineffective or ''peasant-like''. Those jokes all too quickly turn to disdain, and disdain to carelessness. They can still kill you, and you need to remember it.


    Why? Because they''re some of the only weapons that will be forged as good as yours are, and wielded by some of the only men who will have trained as long as you have. It''s as simple as that.


    Now, the main weapon''s in a knights arsenal are the greatsword and the longsword. The greatsword is an excellent weapon, able to be wielded in one or both hands, and with a versatile number of styles at the user''s beck and call. The handle tends to be about twenty-five centimetres long, and a blade that rests at eighty. Larger than that are the longswords, who''s handles tend to rest at forty centimetres long and their blades at somewhere around a hundred and twenty. The longsword tends to be wielded two-handed, for obvious reasons, but there are those who can wield such mighty weapons in one hand. Lord Drytos Brathaxe for a start, as well as his ward the young Prince Lykourgos. Marshal Crowe is also able to fight one-handed with such a great weapon, though you can see what I mean by it normally being two-handed; these people are the exception, not the rule. Most of those who can wield such large weapons in one hand have been training to do so since they could walk. By all means, attempt to learn swordplay with such a weapon in one hand as much as you''d like! If you succeed, you''ll be a damned fine soldier indeed.


    There is one other weapon that will be of use for you. It isn''t a sword, no. It''s a greatpike.


    The greatpike is the senior weapon amongst the order. Its use is reserved for those true violet knights who have proven themselves to be both loyal and capable both in combat and in peace. It is a weapon that will seem unwieldy at first, especially to those amongst your number who have only ever held a sword in your hands, but rest assured that once you learn your way around it there''s little it can''t do. Standing at around eighteen tenths of a metre long it dwarfs even the longsword in terms of size, and is designed for use both in the saddle and on foot in formation. In truth it resembles a halberd more than a pike, having both a point and longer bladed edge along the side, but one thing that tends to be forgotten is the spike on the base, perfect for a return stroke after you''ve swung the weapon around.


    Now, to move on to a point of much confusion, most of the world measures their swords the other way around. No, I don''t mean they measure from tip to point instead of point to tip, I mean they call our Greatswords ''Long Swords'' and our Longswords ''Great Swords''. It can be rather confusing, but you can''t expect the entire world to call something by the same name. If it''s said as one word, it uses the Klironomean classifications. If it''s said as two words, it uses the non-Klironomean classification system. Relatively simple, right?


    Tildans are also fond of what they call the ''Bastard Swords'', so named for being halfway between the length of Long Sword and a Great Sword. They''re good weapons, especially for battle, but I find them a little too... I''m uncertain as to the right word, but ''showy'' is as close as I can think of. They''re usually for fighters that want to stand out and seem different, though without going to the lengths of abandoning their beloved swords.


    Speaking of swords, I''ll quickly bring up a few other blades you may be facing in the field. Those of you who have grown up in the countryside and outside of castles- I see a few snickering faces, and I''ll be the first to tell you not to laugh. The status of a man''s birth doesn''t matter, not when he''s got a sword to your throat. Sorry, where was I? Yes, thank you, the other blades. Those of you who grew up in the countryside and outside of a castle will no doubt recognise the name of the longseaxe. It''s a good weapon, if often poorly made, and they can be found in the hands of levies from Anaria all the way to the Drakefyre Wastes. It''s basically a short sword, made more for stabbing than slashing. Less common are the seaxe and the greatseaxe.


    The seaxe is the weapon from which the longseaxe was born. Traditionally it was worn by the Skraelings as a dagger at the belt, though when the Klironomoi came back to Klironomea they found it wasn''t long enough to best the knights they were fighting, and so the longseaxe has sort of replaced it as the sword of the Skraelings and Low-Klironomeans. The greatseaxe on the other hand is in its peak at the moment, being the principle sword of sellsword companies and outlaw bands the world over. Being about the same size as the weapon you''ll be learning to use as squires, the knightly sword, it''s somewhat shorter than the greatsword, but still longer than the longseaxe. Yes, there''s a lot of weapons to try and remember. Don''t worry, by the time you face them in the field for real you''ll know them all off by heart, as well as how best to combat their use.


    Greatseaxes are excellent weapons, though admittedly novice sellswords don''t tend to be the best at maintenance leading to them growing dull or rusty. Now, don''t take that to mean sellswords are easy to beat in a fight, because believe me, they''re not. Most sellswords aren''t much good and as such die early in their careers, but once they''ve seen a battle or two they''ll have learned more than you will in a year of these classes. They''ll keep their equipment well maintained, they''ll drill in fighting techniques every day, they''ll practice battle drills with their comrades constantly. They''ll do all of this, but they''ll still lack honour when you fight them. Why?


    Because they can make themselves be ruthless. They don''t care about honour, or fighting fair. At the end of the day a sellsword fights for coin, but more than that they''re fighting for their life. If you fought one of them now you''d probably have your head full of faetale nonsense, like the idea that he''ll stop what he''s doing if you yield and take you prisoner with your honour and dignity intact.


    The sellsword will not.


    The best sellswords see every fight as a fight to the death, because in this age that''s what they are. If you try and surrender, try and yield, then he''ll take that opportunity to strike you down wherever you kneel so that he can move on to the next opponent. This is because the sellsword fights on the battlefield, not the tourney ground. There will be no bell rang to signal the end of a bout, no-one rushing over to make sure both of the fighters are okay. The battlefield is a cruel place, and unless you can make yourself be just as cruel then you''ll be fighting a lost battle.


    You''ll probably come across a variety of axes in your time as a soldier. As a knight. Most common will be just a standard one-handed axe and the two-handed greataxe, both typically used by sellswords once more. They''re good weapons, especially against those wearing light armour, but so long as you keep your mail maintained and your gambeson stitched up you should be alright. Try not to get hit if you can help it though; they''re still bladed weapons, and bladed weapons damn well hurt.


    The only other weapon that sees a lot of use in Klironomea is the hammer. These might range in size from a builder''s hammer wielded by a fanatical church-militiaman, all the way up to a mighty warhammer hefted by one of your knightly brothers. These weapons are some of the most dangerous to a knight, for they''re specialised in killing despite armour. This is where your chain and gambeson really come in handy, for though they will not render you untouched by such weapons they will, at the very least, see the shock of the impact mostly absorbed and dispersed. It''ll still hurt, don''t mistake my words, but it''ll at least not be debilitating. I believe I mentioned this, or something similar, earlier whilst talking to you about your amour.


    Now, for the final weapons you need to be wary and take note of. Ranged weapons.


    To this day the most common ranged weapon amongst all Klironomeans, and most of the people of the world for that matter, is the javelin. Most levies carry a couple with them into combat, for they provide an excellent bit of stopping power and the capability to soften up enemy lines before a charge, or to soften up a charging enemy before they get amongst you for that matter. Javelins aren''t something you need to worry too much about; keep yourself moving fast on your horse and, if you''ve got a shield, make sure to keep it ready. Javelins may not seem scary to a man in full plate on horseback, and if you were fighting one man with such a weapon then I would agree, it wouldn''t be scary.


    But you won''t ever be fighting just one levy.


    Any man that calls a javelin a useless or outdated weapon has never had to charge across a field where hundreds are being thrown. They''re still dangerous, no matter what those of you whose fathers and mothers were lords and ladies may have told you; peasant weapons can kill just as easily as knightly ones.


    Now as knights you won''t be seeing much, if any, ranged combat. Shortbows are used by poachers and peasants, longbows by armsmen and sellswords, and crossbows are used by... well, anyone who can get their hands on one, mostly Tildans and Dathanians. The knights of the Order of the Hanged Martyr do use bows extensively however, their mighty huntsbows felling the foe from a great distance with great power. Seeing as none of you are applying for that... strange order, you don''t need to worry about all of them. You''ll be mostly protected in your armour from shortbows, but longbows and crossbows will still give you some trouble. Use your shield if you have one, and keep your wits about you where bowmen are concerned regardless of whether you have one or not. There''s no honour in death by arrow or bolt.


    That''s enough talking for now. Master Ela, please show our prospective new squires to the training grounds. I want to see what they''re all made of.

 K?til VI: A Bittersweet Future

    <u>K?til VI: A Bittersweet Future</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Sixth Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>The Great Warcamp, The Isanford, Scelopyrea.</u>


    It wasn''t bad, all things considered.


    Oh sure, he''d been fucking livid at first, but he''d come around afterwards. He''d genuinely believed that the great showdown between father and the Eyvindottir was to be his moment, his chance to prove himself as a worthy successor to his father. When there had been no battle he was furious, yes, but his friends and companions had calmed him. They''d made him see sense, no matter how little he wished to see it at the time.


    Yes, it was certainly annoying that the battle had never come to pass. Yes, it certainly did seem to be a betrayal of the decade of training he''d been put through for this moment. No, that did not mean it was all useless. His friends were alive and still by his side, and that was the most important thing to note. On top of that, it wasn''t like this would be the only time war would be upon them all, not with the combined might of all Scelopyrea behind a pair of truly great warlords. No, war was a certainty in the near future, and promised to be greater than any internecine conflict amongst their own kind. The treacherous petty kings on the island of Hedinskye, the tribes of the other Brythonian Isles, even the mighty rulers of the south would all make viable targets in time. He just needed to wait a little longer, and the glory he craved would certainly be his.


    The marriage of his father to Thjodhild Eyvindottir had been one of the grandest affairs in living memory, even if he did find himself having to bite his tongue all night due to being sat to father''s right with the Valkyrie-Queen on the other high chair at the dais. That was one of the main stipulations of their union: they were equals. Father could not overrule her, and she could not overrule father. K?til wasn''t pleased with that, but then he wasn''t overly pleased with any of this. He wasn''t displeased enough to actually say anything to father about it though, for he wasn''t stupid enough to think that this move was wrong. He was too proud to admit his distaste came from selfishness, but he wasn''t so selfish as to try and rile up discontent. His father seemed pleased anyhow, and if nothing else he would stay quiet just to keep his old man happy. Father deserved that much.


    He wasn''t sure how much he''d drank that night, but he did know it was a strong fruit brandy. He wasn''t in the mood that night for merriment, and though he did try to contain his bitterness for the sake of the man to his left that night he knew that his father had been a little worried about how he would take it.


    He wasn''t taking it well, to be honest. He now understood why uncles Rogar and Osvald had driven themselves so hard to try and be fathers equal. It had gotten them both killed in the end, which was a pleasant thought, but he understood their desire nonetheless. The fact of the matter was that a month ago he was set to be father''s heir, but with this new marriage the heir would have to be whichever child first came about from the union of father and the Valkyrie-Queen. He was old news, and as such leadership of the Scelopyrene would never be his.


    It was a bitter thought, but that didn''t mean there were no other avenues open to him. Whoever his half-sibling was to be would surely benefit from having him around as a loyal huscarl, and if he wasn''t wanted here then he''d just take his companions and go off on an adventure somewhere to the south. The southern kingdoms were always looking for mercenaries, weren''t they? Maybe he''d be able to find passage across the Aenir and find his way through life amongst soldiers and brigands from around the entire world. It would be an interesting life, if a short one.


    He didn''t blame father for what he''d done. The man had made the smartest decision available to him, and with his new union Scelopyrea was on the way to finally becoming a true nation rather than the collection of squabbling clans and tribes it had been since time immemorial, and of course it made sense that there were to be some losers that came about as a result of this, but it just felt gut churning that it had to be K?til himself that was the loser here.


    Okay, maybe it was a little bad, but he was doing fine, honest!


    "Son."


    He looked up to see the towering figure of his father enter the room, a strange sheepishness across his features, or was that... guilt? Yes, that was certainly guilt. He looked up at his father with tired eyes and nodded his respect.


    "Great Jaerl."


    The use of his title instead of his name when in private looked like it might have stung, but K?til was too lost in his own head to think about that at the moment. He didn''t want his father to feel bad, of course not, he loved the man dearly, but this all... this all still hurt. More than he was probably willing to admit to anyone else.


    Still, he just about managed to force himself to keep talking, to stop his father from thinking that everything was irrecoverable between them. Father had made a choice which would deeply impact the rest of his life, yes, but he was still his father and had done what he thought was right for the people he ruled over.


    Who was K?til to come between father and his people?


    "I don''t blame you, father. You made the right choice."


    His father sat down next to him and laid a large hand on his shoulder. The movement was gentle, slow, but warm. Nice.


    "You don''t sound happy with that."


    K?til turned to face his father, a smile on his face that didn''t feel entirely fake, but didn''t exactly reach his eyes either.


    "Would it be selfish of me to say I was hoping you''d make the wrong decision?"


    Dyfed smiled a little at him and squeezed his shoulder gently.


    "It would be human of you, my son. I am sorry that the future you were promised will no longer be yours. I hope in time I can at least begin to make up for taking this from you."


    "It''s fine, dad." He said almost on impulse. "I''ll live with it. Besides, your next child can be raised by the both of you from birth to rule over Scelopyrea. They''ll do a much better job than I could of."


    His father looked down at him, frowning a little.


    "You''d have done a fine job, my son, and I have little doubt that you will have the greatness you crave in the future. There''s too much of your grandfather in you for anything else to be true. There are further wars on the horizon, that much you know already, and men as skilled as you with both blade and command will be in great demand soon enough. The men of Scelopyrea will know your name soon enough, and the men of the south will tremble at your approach. There are many years ahead of you yet before anything is to change in your life, and in time you may become the greatest commander amongst the armies of your unborn sibling. You will be known far and wide, K?til, just not as a head of state. There are many who wear a crown and yet are powerless, just as their are many who appear weak and feeble and yet control much. You will be able to live along that middle line, taking the best of both worlds as they go past. You will control much as a friend and confidant of your younger sibling, being a trusted hand for them to rely on and ensuring the rise and fall of many within their court."


    "I know, father. I know. In time I will... in time I will learn to be happy with that, I think. I hope. If I stay."


    Father''s hand remained steady, but there was a slight pause to his words that suggested he was very surprised, and not in a nice way.


    "You... wish to leave?"


    "I don''t know yet, father. I don''t know what I want at the moment. I didn''t pick the future in front of me, you did. I was raised with one purpose in mind, and that purpose was to succeed you. Whether I had to bolster my position in battle or in the more boring matters of meeting people I was happy to do it, because that was what my future was going to be. But now that future is gone, and I don''t know what I want anymore. I''ve never had to think about what I was going to be, because that knowledge was always right in front of me. I don''t really know what I''m supposed to want anymore."


    Dyfed sighed, seeming genuinely sorry about all of this, which made K?til feel a little guilty for unloading all of this onto his father. The man has only done what was right, K?til reminded himself for what must have been the twentieth time that day, and moping won''t change anything.


    Still, it was hard to just accept everything. He''d been in disbelief at first, then angry at everyone involved with all of this, but now he just felt tired. Spent. His entire life had been building up to one goal, and now it was gone. He opened his mouth to continue talking, at this point barely even registering what he was going to say before the words left his mouth.


    "I know this is harsh of me to say father, and I don''t want to say it to hurt you, but I was... I was thinking earlier, and I had a thought."


    Father remained quiet, but slowly motioned for him to continue.


    "I thought about my uncles. I thought about Rogar and Osvald. I thought about how... how in the shadows they felt when stood next to you. And I think now I understand it as well. You''ve been one of the best men Scelopyrea has ever seen, and you''ve done so much, but... but there''s never been much left for anyone else to do. And I think that''s why they both had to leave on the tides."


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    His father closed his eyes for a moment and let out a deep sigh.


    "I see. I am sorry, my son. I want you to know that I am proud of you, immensely so, but I understand what you say as well. Will you be wishing to leave on the tides as well?"


    K?til shrugged, looking down a little as he absentmindedly kicked at the floor. He probably looked like a petulant child at the moment, but he didn''t care. He was still bitter about all of this.


    "I don''t know. Part of me wants to stay and help, to try and help train the child or act as a trusted commander for you, but I know your new wife likely wants me out of the way. Besides, there''s nothing I would be able to teach the child that you and her couldn''t cover between you. That led me to thinking about heading south and becoming a mercenary. I don''t know, yet. I think at the end of the day I''ll just... I''ll just do what you tell me."


    And that was the truth of it. He still loved his father, and there was still a part of him that didn''t want to leave despite all of this. His friends would likely have tried to convince him to stay anyway, so leaving was feeling like more and more of a lost cause as he thought about it. He supposed he''d just have to... well, to stay here and try to make a life for himself in the shadow of this as-of-yet unborn child. There''s something that''ll be remembered in the sagas of our people, he thought to himself bitterly.


    "I know this hurts," his father said in a gentle voice, "and I cannot overstate just how much I regret having upended your life in this way. But it needed to be done. You''ve already said you understand that, and I trust you to decide for yourself whether you think it was the right decision in time. In any other circumstances I would wish for nothing more than to call you my heir, but these things are difficult to decide. History will not remember our suffering, only our accomplishments."


    He let out a bitter scoff once again.


    "If that''s the case I don''t think history will remember me at all."


    "K?til, you killed two Jotun. You led our forces along the river Isanar. You''ve been blessed by Krakevasil more than any other warrior I know, and have taken a Druid for a lover. How can you think that history will not remember you?"


    "I will be ''the son of the Great Jaerl by his first wife'', that''s all. You and the new kid, those are the ones people will remember. Thjodhild too, for that matter. I''m to be Osvald and Rogar, clinging to the edges."


    "My brothers were great people in their own right, son."


    He nodded.


    "I know, dad. But no-one beyond our family sees them as anything more than ''the brothers of Dyfed''."


    Dyfed huffed out a long breath, seeming to mull over his words before speaking.


    "There is, admittedly, some truth to what you say. I will not hold you here if you do not wish to be here, my son, but I would miss you deeply if you left. My new wife, though she is wary of you for your enduring dislike of her, does wish to speak with you and get to know you better. I''ve told her that you''d never seek to harm any child we had, because I know that isn''t you, and she''s more than happy for you to continue to stand by my side. More than anything I want you to take some time to cool off and carefully consider your options. I don''t want you to be miserable, my son. More than anything I want you to be happy. And to that end, I think I have a proposition for you."


    K?til perked up a little looking over at his father with a small twinge of hope in his chest.


    "A... a proposition?"


    Dyfed nodded.


    "Of course. We will be striking south in the coming years, as you already know, and there is no one man who can rule such vast territories without delegation. There will be a mighty fiefdom carved out by your forces amongst the weak-willed southerners, and that will be yours to rule in your sibling''s name. You will swear yourself to them as you have to me, but you will be just as free as you are under my command as well. You will yet be great, my son."


    K?til smiled up at his father. For the first time in this conversation it didn''t feel fake.


    "I think... I think I need some time to think."


    "Of course, son." His father replied, rising from where he sat. "Maybe consider speaking to my new wife; she would like to get to know you better."


    "Alright. I''ll do it. Tomorrow, though. I feel tired."


    Dyfed nodded.


    "I understand. Goodnight, my son. I am proud of you."


    <hr>


    "K?til Dyfedson. I am pleased to meet you at last."


    The woman before him was tall, about as tall as father in fact, but he didn''t need to crane his neck from the angle he was at. Her gaze was shrewd but not unkind, much like father''s was as well. Yes, he could see why those two would make for a good pair, even if the thought of his late mother being replaced made his gut churn.


    "Queen Eyvindottir. I am..."


    He trailed off a little, unable to bring himself to repeat the pleasantry. He wasn''t pleased to meet her, but he was here nonetheless, wasn''t he?


    "Thank you for granting me your audience." He eventually settled on. "There are one or two things to be discussed, but less than you might think. Father has explained much to me already."


    "So I have gathered. The matter of succession is settled then, with your support?"


    He grit his teeth as she motioned for him to sit down at a small table next to a long couch in the style of one of the southern peoples, he didn''t know which. He took the offered seat and drummed a hand on the table as the other one came to his mouth. He had to say the words, he had to say yes and just get this over with, but at that moment he just couldn''t manage it. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no matter how much he tried he couldn''t force the words out.


    "Perhaps we''ll discuss that another time, then? There were other things that we were to discuss, weren''t there?"


    "Just the one." K?til said. "One more thing and then I''ll leave. You are a good match for my father, that I''ll not deny. You make him happy, which is important to me, and so I''ll not stand in your way. But that doesn''t mean I like you. This time last month we were enemies on the field of battle, and I watched good men cut down by your own supporters. We did the same to them in return. It was war, plain and simple, but now we sit here in the same room, with you taking the place at my father''s side where mother once stood, and I''m pushed to the side-lines. I''m not going to pretend I''m happy with any of this."


    "But?" She pressed, sensing that he wasn''t done.


    "But I''m not stupid. I know this is for the best. So I''ll... I''ll stand aside for your child, whatever they end up being. I''ll not try anything stupid. Just... just don''t try to force anything on my father."


    "I won''t," she replied with what at least sounded like sincerity, "there''s too much at stake for any of that. He still loves you, you know."


    "I know," K?til replied, for it was the plain and simple truth, "and it is returned in kind. That doesn''t make this sting any less."


    "I... I understand that this is a great change in your life, Warchief K?til, but you will need to forgive your father sooner rather than later."


    He attempted to shoot her a scathing look, but he was too tired and his mind was too far away for such a look to be managed.


    "You know," he settled on saying instead, "I was supposed to inherit father''s mantle. I was supposed to spend my adulthood at the head of a unified Scelopyrea, following on from wherever it is that my father left off. Then he married you."


    Though he could see and hear what was going on in the room it felt as though he wasn''t there. It felt as if he were just watching his life, not living it. He just about registered Thjodhild move to sit next to him at the table as he stared off, unblinking, into the distance.


    "I was going to be a king, you know. I was supposed to be a king. That''s what I was raised for. I was raised by father so that I could do what it is that he does. But that isn''t what I can do anymore. Father has put forwards a compromise of sorts, which he has no doubt cleared with you first and does admittedly help with coming to terms with this, but... but I was supposed to be a king. And now I''m not."


    The woman next to him nodded, likely not understanding just how much this had effected him but still maintaining a large dose of empathy as she spoke.


    "I won''t apologise for that. It''s for the good of everyone, and just as your father''s supporters would not support an heir solely born of my loins so to would my supporters not support you. The heir of myself and your father needs to be born from our union. Even so, what I can do is recognise the strain this is likely to put on you. The strain that, from the looks of things, it already has put on you. I may not be your mother, but so long as I am wed to your father I will treat you with the care and respect that you deserve. You are a good commander and a great warrior, and tales of how you slew a pair of jotun have even made it to my own ears before now. People like you will be sorely needed in the years to come, K?til, and your father is right to say that it would be good to keep you as one of our commanders. Tell me, are you familiar with how the southerners organise their councils?"


    He shook his head, trying to focus on what she was saying but finding it a little hard to tear his gaze from the spot on the wall it had fallen upon when first he sank into the chair.


    "The southerners appoint people to a variety of positions where each man, or woman, controls one thing in totality. One man controls the military, one the traders, another still the spies. All answer to their king, but remain proficient in their roles. I think that, in time, you could make a rather good Warchief of the huscarls. I don''t mean of a small band like you command now, I mean all huscarls. You''d be responsible for their recruitment, for their training, their equipment, their facilities, all of it. You''d not be a king, no, but you''d still wield a lot of power. A lot of people will answer to you and you alone, and in all matters of war it will be you that your younger sibling comes to for advice and a right-hand man. Does that sound like something that interests you?"


    It was... surprising, to have a woman who by all means should have despised him and seen him as a threat to her as of yet unborn child, to be this kind and offer him this much power. Moving still felt like a chore, but he just about managed to nod and force out a few words, even if the movement of his mouth felt foreign and disconnected from his mind.


    "Yeah," he said slowly, "I still don''t like you, but that sounds alright. I dislike you a little less than I did before, I think. Thank you for your time, your... what''s the right term for a queen?"


    "Leave honorifics for the southerners," she replied with a smile, "And as for you still disliking me, that''s fine. I don''t expect you to change your opinion in one conversation. Just call me by my name. It will take some time for the notion to sit well with you, and I completely understand why, but we''re family now. You can rest here for a little while until you feel fit to move again. Don''t worry, you aren''t the first person I''ve met to find that their bodies won''t obey their commands. Rest for a few moments, then leave when you''re ready. We''ve got plenty of time, after all."


    He nodded again, feeling a little more lucid now. He wanted to hate this woman, to shout at her and rant about how she was the reason he was like this at the moment, but that would have just been petty. She was making an active effort to try and show him that she was fine not only with them building a good relationship with each other but also that she was amenable to him holding a great deal of power when the time came. She was trying, and so he would need to match that or else admit that he was worse than she was.


    He stayed sat there for quite some time that night before returning to his tent and, finding that Svaltha was already asleep, lay down beside her. He didn''t feel as bad as he had before, no, but it still took him quite some time to get asleep that night.


    In fact when the dimming sun came up he wasn''t even sure he''d actually slept at all.

 Rhema IV: The Mists of Autumn

    <u>Rhema IV: The Mists of Autumn</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Eighth Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.</u>


    <u>Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    "You''ve got to be fucking kidding me."


    Rhema stared on with incredulity at his brother. He was dressed in the same sort of leather armour that Rhema tended towards wearing, only duller and more worn. He looked like he belonged in the camp that Symon''s boys stayed in, not the royal court. Neither did the man who stood besides him for that matter, who wore a very similar garb despite appearing to be somewhere around twice his brother''s age. The man apparently was, or rather had been, the fucking Triarian King. And he''d just... given Lykourgos his crown. Rhema hadn''t known his brother to be one for negotiation with those he saw as enemies, but then if this royal had reached out before any sort of conflict had taken place... yes, that would probably stay his brother''s hand from violence.


    "There''s no lie here, your Highness.


    "My title is ''your Grace'' at the moment. Until my brother has a kid of his own, that is. Not that I particularly care for titles. Anyways, this whole fucking situation is madder than a spring hare. You mean to tell me the two of you just... went to an inn, had a few drinks, and now you''ve sworn fealty to my brother?"


    "It was a little more complicated than that," Lykourgos interjected, "but yeah, that''s the broad strokes of it. Lord Sigiros has talked much with me about future plans, and I am pleased to have learned that many of his ambitions line up with mine. We have entered into a true partnership."


    Somehow Rhema doubted that. Maybe he was just being paranoid, maybe he was letting the memories of Lieutenant Isen get to him, but he really doubted that the ex-king was being completely honest with his older brother. Lykourgos had intellect and ambition, drive too, but the man stood to his left had the experience that came with age. Ernest his words may have been, and perhaps many of his ambitions truly did line up with those that his brother carried, but Rhema suspected that there were other ambitions hidden below the surface. He suspected that there were ambitions that none would learn of until they came to pass, or ones that might remain buried for decades more and never spoken of until the opportunity arose.


    You could take the title away from a man, but you could never take away the ambition that titles once gave. It was only his love for his brother that stopped Rhema from dreaming on what might have been at times, even if he had hated sitting on the throne whilst he''d been king. That was just what memory did to you, especially when said memory was as patchy and false as his. It made the past seem better or worse than it was, and Rhema had no doubts in his mind that he was certainly remembering his time as king to be far nicer than it was. He wasn''t cut out for kingship and he knew it, but most didn''t. The question remains, therefore: does this man mean to betray my brother?


    Maybe he did, maybe he didn''t. Rhema couldn''t very well act straight away with no evidence, but he would definitely be writing to the Master of Silver and telling him in no uncertain terms that he didn''t trust this man, and that he needed to be watched. At least that might give them all some warning before treason came around.


    "You seem discontented at my presence by your brother''s side, your Grace. Have I done something to offend you?"


    Rhema shook his head swiftly, recognising that he at least needed to appear civil in front of everyone.


    "No, you haven''t. I''m just wondering what you hope to gain from my brother. From this deal you''ve made with him. What could be worth giving away half your kingdom, and your sovereignty for that matter?"


    The man smiled at him, not in a threatening or manic way, but in a genuinely earnest and amused manner.


    "What else but gold, boy? What else could make a man give up his kingdom save riches beyond compare? The lands of the Arthaxan Plateau are rich in iron and coal. The riches I will gain by becoming the main provider of weapons, tools, and armour to the armies of your brother will far outstrip all the taxes and tithes placed on me by becoming a vassal. Now if I were to stand against your brother then there''s a very real chance I''d lose everything, and my family would be destitute. Swearing myself to your brother in peace, however? That brings with it no risk. I am free to see to my manufactories and business links, becoming one of the richest men in this new kingdom. As for my loyalties, why would I ever seek to turn against his Grace when this partnership promises to be so lucrative? As his kingdom grows, so too will my wealth. That''s what was worth giving away half my kingdom for. The world is changing, and we in Triarios know it well. I''d rather my family sit besides the victor when the smoke clears. I''d rather we grow strong alongside the next generation than fade into nothing against them. That is why I swore myself to your brother."


    Honesty. It was refreshing to hear such honesty. There was no attempts to pretend that this had been to save lives, nor that this was the ''right thing to do''. The man had sworn himself to Rhema''s brother because he was greedy and believed this to be the best way of increasing his wealth and his business empire. In a strange way Rhema could respect that. At any rate, it just meant one less kingdom that his brother would need to take through war. For all Rhema''s bluster and want for battle, even he couldn''t deny that it would certainly be good for his brother.


    Angels, when had his brother become so lucky? He guessed they both had Angels looking out for them now, literally as well! The fact that the Angel Hydran himself seemed to have taken an interest in his brother was... well, if that were the case then it certainly made sense that things would be going his way. Saints, that was weird to think about. There were still Angels who physically existed in this world, and they''d taken an interest in his family. Not that Rhema thought his brother needed the support of any divine creatures; they raised him from sleep at an opportune time, yes, but now Hydran seemed content to sit back and watch the wars from afar if Seventh''s complaints about the man were anything to go by.


    He nodded his acknowledgements at the man and tried for a grin, but it probably looked more like a grimace. There were too many things going on at the moment, too many things for him to try and keep track of. He''d have to start trusting some of the others his brother kept in his inner circle to keep any new members in check. Hell, the new Master of Copper was doing an excellent job and had been advising his brother by letter from Anaria about financial matters, so he seemed like a trustworthy start. In time perhaps this new lord might go that same way, might become a valuable and trusted man to have at his brother''s back, but no matter how honest he was Rhema had no intention of trusting him at the moment.


    "Well," he started, turning back to his brother, "what now then?"


    His brother stared off a little, a look that suggested deep thought passing over his face as he rubbed his chin.


    "Well, first things first there''s the matter of the last few Owkrestan holdouts, who are now rebels and not legitimate claimants thanks to the legal passing of the crown over to me, but they''ll fall in line relatively easily. Rhema, I''m leaving you in charge of that. Most of the lords have heard what you did to Blacktree Hall, so they''ll be loathe to show such defiance to after what happened to the Old Oak. Make sure that all know who now rules these lands, brother. The people are innocent, but the rebel lords are not. Dispose of them."


    Rhema grinned, nodding his assent. He''d learned a thing or two this last year about leading men into battle, and now he was being trusted with these responsibilities without the oversight of a more experienced commander. His brother trusted him, and Rhema would do anything to ensure that he would remain worthy of that trust. If a half-dozen petty lordships had to have their castles razed to prove that point then that was what he would do. It wasn''t like the people were living within the walls of those castles, only the lords and the traitors. It seemed that his brother was content to allow one lord in his new kingdom, and a powerful one at that, but the rest of the old order was to be swept away.


    It was all rather exciting, really; he was stood at the forefront of the single most radical shift in the balance of power of the world in... well, perhaps in a millennia. Centuries, surely. The campaigning season was coming to a close, what with winter on its way, but there would still be plenty enough time to see this mission through to its completion. He just needed to ensure that the people weren''t incited to rebel in his wake, which meant that he''d need to be rather generous to the towns and villages he passed through. There wasn''t really anywhere in Owkrestos worthy of being called a city outside of Stagspring itself, so it wasn''t like he could offer the gentlemen chances for their towns to become cities to pacify them. Well, Derrytown was probably big enough, but that one was already pacified and the opposite direction to the way he was marching, so he couldn''t do that himself. He''d be surprised if Lyk hadn''t done that already though, given that the bestowing of city charters to large towns in his possession was his idea to begin with.


    Those things were considerations for later, however. At the moment Rhema needed to keep his mind primarily on war, and then on the pacifying of the lowborns. Whatever his brother was to do, well, that was for him to know at the moment. Rhema was already trying to keep up with too many things at once, so it was time to take a step back and ignore the other happenings around him. Rhema had been given a job, and that''s what he would focus on. The rest of this was for his brother to work out, and if Lyk wanted his help then all he had to do was ask. Until that time came, Rhema would do what he was told.


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    His brother continued relaying orders to the other members of his council in the room, the confidence in his voice matched only by the conviction with which he carried himself.


    "Ser Romanos, Marshal Crowe, I''d like the two of you to lead the majority of our forces eastwards into Triarios. With the assistance of Lord Sigiros'' forces the campaign shouldn''t take more than a few moons to reach its completion. After we''ve pacified our new lands and ensured that we upheld our end of the bargain with Lord Sigiros then we march our forces away and ready ourselves for the coming coronation. Those are your orders. I have the utmost faith in the both of you to see these carried out, and should you need anything then you need only send a raven or messenger. I trust you."


    Romanos slammed a metal-clad fist against his own chest in a sign of respect whilst Crow nodded with an almost proud look at his brother.


    "It shall be done. Grandmaster, I would borrow you for a conversation in my chambers shortly. We have much to discuss."


    The Grandmaster, resplendent in his plate armour, gave a slight smile and bowed his head a little.


    "Indeed we do, Marshal. Your Grace, by your leave?"


    Rhema''s brother nodded, eyes flicking between the knight and the marshal. Was he reading too much into that smile or was there something there?


    "Of course. You may take your leave. Brother, yourself as well. Lord Sigiros, attend me if you would."


    There was a series of responses, mostly just a repeat of "Your Grace", and one by one the attending councillors and servants of the prince took their leave. Rhema himself made to walk back to his chambers, tired but electrified with energy thanks to the new task that had been bestowed upon him. It seemed he had some planning of his own to do.


    <hr>


    It was all quite exciting really, making these plans and imagining the battles that were soon to come. He tried his best to keep himself from getting distracted with musings on how he could better apply his skills in personal combat, since he knew that there was so much more to leading men into battle, but it was a hard line of thought to keep. Even so, he felt like he was making steady progress when it came to understanding the logistical concerns of an army thanks to the lessons he''d had whilst his brother was incapacitated, so even if he didn''t totally understand everything he at least had a good starting point to build off of.


    Hell, at least in part even reading some of the reports from the Lieutenants about the state of the men and their capabilities was turning out to be somewhat engaging, even if it did make his head hurt. Not in a joking way either, nor the normal dull thrum he usually felt at the back of his head, but an actual pain.


    Angels, now that he thought about his head hurt really bad. Like, really bad. He put a hand to his forehead, rubbing gently so as to try and alleviate a little of the pain. Was he truly going to have another-


    "Hello, brother. You remain as busy as ever, don''t you."


    He sighed, then swallowed hard. He knew this would happen again, he was just hoping it wouldn''t be this soon.


    "I am very busy, sister. Leave me be."


    His voice came out shaky and he stumbled over his syllables a little, but he was able to get them out nonetheless.


    "You don''t get to command me, brother. You lost the crown that I never got to wear. I should have worn the crown, not you, and certainly not our baseborn brother. With me we would have had peace, the lords would have been given their homes back, and the church would have taken its rightful place at the top of our kingdom. Now you just have chaos. Chaos and war."


    "You were the queen in all but name for several moons, and all you proved in that time is that you were exactly the kind of ruler that the heads of the New-Church hoped for. That is not a compliment."


    He heard the noise of a laugh from behind him, not quite the gurgle that a man made when you cut his throat but there was certainly a hint of that macabre noise hidden within the laughter.


    "All these insults, and yet you can''t even bring yourself to look at me. I shouldn''t be surprised; you weren''t even capable of looking upon my execution without turning and running."


    He turned to look at her and respond, but the words died in his mouth. Hearing her was terrifying enough, but actually seeing her once again made it all feel more real somehow.


    She''d looked bad the last time he''d seen her visage, but now she looked even worse. Her pallid cheeks and glassy eyes were sunken and stained with dried blood, and her hair seemed as matted and tangled as a briar patch.


    The bloodied, pale visage of his sister smiled at him. He wasn''t sure whether it looked sickly sweet or mocking, or perhaps even a mixture of both, but what he did know was that just the sight of it felt like it was hurting him just as much as the headache was.


    "Seventh," he spoke with a dry voice, "it''s happening again. Help me."


    His voice was quiet and Seventh wasn''t even in the same room, but almost as though Seventh had maintained a connection to his mind he felt a twinge of comforting energy ebb at the sides of his headache.


    "You can call for help all you want, little brother. This isn''t over. It won''t ever be over. I made a promise to you, little brother, don''t you remember it? Do you really want to forget me, Rhema? To forget your own sister? You''re not allowed to just forget, brother. I won''t let you just forget me."


    He opened his mouth to respond, but the only sounds that left his mouth was a pained groan.


    At that moment there was the thundering sound of running feet from outside the room he was in, and the doorway burst open to reveal a blinding jolt of whitish-blue light. Seventh, as soon as they''d all but broken the door off of its hinges, rushed over to him and and pressed a smooth yet scarred hand to Rhema''s forehead.


    "Hey, hey, I''m here. You called me, and I''m here. Come on, lets sit down."


    Rhema nodded shakily, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to focus on the coolness against his forehead that seemed to be slowly pushing the pain out of his mind. Seventh led him to a small table and poured out a small measure of what smelt like lemon water, though where the hell they''d got that from Rhema had no idea since it wasn''t in here earlier, and handed Rhema the goblet.


    Slowly, one sip at a time, he forced himself to drink. The cool liquid helped him to ground himself in the here and now, and the fact that his friend was wordlessly next to him somehow gave him a sense of... stability. Security. He hadn''t even noticed in the commotion that the mind-spectre of his sister had vanished, but her bloodied form wasn''t tormenting him anymore so she must have dissipated at some point.


    "Seventh," he said, voice taut and a little scratchy despite the fact he had neither raised his voice nor screamed out in rage, "I saw her again."


    "I know, Re. I know. But you remembered what I told you, didn''t you?"


    He nodded stiffly.


    "I did. I called for you like to told me to. I didn''t do anything else to make her go away this time."


    "And are you feeling... better, now?"


    The prince was silent for a moment before nodding slowly, genuinely being a little unsure as to whether or not he felt better yet.


    "I think so? I can''t see her anymore. Or hear her. But the headache is still there. It isn''t as bad, but it''s still there."


    "Well," his best friend smiled, shuffling together some of the papers that Rhema had been looking through on the table and moving them into a neat pile to the side, "I might be able to help with that. Just try to relax for a moment, Re. Like I taught you to do when we''re scrying. Keep your mind relaxed and open for a moment, then I''ll be able to help you a little."


    Despite the sluggish nature of his movements and thoughts at the moment, he eventually nodded. His headache made the action of relaxing his mind difficult and painful, but only for a second. With Seventh''s hand back on his forehead he felt that same comforting energy that had pressed gently against his headache before come back, only stronger and more... he supposed it felt more ''sustained'', if that made any sense. It felt less like a burst of energy and more a slow, measured release.


    It seems his friend had been learning quite a bit from their mentor after all.


    "Whoa." Seventh''s voice was quiet, small even. "You weren''t kidding, Re. Those headaches must have done a number on you. I''m proud of you for reaching out to me for help though, Rhema. I''m glad that you know that I''m here for you."


    There was a short beat of silence before a blissful sigh escaped Rhema''s lips. Angels, that feels good. It didn''t even feel like normal, it felt... better. The dull, barely noticeable thrum soon returned in the back of his head, but that he could deal with. That was normal.


    "That''s weird. For a moment it felt like I had no headache at all."


    Seventh looked at him, confused.


    "Yeah... that''s normal, Rhema. Do you... often have headaches?"


    "Well, yeah!" He started. "Everyone has a little bit of an ache in the head, right?"


    "You mean like... constantly?"


    He nodded, confused by how he was having to spell this out to Seventh. His friend, for their part, sighed deeply.


    "Oh, Rhema. No, that''s not normal. The normal amount of constant headache is ''none''. I''ll speak to my mentor and see if they can do something about that for you. If not there are always apothecaries and men of healing that can assist with such things. We should really get you to the Royal Hospital in Polaeros at some point to see if they can help you with a few of your ailments, myself as well while we''re at it. The two of us could make it a fun trip!"


    Rhema laughed softly. The idea of going to the Royal Hospital with his friend seemed a little scary at first, but at least it distracted him from the rather distressing notion that the dull headache he could always remember having wasn''t something that was normal. It really felt like the Angels had it out for him sometimes, even as they looked out for him and his brother.


    "Sure, why not. We''ll have conquered our way over there in a few years anyway, so whilst it might have to wait for a while we''ll certainly be able to do that. How''s the mentor been recently?"


    Seventh shook their head at the change in subject, but the action seemed light hearted.


    "He''s... we''ll, he''s still infuriating at times, but it feels like we''re getting used to each other a bit more. You know what I mean, it''s like we aren''t constantly treading over each other''s toes all the time now. It can still be... tense, at times, usually when one of us brings up a sore spot for the other, but we''re both learning what to bring up and what not to bring up. In a year or two it''ll all be smooth sailing so far as I can see."


    "Until he throws the next load of worldview-upending lost knowledge at you, you mean?"


    Seventh flicked them on the forehead in response, and where Rhema was worried that would result in an explosion of pain and that Seventh had forgotten the headaches he''d been having he found that miraculously even the after-effects were now gone. For now his head was blissfully quiet and peaceful, and he could taste fresh mountain air alongside the lemon water he''d drank.


    "Well, if nothing else then I''m glad you''re okay at the moment, Re. Heavens know what I''d do if you were incapacitated."


    "Apart from enjoy the peace and quiet, you mean?"


    "Rhema," Seventh replied with a lopsided grin, "my spirit belongs to the wild just as yours does. There''s very little I enjoy about silence. Chaos and feral energies are more my sort of thing, not quiet contemplation and reflective moments."


    "Well," Rhema replied, picking up the sheet of paper on the top of the pile Seventh had just made, "I feel better now. Now that you''re here you might be able to help me with some of this, if you''d be so kind?"


    His friend smiled sweetly at him again, and wordlessly sat down besides him at the table. He was so very lucky to have Seventh in his life.

 Lykourgos XII: Mightier Than the Sword

    <u>Lykourgos XII: Mightier Than the Sword</u>


    <u>The Second Day of the Tenth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    Hells, but this was a lot of paperwork. Some interesting, some boring, some major, some minor, but all needed to be read most diligently, lest an important detail be missed.


    "Well, lets see," he said aloud to the empty room, "Teleytaios has two and a half thousand Men-at-Arms and the same again for Longbowmen-at-Arms, as well as one-thousand Armsmen manning field artillery. From Triarios I have under my direct command another thousand Longbowmen-at-Arms and a thousand manning field artillery. As for Owkrestos there are another two-thousand there, almost all Men-at-Arms. That places me at a standing army strength of four and a half thousand Men-at-Arms with billhooks, three and a half thousand Longbowmen, and two-thousand men manning siege equipment and field artillery. According to what can be reasonably afforded and trained in the time period before we go back to war I can finance another two and a half thousand men with billhooks and five-hundred more with longbows. That should be a grand army by itself."


    His mutterings were barely audible even to himself, for he was doing little more than whispering and mumbling whilst he flicked through documents and scribbled down notes on the foolscap next to him. As of right now he was trying to get everything in order when it came to the preparations for next year''s campaigns, but most of what he''d been doing so far these last few weeks was nothing more than the first steps towards the consolidation of his new territories for the winter months since more than a little food and clothing would need to be distributed amongst the poor both in his core territories and his new holdings; winter didn''t care who you were or which side of a war you''d fought on after all, and winter brought with it cold and hunger and death. The sooner his preparations were made the better, but he''d made sufficient headway on those issues and desperately needed a break from it all.


    Now most people, Rhema and Elikoidi came to mind, wouldn''t have counted ''moving to the next stack of paperwork'' as a break, but Lykourgos couldn''t afford to do anything else at the moment. If he wished to be coronated as the king of not only Teleytaios but also of Triarios and Owkrestos then he needed to prove himself as being diligent. Nasos was worrying about him becoming too stressed, but in all honesty this wasn''t stressful. These were just numbers, and numbers were easy enough for him to understand. What was stressful was dealing with the endless number of petty matters that ruling in peacetime brought with it, and he had little care for that sort of thing. This paperwork was rather dull, yes, but not stressful. Numbers were simple, but people were stressful; better a hundred stacks of paperwork than a dozen delegate meetings. He didn''t need to worry about running out of time with the numbers, since there wasn''t exactly a hard limit on the time he had at the moment. Now that would have made it stressful.


    Turning his thoughts back to the sheets of paper detailing the military strength of his new lands he mentally added those men that his new vassal was maintaining control over, speaking aloud once more to try and keep his mind on track and focused on the matter at hand.


    "Of course Lord Sigiros has maintained control over his two-thousand Triarian Legionaries, who perform much the same function as the Men-at-Arms being heavy infantry, but of an even higher quality. He wants to expand his Armsmen as well, since half of the ones he once had were sworn to his vassals and as such now belong to me. He will likely fund an expansion of either a thousand Longbowmen-at-Arms or a thousand men trained in the use of siege weaponry, since both of those can be called upon to give support at range. Knowing the tactical advantages Longbowmen have over artillery pieces I''d be surprised if he didn''t go for them."


    He nodded to himself when he finished speaking, quickly jotting down some numbers on another piece of foolscap whilst they were fresh in his mind. Nine-thousand heavy infantrymen, both Men-at-Arms and Triarian Legionaries counted together, four-thousand Longbowmen-at-Arms, and two-thousand artillerists. Now that was a professional army if ever he''d thought of one. Perhaps a little heavy on the frontline infantry and lacking the preferred west-Klironomean one-to-one ratio of melee and ranged combatants, but still a formidable force. Knights would need to be relied upon to provide both light and heavy cavalry wings, but the vast bulk of the army that marched east with him would be made of Armsmen. Hell, an army of Armsmen and Knights would mean that, as had happened in this campaign against Owkrestos, the lowborns could be left to till the fields and see to their trades, meaning that the war would hardly hamper the economy at all. Even beyond that, it would keep unrest low in the newly conquered Owkrestos and the somewhat-begrudgingly kneeling people of Triarios. A successful war without a raised levy would be... well, it would be most excellent indeed.


    That was all just war, however. A point that was far more dull, and yet perhaps even greater in importance, was that of the economy.


    Just as he had thanks to his invasion of Owkrestos, the pacification of Triarios had left him with a great deal of new crownlands in his pocket. Most of the fertile lands in Triarios were located in the Arthaxan Plateau, which now belonged to his vassal, but the highlands and hills Lykourgos now owned seemed fine enough for sheep, goats, and highland cattle. He''d have to see about investing in those lands alongside his Owkrestan holdings in the coming years, especially those lands perfect for the keeping of sheep; thanks to his financing of clothiers in Haestinghen and Aenirhen there would be an increased demand for wool in the years that were to come, and internal trade links were just as important as external ones.


    According to the notes he''d taken from a few of the documents that were in a pile somewhere behind him and to his right, there were somewhere around three million hectares of land being used for agricultural needs in Triarios, two-million of which was pastoral. It seems that in the span of a year I''ve accrued six-million hectares of pastoral farmland and three-million more of different assorted agricultural practices, mostly cereal and grain crops. The greatest kings and lords of eastern Klironomea might have held greater tracts of land than him, but he was still one of the largest landholders in the known world. The envy of the clergy and remaining lords would grow in time as a result of this, of that he had no doubt, but such matters were unlikely to become issues until decades from now.


    Of course, there were other types of lands he''d come into ownership of as well. Apiaries, fruit orchards, vegetable cropland, horse breeders, donkey breeders, hound breeders, fisheries, there were all sorts now under his control. He actually had read in one of the documents that there was a large orchard of plum trees, which he admittedly was rather excited about. They grew a hell of a lot there, everything from his favourite damsons to sweet dessert plums such as greengages, from mirabelles that were used to make brandy to sugar plums for jams and conserves. It might not have been the greatest of his new holdings commercially, but he couldn''t see anyone minding if he invested and modernised the facilities there. It couldn''t hurt to do something small for himself, could it?


    Lord Brathaxe had once jested that he''d turn into a plum when he was a young boy, since he ate so many items of the delicious fruit, and if the man could see him now he''d no doubt be howling with laughter from the heavens. His little jest about how much his ward liked to eat plums not only proven correct, but in the acquisition of some nine million hectares of farmland the few hectares he was most excited for were those dedicated to a vast orchard of plums.


    He did miss Lord Brathaxe a bit. The man was not his birth father, but he''d done more to raise Lykourgos than his true father ever had. The man had seemed stern and scary at first, but as soon as he''d realised that the young Lykourgos was being picked on by a group of older squires who really should have known better it was like a switch had been flipped in the man''s head. Almost immediately he not only set about clattering the offenders to the ground in the next day''s sparring match but he''d also started teaching a young Lykourgos to wield a blade that was far too big for his size in self defence. Brathaxe had always, as Lykourgos had come to learn, expressed his love through actions rather than words. Teaching him to wield a too-big sword was his idea of showing the young prince that he cared.


    Well, he''d thought that the sword was far too big at the time, anyway. Nowadays he knew that the blade was just the right size for him. Funny how those things went, wasn''t it?


    Anyway, to get back on track and finish his small look into the new lands he''d taken he simply made a note about the plum tree orchard with an annotation that read ''Look into quality and quantity. Potential for expansion and improvement, find specifics.'' It wasn''t the most easy to follow note he''d made, but it was as concise and neat as it needed to be.


    Sighing softly to himself he stretched out his arms and felt the little pops around the joints. Knowing that he had to keep himself in good posture if he was doing this all day he made sure to stand and perform the same stretches he''d been doing since he was a child learning how first to fight. They were still easy enough to perform; he had struggled a little after waking from the coma he''d been in, though since then he''d made sure to get back into the practice with Nasos'' express enthusiasm. They were good for keeping him limber and agile, and seeing as he wished for little more than to get back to leading from the front he was always looking to be limber and agile.


    Oh, he''d had a little time at the front at Sodden Field, but since then it had been others who had done the fighting. He didn''t want to miss out on that anymore.


    He groaned a little, realising he''d gotten off track yet again. He finished the document he was reading, set it neatly off to the side, then picked up the next.


    On the matter of foreign trade within the lands and holdings of Grand Duke Thrytas Sigiros. What an ''interesting'' read this promises to be. Lykourgos couldn''t stop himself from rolling his eyes at the document. He knew exactly what this would entail even without reading it. A quick skim over and yep, that was what he''d expected. Lord Sigiros basically wanted the freedom to continue selling his weapons abroad.


    "Then given the export of crossbows from these foundries to Dathan Lord Sigiros would be sitting on an even greater pile of coins, especially now that the foundries owned by his vassals have been rendered inoperable."


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    He continued his mumblings as he leafed through a few more documents, these ones from Triarios that had been sent to him detailing trade links between the former kingdom and the outside world. Triarios had never been much of a major trading hub through its past, but the recent history of the past century had seen their wealth skyrocket thanks to their arms dealings. Lykourgos would now trust Lord Sigiros far more than he initially had when it came to the fighting of wars, for if nothing else Lord Sigiros must surely have realised that when Klironomea was reunited he''d have a complete monopoly on the arms trade. It wasn''t exactly a pleasant thought, being reliant on a vassal lord for weaponry and armour, but if Lykourgos wanted to expand the ranks of his Armsmen and professional soldiers in a short period of time then that was what he''d have to do.


    Maybe in the future he would be able to turn his attention to breaking the stranglehold they''d have on the making of weapons and armour, but that would be a long way off. Besides, house Sigiros would have had plenty of time to entrench itself by then. When that moment came around he''d need to find a compromise solution, perhaps some small measure of oversight to ensure men were not being worked unfairly as well as a ban on sales abroad without royal permission on a per-nation basis. It wouldn''t be perfect, but it would at least prevent most of their products from reaching the hands of rich enemies. Lykourgos had no intention of allowing his foes to be armed with his own weapons, after all.


    For now he''d accept trade with Dathan and Tildan, the Al-Alema and Anatolikoi as well, but he couldn''t let all these weapons flow unimpeded into the rest of Klironomea. He had no wish to make his enemies stronger, thank you very much.


    Still, he recognised the need to get some trade links out. Lord Sigiros, being closer to the east, had mentioned something about an outbreak of war in Dathan. If that were the case then it couldn''t hurt to start sending over pikes and crossbows, could it? That was what most Dathanian armies relied upon, and if a few of the groups there could become amenable or even friendly to him then that was certainly a potential way to make some new friends on the international stage. Even besides that, establishing a few trade links over there and selling a few weapons to those nations and peoples to whom slavery was abhorred would enable them to triumph over the evils of slavery in one more theatre of conflict, and that was always worthwhile. There might even be some amongst the Dathanians who would be willing to bend the knee to me, when the time comes that is.


    Dathan was still a long way away from where he was now, but it was something to keep in mind for the future. He hadn''t any clue what local spats were flaring up there in particular, but he was sure Elikoidi would be able to find out soon enough. It couldn''t be that bad or wide-reaching over there, could it? Dathan was the backwater of the continent after all, so surely any war there would be little more than some local rivalry that had gotten a little hotter than usual. Nothing for him to worry about, that much he felt certain of.


    Still, all this thinking about distant theatres of war and the spectre of conflict was not helping him read through this document on the trading of weapons any faster, and so he dragged his eyes back to the top of the page and made to read once more, this time looking over the full minutiae of the text and not just skim-reading it.


    "Section One, Sub-Section One, Paragraph A, Point One: The Provision of Weapons to Internal Suppliers. The newly formed Grand Duchy of Stratiopolis reserves the right to sell weapons to non-international suppliers of its choice. Section One, Sub-Section One, Paragraph A, Point Two: The Issue of Non-Payment. In the event of the failure by the client to pay the full amount agreed upon to the primary supplier, the Grand Duchy of Stratiopolis reserves the right to..."


    The rest of the afternoon continued in much the same way, the prince filing through a seemingly endless list of trifling matters to try and find the few major concerns that were bound to be hidden within, until he heard the sound of echoing footsteps coming from the door and into the room.


    "Saints, this room is practically a private fucking library. You actually sleep in here? And how the hell do you manage to find anything given just how many sheaves of paper are in front of you?"


    Lykourgos smiled at his brother''s good-natured needling, though made a point to ignore his only half-joking questions. Yes, it was a little like a library in here given that most of the walls were shelves of books. Yes, he had been sleeping in here for the last few weeks, or months now he supposed, for there was a bed at the back for him to nap in between his work. Yes, he was able to find things easily enough for everything was filed in an orderly manner, even if it didn''t look like it. There was no need to tell Rhema any of that though, for Lykourgos knew that he knew it all already. He was just teasing a little as a conversation starter, that was all.


    Though admittedly it was rather nice to actually have someone come in and break up the monotony of endless papers and parchments detailing trading disputes and new crownlands.


    "Ah, Rhema! I''m glad you''re back, and so soon! I take it you didn''t face too much trouble in the completion of your task?"


    His brother smiled widely back at him, giving him an exaggerated roll of the eyes.


    "Come on Lyk, what do you take me for? Of course there wasn''t any trouble; you''ve seen to it that there weren''t enough of them left to put up a fight."


    He nodded at his brother, conceding the point as a smile just as wide as the one aimed at him spread across his face.


    "Still, I thought that one or two of the last rebel houses might give you some trouble. Brookrill or Redseed, one of them particularly. They weren''t really touched by the main war, after all. Still, I''ll take your word for it if you say they folded. So that would mean that the last of the rebel Owkrestans are..."


    He looked at his brother expectantly, silently asking him to confirm that the war in Owkrestos and as a result this entire campaign was over. Rhema did not disappoint.


    "Yeah, they''re all gone. Dead and buried, or otherwise exiled. We won''t be hearing from any of them for a little while. I take it now''s the time for moving back to the capital then, eh? There''s a coronation that needs to be prepared for, as far as I recall."


    "That there most certainly is. Have you seen the young Aleksandar Wyldlarch around? I haven''t seen him these last few days, what with me being busy with all of this-"


    He gestured at the small mountain of paperwork sat on his desk.


    "- but I know he''s still in the palace."


    "Why not just have someone summon him for you? It isn''t like he could refuse to attend."


    Lykourgos nodded sheepishly at his brother. Such thoughts had occurred to him, yes, but he felt like he was already on rocky ground with the ex-king thanks to the whole ''seizing the Owkrestan throne'' thing, so hadn''t tried to push it.


    "I didn''t want him to think of himself as a lesser to me."


    "Lyk," his brother started, exasperated and amused, "he is lesser than you. Everyone is. You''re the king of three kingdoms, and I''m still fucking baffled at how you''ve managed to pull that off but that''s not important at the moment, so that puts you above anyone I can think of on the continent. In the world."


    He raised an eyebrow at his brother, amusement plainly visible in his smile and his eyes.


    "There''s currently an Angel who is worshipped as a deity by most of our subjects stalking the halls of Anaria. Are you absolutely certain I''m above everyone?"


    Without even stopping to think his brother scoffed, quickly responding to his statement.


    "Yep," Rhema said, popping the ''p'', "I don''t see him doing anything at the moment. He can sit and skulk in the capital all he wants, but he isn''t doing much. You are. We are. That puts us above him at the moment."


    Despite himself Lykourgos couldn''t help but smile at his brother''s words. Rhema never had been one to stymie his thoughts.


    "Some would call that blasphemy, brother."


    "Some people are as sharp as fucking mallets. Now come on, apparently you wanted to talk to me about something when I returned? That''s what Ilias said before he scampered off anyway, skittish little colt."


    He racked his brains for a moment and ignored Rhema''s well-meaning and clearly kind-hearted jape on the cupbearer''s nature, having gotten so off track he couldn''t really remember what he was thinking of speaking about, before remembering and bringing up his points.


    "Ah, yes. Now that the last of the rebels are dead we can actually disband our forces. For a time, anyway. The last harvest before winter needs to be brought in and, though Teleytaios and Triarios are relatively unaffected in terms of farming since no levies were raised, Owkrestos certainly is. A good number of Owkrestan lowborns from the countryside were taken from their farms and died at the Sodden Field and Suthdaal, meaning that they''re bound to have more difficulty bringing the harvest in. We''ll have to make sure that they don''t starve over the course of the winter months."


    Rhema nodded at him, and Lykourgos sensed that he''d managed to get off topic again. His ears reddened a little as he continued, coughing once to clear his throat.


    "Ahem, excuse me. I called you in here to tell you of what we''re to be doing next year. As mentioned already our forces are being demobilised at the moment, and on the Day of Ascent I''m to be coronated, then we''ll have another few months of peace before winter ends and springtime rolls around. When it does and the worst of the spring rains subside, we''ll march on Nordicos. Nordicos has an alliance with Licotemos, for the queen of Licotemos is a part of the Nordican royal family, so we''ll need to strike fast to prevent them from receiving Licoteman support before we can take their capital and pacify the worst of their hinterlands."


    His brother nodded at him, still smiling but eyes giving nothing away.


    "Sounds like it might be quite fun, brother. At the very least we''ll both be quite busy in the coming years."


    He raised an eyebrow at his brother, gesturing to the ever-growing stack of papers on his desk.


    "Okay," Rhema laughed, "maybe you''re busy already. Still, you get what I mean. By the way, are you fine if me and Seventh go on a small trip for a day or two? There''s a ruin in the woods somewhere they''re adamant about going to see, something important to them."


    "And if it''s important to them then it''s important to you, yes?"


    Rhema nodded, smiling at him.


    "See, now you get it. I think it was near Derrytown, somewhere in the woods around there anyway."


    Lykourgos was silent for a moment, trying to think about where exactly Rhema could be talking about.


    "You don''t mean Crowhall, do you?"


    "I think that was it, yeah. Why, is something bad there?"


    Lykourgos shrugged.


    "Not to my knowledge, I just wasn''t expecting you or Seventh to want to travel there. It''s more like the sort of places I went to on my expeditions, to be honest. Just an old overgrown castle with a still intact banner marking its front. The forest is so dense overhead that it hasn''t been bleached by the sun despite the fact it''s been there for... well, for a very long time. Nine, ten centuries, if I had to hazard a guess. For almost that entire time it''s sat as a ruin, so it''s a miracle it still stands at all."


    "Seventh said something about there being ''wild energies'' in that place, so I think that''s why they wanted to go."


    He nodded at his brother, beginning to understand. Well, he didn''t understand magic at all, but he did at least understand where the younger Angel was coming from whilst talking about the ''wild'' part of things.


    "Well, Crowhall was apparently the seat of the ancient ''Wild-Kings'' of the Owkrestan wilderness and, after they were conquered, the ''Wild-Lords''. When Lord Cyning Cromdaw rebelled and his line was ended..."


    "No one''s lived in the castle since. I think I get you now. Well, I''ll leave you be. Try not to let the papers and scrolls crush your desk when they pile too high."


    Lykourgos sighed a very, very deep sigh.


    "Thank you, Rhema. You always know what to say. You may take your leave now."


    Despite the sarcasm lacing his tone his brother grinned at him nonetheless, moving to walk out of the room.


    Right, the eldest prince thought to himself, let''s get back to work.


    Oh bugger, I forgot to ask someone to send for Wyldlarch. Oh well, I''ll make sure to do it later. We need to talk at some point, after all, or else I can''t see to treating Owkrestos just the same as Teleytaios.


    Well, there would be plenty of time to talk to the lad later. Actually, he thought, looking at the stacks of paper on his desk, I''m not sure that there will be.

 Lykourgos XIII: The Campaigns End

    <u>Lykourgos XIII: The Campaign''s End</u>


    <u>The Tenth Day of the Tenth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    "A note for you, your Grace. Well, a letter containing a dozen notes, actually. I''m not really sure how this was able to fit in the envelope."


    "And?"


    Ilias smiled at him as he handed Lykourgos the letter, the little rascal likely having already read it through.


    "And the renovations to the capital have left the planning phases. Construction will have begun by the time we reach Anaria again, or so I''ve been told. Only on the west and south districts though, the rest will have to wait according to the Master of Copper. Apparently the money that would be needed to refurbish the northern district could be spent on renovating two of the others, so that''s what''s being done."


    Lykourgos rubbed at his chin for a moment, then nodded in agreement with the absent Master of Copper.


    "Well, whilst I''d of course rather have all five districts refurbished and improved he has made the right call by concentrating on those two in particular. They''re the ones that provide a good deal of the economy in Anaria, or at least the southern district did before the hillocks were repurposed for the nobles to live in their manses and the old workshops were torn down. Without the nobles the south can once again become a hub of craftsmen and artisans, which by itself will greatly assist with the repairs and rebuilding of the rest of the city. As for the docks, well, that should go without saying. The docks always were important to Anaria, and an improvement in their infrastructure can only yield good results for us. Yes, the Master of Copper has made the right decision in this instance. I''ll send my regards to him with a letter of my thanks for his diligence soon enough. Tell me Ilias, is there anything else?"


    His cupbearer nodded dutifully, and handed over a small sheaf of papers with illustrations and notes on them.


    "Yes, your Grace. The Master of Copper, having been advised by the Master of Silver, thought you might find some of the plans interesting for the docks. He''s attached a few examples of what is to be built there with notes explaining what they are, how they work, and why they''re to be built."


    Lykourgos nodded his understanding, unable to keep the smile from spreading across his face. Even so far away Elikoidi knew exactly what Lykourgos liked to see, what sort of things he''d find interesting, and it would be a nice break so see some of what was planned for the city in the days to come.


    The first sheet of paper detailed plans for a more permanent series of wharfs along the coast of the Bay of Saints, completely restructuring and replacing the ailing and, in all honesty, rather poor infrastructure that the dockside had degraded into using over the last few centuries. Chief amongst the diagrams were plans for an improved series of cranes for the loading and unloading of cargo, made of wood and built into a base that looked rather like a stout stone tower. A large treadmill to the side seemed like it would enable the mechanisms to move, though whether it would end up being powered by men or donkeys he didn''t know.


    Similarly the warehouses that dotted the waterfront were to be torn down and rebuilt out of stone with roofing slates atop them, the wooden buildings having been a fire hazard for so long that it was a miracle that half of the dockside had only burned down four times in the last hundred years. That would certainly make a good start to improving the western district of Anaria, and in all honesty Lykourgos himself would probably have stopped there, but it seemed that Master Yzaldae was something of a city planner as well as an economist.


    Many of the jetties and piers were to be built out longer and wider, and on the plans that the second sheet of paper detailed there was an entire new area to the north of the western district that was to be dedicated to the docking of huge Brythonian leviathan-ships as they came in with their hunted quarry. Lykourgos had seen one of them when he was a child once, a truly hulking ship with the carcass of the largest creature he''d ever seen set into a lowered part of the deck. It would be good to see them come into port more often, especially since almost every part of the whales they hunted could be sold and used. It was good that Master Yzaldae, despite being from Sothettar and as a result likely having never seen a Brythonian whaler before, knew the boons that having one of the only ports capable of receiving such ships in all the world would entail. Of course, in all matters such as this there was the issue of crime to think about. Docksides were notorious hotspots for criminal activity, and to combat this Yzaldae had detailed plans for a small barracks to be built into the cliff face that the rest of the city sat atop and which overlooked the western district of the city, carved into the cliffs so as not to use any more space than it needed to. Such a barracks, as well as a series of four small guard posts along the waterfront, would allow the city watch to keep a close eye on the underground of Anaria, or at least prevent too many smugglers and known pirates from making clandestine visits.


    To guide ships into the harbour there was to be a small guard tower at the mouth of the bay which was to double as a lighthouse, replacing the blazing signal-fires that had been used thus far. It would certainly be a great help in preventing any shipwrecks from clogging up the bay. Well, any more shipwrecks anyhow.


    The last page of the file which looked at the western district was... different. It was intended for his eyes only, or so the joint seals of the Masters of Silver and Copper seemed to imply. Opening it with a curious glint in his eyes Lykourgos beheld the plans for a separate wharf to be built nearby, on the southern outskirts of the western district. Unlike the other wharfs, two of which were civilian in nature and the new one that would be purpose built for the Brythonians, this one was entirely militaristic in nature. It was designed to be heavily guarded, to be easily defendable from both land and sea with its own walls, gates, and towers, and if the claims of the notes were accurate then it would contain room for ''a dozen carracks and two-score cogs''. Seeing as Teleytaios had little need for a navy at the moment the actual building of those ships could wait, but they would eventually be needed and so it would be good to have the infrastructure in place to house and supply them.


    The last point, tacked on as almost an addendum in rushed handwriting, seemed to be the replacement of all the wooden housing in the western district with multi-story stone housing. Whilst an expensive move, it would mean that the smallest district in the city by size would be able to house almost as many as the southern district.


    And with more people came more taxes.


    Still, the western district wasn''t the only one in the process of renovation; according to this file the southern district, once a renowned hub of workshops but having spent the last half a decade being used as grand housing for dispossessed nobles, was returning to its roots. Stone workshops, stone housing, stone taverns, and stone watchmen''s barracks. Angels, that much stone is going to be expensive to ship into the city. Still, it''ll be worth it in the end. These investments will last far beyond my lifetime, after all. Anaria would be the first truly modern city in the western half of Kliskorios if he had his way, followed by the other large Teleytaian settlements of Haestinghen, Aenirhen, and Brycgestow. The power he wielded in the internal affairs of Teleytaios was matched by none since perhaps the establishment of the kingdom during the Year of Desolation, which would enable him to take on these grand projects without the meddling of lords to check his ambitions. Without the lords he could increase the power of the merchant classes, who could both increase the wealth his kingdom could boast of and keep the powers of the church in check. These things were multi-purpose, they had to be, for otherwise they weren''t a sound investment.


    Where other, relatively smaller settlements such as Aenirhen and Haestinghen tended towards one particular industry, the same was not true of a city as large as Anaria. Within the plans for what had once been the heart of the city''s industries there were places set aside for everything from stonemasons and bakers to other, rarer trades. There was to be a candle-maker, a bellfounder, a bookmaker with an annotated note that read ''import of paper from Polaeriopolis'', a clothing store to sell that which had been made in Haestinghen and Aenirhen, it really had the works. Not many smithies though; there was a large building marked as being a storage-come-storefront for the work of house Sigiros, and as a result Lykourgos doubted that any local smiths would be able to compete with the quantity of goods the Grand Duke''s realm could churn out. He briefly wondered if this was to be anything like the great cities of Dathan or Tildan, or perhaps even the ancient southern realms, but those thoughts were quickly pushed away. Those cities may have been magnificent, but they were built on the blood of slaves. The cities he was to build would be built by the hands of free men and women, working to earn their keep and not because of the threat of a whip behind them. His were to be the cities of the free, not cities of chains. Klironomea may have been a few centuries behind the rest of the world when it came to city planning and ensuring structures were built of stone rather than wood, but as with everything else in this land he would bring them into the future, dragging them if he had to.


    Progress waited for no man, after all.


    Renovations on a scale as large as this would prove to be a very expensive undertaking and take years, but seeing as he was now one of the richest men on the continent, nay, in the world, he didn''t feel like there was much to worry about. If the rest of the city could be renovated to be like these plans then Anaria would become the greatest city in the world once more.


    "Very good, Ilias. Very good indeed."


    The cupbearer, having long since moved across the room to lounge on the windowsill, started a little as the silence was broken. Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at him.


    "Careful, young man. You could have ended up out the window then."


    Ilias flushed, embarrassed, then moved across the room again and cleared his throat.


    "You, uh- you''ve got a war-council to attend in an hour, your Grace. With your commanders, I mean."


    Lykourgos looked outside, noting how low the sun was hanging in the sky. It seemed he''d spent more time than he thought reviewing those documents.


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "So I do. Would you mind folding those papers back into the letter? Carefully, please; I''d like to review them again soon.


    <hr>


    "Plum, Lyk?"


    As soon as he entered the room he caught sight of his old friend, and the small object of food that was thrown at him. Thanks to his good reaction times he caught the object of fruit that was languidly tossed across the room, and almost without thinking took a bite.


    "That''s good."


    Romanos snorted, shaking his head a little.


    "There''s still one part of you that''s been the same as long as I can remember knowing you for, and it''s the fact that you can be bribed entirely in plums."


    He shrugged at his friend, taking another bite and swallowing before speaking.


    "Hey, I just know what I like. In terms of obsessions for a reigning monarch to have I think ''eating plums'' is probably one of the more innocuous ones."


    Symon, already seated at the table with his boots up atop it, laughed a little without turning to face him.


    "He''s got you there. I''d sooner a king with a favourite food than a king with a favourite method of turning your guts into soup."


    "I can have both if I want!"


    Rhema snickered and both Romanos and the mercenary rolled their eyes politely ignoring him and continuing with their bickering.


    "He''s a prince, not a king."


    The sellsword captain scoffed.


    "Yeah, cause that''s made a fucking difference ain''t it? Right, we all ''ere now? Who we waiting for?"


    Lykourgos looked around the room. His brother, Rhema, was here, as were Romanos and Symon. Four Lieutenants-at-Arms were present, since he hadn''t had the time to replace the slain ones from his forces and instead was just relying on those he hadn''t known very well but had at least served dutifully through the last two wars. Well, all aside from Marren of course; Lykourgos knew the siege-officer well. There was also the Marshal-at-Arms, Crowe, attending, her muscular frame making even Romanos'' not inconsiderable bulk look small by comparison. He hadn''t spoken to her yet about the new Grand Duke being made the Master of Iron, but he had discussed this sort of thing with her before anyway; council seats could be traded just as readily as coin and lives, but at the very least he could ensure she would always be the First Marshal of the kingdom. For that matter the Grand Duke was also in attendance, having remained in Stagspring whilst his sons dealt with any dissenters back in his homeland.


    "What would you all do if you were in my shoes?"


    The room was silent, and Rhema looked at him with what might have been a hint of confusion.


    "Come again?"


    "I''ve got a few options in front of me," he began, not at all dissuaded by the questioning glances being thrown his way, "but I''d like to hear one or two opinions on what should come next before I make any decision by myself. Of course the campaigning season is soon to be over this year, and as such we''ll be weathering out the winter months in the capital most likely, but come the spring we''ll be on the march again. So, I have a few options in front of me."


    Romanos nodded, seeming to understand where he was going with this.


    "And if I''m not mistaken there are two options that are really standing out to you, aren''t there? You stand at a crossroads here, Lyk. If you take the first option, if you march north in the springtime towards Nordicos, you''ll unify western Klironomea with little to no risk, save perhaps the Licotemans getting involved to honour their marriage alliance with the Nordicans. If you act quickly enough then the western Klironomeans would be under one banner for the first time... well, for the first time since Harald."


    Lykourgos nodded at his friend. That was one of the thoughts he''d had, yes, but he suspected Romanos had figured out the other as well. There weren''t an infinite number of possibilities, after all. He pressed his friend to continue with a gesture of his hand and a quick word.


    "Or?"


    Romanos sighed.


    "Or you can throw the dice, and march east into Licotemos before rounding back on Nordicos when the east has fallen. There''s a greater chance for glory and riches over there, but our rear would be dangerously exposed to a foe who are, we must not forget, allied to Licotemos. Either way we''ll likely find ourselves at war with both kingdoms, it''s just a matter of who we think it would be better to take by surprise and who we think we can challenge in the field. The eyes of all Klironomea are upon you here, Lyk. Please, think on your next actions before we move out."


    Crowe spoke up from the corner of the room, her arms crossed and her voice a deep rumble.


    "Licotemos is too large to be occupied before they can call up a massed force of levies and knights to oppose us. We can''t pull another Owkrestos here, your Grace. There''s no way of doing this quickly. Even if we had control over Nordicos already and could march our forces in across two fronts, those being Nordicos and Triarios, they''d still have enough time and resources to challenge us in the field anyway. Better that we strike at Nordicos first and gain the sure thing, then march east."


    One of the Lieutenants spoke up, a young woman whose name Lykourgos had yet to learn, who seemed to have a voice almost as deep as Crowe''s from her time spent barking out orders in the field.


    "If we march into Nordicos first then we''d have to contend with the fortifications of the Upperhold, then brave the mountain passes, then force our way into each of the fortified and interconnected cave networks one by one. All of this without any maps of the area and whilst being harried by both Nordicans who have fled to their hideouts above the surface rather than below it and the clans who live in the mountains. Any army would find itself whittled down into nothing after wasting years trying to pacify that region."


    Lykourgos nodded again. That was also a good point. A conventional siege of the Nordican capital wouldn''t end with the breaching of defences and the seizing of the royal palace, but would instead drag on for months, perhaps years, as the mountains were slowly and painstakingly pacified. It promised to be even more brutal than trying to pacify the Owkrestan wildlands, for at least any rebels who hid in those woods were hunted by Umbra between raids. Not so in the mountains, for whilst there were indeed Umbra up there they were far fewer.


    Strange to think he''d believe ''less Umbra'' to be a downside for once. Well, war made for strange bedfellows he guessed.


    "You could also head to Kortheros instead by marching to Stratiopolis via the Soldier''s March and then heading down the Tyrantroad. Just giving you another choice."


    Lykourgos shook his head at the Grand Duke.


    "No. The other kingdoms of the Heptarchy are already looking to us with suspicion as to where we''ll strike next. If we attack Kortheros it''ll give Licotemos and Nordicos time to coordinate and ready themselves, or even launch a pre-emptive strike against us. Nordicos and Licotemos are our best choices for the next campaign, and surely after five of the seven kingdoms of the Klironomoi have joined into one the last two will kneel anyway?"


    "You''re really underestimating just how overconfident you highborn fucks can be. Your sister thought she could stop you with an incompetent commander who had half your manpower at the Einarbrycge. Ser Aerna thought he could lead hunting parties himself whilst laying siege to us and no-one would ever try and use that as an opportunity to take him down. A few years back the widowed wife of King Aered the Unready took this city for herself, and wouldn''t back down even when me and the boys had battered down the gates and came up through the sewers. You highborns can be fucking idiots when faced with overwhelming odds."


    Despite the insult to his person Lykourgos couldn''t help but feel a chuckle bubbling up from his throat. He quickly stifled it with a cough, but Symon had made a rather compelling point.


    "Point taken, Captain Symondson. Any ideas of your own?"


    The man shrugged nonchalantly where he was lounging, the Lieutenant who''d pointed out the treachery of the mountain passes grimacing as the man''s boots shifted a little on the table.


    "Nope. I''m just here to point out when an idea is shit so I don''t have to die doing it. Apart from that I''m getting paid the same, so it makes no difference to me where we march first."


    Lykourgos rubbed at his chin whilst most of the room either rolled their eyes or grumbled in discontent at the sellsword''s words. They could remark on how uncouth he was all they liked, but he was instead thinking on what Romanos had said earlier, as well as the advice he''d been given by the others here. He could either march north and get drawn into a prolonged engagement in the mountains beyond the Nordican capital, or he could move east into Licotemos and Kortheros through Triarios. Decisions, decisions.


    Then, after some thought, he decided to take a third option. It wasn''t perhaps any better than one or the other option, but it would in his mind enable them to take the best of both worlds.


    "We do both. We march north first, any army they amass we smash aside, then we tear down the walls of Upperhold."


    Romanos raised a quizzical eyebrow.


    "By the time we take Upperhold the people of the Nordican capital will have long retreated into their fortified caves, and we can''t dig them out without wasting months in a siege and thousands of lives."


    Lykourgos smiled smugly. He knew that already, but there was a relatively simple solution to be had here, which he relayed to his friend with that same smile still on his face.


    "We won''t be going into the mountains. We take smash their armies and tear down their defences, then we march along the Riverroad east directly to Sygomidopolis, the Licoteman capital. The road is well maintained the whole way according to Master Elikoidi''s rats, and even if we haven''t truly taken the Nordicans out of our wars they will at least be neutralised as a threat. There will be no risk of them marching on our backs, or on Anaria for that matter, for they won''t have the men. Even if they did, they''d have very few fortified positions to fall back upon. We catch them unawares, we tear down their defences, then we march east. Those are my orders."


    Lord Sigiros gave him a look of deep satisfaction. He seemed extremely pleased with the orders, as though Lykourgos was some sort of budding strategic genius.


    Which was silly, of course. He was just Lykourgos.


    "I concur with his Grace. Such a move will be most unexpected by our foes. I know the land well up there; I served in the Grey Company as a young man, back when the triplets who now run it were barely born. You won''t be able to tunnel under those walls without serious mining equipment and many months of dangerous work, but siege hooks and ballistae loaded with round polished stone? That''ll take them down in a few weeks. You can probably just leave a thousand Men-at-Arms with a thousand artillerists and move the rest of the army onwards by that point though, so it shouldn''t really effect the time you spend on campaign at all. You won''t be able to use carcass shot without torching the whole city outside, since it''s so densely packed, but the Upperhold will fall to you provided the Nordican army can be first caught in the field. Otherwise they''ll guard the passes, and you''ll need to fight a battle the second the walls fall."


    The man stopped stroking his short-cropped beard and turned back to Lykourgos, ending his trail of thought.


    "Yes... yes, that would work well. Very good, your Grace. There are a great many achievements you have gathered in your reign so far, and it seems ''first man to seize Upperhold'' will be next. Afterwards we''ll march east, my forces acting as your vanguard if I could be so bold, and seize the eastern realms."


    "Very well. My coronation will take place on the Day of Ascent, and we''ll reconvene our armies come the dawning of spring. Until then I bid you all farewell, and good tidings."


    Lykourgos nodded towards the doors before anyone else could say a word, and dismissed the gathering. He''d said all he wanted to say here. As the men and women filed out, one person stayed behind. His brother, Rhema, came to him as the council filed out with a look of mild worry across his face.


    "Brother, he wishes the position of vanguard to be his own. Can you really trust him not to stab you in the back when faced with the wealth of Licotemos?"


    Lykourgos smiled knowingly at his younger brother''s distrust of Lord Sigiros, though he admittedly had already contemplated this very thing before now.


    "It is because of that fact that I allow him the vanguard. It was my foster-father, Drytos Brathaxe, that once gave me a very valuable piece of advice. I know most people thought of him as little more than an honourable commander and relentless duellist, but the truth is that he was far cannier than most realised."


    "And what was this sage advice?"


    Lykourgos smiled, visibly recalling the memory of his foster-father''s words.


    "I remember it word-for-word. He said to ''whittle down the disloyal through attrition, such that if the knife is aimed at your back there will be none with the strength to drive it through the chainmail''."


    Rhema nodded, a small yet almost predatory smile on his face.


    "That is good advice, eloquently delivered as well. I''ll have to keep that in mind myself just in case I ever need it."


    "Yeah, well," he started, tone falling a little in bravado, "here''s hoping you never need to."

 Seventh V: The Mists of Rest

    <u>Seventh V: The Mists of Rest</u>


    <u>??? ???, 873 AD.


    </u><u>A Place Outside the Physical World.</u>


    Meetings with their mentor almost always took place within the confines of their mind, and today was no exception. He could manifest himself in the physical world and cross vast distances in the blink of an eye, much like he''d done when they''d found themselves held captive under the Seaview Manse, but all things considered that was a rather unnecessary risk to take while he was trying to lay a little low.


    Today''s session was... well, if the opening words of his mentor were anything to go by then he was still trying to get the whole ''tact'' thing back in order, that much was for sure.


    "I don''t like how close you''ve tied yourself to the cause of these princes."


    Seventh bristled at the words of his mentor. They respected the man greatly, but they weren''t about to throw away their friendships on a whim.


    "If you''re asking me to distance myself from Rhema, I''m not listening to what you have to say."


    Hydran smiled.


    "Of course I''m not asking you to do that. That would both be cruel of me and deeply depressing for you. When I say I do not like how close you have tied yourself to their cause, I mean just that. No veiled words, no hidden meanings, just that I worry for you getting too involved as you learn more about the powers that are soon to be yours. I do not fear your friend, the Prince of Hemlock, but the Prince of Violets worries me a little. He will do nothing if he believes we do not wish it, but should you continue to show deference and a willingness to support his cause unconditionally then I do not doubt that he would use the powers that lie in your blood for his own gain."


    They squinted a little at their mentor, wondering just what it was that


    "Elaborate."


    Their mentor shrugged.


    "A creature with the potential to turn a man to ash with the wave of a hand. With the potential to, one day at least, turn armies to dust on the wind with nought but a grief-filled scream. For a king looking to reunite a shattered realm, such a resource may only be turned towards conquest."


    "I don''t care," they responded levelly, "because I trust the two of them. Lykourgos isn''t like that, and even if he was Rhema would stop him. Would keep him grounded."


    "Ah, but you have not seen the depths the Prince of Violets would stoop to if he believed his duty demanded it. You have not seen how much duty rules his heart and his mind, and likewise you do not see how quickly he could turn himself from an aspiration for all to a tyrant. Why are you so dead-set on supporting these princes? Why is it that you want to help them so?"


    "Because they''re good people," they shot back, "and when everything is said and done the elder will be one of the greatest kings in all of history. This world could stand to gain from a few more men like him and his brother."


    Hydran looked at him with a quizzical expression. When he asked his question it was not scornful, but one of genuine confusion and


    "The strength that lies in men is all but spent. This world is dying. Why are you searching for a sun in the abyss?"


    Seventh shrugged, looking down a little. To them, who had only ever known this world, there was nothing else they could do but fight for those that would protect it.


    "Where else would light be needed if not when all is surrounded by blackness? Where else would the sun be needed if not in the abyss? I can do nothing but support them, my Lord."


    Basileous'' expression turned thoughtful for a moment, and he bowed an antlered head in acknowledgement of their words. It seemed that, if nothing else, they had struck a chord within their master''s heart.


    "I understand. I... will cease my requests that you stop tying yourself to their cause. I only ask of you not to fight their battles for them. Their literal battles, I mean. I do not tell you this, I only ask you. If you wish to fight for them then know that I will train you to do so, but I really would rather you didn''t."


    Seventh thought for a moment, and thought hard at that. Their mentor had a point, but Seventh somehow knew that by fighting for the princes they were doing the right thing. If they could continue to do the right thing, and at a better level at that, then they would gladly do so.


    "I''m genuinely sorry for ignoring your request, but I will be fighting alongside them. The second of my wishes is that you teach me to fight and as befits our kind."


    Though Basileous didn''t look happy at what had been said, he chuckled a little nonetheless.


    "I can''t teach you to fight as befits our people, for millennia of splintering and trauma have meant that I''m not much keen for honourable battles like I once was. I''ll train you to fight and win, young wingling. I hope that will be good enough to fulfil your wish?"


    Seventh nodded purposefully. Here was a way that they would be able to actually help Rhema on the field of battle instead of just as a figure of comfort.


    "Okay. Teach me what I need to know."


    Hydran bowed deeply. It was a graceful motion, and for once they couldn''t detect even a hint of an insult in the display of respect.


    "Very well. Before we do begin I need you to understand something; it will be years before you are ready to take to the field. This is not me trying to hold you back, nor even just to protect you. I''m just trying to be more transparent with you now, since I know how much you disliked me keeping things from you ¨¤ la the Prince of Violets'' awakening. Now that I have had a little more time to get my... emotions back under control, I will be able to more readily control my actions."


    They didn''t miss how their mentor practically spat the word ''emotions'', as though they were a curse or an insult, but having heard it they ignored it all the same. Their master had his own things to work through, his own daemons to wrestle with, and they were certain that his own coping methods probably worked fine for him. He''d had a very long time to make sure they worked, after all. If they didn''t then he was more obstinate and foolish than anyone Seventh had ever known.


    "That''s good. I''m thankful for that. There is still much to discuss right now, however."


    Their mentor nodded, conceding the point.


    "True enough. I take it you will wish to wait until we''re back in each other''s presence in the physical world before engaging in any real training?"


    Seventh nodded.


    "We''ll be back before winter sets in. When we next march out to war you can come with us! I know you don''t want to fight in the wars of man, and I''m not asking you to, but I''ll be wanting to continue my training without the two princes leaving me behind. I''m sure you have no issue with that?"


    Basileous raised an eyebrow at them, but huffed out a laugh when they mirrored the motion back at him.


    "Oh, very well then. You should feel lucky, young winging. If you weren''t Aenethar''s get then I''d not be so doting."


    The words were said with a teasing and friendly tone, which was a nice change of pace. There was too much seriousness at the moment, and they could do with a bit of levity.


    Hells, they could do with some levity right now.


    "Wait! Aenethar?"


    Their mentor stilled, then cursed under his breath.


    "Bugger it all. I''d meant to wait for the right time to let you know who your progenitor was. Yes, it was Aenethar. The ''Angel of Death'', as the Klironomeans knew him. The gentlest and kindest of all our kin who ventured to this world."


    Seventh blinked once. Twice. Three times.


    "I''m... he''s... Aenethar... what?"


    Their mentor gave a long sigh in response to their half-formed questions. One thing was for certain: this was going to be a long, long conversation.


    <hr>


    Their conversation continued on long into the night, the two divine entities bickering endlessly about everything and nothing. Most of it was good natured and of no real consequence, but whenever his mentor suddenly took on a more serious aspect Seventh made sure they were listening, and that they were able to detach the more serious points of conversation from the more casual points that surrounded it. They''d just been finishing up with a humorous back and forth about one of the ancient guises Basileous had worn long before the name ''Hydran'' had ever been known to the world when their mentor, seemingly without warning, had ceased their laughter and abruptly changed the tone of their conversation and his voice once more.


    "Be careful with your foresight, young Seventh. We still don''t know how it works."


    They raised an eyebrow, genuinely confused.


    "What do you mean? Surely the premise is simple? I look into the future, and I foresee what happens. Is their another element to it? I don''t discount it, but I genuinely believe that''s all that happens."


    "Maybe it is," his mentor replied, "but is it your predictions which are right? Or is reality itself warping to fit your vision? How can we know? We''re powerful creatures, Seventh. We can''t forget that. It''s one of the reasons I tell you not to get involved in the wars of the menfolk; with an Angel as unstable as I or as untrained as yourself a simple attempt to turn one man to ash could quickly send a shockwave around the globe and turn half of the world into a morass of gibbering corpses spewing blood from their mouths. There''s no knowing what we might do. Of course, if we take your training slowly then it should be fine. It isn''t even your fault we need to take it slowly; it''s my own powers I''m worried about. I''ll need to shake off my rust first, but I should be done with that by the time this war ends and you return."


    Hydran suddenly stopped, as if realising he was getting off track and shooting Seventh an apologetic smile before finishing his statement.


    If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    "We need to be careful when using our powers, Seventh. There''s no telling what we might do. You''ve grown into your dream-magics wonderfully, but angelic-magics are something else entirely. I''ve not had to teach anyone angelic-magics in... let''s just say it''s been a long time. A very long time."


    "How long?" They asked, curious. "Before I was born, I take it?"


    Basileous chuckled a little.


    "Put it this way: do you remember the city of Tjenkha?"


    Seventh just stared at their mentor, confused.


    "No, why should I? I thought it was just a ruin?"


    His mentor chuckled again as he spoke, almost as if recalling a fond memory. Seventh supposed that, maybe, that was exactly what he was doing.


    "Yeah, well, I remember it. I remember it well. There was a man down there once that asked for the help of me and my friends back when we all still lived. I don''t recall what became of him, but I remember his tomb. If all is well and good in the world, then his tomb should still bear our engravings. Those engravings and etchings held within them the faintest mote of divine powers. But that''s besides the point, and you''re not interested in that."


    Seventh bit their tongue to stop themselves from saying that no, they really were quite interested in that, but then this did seem like a conversation for another time. Ah well, it wasn''t like the two of them would lack for time across their lives to discuss the past. Right now they needed to be more focused on the future.


    "Another time, then. Angelic-magics are harder to master, then?"


    The elder of the angels made a so-so motion with one of his hands.


    "Perhaps a little, though ''harder'' might be the wrong word. I think it''s less a matter of them being harder to master, and more that they take far more time to master. There are minutia and details that, whilst fine to be skipped over in dream-magics, are unsafe to ignore with angelic magics."


    They scoffed at their mentor''s words.


    "If I miss out a few details when scrying or projecting myself into the mind of another then there''s a good chance I''ll drive someone mad. Totally, fatally mad. If I lose control of my emotions there''s a good chance I''ll do the same. I don''t think ignoring details is ''safe'' for dream-magics either."


    "The ability to control your dream-magics even when your emotions fray and snap is one you will learn in time, fear not on that account. As for the rest of what you say, whilst it is true that you may drive a person to madness with a mistake, at least the slightest error will not reduce the man to your right to a pool of bubbling flesh screaming for death. Angelic-magics can. I''ve seen what happens when the spells of our kinfolk have ran rampant after the casters have lost control, and long, long ago I watched a continent of living, breathing, sentient life get reduced to boiling blood as the result of... no, there''s no need to bother your mind with that story. The point is that angelic-magics are more volatile and potent. Less applicable in everyday life, but still more volatile and potent."


    Seventh swallowed hard, and before they could even register the words coming out of their mouth they were speaking.


    "I want to hear what happened."


    Basileous blinked a few times.


    "You- alright, I guess. I''ll keep it very short, but far away from this place and even before I was your age, there was what humans would term a ''civil war'' amongst one of the groups of our kinfolk. They battered each other with spells for centuries, and at its zenith one of the groups dug up a very, very old spell that would unleash a magical plague on their foe, boiling their blood in an instant. Unfortunately they didn''t realise just how beyond their powers this spell was, nor did they have all the information they should have had, for they lost control after only a few minutes. Forty of the greatest spellcasters of the generation that came before my own, dead in a blink, a victim of their own spell, and without anyone to control it this strange blood-boiling disease ripped across their lands, then their foes, then the entire continent. Within minutes a continent of a million souls lay completely silent."


    Their mentor seemed to shake themselves from their reminiscing, focusing back on Seventh who now felt more than a little worried. As if sensing their worry their mentor shook his head lightly.


    "But we won''t be learning anything like that. I never learned that spell, and even the most vile of our kin turned their heads away in shame when they so much as considered trying to find out information about it. Even if I did know that particular spell, I wouldn''t teach it to you. Some things are best left forgotten. Still, it''s a cautionary tale. Spells that powerful were beyond rare even back then, and I was- hells, I was far younger than you are now when that happened. Thinking on it now I think I could only have been around two-hundred at the time."


    Seventh zoned out a little at their mentor''s words once more. Two-hundred? For them that was a fifth of their life, and about the number of years they had been awake in total. For their mentor?


    For their mentor two-hundred years was nothing. It was a long blink, a missed day. To a being so ancient, the entire human history of this world was nothing but the most recent, and probably least impressive, section of his life. To Seventh? They couldn''t even boast of being older than the Klironomeans.


    "Seventh? Young wingling, are you alright?"


    Their mentor''s voice broke through the fog of their thoughts, soft and yet concerned. They tried for an easy smile as they looked at the man, but it didn''t feel convincing to them. They dropped it a few seconds later, their shoulders slumping a little.


    "Sorry, It''s just a lot to take in. All of that, and then the points we were discussing earlier. I just- I can''t stop thinking that the one who made me, who handed me over to my parents, and who you say loved me like a child. shares the same name as the knight who should have protected me and instead brought me to the Cult of the Choir. It sits ill with me, the irony of it all."


    Basileous nodded sagely, and though seventh could detect a hint of anger in his eyes it was quickly drowned out by concern and sorrow.


    "Aenethar was a good man. The best of all of us. That this... that the criminal, he who brought you to those vile theosarkas, sought to take the name of the gentlest angel I''ve ever known for his own is just another insult piled atop the gentle one''s death. I will continue to mourn Aenethar, but the criminal who stains his name will be washed away by time, and the Angel of Dreams and the Dead shall not be. It may not be much for now, but in time you will find some measure of justice in that. The foulness of the choir, one day, will be but a memory."


    "You keep saying that," Seventh said as he turned on his heel and took a few steps away, "you keep saying that Aenethar was the best of your kin. But he couldn''t have been. How could he have been? How could it have been Aenethar who made me?"


    His mentor, though initially bristling at the insult Seventh had thrown at their old friend, quickly regained composure and steadied himself before speaking.


    "That last remnant of Aenethar gave life instead of taking it. He''d never enjoyed killing, not Aenethar. By the time you were created he''d been gone from my periphery for so long that... well, I genuinely didn''t know a shade of who he once was still lingered. When he found that family, he made you to carry on his legacy. You two are so much alike that I find myself unable to look at you, at times. Forgive an old angel who''s friends have long since left this world his imagination, but you look very much like he did when he was your age. You act like him too. Be thankful of that; Aenethar was always the best of us. He didn''t bicker or fight, he never accused nor stirred up incidents. He was unconcerned by his popularity and the offerings given to him. He just wanted to do his best to shepherd the mortal folk of this world into the next, when their time came. He was the best of us, Seventh."


    "He couldn''t have been that good." Seventh spat bitterly. "Any way you try to spin it, he lied to my parents. My parents, who wanted nothing more than a child to call their own."


    Their mentor gave them a solemn, sad nod.


    "That''s where your anger comes from then. I see. I do not blame you, for it certainly seems like a betrayal on the surface, or a lie at the very least, but I implore you not to think of it as such. They wanted a child and they got one, didn''t they? They wanted a child, and it was a child they got. There''s a reason deals with people like us are told in faetales as warnings. Humans never get exactly what they wish for when dealing with our kind. All of that means nothing however, because Aenethar wasn''t like that. I understand you''re angry, but I need you to understand that he wouldn''t have done what he did, he wouldn''t have lied to your parents and left you here, if he felt like he had any other option."


    Seventh glared defiantly, still angry but willing to hear what his mentor had to say.


    "Explain."


    Basileous nodded sincerely and took a deep breath, then began to speak.


    "Most of us were gone. I was still aimlessly wandering the world, my mind and body both shattered, Anawroth had vanished with nought but burning anger and the scent of a man betrayed left to him, and the Silence had seen to the end of most of us who had eked out an existence on this world. Aenethar though, he''d been dying for a long time before that. He lasted longer than most of us, but he''d been dying for thousands of years by the time the Silence arrived. He''d long talked of creating his heir, his prot¨¦g¨¦, and it seems that some time after the silence he must have realised he was soon to fade, and so created you. He took what was left of himself, and made you. Then he found a family that could raise you through the tumultuous early decades of your life, and wandered into the mists to finally be at peace. He''d been dying for a very long time, Seventh, and he wanted to finally let himself move past this world, but he needed to make sure you would be in safe hands first. That''s why your adoptive parents could never find him; he was already gone by the time you were in the crib. He made a show of debating them all night purely so he knew how much they would love you and cherish you, and I know for a fact that if he''d have practically lived in their house with them to help raise you. He loved you, Seventh, even if he only saw you for a day. He loved you as a father loves his child, or an elder sibling cares for their younger. He loved you."


    Seventh brushed away tears that they hadn''t realised had been forming. They just- this was a lot for them to take in, and for so long they''d been angry at how their parents had been deceived, and-


    And this was all just a lot to deal with right now.


    "Then why did he trick them? Why not just tell them the truth?"


    Basileous smiled sadly, shaking his head a little.


    "Please don''t think of it as deceit, for it was no trick, not truly. I know for a fact that he would have hated tricking them, but he also would have known that the people who became your parents would love you and cherish you no matter how fast or slow you grew. He gave them what they wanted, in a sense, and kept you, the heir to his mantle, safe. Should it exist then he rests in the life that comes after with your parents now, and I know for a fact that the first thing he would have done after his end would be to seek them out and tell them how sorry he was for the truths he kept hidden, and how thankful he is for all that they did for you. He may have never been able to care for you as they did, but he is a parent of yours just as they were, and I know he''d be so proud of what you''ve accomplished so far. You''re on a good path, Seventh. He had his opinions about the pride and arrogance of our kind, and wished you to be raised amongst humans to avoid that same arrogance from manifesting in you as well. He''d be so proud to know that you haven''t fallen into conceitedness."


    "He wouldn''t want me going off to war, would he?"


    "No," Hydran began with a conceding nod, "just as I do not, but don''t let that dissuade you. You''re your own person, even if you are tied to the memory of him in a way that''s hard to describe. Still, perhaps it would be best to ensure that there is a non-violent element in your curriculum. That would at least allow you to decide whether you want to pursue one particular branch of study or a number of them."


    Seventh nodded their agreement, taking in a deep breath and parcelling away the very heavy information they''d been given to unpack at a later date. A non-violent subject of study as well as a more combat-focused one? It seemed like a fair enough system to them.


    "Alright. So, where do we start with that? With my not-combat or magic related learning, I mean?"


    "Well," their mentor started, "I won''t lie to you, your upbringing amongst mortals does bring with it some downsides. Your lack of knowledge on the philosophies and timekeeping of our kind, for a start. They will seem so alien to one such as yourself, and will take you centuries to learn. Took me a millennia to start understanding them, and I had actual trained teachers amongst our kind. Luckily, once I started to understand them it turned out I was one of the best students our kind had produced in a generation. For you it''ll take a bit longer. That''s not an insult aimed at your intelligence, nor is it meant to discourage you for that matter, I just want to let you know in advance that there will be difficulties in your education. It isn''t something I can just breeze past, for they''re so different to anything that humanity has yet managed to cobble together and as such are an integral part of what we once were. Still, that seems as good a place to start with your less martial or mystical focused education. I understand it''ll have very little appeal to you at the moment, but it''s important we remember these things about where we came from; you''d be surprised at how much our kind once had as a result of these philosophies and timekeeping measures."


    Seventh sighed as loudly and in as exaggerated a manner as they could.


    "That sounds utterly incomprehensible."


    "Well," their mentor said with a lopsided grin, "you''ve got a fun few centuries coming up in that case."

 Lore Chapter: The Khidonean Heresy and Exalipsianism

    Cornered you at last, have I? Put those books down and walk with me, young student. There is much for you to learn, and little of it from those texts.


    So you''ve attended all your lectures about the Church of the First Saint. You know all there is to know about the Old and New churches, you''re sick to your stomach of having to reread the scriptures of Agia Arwald that caused the Schism, and if you have to write one more paper on the Dragon-Church''s seizing of power and the effect it had on getting the Old and New churches to work together then you''re going to go mad. But you weren''t satisfied with that, were you?


    So then you dug a little deeper. You looked into the smaller sects and cult that form up the church; you researched the dogmatic differences both small and large between the Silverian Church and the Silent Cult, between the Church of Bloodied Purity and that of the Ancients. You started looking into more obscure pieces of theology, at things like the ancient Kingdom of Ereverry from which our faith descends and the Book of the Martial Saint. You''ve read Scholar Theseus'' thesis on the nature of the Lamb and the Silence, and you''ve even started looking into the Church''s ancient roots amongst the pagan faiths of the world.


    But it still wasn''t enough.


    No, you want more. You want to learn more. You want to learn the truths of this world, truths that no faith has yet been able to explain. You want more, but you don''t know where to turn. Or rather, you didn''t. But you do now. You can pretend you don''t if you want, but I watched you in the library just the other day. You''d picked out as many books as you could about Saint Khidon, not to mention the book of legal records that went alongside it. Don''t try and act foolish, we both know you think you''ve found something. Something you weren''t supposed to find, something that they told you not to find interesting. For a while you''ve listened, but you and I both know that soon you''re going to give in to your desire to learn.


    And if you''re going to learn it anyway, why not learn it now? Why not learn it from... well, from me? You''re on the right track to learning what you need to know, but I''d not bother with most of the records they keep on Saint Khidon in this library. You ever notice that they''re all dated centuries after his death? It''s because they''re all lies. Falsified bullshit to help the image of a dead saint better fit the role the church wants him to take. He''s too ingrained in the culture of Aegos and southern Kliskorios at large to be truly removed from all records, so instead the powers-that-be sought to twist his words and his findings to fit their own power plays and beliefs, leaving his real teachings in the dust.


    But there are other books out there that exist. Books that tell the truth of his teachings. Books of what he discovered, and why it was that the Church of his time deemed him so dangerous that they ordered his execution to be carried out the day his sentence was passed instead of the customary sennight after sentencing.


    There are books out there that teach of these things, young student. Books that teach of the true nature of death and of living. Books that teach of the Khidonean Doctrine. Would you like to read them?


    Of course you would. You''re smarter than most in your class, if not conventionally then at least in common sense. I''m going to teach you what I can about the teachings of Saint Khidon, and the tenets underpinning his ideals and several others like them. Be very careful in choosing who you spread this knowledge to, however. There are not many who care for the name of the ''Khidoneans'' anymore, and there are a great many who would see you killed just for wishing to learn of these things. Does that not dissuade you?


    No, it does not. You''ve got a good mind for knowledge.


    Tell me, if you would: why are you here? You''re not a normal student of this place, and before last month I''d never seen you around here. You''re a Klironomean, a Polaeran if I have my accents right, and they''ve got plenty of their own academies dedicated to training clergymen. Ah, but you aren''t a clergyman in training, are you? No, that''s quite alright, no-one will mind. The Archbishops and Cardinal who run the school likely know you won''t be here long. So, what is it that brings you here?


    A genuine thirst for knowledge, hmm? Well, that I certainly can help with.


    Come, walk with me. My chambers are not far from here, and entertaining foreign nobility is always a good excuse for getting off of work.


    My name? Sin. It''s a pleasure to meet you as well. I''ll be a Cardinal in a month or two, I think, but for now I''m just Sin. An ironic name for a preacher, I know, but that''s the one the priests all gave me when I got here. I don''t actually remember what I used to be called if I''m honest, in fact that might have been my name all my life, but Sin is a fine enough name by me. Ah, enough about me. We''re here to talk about the Khidonean Doctrine, so please feel free to make yourself at home here while we discuss these things. After you!


    There we are. It''ll be much nicer to talk in here without the risk of people listening in. The Khidonean Doctrine isn''t one that''s seen much love from church authorities since it was originally penned, and I don''t see that changing anytime soon.


    Yes, you''ve likely heard it labelled ''the Khidonean Heresy''. A crude title, but to most that''s all it is. A heresy, no different than any other upstart little theology with a half-baked idea and a mad prophet to guide it. That''s what the main church would like it to be, anyway.


    See, the Khidonean Doctrine isn''t a ''religion'' by itself. It doesn''t form a core part of any faith or cult in the world, not that I know of at least. I won''t pretend to know all their is to know about these things, but I''ve never heard of a faith that placed it at its heart. Khidoneans are not the adherents to one particular faith, rather they believe in the words of Saint Khidon on top of the words of whichever variant of the scriptures they follow. This means that their are Khidoneans who worship at the New-Church, those who follow the Cult of Anawroth, others still who hold to the Ichorian Cult; you get the idea. It isn''t one faith by itself, merely a truth that certain people hold close to their hearts regardless of who or where they worship.


    The Khidonean Doctrine isn''t a catch-all theology. It deals with one very particular part of our world, that being the matter of death. All die one day, be they jester or king, kind or cruel. It doesn''t matter who they are or how they''ve lived their lives, because at some point it always comes to an end.


    At least, that''s what most believe. Oh, there are the heavens and the hells, but they''re different. They''re eternal. They''re locations. But to get to a location, you need to travel there first. That''s what Saint Khidon''s research looked at. That''s what he wanted to learn the truth of. Saint Khidon was a fervent believer in the scriptures, no matter what anyone says about him, but he also held the belief that, before we reach heaven or hell, first we must journey past this world. He believed that death was not something that merely ended life and flung you to your eternal destination, but that your spirit would have to find its own way to hell. Some Khidoneans take this literally, and ponder how one might be able to ensure that one''s spirit can find their way to heaven as a physical location. Others believe it to be metaphorical or mystical, and claim that there is a place beyond this world that we go to when we die which requires either mental or physical navigation. Some even claim that the path we must walk is not a true path at all, but rather the idea that we must live out our lives again through the shoes of another until we find our destination, whatever that might be. A form of reincarnation, I suppose. Not one that goes on forever, but a form of reincarnation nonetheless. One in which we need only to find where we are meant to be to reach heaven or hell.


    Now of course there are other things to consider, but the teachings of Saint Khidon are remarkably simple. Where they grow complicated are when one looks at the history associated with them.


    See, Saint Khidon wasn''t some obscure figure like we might assume nowadays. He was practically a celebrity back in his lifetime, and for all he accomplished he lived a remarkably short life at that. He was a grim man, not stern nor unkind but with an unmistakable seriousness surrounding him. He believed firmly that all of life was nothing more than a test to prepare one for death and what came after. His sermons drew crowds numbering in the tens of thousands, and entire university complexes would crowd themselves into open fields just to hear a word of his teachings from his own mouth. Though grim he may have been, he was immensely popular amongst many of the faithful. His lectures often even saw a great number of pagans in attendance; the priests of the Sotenari took the long voyage across the Ambyr sea to listen to his words, and druids from both Brythonia and Scelopyrea would sit next to one another despite their ancient hatreds so that they might be privy to his wisdom. The words he preached were humble, and yet grand. They were so very complicated, and yet also completely accessible to even the unlearned. Yes, Saint Khidon was a wonderful teacher while he lived.


    He did not live for long.


    As I mentioned, the powers-that-be were never pleased with his popularity. They saw him as a threat to their established canon and to their liturgy, and though they would never admit it in public his popularity made him a direct threat to the power they wielded. Why? For he believed that the Church should not possess great riches, nor should they own any lands outside of the cathedrals, churches, shrines, graveyards, and potter''s fields they ministered to. He believed that any lands that did not directly see to the needs of the church should not be owned by the church, be they farms, mills, or breweries. You can see why this didn''t go down well with the higher levels of the priesthood.


    Before his words could reach the ears of kings who would no doubt be pleased to propagate his words as an excuse to seize the lands of the church for their own they called him to trial for crimes against the faith, and for Arch-Heresy. He was one of only three men to be tried for Arch-Heresy in the last thousand years. Yeah, his work really made the church paranoid. Can''t think why.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Sometimes I wonder whether the clergymen who ordered him killed had even bothered to read his work. I doubt it; most of them probably didn''t care much for the scriptures regardless of what they said.


    As for his execution, that''s the subject of much debate. Not over ''how'' they did it, since we know that much: he was sentenced to be executed by being interred in a statue of his likeness for spreading his beliefs. No, the thing people aren''t sure on is whether or not it actually happened. There was no skeleton inside the statue when it was knocked down, after all. Most of his followers generally believe that he all but disappeared before his sentence could be carried out.


    Though many have speculated on whether he escaped or was killed, no evidence of any sort has ever been found about him from the day his execution was set to take place. He simply vanished.


    His beliefs laid the foundations for the what church-folk call the Khidonean Heresy, referred to amongst adherents as the Khidonean Doctrine, which encapsulated his beliefs. The Khidonean Heresy is not a sect of the church by itself, merely a doctrine of faith that a few extremely minor sects adhere to. Despite many radical differences with each other, any sect following the Khidonean Doctrine sees other faiths following the doctrine, or even pagan faiths with similar beliefs, to be brother-faiths. Old-Church, New-Church, pagan, it matters not. If one holds to their beliefs in what comes after, they are a Khidonean.


    Hm, perhaps that''s not quite true. I believe that those believing in pagan faiths who still hold to the truths of Saint Khidon don''t tend to use the term ''Khidonean'' much. It makes sense of course, especially because similar beliefs have existed the world over for as long as anyone can remember. Most of those in pagan faiths instead keep to their own local versions of the Khidonean Doctrine, many of which predate it but weren''t anything other than tiny sects of belief before Saint Khidon sparked interest in these similar teachings. As a collective umbrella, these small sects and doctrines of belief with very similar teachings are referred to as ''Exalipsianist'' beliefs. You''ll probably never encounter another type of Exalipsianism outside of the Khidonean Doctrine however, since interest in such things has waned greatly since the killing of the blessed Saint Khidon centuries ago.


    Yes, there is a monastic order that bears his name, just as there is a cathedral dedicated to him within the walls of this fair city. Strange for one labelled as an Arch-Heretic to be honoured in such a way, no?


    That''s because they don''t commemorate him. They don''t commemorate his teachings. They commemorate the false version of him that the church pretends existed. They put his name on books he never wrote, on scriptures he never cared for, on transcripts of lectures that no-one had ever heard him give. They lied, so that they could pretend he was someone he wasn''t. So that they could do more than just erase him from history; they''ve used his name and his words to disparage the very groups he sought to support. They''ve perverted his vision and dug up the path he once laid, letting the darkness of the forest reclaim the trail.


    But some of us remember where that path once was. Some of us remember what he believed, what he said, what he taught. Some of us remember the real Saint Khidon, and with any luck you now will as well. He was arguably the most important Saint since the First Saint himself, and yet his name has slowly been forgotten by all in the outside world, and shunned within the confines of holy places.


    Saint Khidon''s message may have been cut short, but the pieces of it we have that he left behind are enough to get us started on working out what''s left. We don''t know what grand truths he''d reached past what he''d spoken of in public, and we know for a fact that six half-written books bearing his hand were burned when the church came for him. Saint Khidon got us started, but we now need to work out the rest alone. He held his lantern out for us, but the candle within has flickered and died. It may never be rekindled, but we can at least do our best to stumble through the darkness and follow his footsteps. It''s what he would expect of us, after all.


    Ah, my apologies. I never realised you were royalty. There aren''t many princes that come here anymore, though prince Mathias Perytlos did used to come by here a few times a year. I do believe the burnings have put him off a little, however. Not that I blame him, they''re fuck-awful things. Tell me then, prince Alekos. What do you make of Exalipsianism? Of the Khidonean Doctrine and its beliefs?


    Yes, I agree. Fascinating, aren''t they?


    Well, that covers most of it I think. I know that was probably more of a ramble in places and for that I''ll not apologise, since that''s just who I am. Still, rather strange to find a prince from as north as the civilised world goes down here. If I were you I''d not hang around here for long. There''s a reason Dathan has been seen as the backwater of the continent this last few centuries, and it''s about to get a hell of a lot worse. Yes, the Aegan Civil War is over. No, that doesn''t mean everything here is all fine and dandy. I respect your wish to tour the peninsula, young prince, but I wholeheartedly stand against it. There''s zealots and despots galore around here, and you''ll be hounded at every step of your trip by those who wish to curry favour with you. Yes, I''m aware that such a thing never happened here in Aegos. You wanna know why?


    Because Archcardinal Adikos hates royalty.


    He sees them as impure, unneeded, vainglorious. He despises them for what he sees as laziness and sins abound, not to mention how much they try and hold the church in check. Adikos hates all sorts of people, but royalty is certainly up there. He''ll not do anything to you, don''t worry, he isn''t stupid. He doesn''t want to start a war with a kingdom as far away as Polaeros. No, what I mean by all of this is that he hasn''t tried acting nice to you because he has no intention of even pretending that he cares about you. He hates royalty, he hates those who worship Angels, and he hates Klironomeans for what they did to Terranea. Me? I couldn''t give less of a shit what happened a thousand years ago. But then it doesn''t matter what I think, because Adikos is in charge.


    Yeah, it is odd how different Khidon appears to other Saints from around here. I mean, you don''t see figures like Saint Priore causing a rift in the church''s theology so totally, do you? Saint Brassica came close in her lifetime, what with her desire for power and ambitions of greatness, but that''s a story for another time. Oh yes, Saint Brassica is another case of the church trying to cover up and rewrite its own history. Quite a few of the Saints were rather different in life to what they''re seen as in death, though some are admittedly little different than the records say. Anyway, that''s not important right now. If nothing else I''ve given you something else to consider, haven''t I? I''m not sure how many records of the Saints from the time they lived in still exists, but if you wished to find any and they did turn out to exist then I''d be very surprised if there wasn''t at least a copy of each in the Great Library of Sothettar. There isn''t really much of a presence from the church on that island city, since they keep to their own ancient gods. Therefore there wouldn''t have been any reason for them to get rid of the books. Makes sense, right?


    Sorry, I realise we''ve gotten quite far off track. You had a question, you said? Oh, the monks? Yeah, there''s a small monastic order nestled in and around the city of Athio called, plainly enough, the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon. I think it watches over three monasteries, a nunnery, and eight priories. There''s a hermitage nestled into a relatively isolated and secluded area as well, not far from the coast near the Rocks of Aercad. As with much of what bears Khidon''s name, it''s widely accepted amongst the church and Khidonean practitioners alike that they don''t really teach his true work.


    There are a few things about them that make me think they might hold more than a few secrets about their adherence to their namesake, however. Sure, in the eyes of the wider church they''re seen as adhering to little more than the toothless and bastardised version of Khidon''s teachings that the church claim were his actual beliefs, but I''m not so sure. They hold no lands outside of the various buildings they call home, with the only exception being a balneary that they run for pilgrims making the trip to Aegos. That''s it; a bath house and a series of convents. No grand prestige projects, no vast farming estates, nothing like that. Just what they need to survive, and no more. They swear a vow of silence and don hooded robes of deep crimson, both of which are not uncommon amongst Khidonean congregations the world over. Taking on a vow of silence also helps them stop anyone from slipping up and revealing themselves, hypothetically speaking of course. It would be interesting to see how they operate from within, however even someone set to be as high up in the church hierarchy as myself may not enter a convent without invitation.


    And the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon do not make any invitations. To anyone. Ever. The day they agree to let someone not of their order past the walls of one of their convents is the day that this entire continent bows before the same ruler.


    Yeah, that was a joke. Because neither of those things are ever going to happen.


    Anyway, they''re pretty alright. Some monasteries and monastic orders tend to have a bit of a prideful streak, but Saint Khidon''s order is just a little isolationist. They want to be left alone, generally speaking. They''re fine with helping out folks in the outside world, but they generally don''t enjoy people asking them questions about how they operate. If they weren''t so small in scale they probably would have been forced under a little more oversight, but as it stands people are generally content to let them provide alms, operate their bathhouse, and generally just remain apart from the world. That''s what monks and nuns are supposed to do anyway, isn''t it? Stay away from worldly desires?


    Don''t worry, I''m not gonna chastise you for laughing at that. I''ve seen the central abbey of the Order of Saint Mikah, and I''m pretty sure there''s more gold stashed away in that place than your palace back home. No offense. Yeah, I think some of the abbots around here just... never got around to reading the whole ''avarice is a sin'' part of the scriptures. Go figure that one out by yourself, because I''ve been pondering it for years and I''m no closer to finding an answer to that particular question. Let me know if you figure out how the fuck they think everything being gold helps them get closer to the First Saint.


    The Order of Saint Khidon doesn''t go in for that kind of stuff. Granite and slate, that''s all they care for. They don''t even go for lead on their roofs, so you can imagine exactly how little use they have for gold. They don''t care for opulence; they''re masters at making the mundane fantastical. They might not have marble walls, but their carvings are some of the best I''ve ever seen. They might not have masterful statues and plinths, but the gargoyles that perch atop their convents are more than enough to convince everyone around them to simply let them be and leave them alone.


    I can respect that, in all honesty. They help the poor and the needy, and their ranks are almost entirely populated by those cast out on the streets with no-one to turn to and no-where to go, usually children. That''s how they recruit; they help people. No ulterior motives, save that you now must help them help the next person who is taken in. Whether the order forces them to stay I won''t pretend to know, but in my mind it''s pretty telling that not once has anyone ever broken their vow of silence when outside the order''s walls. Oh, they can talk and sing their hymns while inside, but as soon as the doors are opened and the monks walk out it''s as silent as the grave.


    Ah, that''ll be enough of your time wasted today. As I mentioned before, I''d leave Dathan relatively soon. I give it half a decade at the most before this peninsula is knee-deep in blood. Best for foreigners to keep away when that time comes; despots ruling over an increasingly war-weary and angry population are always keen to use outsiders as scapegoats or bartering chips. I wish you well in your travels, Prince Alekos, and I hope you will not soon forget Acolyte Sin. I''ll be a Cardinal soon you know, and if Dathan isn''t at war with itself when that time comes feel free to come and visit me again. I''ll be down in Athio whenever you wish to make your appearance.


    Good day to you as well, and goodbye. Be careful what knowledge you seek next, young prince. I know better than most that knowledge never comes without its price.

 Ilias II: The World Under Stagspring

    <u>Ilias II: The World Under Stagspring</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Tenth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Stagspring, Central Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    "Evening meal, your Grace."


    Lykourgos smiled down at him as he gently placed the plate down on a table to the side of the prince''s work desk. It was a good plate of food for someone like him, but by the standards of royalty he''d learned that Lykourgos lived a relatively Kallitrian lifestyle. That was another term he''d learned recently; ''Kallitrian'', not in the sense that something was from Kallitrios or was like something from Kallitrios, but in the sense that it was austere and without unnecessary frills.


    To him the food looked fucking great, and when he was younger he''d have never dreamed he''d be eating anything even remotely close to something like this. Still, lords and kings lived different lives to the people, and that was the way of the world.


    "Come, sit with me. I''ll not manage to eat all of this and I could use some company at the moment."


    Ilias smiled to himself. At times it was almost like the prince could hear his thoughts.


    "Thank you, your Grace. I am a little hungry."


    "You''re still growing; you''re always going to be hungry at the moment. I was when I was your age."


    Ilias snorted at the thought of the usually prim and proper Lykourgos gorging himself like a child who''d found his way into a honeycomb, the casual tone of the conversation help settle his nerves a little. He wasn''t nervous about serving the prince his food, for he''d been doing that for more than a year at this point, but he was nervous about the job he''d be doing later. Talking with the prince helped alleviate those nerves a little.


    Today the prince had been sent a piece of fillet steak which had been seared on the outside and left red in the middle. It was a little bloody for Ilias'' preference, but he wasn''t going to turn down such a good cut of meat. There was a small pot of thick gravy to the side which the prince poured over the meat and vegetables, separating them out into two roughly equal portions before allowing Ilias to start eating.


    Ten years ago he''d been living in poverty and hardship on the streets of northern Anaria, the cold never far from his mind or his skin. Now he was sharing an evening meal in a palace with a prince. Angels, he was glad at how things had changed in his life these last few years. He didn''t want to turn out like some of the people he knew from the streets.


    "I''ve received some... odd correspondence from Triarios recently."


    Ilias looked up at the prince, who''s words had broken the short spell of silence.


    "Anything hostile?"


    "No, no," the prince chuckled, "nothing like that. Strange, but not hostile. The ex-King of Triarios writes to me as if... well, as if we were old friends. I suppose it makes sense given the circumstances, for I think he wants to make sure our new partnership goes both ways, but it is still a little amusing nonetheless. How about you? How have your days been recently? How have you been faring in Stagspring?"


    "The days have been fair enough, but... well," he started as he hastily swallowed a mouthful of steak, "I''ll certainly be happy to get back to Anaria. I like it better there. There''s no sea here, it''s... it''s weird. There''s no ocean. Just land."


    Lykourgos raised an eyebrow at him.


    "I wasn''t aware you missed the sea that much. Has the ocean been a big part of your life?"


    Ilias shrugged.


    "I didn''t realise it until we left it behind. I don''t think I noticed too much during the civil war or this campaign because we''ve all been very busy, but now that there''s a bit of a lull in the activity I feel... I don''t know how to describe it, it''s just like I''m missing something."


    The prince smiled kindly at him and set down the cutlery he was holding, ruffling his hair. Ilias noted that the prince''s side of the plate was still mostly full, but he wasn''t worried about the man starving himself; from what Ilias had seen whilst working for him the prince ate a hearty portion of food in the evening, but slowly. Sometimes that was reversed, particularly on days where the prince had seemed hungrier than usual or else had forgotten to eat through his work that day, but most days he was content to eat slower than those around him.


    "Well we''ll be heading back to Anaria soon enough, probably in a day or two, so that might bolster your spirits a little. You''ll be in attendance at my coronation in a position alongside Dreamwulf and Nasos, though I must apologise for the role you''ll find yourself in on the banquet."


    Ilias giggled a little, the prince''s apology seeming genuinely funny to him.


    "Your Grace, in that banquet I''m to be your personal cupbearer. That is literally what I''m paid to do. You don''t need to apologise for that, your Grace."


    "I know, but still," the prince continued, "you''ll be one of only a few people who won''t be able to enjoy the festivities."


    "I''ll sneak plenty of food from the kitchens whilst I''m serving you, your Grace. I probably shouldn''t admit that, but there''s no risk of me going hungry. Trust me."


    Lykourgos snorted, and his spirits seemed to lift a little, so Ilias took that to mean he had the prince''s support in his pilfering of the kitchens. That was why he liked Lykourgos, the man was different to the lords he''d met before. Nicer. Stronger. Not necessarily physically imposing, though the man could certainly hold his own in a fight from what he''d heard from Dreamwulf and Eros not to mention his own experience seeing the prince use improvised weaponry to defend himself from the Cult of the Choir before they were smoked out, but stronger of the mind and of the heart. He was stronger in his wit, in his ability to do what he needed to in order to win, and stronger in a hundred small ways that combined to make him the strongest man who had ever lived.


    Angels, was he stronger. Twenty-one years old and the king of three kingdoms. Ilias had come into the knowledge that, when spring rolled around, the wars would start anew. Nordicos was next he''d heard, then a swift march eastwards. Lykourgos had an ambition and drive that could be matched by very few indeed, and Ilias was happy to be able to say that he was on the prince''s side and would never stand against him.


    If Ilias had his way, no one would stand against Lykourgos at all. He could not fathom anyone wanting to.


    <hr>


    "Hurry up, boy! We''ve got a couple of upjumped thugs to meet with, and I don''t want us being late because you''re nervously looking over your shoulder every half a minute. The only person you need to be afraid of is me, so keep your eyes on where we''re going."


    Ilias scowled at the man''s rebuke. Of all the people that the Master could have assigned him to work with on this matter, why did it have to be Stefanos? Scratch that, Stefanos dealing with this matter made sense. Why was Ilias here? He was supposed to keep an eye on the king, not assist the Master with pacifying the underground.


    "I''m just not used to this place. Anaria I know like the back of my hand, but Stagspring is new to me. I don''t like not knowing my way around."


    "Well," the eternally smug man replied, "luckily for you I''ve been here many times before. I know my way around, and I know the men we''re supposed to be dealing with. They know me well enough and they''re expecting our presence, so we won''t get any trouble from then. Just ignore the eyes watching us and pretend they''re not there. I know you can feel them, just like I can."


    Stefanos was right; this entire time Ilias had felt that uncomfortable crawling sensation on his back that signalled hawkish eyes tracking his movements. He felt it every now and again when he was in the palace in Anaria, and in those cases he knew that there would be rats in the walls waiting to report on him to the master. Ilias wasn''t stupid, though. He kept any misgivings about the fact he was now reporting on the prince to himself. The reports were filled with nothing of any import, since the prince either kept his plans to himself or blurted them out for all to hear, so there wasn''t really much for Ilias to do. Most of the time, back in the capital that was, he just filed mundane conversations into the reports. The only real thing Ilias had been able to report back with was the planned investment and reorganisation of the prince''s new Owkrestan lands into vast estates so that they could turn a much greater profit. He didn''t think such a matter would be harmful to report.


    Of course that meant a whole lot of paperwork. The prince had joked previously about making Ilias do a large amount of it, but that was all in jest. Once all the figures were in place and Lykourgos had a more organised idea of what he was working with Ilias was willing to bet he''d be overseeing the project himself. Nasos would have his work cut out for him, what with trying to convince his Grace not to work himself back into a coma. Ilias did not envy the sheer amount of work that seemed to encompass the prince''s entire life; the young man was ambitious, yes, but he also was willing to put in the work to see those ambitions through. Those ambitions ranged from smaller scale steps, such as the city charters that had apparently been sent out to a few of the larger townships amongst the new lands, to the prince''s eventual goal of uniting the Heptarchy of the Klironomoi into one kingdom again.


    After that, who could say?


    His mind was drawn back to the presence by a series of scribbles on the wall of a side-street that he roughly recognised as thiefspeak, if distorted. That was another reason he preferred home: he could understand Anarian thiefspeak, but not this dialect. In this environment he felt useless.


    He couldn''t waste time with self-pity however, for as much as he hated to admit it this wasn''t Anaria, and that meant he just had to work a little harder if he wanted to get around in the criminal world. Not that he''d been doing much of that sort of work lately, what with his assignment to watch the prince and everything. He could parse a good guess on what the symbols surreptitiously scrawled on alley walls and abandoned buildings meant, but he couldn''t know for certain. He was completely fine when it came to the Anarian thiefspeak, after all he''d grown up scribbling the stuff, but the underground of Stagspring seemed to have its own variant of the chickenscratch scrawlings.


    "Come on, stop staring at random fucking bits of code. We''ve got a meeting to get to, or don''t you remember?"


    Oh, Ilias remembered all right. When Stefanos had appeared and handed him a letter with some very clear instructions from the Master he''d felt his heart sink a little. Apparently now that these lands were owned by the prince there were those who felt that Elikoidi should take a more direct hand in controlling the underground here, just as he''d swiftly grown to control information-brokering. Seeing as the man already controlled most of the Teleytaian underground and kept them in check Elikoidi had agreed, and so Ilias and Stefanos were being sent as his representatives to meet with the heads of a few of the more prominent minor gangs in Stagspring. Now that his Grace controlled Triarios as well Ilias suspected that similar moves would be made over there in time, but for now it was his job to just speak with these criminals on behalf of his master.


    Elikoidi was a very powerful man. The only person with more power in the kingdom was Lykourgos himself, and so Ilias was very thankful that the spymaster''s intentions seemed to be genuine when it came to dealing with the royal. The Master of Silver hadn''t revealed exactly why it was that he was so totally loyal to the prince, and Ilias wasn''t sure he ever would, but that didn''t matter. Ilias owed the prince his loyalties for who he was, for what he represented: change. The prince was change made manifest, a brilliant flame to burn away the corruption of the old world and replace it with something new. Maybe the spymaster''s reasoning wasn''t much different?


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    He got a niggling feeling that there was something more to it than that, but before he could think on it any more the feeling of being watched returned in a far stronger form than it had been in before, burning away his trail of thought. Turning into an alleyway just behind Stefanos he soon realised that they were being followed. Ilias got followed a lot in his line of work, so he''d gotten pretty good at realising when it was happening and stopping himself from getting anxious because of it. Stefanos, judging by the grin creeping across his face, had probably just realised it as well. Ilias just sighed. This was going to get bloody.


    "Any coin to spare, mister?"


    Two men stalked towards them from the shadows of the alleyway, and where normally Ilias would have been able to give them the slip easily he both didn''t know this place and didn''t have the time to waste on such matters, since this meeting wasn''t something that could just be rearranged on a whim. They were gang leaders, not bureaucrats, and as such if they didn''t get what they were promised when they were promised it they wouldn''t be pleased.


    "Depends what you''re selling to me."


    Stefanos'' voice was cocky. Confident. Such confidence wasn''t misplaced, as Ilias knew all too well, but to these men he must have seemed rather out of touch with his situation. One of them drew a seaxe from his pocket and pointed it at Stefanos, and when the other did the same but pointing at Ilias he took a step back on instinct.


    That''s when Stefanos seemed to change a little. That''s when the killer who''d terrorised the streets of Anaria''s northern district showed himself again.


    "I suggest you to put that down. The boy will die one day, that I promise you, but I''m going to be the one that does it. Just me. I don''t want anyone else touching him."


    The two men looked at each other, looking very confused and almost a little disturbed. Eventually one shook his head to the other and they turned back to Stefanos, their tone becoming belligerent and dangerous.


    "I don''t care what fucking gripe you''ve got with the kid, give me your fucking money!"


    Stefanos said nothing, instead holding his arms out wide as though inviting them to try and attack him. The first man lunged forwards, his footwork clumsy and strike far too ungainly to even phase someone like Stefanos. The killer simply sidestepped the man and kicked him so hard in the balls that the first of their assailants dropped to the floor, his seaxe flying through the air. In the same movement Stefanos had plucked the blade from the air and opened the second man''s throat, drawing his hand back and dropping the blade only to grab the dying man be the back of the neck with one hand and, with a great deal of force that seemed out of place in his lanky frame, reached into the open wound and tore out the man''s tongue through his throat.


    With that display concluded he wiped his hands on the dead man''s coat, allowing him to drop to the floor next to his groaning friend. For a moment he looked at the other man as though considering killing him as well, but judging by the glint in his eyes he was finding the idea of leaving the other man alive more amusing for some reason. Whatever it was that he was thinking of Ilias didn''t know, and for that matter Ilias had no wish to know what went on in that man''s mind.


    Ilias was disturbed, but not overly so. It was a needless display of brutality, yes, but these men were thieves and criminals. There was no telling what else they''d be up to. He hated the fact that he was forced to stand alongside Stefanos at the moment, but then he supposed that in some ways it was a good thing; his master wasn''t foolish enough to trust the killer on a personal level, and so Ilias was told to watch him. Of course there was a chance that Stefanos might take the opportunity to kill him, but Ilias doubted it. The man wanted to, of that he had no doubt, but Stefanos needed to be able to go back to Elikoidi with his job still intact. If Ilias turned up dead then he knew exactly who''d get the blame, and both his Master and his prince would be furious. Lykourgos cared about him after all, and for all of Stefanos'' many disturbing and depraved faults, he was not rash. Not normally, anyway. Push the right buttons, say the right words, and he''d fall into a fury like any man, but it would take a concerted effort to get him there.


    Ilias had no intention of trying to anger him at the moment.


    "Come on then littlun, the boss wants us to meet a few new contacts. You aren''t afraid of a few Owkrestans, are you?"


    Ilias shook his head, doing his best not to appear in any way intimidated by any of this. He needed to be stoic if he was to get through this without anything going ill.


    "Of course not. These contacts know the Master, by name if not by meeting. They wouldn''t dare touch us, not unless they want half of the organised underground after them. These people didn''t get where they are today by acting in choler."


    "Choler, eh?" Stefanos smirked at him, a dull lifelessness to his eyes that somehow appeared manic. "You''ve been picking up some fancy words from your new friends, haven''t you? Seems you''ve almost forgotten you came from the streets like us."


    He stayed silent, unwilling to respond to the other''s needling comments and give the vile man the rise he''d hoped for.


    "Pah, you''re too serious nowadays. Then again, you never were one for fun."


    "Your idea of ''fun'' was the mutilation of people who crossed you, Stefanos. I suppose in that way we both haven''t changed much, have we?"


    The killer grinned ferally at him, seeming almost happy to be talked back to.


    "That''s more like it. I was beginning to get bored with your silence and thought you might never find your spine. I''ll kill you one day Ilias, but that won''t be for a long while yet. Tell the boss if you want, he won''t believe you. Besides, I''m his most valuable worker."


    Ilias just shrugged, acting as if none of this bothered him. The man could make all the threatening comments he wanted, but at the end of the day Ilias had royal favour. Not in the traditional sense, no, but he highly suspected that Stefanos would end up shorter by a head if the man was found to have done anything to him. Hell, Ilias was pretty sure that Prince Lykourgos would have ordered the man''s execution anyway if he knew what he''d done, that the serial killer people once knew as the ''Gin-Run Angel'' still lived. To be honest Ilias suspected that the reason his Grace tried not to involve himself in this sort of thing was precisely because he didn''t want to learn exactly who it was in the underground that now, technically and nominally, worked for him. Killers, thieves, gangers, extortionists, forgers, all the detritus of society could find work under the Master of Silver.


    Well, if they were good enough that was. Those who tried to back out of their obligations or otherwise fell short of being considered worthwhile... well, they''d be given plenty of chances, but as soon as those chances ran out then a new seat at the table would soon appear, so to speak.


    "This should be the place. I fucking hate the chickenscratch they pretend is thiefspeak here, but the markings match up. Time to wrangle us up some luckless halfwits."


    Angels, but Ilias fucking hated working with this man.


    <hr>


    The meeting had taken place in a dimly lit room behind a brothel, which a still-grinning Stefanos had led him through on their way to the meeting place. At one point someone, probably the house owner, had called out to the older man, asking him if he was "Paying for your boy to have his first time with some of my girls, eh?", to which Stefanos had only laughed in response and shook his head.


    "No, as funny as that would be to me. We''re here to meet with a few people in a... private room. I trust you can accommodate us?"


    The brothel owner''s smile vanished as Stefanos'' words rang out, and Ilias watched the colour drain from the man''s cheeks. It seemed he wasn''t overly keen with having so many gang members in his house of pleasure, not that Ilias blamed him. Some of the gang leaders here were likely to be actively feuding with each other, and probably had only stayed their hands from violence thanks to the reputation Elikoidi had amongst the underground of the Heptarchy. The western parts of it, anyway.


    Well, that and the fact that none of them probably wanted this haunt to be shuttered. Ilias hadn''t seen the insides of many brothels, but this one certainly seemed... classier was probably the wrong word, but they were certainly cleaner and nicer than some of the ones he''d needed to visit before.


    The owner led them to a private room in the back, and knocked thrice on the door. Ilias was certain he could hear the moaning and giggling of some of the ladies within, and as such was worried they had the wrong room, but as soon as the owner spoke the noises stopped.


    "They''re here."


    A few moments later a hurried procession of half-dressed women left the room, Ilias averting his eyes to give them some decency as they passed which made more than one of the giggle, and when the last of them had left the owner gestured towards the now opened door and allowed them to enter.


    "Well, you all certainly seem to have been busy."


    "Your boss can cover the costs of that. If he wants our cooperation, that is."


    Ilias bit back a retort as Stefanos chucked down a small bag of gold ravens onto the table. It seemed that the master had suspected this after all.


    "That should cover it, and then pay for a dozen whores in every brothel in your shitheap of a city on top of it. I don''t want to waste your time, so I''ll keep this short. The boss likes information. It''s his job to collect information. And there''s no-one better to learn from in the cities than the rats. That''s why we''re here. The boss wants to enter into a deal with the lot of you."


    One of the gang leaders, a man with a dark goatee and a pair of intense brown eyes, interjected.


    "What sort of a deal? We don''t need no boss over our heads, even if he is bloody powerful."


    Stefanos made a conciliatory gesture, though it seemed more mocking than sincere.


    "Well, he doesn''t want to lord over you per se. He really just has one or two demands to make of you, and in return he''ll make sure the worst of the attention is taken off of you. After all, a man with so vast an informant network could crumble any small-time city-dwelling gang in a matter of weeks. He doesn''t want to do that, though. All he wants is for you to leave his rats, and his rats nests, alone. If he needs to know something from one of you, he''ll send someone to ask, and he expects you to tell him. Apart from that he''s content to leave you all be, and maybe even enter into a few partnerships in the future. It pays to have powerful friends in our lives, doesn''t it?"


    Another of the gang leaders, an older man with white sideburns that joined to his beard, spoke in a gruff and scratchy voice. If Ilias had to guess he''d say that the man had once been a miner of some sort, probably working at digging the silver out from under this city. Well, before he''d become a criminal anyway.


    "And if I refuse? If I walk out?"


    "Then the boss will find another candidate to reign over the underground of Stagspring. And their first order of business will be to tie up our loose ends. I trust you understand how dangerous this line of business can be?"


    The man narrowed his eyes at Stefanos, saying nothing. Then with a slow, almost deliberate breaking of eye contact, he turned to look at Ilias.


    "And why''s he here? What is it the runt wants with all of this? He looks better fed than the rest of us; can''t be a man of the night. Why''s he here?"


    Stefanos, grin still in place, moved to place his hands on Ilias'' shoulders. The feeling of the man''s hands on him made Ilias feel genuinely ill, and it took a lot out of him to pretend that he was fine with the man''s disquieting presence.


    "At the moment? He''s here to watch me, I think. The boss is smart, doesn''t trust anyone."


    Ilias bit back a remark about how the boss did trust people, but only two of them. Outside of Lykourgos and Romanos the man was, admittedly, rather suspicious of everyone and everything. It made sense, considering the line of work he was in. Stefanos continued to speak, his hands and words making Ilias feel disgusted and wish that he would be able to wash off the patches of his shoulders that Stefanos had touched, as though the man''s psychopathic traits might be spread through contact.


    "This one keeps an eye on his Grace himself. He''s his cupbearer, you see. That means he hears a lot of things he probably shouldn''t of. Important things that involve important people, not scum like us. That makes him a valuable piece on the Deicide board."


    One of the gang leaders, a man nearly as wiry as Stefanos but with a motley beard and sunken eyes, passed a hand over his mouth as he looked at Ilias.


    "I see. So, if your boss were to be paid enough, he could kill him."


    Ilias kept his emotions under wraps, answering as cleanly and as calmly as if the ganger had asked him to fetch a mug of ale, but in truth the comment struck him a little. The answer was that yes, he could kill his Grace, but no, he wasn''t going to. Not for all the gold and gems in the world. Lykourgos was important. Lykourgos couldn''t just be killed by some menial from the streets of Anaria. The prince of violets was destined for far greater things than a death at the behest of a few petty gang leaders.


    "I fear that would do no good." He said, opening his mouth for the first time since the meeting had begun. "His Grace has a talent for surviving blades in the night."


    Another of the criminals made to open their mouth, but thankfully Stefanos spoke up first. Angels, I never thought I''d be thankful for his presence of all people.


    "Now now gents. Whilst I understand your animosity to the good prince, for who here can say they aren''t anxious whenever young and energetic leaders take the reigns, I can personally attest to the fact that, so long as you don''t try to hurt the prince and you aren''t too obvious with what you''re doing, he''s more inclined to let his guards and spymaster deal with us directly. the first might not be great, but the spymaster... well, lets just say that he''s quite content to let us be. So long as we give him the right information from time to time, that is."


    There was a small deal of muttering at Stefanos'' words, but the assembled gang leaders all eventually agreed to the terms that the spymaster had given them. The two of them made to leave as the men whistled to signal that they''d really like the girls to come back in, and Ilias averted his eyes once more.


    "Prude. Come on, I''ll pay for whichever one you want."


    Ilias bit back the urge to kick Stefanos as hard as he could as the man cackled at his discomfort. At the moment he just wanted to get back to his friends and stay away from the criminal underworld for as long as he could.


    More than that, he desperately wanted to be away from Stefanos once more.

 Cardinal Sin IX: While Reason Burns

    <u>Cardinal Sin IX: While Reason Burns</u>


    <u>The Seventh Day of the Eleventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    Sin stalked through the halls of the barracks, his intent singular and mood sour. He didn''t like Ser Ezekiel, but seeing as he''d just found out that the man was being held down here, and that there was to be a trial involving him no less, he felt it important to try and glean as much information as he could from the disgraced knight. The man would never act on his own and Sin knew as much, but that didn''t mean that he might not slip up and reveal something he hadn''t meant to in the process.


    Eventually he came to a small cell two floors down that was inhabited, the rest having long since been cleared out of any riffraff. It was quiet and not exactly small, but not huge either. There was very little to furnish the room, but there at the back, arms bound by chains to the stone wall behind, was Ser Ezekiel himself.


    "Well, Ser Ezekiel. I was surprised you survived our little encounter along the Aegan Road. Tell me, did it at all hurt when you woke up? Or was it merely your pride that was wounded?"


    The man''s gaze whipped up to meet him, and as if on instinct the knight made to lunge forwards as an animalistic snarl fell from his lips.


    "You remember my mace, don''t you?" The knight growled. "I''m going to polish it on your insides until it fucking gleams."


    Sin just raised an eyebrow.


    "You''ll need to be able to hit me with it first. As far as I recall you struggled with that point a little, didn''t you?"


    At those words a fresh bout of clanking could be heard as Ezekiel railed against his chains, moving as close to Sin as they would allow him to.


    "I''ll fucking kill you for what you''ve done! The pious and holy Father, the man who was my master, killed because of a lie you told Adikos! Cardinal Trios died because of you, you vile hellspawn, and it will be the greatest pleasure I have ever known to watch the life leave you whilst you beg for mercy!"


    Sin sighed, already growing tired of this whole conversation. He hadn''t told Adikos that Trios had been to blame, but to be honest he could understand why Ezekiel would think he had. There was no use in trying to explain to so zealous and rabid a man that he was wrong however, and so Sin elected to simply move along and continue with this... ''conversation'' felt like too generous a term, but he couldn''t think of anything better at the moment, so ''conversation'' it was.


    "I''m not here to go into that today. I want to know why your master wanted me dead, and I want to know who else wants me dead."


    Ezekiel said nothing, only hocking and spitting in Sin''s direction. The glob of phlegm fell short of the bars, but he still curled his lip in distaste nonetheless. Oh, so that''s how we''re going to play? I''m going to do that back at you one day, you feral animal.


    "Now that''s not very knightly."


    "Who''s going to stop me? I''m an Inquisitor-Paladin, you vile sinner. I can do what I please to men as crooked and corrupt as you."


    Sin raised an eyebrow. An Inquisitor-Paladin, eh? Normally inquisitors were selected for their agency and quick-thinking, as well as their intelligence. That was why Sin had cosied up to them so much and gotten them removed from Athio as soon as possible. None of those were traits he would assign to the man in chains before him.


    "You know," Sin started, his voice falling to a far more sincere aspect, "people like you were my hero once. I wanted to be just like you, and to do what you do. Then I found out what you''re really like and realised that, just like so much else in my life, it was all a lie. I''ve become somewhat disillusioned with what everyone does here nowadays, and it was genuinely refreshing when I met a few people who were exactly what they said they were. You are not one of those people. You''re a feral beast in need of culling, nothing more."


    Ezekiel scoffed, seemingly in genuine amusement, but hatred and vitriol quickly covered up the short-lived mirth.


    "Never meet your heroes boy. Heroes are people, and people are shit."


    Sin nodded sadly.


    "I know that better than most. I take it there''s nothing you wish to tell me?"


    "What, about who wanted you dead? EVERYONE WANTS YOU DEAD, APOSTATE! EVERYONE FROM THE LOWLIEST WHORE TO THE GREATEST OF SAINTS WISHES HELL UPON YOU! WHEN I''M FREED FROM THESE CHAINS I''LL GLADLY-"


    Though the man''s words were loud, Sin didn''t hear anymore than that. He was already walking away.


    "Father! I am pleased to see you once more."


    "Captain Dessano," Sin started with a small smile, his trail of dark thoughts already leaving him, "it is pleasant to see you as well. Tell me, Captain, what is word on the street like these days?"


    "Generally speaking?" the captain replied, "Not... it isn''t particularly good. Much is being said, and almost all of it relates to the upcoming trail of Cardinal Admeta. The people are growing worried that something dangerous is brewing, and the feeling is beginning to spread to some of the lower ranks amongst my men. Myself and the rest of the officers of the Aegan Watch are doing our best to ensure that morale remains in good shape, but until this storm cloud passes I fear there will be a great deal of worrying coming from all walks of society."


    Sin nodded, making a mental note that the city was starting to turn into a tinderbox. That wasn''t good news for anyone, not at all.


    "I see. Thank you for your diligence, Commander, and please pass my gratitude on to your men. If ever you and yours should find yourself in trouble then don''t hesitate to show your face in Athio. I know you''ll have heard dark rumours, but I can always find good work for reliable hands."


    Dessano nodded, a mixture of relief and thankfulness flushing across his face. Hm, he seems rather pleased to have a backup plan. Ah well, we all keep our secrets, don''t we?


    "Thank you, Father. It is an honour to serve."


    "Right," Sin said, clapping his hands together, "if you''re saying that this impending trial is riling the people up then perhaps I''d better pay my dear colleague a visit. Thank you for your hospitality, Captain. I hope to see you again soon."


    "Of course, Father. By your leave."


    With that he smiled, bowed, and made his way back through the senate building. It was time to pay a visit to his old friend.


    <hr>


    "Cardinal Admeta."


    "Cardinal Sin. Come in, make yourself at home."


    Sin nodded stiffly to the guards at the door and entered the room, cane clacking as he went. The door shut behind him with a satisfying ''chunk'', and Sin slid the lock-hatch into place.


    "Give me one good reason I shouldn''t kill you right now."


    Admeta answered with an almost friendly tone, quite at odds with the content of their conversation.


    "Because it''ll probably get you killed as well. Remember the proverb: ''when you embark on a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves''."


    Sin scoffed jokingly, some of his humour from when they were kids slipping into his words.


    "That''s dumb, I''m gonna kill way more than two people. Besides, I''ve never really cared much for my life anyway."


    To his credit that did make Admeta smile as she gave him a conceding nod, but she quickly steeled her features and continued on with her next reason.


    "Okay, then how about this one: It would tear this fair theocracy apart."


    Sin barked out a laugh.


    "I said a reason not to do it, you needn''t give me any more incentive."


    Admeta rolled her eyes, her tone dripping with sarcasm.


    "And here I thought you were a supporter of our just work."


    She walked across what might have been the gaudiest room Sin had yet seen in his life, and sat down at a small table with a deicide board atop it.


    "I don''t understand you, Sin. If I''m being honest I don''t think I ever did. I don''t mean that as an insult, nor will I try and claim you''re unholy or somesuch nonsense for the voice in your head. I was jealous of that voice at times, for no matter how distressing it may have been it must surely have been better than the crushing isolation of the cells beneath Saint Mikah''s Cathedral."


    Sin made a so-so motion with his hands. Had she given any other reason for being jealous of the daemon in his head he would''ve been incensed, but a part of him agreed with her on that point. Anything was better than isolation in those cells.


    "It has its own drawbacks, but then you know that already. What are we doing, Admeta? Why are we doing this?"


    "Because it''s right." She said with finality. "Because it needs to be done. I promise you Sin, you may not see it yet, but it needs to be done. I wish only that you''d join me in realising this."


    Sin shook his head slowly.


    "You can promise all you want Admeta, but there is no future left for this world, and in a world with no future a promise is just a lie you don''t realise you''re telling."


    Admeta shrugged at him, not even bothering to refute or question his mildly rambling point.


    "Sin, do you think I haven''t come to the same realisations you have? Do you think I haven''t realised that there are no happy endings for people like us, and that there never will be? I''m just doing what I can to make the world as good and pure as possible before my death, and I know you believe you''re doing the same, but if you repent here and now we can fix this world together. We could do it Sin, Spyridon too! It''d be like we were kids again, only this time there would be no threat of punishment hanging over our heads. We''d be free, Sin. You just need to trust me."


    Sin remained silent and said nothing, causing Admeta to sigh deeply and nod her head in respect.


    "You needn''t say anything else. I think I understand. I want Adikos to die as much as you do; I hate him for what he did to us. If you succeed at the trial and have me killed Sin, I want you to promise me something."


    He narrowed his brows.


    "And what would that be?"


    "Kill him as well." Admeta said in a flat tone. "If I have to die, I want to at least die knowing that he''ll follow me soon after."


    Sin said nothing, but nodded firmly. That was one promise he was happy to keep.


    "So, we''ll be coming to odds one last time then, will we?"


    Admeta nodded at him, and though her posture was as poised as ever her eyes contained a grief and tiredness that nothing save a stolen adolescence could impose.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    "I take it you hate me for what I''m going to do, don''t you Admeta?"


    His words were not mocking, but genuine. He would understand her hatred, even if he wished the path she''d walked had been more like her own.


    "As the hallowed book states: ''The shepherd should not waste time hating the wolf that accosts his flock. He should simply kill it''. You''re a wolf in sheepskins, Sin. I do not intend to hate you."


    "But you do intend to kill me?"


    She nodded slowly.


    "As you intend to kill me. I respect you, Sin, and I know you respect me. Our paths have strayed so much, and yet we can still agree on two things."


    "One is that Adikos must die," Sin replied, "but I''m afraid you''ll have to spell out the other for me."


    "Whoever comes out on top between the two of us, whoever lives and whoever dies, we leave Spyridon out of it. If he supports you or me and gets involved directly of his own accord when one of us are gone then that''s different, but whilst we''re both still alive we don''t harm him. He''s the only one out of us three to have been spared the worst of the traumas we endured; there''s no point ruining that now."


    Sin nodded respectfully at her. He hated what she''d done, he hated that she genuinely believed in what she was doing, but sometimes a vestige of her old self still shone through. Sometimes he didn''t have to remind himself that he''d once loved her.


    "Agreed. So, our long partnership and rivalry comes to a close."


    "Indeed it does," Admeta replied, "I''d say it''s been a good run, but frankly I''ve enjoyed maybe a tenth of it at most."


    Sin scoffed at her words, finding them pretty fucking agreeable.


    "Adikos may have ruined us both, but at the very least we know that with one of our deaths his life''s work will crumble. I respect you in some strange way, Admeta, and I wish it had not come to this."


    "Perhaps a game of deicide." She proposed, gesturing towards the table. "You always enjoyed playing when we were children, and I was one of the only people who could match you in strategy."


    Sin looked at the board, then back at Admeta. If he sat down and invited himself to further conversation there was a chance, however small, that he might convert her to his own way of thinking. In that same vein however, he knew that she might do the same to him. The two of them were electrifying and persuasive, and if only their visions had aligned they''d probably have been able to rise to positions of prominence over the entirety of Saintdom by now. If he would only sit down and play that game which he so enjoyed there was a chance that he would be able to spend the rest of his days in a golden haze with the only two people who he could ever say he had loved; he could live with Spyridon and Admeta and make some genuine changes to the world, either for good or for ill.


    "No," he replied in a voice that sounded tired even to him, "I have work to attend to. Good day, Admeta."


    His childhood friend nodded solemnly at him, her throat visibly bobbing a little as she choked down tears. She was so very similar to him, and so in that moment she must have known the same thing he did.


    Those golden days were lost to them both, and would never come back. Neither one of them were going to be having a change of heart, and so as he walked back out the door and passed the guards he knew that Admeta must have been crying for what they both had lost.


    How did he know this?


    Because the sleeve swiping at his own eyes was already growing damp with tears.


    <hr>


    "Spyridon, you would not believe the day I''ve just had. I mean, I know things are getting more hectic in the runup to this trial and the impending end of the first great gathering in Aegos, but by the Saints today was a lot."


    His friend, having jumped when Sin made his sudden entrance, was now stood with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face as Sin invited himself to flop down on his friend''s bed.


    "Get up from their Sin, it''s clean for fuck''s sake. Anyway, you''d better catch me up if your day was as hectic as you claim."


    Sin stood back up, happy to have riled his friend up a little by lying on his bed, and began reciting the conversations he''d had that day.


    "Well, as you know I spent a goodly portion of today down in the cells under the guard''s barracks. It was in those cells that I spoke to one Inquisitor-Paladin Ezekiel."


    Spyridon looked at him, confused.


    "You mean... Ser Ezekiel? Has he been made a member of the inquisition''s fighting arm, has he?"


    "Yes, but he''s still in chains for now. I hope that he never sees freedom, for he''s a dangerous foe to face, but the evidence I hold against him is admittedly rather lacklustre. Short of a true confession there''s little to go off except my word in regards to his guilt, and I''m not keen to face him again anytime soon. Not without a score of crossbows at my back anyway. Still, it mostly just consisted of him alternating between shouting and roaring at me, leavened with the occasional few minutes of far more composed and menacing threats. Not a pleasant afternoon, if I''m being completely honest with you. Still, probably better than his afternoon was, right?"


    Sin snorted weakly at his own jape. Comedy was important when you were feeling tense, since it helped make everything feel a little more normal. In a time like this where ''normal'' seemed to be an alien concept it was more important than ever.


    "What about the Canoness?"


    Sin felt his brows furrow as Spyridon spoke up, and at his friend''s words he searched through his memories to try and remember if anyone else had been down in those cells. A Canoness? Down in those cells? But he knew that it had only been Ser Ezekiel down there, hadn''t it? He couldn''t have possibly managed to miss an entire person, surely?


    "Canoness? What Canoness?"


    Spyridon turned around, a curious mixture of guilt and nervousness crossing his face as he spoke.


    "When you were poisoned- that is to say, when Admeta tried to kill you, there was a Canoness that was meant to be tried as a scapegoat for your attempted murder. Adikos disliked her already for some reason which I do not know, and accused her of heresy. Shortly afterwards she was found guilty and Adikos proclaimed that she was to be placed on trial for conspiring to kill you both with poison and by ordering your death on the road. I know she''s innocent, and there''s no way a mere Canoness could influence someone like Ser Ezekiel when it comes to things like who the man targets, but the Arch-Cardinal deeply wished her dead so that people could move on from this mess. Did you see her down there?"


    He shook his head at his friend, a little annoyed that Spyridon had only now thought to bring this up but willing to give the man a little leeway here. Sin himself may have known about it and forgotten at some point, so it seemed unfair to lay the blame squarely on Spyridon.


    "If she was being held down there then she''s long gone now. Whether that means she''s escaped, was discreetly moved far away so that she could take a desk job, or was simply killed, I couldn''t say. I wish her the best, whoever she is and wherever she is, but we can''t dwell on that at the moment. Besides, there was far more than that going on behind the scenes. The trial is soon, very soon, and I''ve continued forging a friendship with Captain Dessano of the guard. He may not be a native to Dathan, but that might work to our advantage here; because his ties here are only really related to his work, there''s nothing that really keeps him fighting for the city of Aegos itself. We might even be able to launch a coup after the trial, so long as we can rally enough support against Adikos after all. In fact, as soon as this trial is done we need to start both solidifying our network in Aegos to ensure a smooth transition of power whilst, perhaps more importantly, we start working out how best an ''accident'' might be applied to our dear mentor. As much as I''d love to give him a taste of his own medicine and throw him into the cells under the Cathedral of Saint Mikah even he doesn''t deserve that treatment, vile criminal that he is. No, it will be kinder to kill him. What would you suggest, Spyridon?"


    His friend looked a little uncomfortable at the prospect of murder, but at the end of the day Spyridon was getting a little better at dealing with this sort of thing. Sin would be lying if he said that he wished his friend wasn''t learning faster, but he''d take what he could get at this point.


    "I- I don''t know, Sin. He''s old, so maybe he''ll just..."


    "Spyridon," Sin said in a tone as flat as he could manage, "are you seriously suggesting that we wait for the Archcardinal to die of natural causes? Please tell me that isn''t what you''re suggesting."


    His friend sighed a little, looking down as he tried to pull himself together.


    "I know, Sin. I know. It''s just a lot for me to try and comprehend, this whole thing. I''m not good at this, Sin. I can- I''m a great organiser, I can do paperwork like nobody else, I''m brilliant with numbers and correspondence, but I can''t do violence. I never could, and I don''t think I ever will."


    "You''ll have to." he simply replied, at this point not particularly worrying if he came across as unkind. "You may not like it, in fact it''s better if you don''t, but you''ll have to nonetheless. It''s a part of our lives, Spy. It comes with being powerful, with being in a position that places you above almost everyone else. I hate it, but I recognise it as a part of what I need to do to keep myself safe and, by proxy, protect those relying on me for their own safety. We''re powerful men, but we can only be as powerful as we are willing to be ruthless. If we can''t force ourselves to be ruthless, we can''t be powerful."


    Spyridon smiled, but it looked fake and strained. His friend clearly wasn''t comfortable with this, and so Sin let him say his peace and, though he was sighing internally, moved the conversation along.


    "I hope one day that isn''t the case for powerful people. I hope one day people like us do well by those beneath us without needing to resort to killings and extortion. It''s not pleasant at all."


    Sin nodded, agreeing completely. He understood the need for ruthlessness at times, but that didn''t mean he liked it. He hated it, and Hawk knew that much very well. Thinking briefly on Hawk led him to wonder how the man was doing back in Athio; was he alright? Were there any major crises brewing back in those granite and slate neighbourhoods?


    He shook his head a little, smiling. No, Hawk would have told him if there was anything wrong. Besides, the man was a pillar of strength no matter what the task was. To be honest the average resident of Athio probably wouldn''t have been able to tell Sin had left, what with the curfew at night and the fact that he never went out during the day. No, Hawk would be fine. Sin needed to stop worrying about the man and get back to worrying about himself at the moment.


    "It doesn''t matter anyway," he started, "for this will all come to an end soon. Very soon. The trial will see Admeta killed, we''ll see to Adikos'' death soon after, and I''ll leave this world shortly after he does. You''ll be the only one left here, Spy."


    Spyridon tapped his foot against the floor rapidly, a sort of nervous tic that Sin hadn''t seen his friend use in a very long time.


    "Sin... why are you so insistent on this? Why can''t you accept that maybe things will work out happily for you? Why can''t you accept that you might have a happy ending?"


    Sin chuckled a little.


    "That would be a happy ending for me. I have to go soon, Spy. I have to."


    "Sin, I don''t-"


    "I know you don''t understand Spy. You don''t need to. I can feel- I can feel my mind fraying. Snapping. Those things that Adikos taught me didn''t just disappear. The need to hurt myself to prove that I''m not impure, the constant guilt that hangs over me like a cloud, the need to- the fact that I don''t know where my own fraying thoughts begin and his teachings ended. If I don''t go soon I''ll end up burning myself at the pyre to prove I''m not a sinner, to try and make myself happy. I don''t want to have to burn myself just to feel warm."


    His voice fell a little, the room suddenly feeling extremely quiet.


    "I don''t want to burn, Spy. I don''t want it to be fire."


    When he turned to his friend he found himself in a gentle embrace, a hug that left room for him to back out if he so wished. Sin instead hugged back, enjoying a moment of peace in both his own mind and the world at large. He knew it wouldn''t last, both in his mind and in the world, but that didn''t mean he wouldn''t take it where he could. It was important to remember that, sometimes, you needed to step back and take a break from your work before your work decided to break you.


    Sin couldn''t remember the last time he''d had a break.


    "I still don''t understand, Sin. But I''ll be here for you, no matter what path you feel you need to take. I''m here to listen to you tell of the exploits of Agia Harald and his generals. I''m here to listen to you if you want someone to talk to about the Khidonean Doctrine, whether that entails the broad strokes or the finer points. I want to be here for you, Sin, to show you that death isn''t your only way out of this. We haven''t had a long time to reconnect, but these last few months with you have been worth so much more to me than the two years we spent apart. Just give me a little time when we''re done with this, and I promise to do my best to give you a live worth living afterwards. Please, Sin. Just a chance."


    Sin wiped at his eyes a little.


    "I can try, Spy. I''ll try, but... Spy, there''s so much wrong with me that no-one''s been able to fix. The voice led the mummer''s troupe to kick me to the curb, and the better part of a decade under the gaze of the church wasn''t enough to see it off. I''ll try for you, Spy, but I can''t promise anything. Nor do I want to mislead you; it would be a constant uphill battle that would only end with my death, be it natural or not. There''s no telling how long I''ll be able to hold on for before I lose myself completely, and I want to die as... well, I want to die whilst I''m still me. I want to die before I become a real monster, before the person I pretend to be becomes the person I am."


    "You''re not a monster, Sin. Nor is there anything ''wrong'' with you. You''re different, yes, and perhaps even abnormal, but you''re better than almost anyone else I''ve met. Even if we believe the words we were fed as children, the scathing tones that told us the voice in your head was a daemon, then that by itself has never made you a bad person."


    "Of course it does," he scoffed, "the things the voice tells me to do-"


    "Are very rarely acted upon." Spyridon cut in, not allowing Sin to put himself down any further. "You''re the best person I know, Sin."


    Sin opened his mouth again, but Spyridon cut him off by shaking his head and taking a step backwards, hands still on Sin''s shoulders and face still looking up so that the shorter man could make eye contact with him.


    "How is it that out of all the men of the First Saint in this theocracy, the thousands of priests and paladins and inquisitors and abbots that preach love and unity, the one man brave enough to stand up to injustice and begin saving as many people as he could is the one that hears a voice in his head telling him to commit acts of violence and impulse. How could you possibly be a bad person when you''re the only one that''s right?"


    Spyridon placed so much emphasis on the last word and spoke with such conviction throughout that Sin could only think to bury his face into the other man''s shoulder to try and hide his tears. Whether his friend noticed or not, that wasn''t important. All that mattered was that Sin was here, now, and his friend was by his side no matter what. Maybe what came after the theocracy was dismantled wouldn''t be so bad for him after all.


    As nice as this was, he had work to do. So, he pulled himself up and from his friend''s embrace, thanked him in a small and quiet voice, and returned to his work of studying notes and writing down annotations for the trial that was to come. He had work to do, and he could rest after.


    Assuming there was an after, of course.

 Cardinal Sin X: Hellfire

    <u>Cardinal Sin X: Hellfire</u>


    <u>The Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Moon, 873 AD.</u>


    <u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    <u> </u>


    The time of the trial was now. Any moment it would begin, and Admeta would be tried in front of the entire assembled powerbase of the theocracy. If he could best her in this court, then he''d have struck a tremendous blow to the foundations of this wretched edifice.


    "Are you sure you''ll be okay, Sin?"


    He smiled at Spyridon''s concern, his friend having worn the same worried expression for days now. Honestly, there was little that wouldn''t make his friend afraid for Sin''s life at the moment. It was quite endearing, in all honesty. He could think of worse people to have by his side than Spyridon, that much was certain.


    "I''ll be fine, Spy. This is our chance to see Admeta removed from the picture. It isn''t pleasant, I know, but it needs to be done. She''s too dangerous for us to trust anymore, too unpredictable to be counted on. Most importantly, she''s too smart when it comes to playing this sort of political game. You and I need her gone to make sure our goals can succeed, our plans can come to fruition, and our people can breath freely once more. I''ll be fine, Spy. Will you?"


    His friend was still for a moment, then nodded with what at least seemed to be certainty.


    "I will. It isn''t something I''ll enjoy, but then I haven''t enjoyed much of what I''ve done these last few years. Why start now?"


    Sin snorted at his friend''s words, knowing that feeling all too well.


    "Yeah, I get that. Still, we''ll enjoy what we do soon enough. We just need to make sure we''re fine when the smoke clears from today. You think you can manage that?"


    Spyridon gave him an exaggerated salute, and Sin laughed again. It would be nice to go back to this sort of thing when the coming civil war was over, to live a life where he could simply enjoy himself alongside his friend and not worry about the sword that hung over his head at any moment. He''d often thought his life would have been much simpler if he''d just believed in the work of the theocracy, which was true, but he was more than pleased with the fact that he''d taken the difficult road in life and done what was right to the best of his abilities. It wasn''t fun, no, and it certainly hadn''t felt rewarding at times, but he''d done it anyway. It had exhausted him to no end back in Athio and it had stressed him to the point of madness in Aegos, but he had done it anyway. What that said about his character was more pleasing than any reward or praise Adikos could have given him, even if he''d have wanted a gift from those blood-soaked hands.


    "Ah, the trial is beginning. I need to go back to my place by Adikos'' side. Good luck, Sin."


    Sin nodded his thanks to his friend and rolled his shoulders to relieve some of the tension he was feeling. It was time to put on a show. It was time to put on the most convincing act of his life. If he fucked this up... well, best not to think of that. If he succeeded however... well, that was certainly going to be fun. A lie to himself of course, for condemning one of the few people he''d ever trusted certainly wasn''t liable to be something he enjoyed. Still, he had work to do at the moment, and thoughts of what was to come after all of this would only distract him from the goal he had been working towards this entire time. He couldn''t afford to trip himself at the last hurdle; he needed to be focused.


    Cardinal Admeta walked onto the stage, flanked by a pair of guards, and answered the questions put forwards to her with grace and dignity. The senate was strangely silent at the moment, but Sin knew all of that would change soon enough. He just needed to wait for his turn.


    <hr>


    Admeta walked off of the stage perhaps an hour later and was led off through a side passage, and there was no small amount of muttering as the assembled men of the church discussed what they believed should be done with the information that had been given to them. Soon after Sin was called into the centre, and all the chatter stopped. He walked out with purpose and swagger, confident in his abilities to bluff his way through any of the hardliner''s questions designed to trip him up. He was Cardinal fucking Sin, and he wasn''t going to let this opportunity slip him by.


    A pair of guards flanked him up the stairs, spears in hand and stoic faces as he took his position in the centre and bowed before his master, the Archcardinal himself.


    "Cardinal Sin, you here have brought some rather extraordinary charges before Cardinal Admeta. You also saw fit to take command of the Aegan Watch and have her arrested. Do you dispute that this this true?"


    "It is true," he responded calmly but firmly, ensuring that his voice could be heard throughout the colosseum without being a shout, "but the charges are true and the arrest necessary. I apologise that it could not be done with more secrecy, but I needed to see to the security of the other men and women of the cloth before the prestige of our great nation. Prestige can be regained, but men and women who move beyond this world are lost to us forever."


    There was another round of muttering and grumblings from around the senate as he finished his first statement, most of these clergymen likely surprised that he had cared enough to stop them from being targeted. Most people knew it to be an excuse of course, but they had no real evidence to prove that point and so it didn''t matter.


    "I see. Our own evidence found Cardinal Trios to be responsible, not Cardinal Admeta. Do you agree that, though your intentions were pure and none would see you punished for acting to save your fellow men of the cloth, by acting so soon you may have lacked critical evidence and as such jumped to a conclusion in accusing Cardinal Admeta?"


    This was a tricky spot. If he agreed, things would be fine but he would lose his chance to depose Admeta. If he pressed his case Adikos would be pissed beyond belief at him, for they''d already talked about this, but there was a chance to see Admeta condemned to death as a result.


    Well, he couldn''t pass that opportunity up, could he?


    "I respectfully disagree. It was she who handed over the poisoned wine, and it was she who wished me to drink it. She views me as a threat to her ascent, and as such wished to remove me from the church''s hierarchy of succession before making her own moves to secure her power. This was planned by her, and it was she who carried it out."


    Adikos'' face was visibly red even from here, but Sin felt confident that he had done the right thing.


    Up until Adikos spoke up again.


    "I see. Well, in any case I''m afraid I brought you here under a false pretence. There was no way to get you here without doing this after all, and the evidence Admeta provided me has been substantial and shocking."


    Sin swallowed hard as alarm bells started ringing in his head. No...


    "You see, it is not Cardinal Admeta on trial today, but rather Cardinal Sin."


    No...


    "Cardinal, you stand accused of two-thousand four-hundred and twenty-two counts of treason, sixteen counts of murder, one count of abuse of power, and this council''s personal favourite, one count conspiracy to further heathen beliefs. Do you deny these accusations?"


    He smiled a little at that despite the danger he was now in. Hearing how he''d saved those people, waylaid their hunters, imprisoned Cardinal Admeta, and got away with his beliefs for years was enough. He said nothing, and so Archcardinal Adikos continued.


    "Prove these beliefs false and rejoin the table at our side. You will need some good evidence to counteract that which has been brought against you, however."


    "And why is that, your Holiness? I have only ever acted in your interest, have I not?"


    Upon hearing the sound of shuffling feet he looked over to the entrance Admeta had been led out of, and saw her walking back out towards him with the looming figure of Ser Ezekiel at her side. His eyes widened a little at the black fury across the man''s face, and at once he knew he was in grave danger.


    Cardinal Admeta smiled at him. It was a smug and vile thing, not quite false but certainly not a true smile either.


    "One of the heathens you ''saved'' talked quite a bit of your plans. Your plans, and of your beliefs. A handful of silver and his life-debt to you suddenly vanished. It seems your wish to help these people has come back to bite you, Cardinal. Though you are no Cardinal of the New-Church in truth, are you? Bishops and deacons of the senate, inquisitors and paladins alike, this man before you worships at the Church of Saint Harald! He follows the Ichorian Cult, worshipping the family of the man who seized our great and fair city for his own! He may even cavort with other heretical or heathen beliefs! How can we trust him if he is not even one of us?"


    He stared back, mouth gaping before he caught himself. He couldn''t believe it. He''d saved these people and one of them had turned him in?


    In one moment it felt like the floor had fallen away beneath him.


    He heard one of the guards behind him shuffle somewhat, and though he wasn''t sure whether they were readying themselves to arrest him he wasn''t going to stand around and wait for them to have the chance. With a series of swift movements he had laid out both guards on the stone platform, his cane lashing out with great force and every motion leading directly into the next as though he were dancing. He wasn''t going to be able to fight his way out of the senate, out of the city, but at the very least he might be able to buy himself a little time before working out his next steps. A disguise, a favour or two to the right people, and he might be able to get himself out of here. Captain Dessano and the Aegan Watch, maybe? It would have to be them, no maybe about it, for he had precious few friends besides them and Spyridon in this city. Of course he''d need to lay low for a while, to travel through the woods and fields instead of along the Aegan road, but honestly any plan was better than nothing at the moment.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    But as he made to turn himself back around and face Admeta he heard the pounding of running feet, and all of a sudden Inquisitor-Paladin Ezekiel was upon him. As the two guards went down Ser Ezekiel had rushed towards him with his mace-arm drawn back, and without even the time to think or raise his arms in defence Sin found himself dazed on the ground, blood dripping down his face and his jaw in agony. Ezekiel stared down at him with a deep-seated hatred, and struck him in the chest with the blunt weapon as he lay there, barely moving.


    "I told you I''d get you this time." the man said with a sneer of utmost contempt. "I''m not going to wait for you to dodge out of the way this time, daemon-host."


    He did make a feeble attempt to roll out of the way, but in his dazed state he was barely able to move full stop. The two guards were still down, so he must have knocked them out, but looking around he could see perhaps two-dozen crossbowmen aiming their weapons from the lowest level of seats amongst the old senate seating area. All at once he came to a conclusion that probably should have terrified him, if not for his belief in something coming after all of this: he, Cardinal Sin, was going to die here. Today. There was to be no imprisonment for him, no tortured confession so that people may learn of where he''d squirreled the ''heathens'' away. He was to die here, for he was too dangerous to be left alive.


    Was that a pleasant thought or not? He wasn''t sure. He hadn''t been planning on dying just yet, but he guessed that it was bound to happen sooner or later.


    As his mind raced with thoughts he heard Admeta speak up once more, her voice cutting through the fog of his mind and her movements making him feel nauseous. He just needed the world to stop moving for a minute before everything came crashing down again.


    "Where are you hiding the rest of the heathens?"


    Despite the state he was in that question made sure that at least some of his confidence returned, for at least now he could be certain that they didn''t know where the persecuted were hiding! His mission had not failed in totality!


    He smiled up at her, blinking blood out of his eyes and only vaguely registering that he could hardly talk. Still, he tried his best.


    "I... thought you... knew. Stupid or... something?"


    Admeta curled her lip a little at his words, though less at the insult itself and seemingly more at the fact that he hadn''t used a bitter or mocking tone, but more one that entailed good-natured ribbing between friends. She shook herself a little, and though the motions were too slight for the thousands of people watching from the stands to see Sin could make them out perfectly well despite the nausea that watching people move made him feel at the moment.


    "Who are your conspirators?"


    He smiled and laughed. It was a weak, gurgling thing, but a laugh nonetheless.


    Fucking tools. I didn''t need help. I couldn''t trust any of you, any of my ilk.


    The mace came down again, and yet still he managed to laugh. The could take everything from him, but not the fact that he''d beaten them for so long. He''d spent two years playing them like fucking flutes, and there was nothing on heaven or earth that would ever let them forget it. In that sense, he''d already won.


    "Where are the heathens hiding?"


    He smiled up at Cardinal Admeta, and caught sight of his reflection in her ridiculous mirrored earrings. He''d never looked particularly bad if he did say so himself, and a great many had viewed him with attraction before now, but he doubted any would from now on. Not that he''d live long enough to test that theory, of course. His death was assured here. His face was now a bloody ruin, being covered in already-drying blood and his lower jaw hanging only by a connection to his left cheek, the right side severed and limp. It made it hard for him to spit in defiance as his tongue rolled around half-uselessly in his mouth, but he made do.


    He spat at Inquisitor-Paladin Ezekiel with all the vitriol he could muster, just as he''d promised the man he would in the cells beneath the garrison. It was not saliva but a mix of blood, bile, and shards of shattered teeth that left his mouth. In some strange way that made his defiance all the sweeter; no matter how low he''d come, how injured he was, he wasn''t afraid nor even regretful at how things had gone. In some strange way, he felt like everything was happening exactly as it was supposed to.


    That was a nice thought, despite the pain. The journey wouldn''t end for him here, no, but this leg was coming to its end. Somehow that thought didn''t really phase him much.


    Cardinal Admeta turned to the Arch-Cardinal on his throne, a mixture of distaste and piety in the expression she wore across her face.


    "He will not confess, your Holiness."


    With a guttural, stuttering breath and a great deal of effort he moved his head to look at the man he would once have called father for more than one reason, the man who had given him faith and who had practically raised him.


    The man stared back. He was not angry. He was not sad. Just disappointed.


    Sin rolled himself back to face the ceiling with as close to a sigh as he could manage. He smiled nonetheless. It was a tired, broken thing, but it was still a smile. Two-thousand four-hundred and twenty-two. That wasn''t bad. Even if only a quarter survived, it was worth it. Hell, if one survived then it was worth it. A small part of him cried out that he could have done more, could still do more, but it was gently silenced by the rest of his thoughts.


    He''d done what he could. He''d tried his best, and that was something. That would have to be enough.


    Admeta leaned in close, and for a moment the scent of her sweet perfume took him back to his adolescence, back when he could truly call her one of his closest friends. Only for a moment, however. In but a second the smell was gone, and he was back on the floor of the Senate building. Somewhere up next to Adikos he could vaguely make out Spyridon''s distressed form, but he didn''t have time to worry about that. Spyridon would be fine, and would come out on top by the end of everything that came about as a result of this. He believed it with all his heart, no matter how small a chance his friend had in truth. With his death Adikos was basically consigning the theocracy to a premature dissolution anyway, so it didn''t really matter anymore. He only hoped that the faith he had placed in his friend would be enough to see Spyridon and Aegos itself through to salvation.


    "No-one will mourn you." Came Admeta''s voice. Where the words would have come across as being cruel if they were said by anyone else, in this moment she was the scared little girl he had cowered besides with Spyridon in the cells beneath Aegos. In this moment she was sorrowful, almost tender, her normally affable tone falling away to despair. "To the masses you were a butcher. To us you were a traitor. No-one will cry at your passing. You may as well have never existed at all.


    "But," she continued, "I will mourn you. I am not sorry it came to this, because what we do here is right, but I am sorry that you could not be saved. Goodbye, Sin."


    Talking hurt. Thinking hurt. Hell, even breathing hurt, but he needed to know one last thing before he died.


    His voice came out as a rasp, slow and stuttering.


    "Did... do you... think that... Saints... would agree with this?"


    She smiled, somewhere between pity and scorn. Her voice was a whisper, careful and measured to ensure not even the knight to her side could hear her.


    "The only Saint that mattered was the First Saint, and he''s long gone. All I can do is purge the unclean in his name to make the world right for our lord once again. What else is there for me to do but take centre stage myself to see the plan through to completion?"


    He looked up at her, his breathing heavy and troubled as she continued.


    "Of course, as you''ve said before, this entire farce is a play, and we''re all actors. You''ve always been the villain, Sin, and with your death I will triumph over the darkness. It''s a pity you fell so far, for we could have done so much together. If only you would have believed..."


    Her voice trailed off a little, and for just the briefest of moments she seemed to be genuinely fighting down her emotions so that she might continue. Guilt, sadness, empathy, all buried beneath a glaze of piety. Saints, Adikos had really fucked up the three of them, hadn''t he? It seemed that Spyridon was the only one who knew where his own thoughts ended and Adikos'' began.


    Sin pitied her, in a strange way. She was power-hungry, tyrannical, and overly-zealous, but she was just as much a victim as he was. At least he could take some solace in the knowledge that Adikos would fall soon after his death.


    "If only... you... believed." He gave as a weak response, meaning every word. She was right when she said that the two of them could do great work together, but their paths had walked apart for far too long. They shared a desire to see the Archcardinal dead, but that was it. The rest was behind them.


    "If only I had." She replied, her eyes misting over one last time before the hardness returned.


    "Promise me," Sin started, his voice such a low rasp that Admeta had to lean closer still to hear him, "you''ll... avenge us. All of us. You''ll kill... that bastard. Please? For... all... of... us."


    She nodded, the gesture harsh but strangely kind. If nothing else the two of them were in agreement that Adikos needed to die. He saw it there in her eyes, the certainty held within. Of course. She did care, in a strange way. She genuinely believed that she was doing the right thing. Oh, what had happened to them? When had their youthful optimism given way to harsh pragmatism? When had their piety turned them into monsters of different stripes? To her this entire farce of a trail was a way to secure her path to power so that she could do what she thought was right. Had she always truly believed in what they were to do, even back when they''d been children being raised by Adikos together? He wanted to believe it wasn''t so, but truth be told he just didn''t know. How strange, he thought to himself, that I was raised amongst actors and yet could never read her intentions. Oh well, he''d have plenty of time to contemplate that soon enough. At the very least he could rest assured in the knowledge that, if Adikos was right and people like Sin did go to hell for things they couldn''t control, then Adikos would be a million fucking leagues deeper for the conscious and wilful evils he had committed through his life.


    He didn''t believe Adikos was right, though. And besides, he had a long journey to make before reaching heaven or hell.


    Admeta gave him one last sad smile, then stood once more. For some reason Sin felt the urge to laugh once more. He laughed despite the pain it caused him, and he laughed knowing that death had come to him. For some reason he couldn''t understand, he laughed his gurgling laugh harder than he ever had in his life. Blood spewed from his ruined mouth as he did so, and his entire body twitched and seized in pain as his shattered ribcage pressed against his lungs.


    He didn''t care about that, about the pain. He was too busy laughing at the absurdity of the situation they found themselves in. The two of them were possibly the only ones who had seen each other for what they were, had seen that they were vehemently opposed to each other, and yet still respected each other enough to just talk as equals even as he was being killed. They alone knew what the other was truly like, what the other truly believed in and cherished, and instead of working together had killed each other for it. A pity, but perhaps he should have foreseen this happening sooner. We always did make a hell of a team, but no-one could ever make us agree on a blind thing.


    He felt... strange, in this moment. In a way he was almost relieved, since the suffering that had been his life was at last coming to a close. He''d done what he could, and he''d never be forced to endure another sleepless night in the cold cells under the Cathedral of Saint Mikah like he''d had to as a child. For most of his life he''d been scared of death even despite his belief in the Khidonean Doctrine, for if it was wrong he''d genuinely believed that his sinful nature would see him condemned to one of the many hells that existed beyond this world, and beyond the path that came after. In this moment he did not fear such a thing. In this moment he was struck by an almost supernatural force that told him no, you were never evil nor daemonic. You were a child trying your best. Sin was better than almost anyone else in the senate with him, for he had never beaten or starved children for perceived slights, nor had he burned the innocent for crimes that only existed in the mind of another. He had lived his life as a good, honourable person, and the little voice that for so long had been his bane, that had been screaming at him internally the entire trial to ignore the guards and kill Admeta while he had a few seconds of chance, assured him that... it assured him that once he had walked the path that came after, he was surely bound to reach the heavens.


    From that moment until his imminent death, the voice in his head was blissfully silent. The dull ache that came from denying it was no longer present. There was only him, and there was only the forgiveness he had for himself. He''d done what he could, and for once in his life that felt like enough. For perhaps the first time in his life, Sin felt free.


    His body wracked as he forced his way through the last few moments of his life, still in the throes of his final laugh.


    Admeta nodded at the Inquisitor-Paladin, and the mace fell towards his head.


    He screwed his eyes shut, and both the laughter and the pain finally stopped.


    At least it was not the pyre in the end.

 Cardinal Spyridon II: Saints Fall

    <u>Cardinal Spyridon II: Saint''s Fall</u>


    <u>The Thirteenth Day of the Eleventh Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Aegan Road, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    He rode on through the night, tears born of a dozen emotions stinging his eyes though never falling. Tears born of hurt, of anger, of frustration, all were kept inside. He couldn''t afford to slow himself with such petty things as his emotions, not right now. Sin was dead, and Spyridon was still in the dark when it came to just how much his friend had worked on these last few years.


    A part of him thought it might be the same as those wonderful few months in which he''d been able to reconnect with his friend, but that thought only made him curl up his lip in distaste. Nothing would be the same, and it was stupid of him to think otherwise. It was a childish and immature part of him that had brought that thought to the surface of his mind, and the rest of him understood the consequences of what had happened perfectly well.


    Spyridon hadn''t ever been one for politics any more than he had to, what with all the deal-making and backstabbing, but he did know that there would be ramifications for what had occurred in the senate building and, in a more broad sense, what had occurred in Aegos as a whole since the Cardinals had met each other once more. Two of their number were dead, and he was now fleeing south-west. The only Cardinal left in the capital with Adikos was Admeta, and she both wanted Adikos dead and for the Most Devout Church to flourish for an eternity. She was dangerous. Spyridon would be surprised if Adikos survived the next few months, for if there was ever a time for Admeta to strike then it would surely be now.


    Let them kill each other, Spyridon thought bitterly, it was the two of them who killed Sin, and they deserve to be sent to all those they''ve killed for what they''ve done.


    There was a brief moment of self-hatred with the thought that he''d been involved in that same system for a few years as well, but he forced such thoughts away; he had his own set of instructions to follow now, with no room for distractions. He was to travel to Athio and meet the late Sin''s batman, a man apparently called ''Hawk'', and go from there. He didn''t know if there were plans in place for this occurrence happening, nor if Hawk had already heard the bad news, but either way it was Sin''s insistence that he go to Athio and so to Athio he would go.


    The road itself was much the same as Spyridon remembered it being when he''s bumped into Sin whilst travelling to Aegos originally, only of course he was now on horseback instead of in a carriage and was speeding away from the city alone instead of heading towards it with his entourage.


    He did hope that the friends he''d left behind in his entourage would be safe in Aegos. He hoped they wouldn''t be blamed for what he was going to do.


    There was one other minor difference between now and his journey heading to Aegos of course; he was heading straight to Athio instead of taking a shortcut to the coast. Whatever differences the trip itself may have held, the road was still straight and true, and was well maintained to boot. He had little trouble making his way to Athio alone, though even just the sight of the walls gave him pause.


    When he''d been here before, Athio was a relatively normal city with some minor hints of a tradition steeped in gothic architecture and art. Now it was an edifice of black majesty, all dark spires and dark-grey walls. Gargoyles perched over battlements, and even the cathedral that sat at the city''s heart seemed... foreboding. Dangerous, even. There was an air of stillness about the city, one that seemed entirely out of place given just how many thousands of people lived here. If memory served correctly some sixty-thousand people must have lived in Athio, and the city hadn''t been hit that badly by the civil war, so what was it that meant it was so empty? Was this the air of fear that Sin had masterfully cultivated about this place, still maintained as though he were here out of a genuine belief that he was a twisted creature of the night?


    Whatever it was, Sin had really turned this city into his own.


    As he made his way through the gates, stopping only a moment to bless the bowing guards who let him pass, he marvelled at the macabre art that seemed to completely cover the city, with dark scenes from several of the saintly books carved into walls and displayed in dark colours on stained glass. It was... he wouldn''t use the term beautiful personally for he found them to be rather unsettling in all honesty, even though he knew that in truth it was beautiful, but if nothing else then it was just... it was so Sin. It was exactly the sort of thing he would devote himself to when given the chance, and when that chance had presented itself he''d done exactly that.


    Thinking on Sin still made his chest hurt a little, but there was no escaping the spectre of his friend in his mind, not now, not when the wound was so fresh and certainly not in the city his friend had loved with all his heart for so long. Sin''s life was a contradictory patchwork of beliefs and careers, of skills and talents that should never have even intersected, let alone worked so well together, whereas Spyridon was... well, he was just Spyridon.


    Sin had been a fearsome soldier and commander. Spyridon filed away paperwork about harvests. Sin galvanised armies to action with his words. Spyridon delivered alms to sick children and prayed for their health. Sin was made to win wars.


    Spyridon, decidedly, was not.


    Still, he would have to learn. To learn or to rely on other people, anyhow. There was a war coming, and he needed to step up and do what Sin was now unable to do. He knew that he couldn''t hold a candle to the martial prowess of his late friend, but as of right now the people of Aegos didn''t really have another option, did they? It was him or Admeta, and of the two of them Spyridon wanted to at least stop burning people and hunting them for the crime of worshipping the same deity in different ways.


    The doors to the keep heaved open, and Spyridon allowed himself to let inside. The servant besides him seemed to know exactly where to take him without being told, for without Spyridon even speaking he was being ushered into what could only have been Sin''s private chambers where a greying man eyed him up and down with more than a little disdain.


    "So, you''re Cardinal Spyridon. I was expecting more from you, but then Sin did say you were never one for violence. Are you the one that the saints have graced me with? The one Cardinal who can''t fight a war?"


    Spyridon turned away a little, face reddening in a mixture of embarrassment and anger. Still, he balled his fists and forced it down. He needed to keep a level head here, not respond to the needling of a man who was quite right in what he was saying, even if he was being rather rude in the way he was saying it.


    "I am here to fight for the freedom of the people of Aegos. I am here to fight by your side, even though Sin cannot. I am here to honour the memory of my friend, and to enact his will even though he is gone from this world. I am not here to be insulted by the man who I was told to speak to and to treat as an equal by my friend."


    If the flicker of the man''s eyebrow was anything to go by then it seemed he at least respected Spyridon a little for standing up for himself. It was a skill he hadn''t practiced much in his life, but he''d be lying if he said it didn''t feel a little good to do it now.


    "That''s what I wanted to hear. I don''t like you, boy, but I don''t have to. You believe in what we''re doing, and that''s the only thing that matters to me. I don''t like you because, though Sin was willing to play daemon''s advocate for you, you still killed people for their beliefs. Whether you liked doing it or not, you still did it."


    "I know. I want to make up for that now, however I can. If that means playing my own life in harms way then I''ll do it."


    The man nodded again. He still didn''t seem like he was enjoying speaking with Spyridon, and the Cardinal highly doubted that was going to change anytime soon, but when he next spoke he at least seemed to have lost some of the sharpness from his tone.


    "Good. I won''t bore you with pleasantries and the like, for you and I both have nothing to be pleasant about at the moment. I have lost a dear friend, as have you, but there will be time for mourning later. He would want us to work through our grief by enacting his vengeance from beyond the grave."


    "Alright." Spyridon replied with a grave nod. "Where do we start?"


    <hr>


    The conversation had gone on for quite some hours at this point, and it was already growing dark outside. Nonetheless the two of them were still speaking in slightly clipped tones, neither man particularly enjoying the presence of the other but still understanding the need to talk, to remain united despite their differences and make sure that the two of them were on the same page when it came to their position at the moment. The stakes were too high for anything else to be true.


    "I need to ask," the older man questioned in a gravelly tone, "what thoughts do you harbour towards Admeta at the moment."


    He looked at Hawk, confused.


    "What do you mean? Why is that important?"


    "Because," came the answer, "I want to know why you''ve had this sudden change of heart. I need to know why, having just watched a friend of yours die, you wouldn''t try and cosy up to your surviving friend. No man can go to war without being willing to kill, and you don''t seem like you belong in a war at all. What would you say of her, now?"


    He thought back to the last conversation he''d had with Admeta, and whether he was misremembering or not made no difference to him. Anger was clouding his memories, and to him she seemed as unfeeling and unemotional as a fucking tree stump.


    This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    "What can I say of her? What can I say of her!? She''s a vile woman, once wonderful, who has allowed hatred and piety to overtake all that once held pride of place in her mind. There is nothing left in her now save a genuine belief in the work of the theocracy and a burning desire to kill Adikos. The hatred and piety she bears has left her mind without room for anything else; she is without kindness, without compassion. She hasn''t a spark of empathy nor kindness; she has nothing left except her desire to kill Adikos and to survive. She has nothing except her sheer unwillingness to let go, and to tumble down into the blessed relief of hells below."


    He shook his head bitterly and spat to the side. He''d truly thought she was a good person once. Before she''d fallen so far in her quest for power. Before she''d had their mutual best friend of nearly ten years murdered in cold blood for the crime of saving people''s lives instead of taking them. He let out a somehow even more bitter scoff as he continued.


    "What a fucking monster."


    Hawk nodded, the man''s eyes giving nothing away as he seemed to use them to bore a hole right into Spyridon''s mind.


    "And if she was in front of you right now," the servant started, "would you kill her?"


    Spyridon thought for a moment, eyes closing, before he nodded with a graveness and a certainty he hadn''t felt in years.


    "Yes. I would."


    Whether that was the answer Hawk had been hoping for or not was irrelevant. It was the truth, plain and simple.


    "Well then, maybe I was wrong." The man replied.


    Spyridon gave him a questioning look, and in response the man only gave him a rictus of a grin.


    "Perhaps you do belong here, belong in a war, after all."


    "Good," Spyridon nodded, "I''ll need to, won''t I? We''re going to fight her down and we''re going to avenge Sin, even if that means I have to march into Aegos myself."


    Hawk raised an eyebrow, setting down his quill for the first time in hours.


    "Well, at least you''ve come around quite soundly. Lets make one thing clear though: you''re going to be the frontman for this rebellion. You, de-jure, are to be our leader. You will not be making any decisions. I will. De-facto, I will be in charge. I''ve got the experience and connections that you lack, not to mention the fact that I know exactly who we''ll be fighting and where we can expect help to come from. I applaud your change of heart, but you lack the training to lead men into war."


    Spyridon nodded slowly. It felt a little humiliating, but it was the truth.


    "Alright. Anything else?"


    "There are a fair few things, yes, but first of all I''m going to ask you to make a decision. I just told you that you wouldn''t be making any decisions, I know, but this is the one time you get to choose something. It''s extremely important, but you need to choose it now."


    He nodded at the man, hoping to convey that he was ready to make whatever choice he needed to step into the shoes that Sin had left for him to fill.


    "Alright," the older man began, "do we bow our heads before Admeta now, assuming she''s already supplanted Adikos of course, and wait for a few more years to gather outside support, or do we make a bid for freedom now whilst Aegos is still in chaos."


    "Now." Spyridon replied immediately, almost without thinking. "Sin waited long enough and died before seeing his wishes fulfilled. I''m not going to wait around and suffer the same end without closure. We strike now, we fight, and whether we succeed or we die we will at least know that we tried to do what we could to right the wrongs of the past few years. We will at least die contented in the knowledge that we did our best and have done right by the holy books if we fall. That''s got to be worth it."


    Hawk nodded slowly, seemingly unsure what to make of him. He still seemed to find Spyridon''s mere presence distasteful, but at the very least he now seemed more tolerant of the idea of working alongside the Cardinal. Maybe. Just a little bit.


    "If that''s the case we need to send the ravens afly to those few ears sympathetic to our cause. Without allies we will fall."


    Spyridon scoffed.


    "We control half of the men in the Aegan hills, including a few men Sin was able to befriend in Aegos himself. We can fight alone."


    Hawk shook his head.


    "You don''t know how war works, boy. Spirit alone can''t carry us through, nor can we win a rebellion on our own. We''re outnumbered and the defences of Aegos are strong. We won''t win. I''m aware to these new friends of which you speak, for Sin wrote to me often whilst in Aegos, but they won''t be enough. Even if we defeat the council in Aegos, we''ll just be attacked by the Imperator. We can''t win alone."


    "Well, what if we just... swear fealty to Imperator Avitus Thrax? If we bow to the Imperator there''s a chance we could be accepted into his empire with only limited bloodshed and growing pains, so to speak. We wouldn''t need to fight him, and his strength would be joined to ours against the theocracy. Would that work?"


    Hawk shook his head, a bitter smile on his face.


    "Of course not. If it weren''t for Cardinal Adikos usurping the senate and declaring himself Archcardinal first then General Thrax would have done the same and called himself the Imperator anyway. The republic was always going to fall at some point this century; it had grown too decadent, too complacent. What it needed was a crisis to shake it from its lethargy, and whilst what has happened is far and beyond what anyone expected it will, at the very least, mean that the re-established republic will lack the decadence of its late predecessor. That''s something that we can cling to in these dark times."


    "Are you certain?"


    Hawk scoffed.


    "Boy, I''ve been working on this with Sin far longer than you''ve even known about our little operation, so trust me when I say Imperator Avitus Thrax will see us hang just as readily as the Archcardinal. He''s just another despot."


    The man might have been old, but there was no hitch to his gait, no stammer in his speech. Were it not for the greyness of his hair or the wrinkles about his forehead he would have seemed no older than Spyridon himself.


    Sin''s old servant moved to look out the window to the west, a pensive look on his face, and Spyridon''s face twisted in a sort of confused frustration as the man''s words sunk in.


    "So who? Who can we turn to in these most dark of days? The Khyprians? The Confederation of Falcons? Imperatrix Cleodoro would smile as we burned, and the council in Kannagrios would spend half a decade deliberating over whether we speak the truth to them, then another five years on whether we deserve their help. If we don''t reach out to the Imperator then we''re doomed; no one else cares about our corner of the world."


    After a few minutes of silence, broken only by the crashing of the waves against the Rocks of Aercad in the distance, Hawk spoke with a smile dancing about his features.


    "I can think of someone, but they''re too far from this place to make a difference yet. In a few years perhaps, but I do agree with you that we need to act now. What we''re going to do is launch our rebellion and hope from support from our neighbours. We''ll aim to keep ourselves and our lands safe instead of marching on Aegos, for it''s defences are too great for us to take with enough speed to keep the Imperator out of the way. We need to see to our own defences first and foremost."


    Spyridon nodded, conceding that the man probably knew far more than he did about this sort of thing.


    "I can send a missive to Captain Dessano to the Aegan Watch if that''s useful to you? In the chaos that''s gripping Aegos at the moment I doubt people would hardly even notice if the two-thousand men of the watch made for Athio. It would give us a good core to form an army around, wouldn''t it?"


    Hawk nodded, not quite dismissively but certainly with his mind elsewhere.


    "Indeed it would. The actual armies of Aegos will be split, and we''ll have somewhere around four-in-ten men on our side. There are five-hundred men in the Athian Watch, and if memory serves correctly there are around three-hundred in the watch of Chytos. Assuming we''re able to sway a few hundred knights to our side then that means we''ll have around seven-thousand men total to launch our rebellion."


    "Will that be enough?"


    Hawk shook his head. The man seemed grim, grimmer than usual anyway, and seemed to be actively pushing down his distaste of Spyridon. He didn''t blame the older man, of course. He''d been working with Sin behind the scenes for years, and now it was Spyridon with which he would be forced to make things work. Spyridon would be pretty pissed if the situation was reversed as well, but he supposed that a crisis made for strange bedfellows. Still, despite the fact that both men would much rather have had Sin at their side, that was impossible now. Sin was dead, and the two of them would need to pick up the pieces and dust themselves off as best they could.


    War waited for no man, after all.


    "No. Using the same logic we''ve just used, the theocracy itself will still hold somewhere around eight-thousand men in its armies. That isn''t a big difference in and of itself, but they hold the more advantageous position as well as the ability to conscript people into civilian phalanxes from a much larger population than we can. If the war drags on long enough for civilians to be conscripted then we''ve got very little chance of winning."


    "What about the Imperator? If he invades Aegos as well then the theocracy''s attention will be split, which is a good thing for us, surely?"


    "That''s true," Hawk replied, "but whoever wins between the two of them will come after us next, and neither of them will be willing to broker a deal with us. All we can do at the moment is hope and pray that someone from beyond Aegos will swoop in and save us. Given that Dathan is the backwater of the continent, I fear there are few who would wish to involve themselves in our affairs and risk becoming entangled with the tinderbox that has been building these last few decades."


    "About that," Spyridon asked, "what if our rebellion and the Imperator''s intervention grows further? What if others begin taking sides that aren''t our own?"


    Hawk shrugged, seeming completely untroubled.


    "Then we fall sooner. That''s it."


    "So we''re doomed no matter what then?"


    "Unless we can hold out for a few years?" The old man sardonically smiled. "Yes, we''re doomed. But like you said, at least we can die doing the right thing."


    Well, he thought to himself, his internal tone laced with sarcasm, isn''t that a comforting thought.


    <hr>


    He didn''t sleep that night. There was too much to think about, so much planning to go through in his mind. This had been what Sin was good at, not Spyridon. Spyridon was given over to bureaucratic paperwork, to ensuring the smooth daily running of his piece of the theocracy. The first steps of whatever plans Sin and Hawk had once made were now in motion, and Spyridon would be stuck playing catch-up for the foreseeable future. It was a daunting task, and one which he genuinely wasn''t sure he''d be able to complete. None could tell him what the future would yet hold with any degree of certainty, not anymore, and it honestly scared him a little.


    And yet it was not for those reasons that he could not sleep. No. It was his fears nor his memories that kept him awake, nor even his rapidly cascading thoughts. The thing that kept him awake was... well, it was a book. He had seen a book on the table, dog-eared and worn. It had clearly been well read and much leafed through, and his curiosity was beginning to get the better of him. Not curiosity as to what the book was, for the cover made it abundantly clear. No, Spyridon was curious about the contents.


    And this was one of the many books he''d been told to never be curious about.


    On the small oaken table in front of him, a small oaken table in Sin''s private quarters, which Spyridon honestly felt bad to even be stood in considering the circumstances, was a well-loved copy of the Book of Saint Khidon. The principle guide to all things Khidonean, and the starting point for many a believer in the words of the Arch-Heretic. He really shouldn''t, but... well, a read through just to understand it a little more couldn''t hurt, could it? That was one of the things Sin had offered him, that he had offered in turn, the chance to discuss and learn about this sort of thing without having to actually convert. If nothing else it would surely take his mind off of things at the moment.


    Spyridon sighed deeply. He''d never bothered learning about the Khidonean Heresy, nor any of the heresies really, but Sin had revealed shortly before his death that he''d been a Khidonean. If they''d captivated the ever erratic and moving mind of his friend then there must have been something to their words, surely? Besides, it wasn''t like he was going to be able to sleep tonight anyway.


    He found suddenly that he could not bring himself to pick up the book, to open the pages, to read what was written, his learned fear of such occult doctrines having a hold on him even now. He kicked himself mentally. Sin had died without fear to see that the flame of freedom might be relit, and here Spyridon was afraid to read a book. Slowly, almost gingerly, he moved across the room. He sat down at the table and picked up the book. With the sense that he was fighting his own unconscious mind, he opened the pages. Finally, with an almost monumental effort, he forced himself to read the words of the Arch-Heretic, Saint Khidon.


    "Rejoice," he began, reading the book aloud as though in a daze, "for death walks amongst us."

 Lykourgos XIV: The Day of Crowned Ascent

    <u>Lykourgos XIV: The Day of Crowned Ascent</u>


    <u>The First Day of the First Moon, 874 AD.


    Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    The day of his coronation was finally here. A year ago to this day he was supposed to take this ceremony, but things hadn''t really worked out that way. He was fine with that though, for a year ago he''d have been king of only one kingdom, yet today he was to be made the King of Owkrestos, Teleytaios, and Triarios. Such a shift in geopolitics was unable to be missed by any, not even those in the backwater that was Dathan, and so he had needed to ensure that the occasion that was his coronation was one to remember for all. It would be expensive, yes, but this was to be an important propaganda piece for the earliest years of his reign.


    It helped that he genuinely wanted his coronation to be something worth celebrating as well.


    Of course, this wasn''t only the day of his coronation. This was also the Day of Ascent, the holiest day in the calendar of the church, and thanks to his status being amongst the highest echelons of society he was expected to have spent eight hours in prayer, head bowed low as the scriptures were recited before him. He''d sat through the sermon of that day diligently, forgoing sleep that night and instead beginning his penitential prayers as soon as the day rolled over, being first led by the Archdeacon who oversaw the Westcoast Church and, when morning rolled around, Patriarch Olyver himself. Patriarch Olyver was a man with whom he was bound to have a complicated relationship, but on a day like today there was no room for petty grudges or politicking. The Day of Ascent was for mankind to give thanks to the First Saint for giving up his life to spread the truth, and to endure penance for the complicity of ones forefathers in his death.


    He''d entered the church just before midnight, as he''d let the patriarch know he would, and so an elderly man who identified himself as ''Archdeacon Wylde'' was ready to receive him and lead him in prayer. Lykourgos had thanked the man for his piety even at such a late hour, his willingness to help shepherd his soul, and the man had just smiled kindly, waited for the bells to signal the beginning of the Day of Ascent, and had begun his sermon.


    Somewhere around five hours in the darkness had broken as the sun began to peek over the horizon, and an hour after that the Archdeacon had been replaced by Patriarch Olyver, though Lykourgos daren''t raise his head from its bowed position to watch them swap over. More people began to filter in, some richer, some poorer, some guards and some vagabonds. Today it mattered not who they were, not when they were in here. There were likely a great many people gawking at him in there, for how many could say they''d been in the same room as their monarch before? He knew they were likely staring, and could feel the eyes flick over to him when people thought the patriarch wouldn''t notice. He had been popular here as a youth, had been known by the downtrodden most of his life, and now he was back with them once again. Whether the patriarch did notice the attention received or not he said nothing, simply continuing to lead the congregation in prayer.


    Both Archdeacon Wylde and Patriarch Olyver had been good orators in their sermons, the Archdeacon''s tone being that of a kindly and elderly man, filled with warmth and understanding, whereas the Patriarch''s had been stern and paternal, almost dark at times. They had both been good orators, and it was clear to see why Patriarch Olyver had risen to the top of the Conclave of Patriarchs, but Lykourgos still found himself wishing that it could have been Nasos and Dreamwulf ministering to his spiritual needs. Still, he needed to show deference to the church when it came to matters of piety, and so that''s what he would do.


    He felt exhausted by the end of that eight hours, despite the fact he hadn''t really done anything. His thoughts were constantly racing thanks to the silence and the time he was spending doing nothing, but every time that happened he did his best to try and keep his mind clear. There would be plenty of time in the coming months for planning and thought, but right now he needed to be calm, collected, and most of all present. The Day of Ascent was important, it was the one day a year that everyone came together and actually paid attention to the sermons being given as though their lives depended on it. Some believed that he was impious, and whilst his brother had killed a Patriarch and yes, Lykourgos had blackmailed another, he wouldn''t consider himself ''impious''. He cared deeply for the faith, and for the scriptures for that matter, but he didn''t much care for the church itself. The church was, after all, composed of men.


    And men were nothing if not corruptible.


    Still, he couldn''t rest. Today was the day of his coronation after all, and he needed to make sure that everything was ready. There were some things you just couldn''t trust a churchman to see to after all, and a party was certainly one of those things.


    He''d heard rumours from Dathan, right on the other side of the continent, that a truly extreme section of the New-Church had taken root and was killing those who didn''t support such practices. He hoped that tonight, around the banquet that was to be held in one of the great royal halls of this palace, there would be an agreement reached by some of the delegates from those kingdoms and republics that surrounded Aegos with regards to an intervention. Hell, he was pretty sure that even the Imperator of the self-styled ''Imperatorship of Aegos'' had sent a delegate to attend this feast, so he''d be surprised if that delegate didn''t try to drum up some support in favour of the Imperator amongst the Kortherans.


    He was excited for tonight, he had to admit. Men and women of power and influence from all over the world had gathered here, in the walls of his palace, to pay their respects to him. No one else. Angels, if only Lord Brathaxe could see me now.


    There was one figure who he had been informed was attending who he was very excited to meet. He hadn''t seen them yet since they''d only just arrived, but tonight would be the first time around two years that he''d seen Prince Alekos Virgilos. Well, he supposed it was actually a little under one year if he counted the time that Alekos had visited him whilst he was in a comatose state, but Lykourgos didn''t think that really counted.


    Thinking on the delegations led him to consider just how far away some of these people had come from, and just how many people would have enemies enter into the same room. He''d have to ensure that there were a few guards to keep the peace around the room, probably knights since a hall lined with grim-faced armsmen would probably give off the wrong idea, but then Romanos had likely already thought of that. Elikoidi was likely having either a field day with the amount of blackmail materiel he''d soon come into possession of as drinks loosened the tongues of their guests, or was likely in the midst of a fit trying to work out how to ensure nobody got stabbed in their chambers by assassins hired by hated enemies.


    And of course, though none in his retinue would admit this out loud, they were keen to ensure that all there was no repeat of least year. The scars would likely never fade from his body, but at the very least his friends would make sure that none more were needlessly added.


    The work of a monarch was grim, he understood that now more than he ever had, but tonight he was going to make sure everyone had a night to remember.


    <hr>


    Rhema stood to the left of his throne, axe in hand and an expression of pure concentration and vigilance as he stared out over the crowd. His brother seemed adamant that nothing, nothing, was allowed to go wrong today. It was most kind of him, and in truth it was rather amusing to watch the sons of Lord Sigiros match his gaze with only a hint of unease as opposed to the anxiety most displayed when his brother cast his gaze over them. Maybe Rhema had finally met his match?


    "With the authority vested in my by the Church of the First Saint, blessed by both branches of the congregation as well as the Churches of Anawroth, Agia Harald, Aenethar, and Hydran, I crown you King of Owkrestos, Teleytaios, and Triarios, the Violet Prince, Defender of the Faith, and Protector of the Realm."


    As the crown was lowered onto his head he couldn''t help but look at the Patriarch in surprise as a series of gasps came from around the room. The rest of the titles he''d expected and he''d asked that his epithets be left out of the coronation save only his beloved title as the ''Violet Prince'', but ''Defender of the Faith'' was a title he''d not expected to have been given. It was supposed to be reserved for one particularly pious leader at a time, and though the last one had been named some thirty years ago Lykourgos hadn''t expected the church to put quite so much faith in him, especially not from Patriarch Olyver of all people.


    The holy man smiled conspiratorially down on him, likely pleased with the knowledge that there was no way in hell Lykourgos would be able to hang any blackmail over his head anymore, and Lykourgos grinned back. Being named defender of the faith wouldn''t mean that every clergyman the world over would kneel to him, but it would certainly make his dealings with them more likely to produce the desired results.


    The crown sat atop his head for a moment, a beautiful and yet simple band of engraved gold, and Lykourgos stood from his throne. With sword in hand he raised an arm out over the assembled crowd, and almost as one they knelt. Some in submission, some in respect, but all knelt.


    "Long may he reign." The patriarch finished.


    The crowd answered back, some in tones of reverence and some joyful. A few seemed less enthused, but by and large people seemed happy for his ascension.


    "Long may he reign!"


    Now that was a sweet, sweet sound.


    <hr>


    "Your Grace, my congratulations on your coronation."


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Lykourgos couldn''t stop the smile that formed on his face nor the quickening of his heart at hearing that voice, a voice he hadn''t heard in quite some time, approaching behind him.


    "Your Grace. It is good to see you, King Alekos."


    His first ever friend, confidant, and... well, someone he was extremely close to, smiled back at him.


    "Might I just say," Alekos grinned as he leaned in closer to whisper surreptitiously to Lykourgos, "I thought you looked ravishing upon the throne."


    "I hate to disappoint you in that case," he replied, ignoring the strange sensation that passed over his skin as Alekos whispered to him, "but I won''t be spending much time sat on the throne."


    "I thought as much. I think you and I will be meeting each other sooner than we think, though next time I believe that you will be coming to me."


    "At the head of an army, I imagine."


    Alekos stepped away, still smiling, and gave him an exaggerated shudder.


    "Oh, one trembles at the thought. Come then, take your place at the dais. I''ll sit besides you and we can catch up with each other for a bit."


    "Not quite yet. I believe you''ve forgotten about the pre-banquet dance?"


    Alekos actually flushed a little at that, which Lykourgos found more than a little amusing.


    "Lyk, when people see that you''ve given me the first dance they''ll..."


    "They''ll what, Alekos? Talk?"


    "Yes!" His... partner replied. The two of them had been... they''d been in an understanding as far as their relationship was concerned, but Lykourgos hadn''t seen him in person since they''d agreed to... to be with each other. Even now he felt strangely unable to say what exactly they were to each other, even in his own head. He suspected the fact that his own thoughts weren''t private now had something to do with that, but that was besides the point. Either way, when it came to saying something that only just skirted around the point he felt strangely adept. "Yes, Lyk, they''ll talk! The first dance of the night is... it''s important, Lyk. You and I both know that."


    Lykourgos smiled at just how flushed Alekos was as he took the Polaeran''s hand in his own.


    "Let them talk. It''s my coronation, and I''ll dance with whomever I damn well please. Now come," he continued in a slightly louder voice to ensure those around them could hear, "indulge me in this dance, your Grace."


    "Your Grace," Alekos smiled, "It would be my greatest pleasure."


    Lykourgos smiled as Alekos led him in dance. It was a slow dance, not romantic but nothing like the fast-paced tunes that would be playing later when everyone was deep in their cups. Lykourgos wasn''t the best dancer, but he''d learned enough when he was younger. Strangely enough the amount of combat training he''d done also came in handy here, for it meant that he was fast on his feet and relatively quick to correct for any mistakes. Alekos grinned at him as the song came to a close, his voice quiet enough that none else could hear but not a whisper either.


    "You know, I could spend all night alongside you."


    Lykourgos did his best to keep the grin from his face when he spoke, but it was a losing battle.


    "There''ll be plenty of that later, dear. For now there are a great many people who wish to speak with me, and who likely won''t be pleased if you completely monopolise my time. I can''t even give you the seat next to me on the grounds of seniority, since you''re one of six heads of state here not counting myself. The door to my chambers will be open to you however later, and you''re more than free to catch up with me properly then."


    Alekos gave him a wolfish grin before turning to mingle with the crowds, emerald eyes seeming to flash as they caught the light.


    "Then I look forwards to the afterparty, your Grace. Enjoy the banquet, and I''ll see you tonight."


    Elikoidi didn''t even bother to disguise the snicker to his right, whilst somewhere behind him he could almost hear Rhema scowling.


    "He certainly seems less timid than I remember."


    Lykourgos smiled, still looking off at where Alekos had disappeared into the crowd.


    "He might not have much of a stomach for violence or drink, but his time spent travelling the world has made him rather gregarious. He''s right at home in these crowds. More than I am anyway."


    "Another socialite. Just what Klironomea needs."


    He snorted a little at his brother''s words, making the decision to unpack Rhema''s apparent distaste for Alekos at another time. This was to be a night of revelry and merriment, and whilst he knew that his brother hated gatherings like this he''d made it clear that, at any point and for any reason, he was free to come and go as he pleased. He would be more than willing to cover for his brother, not that anyone here would surely be stupid enough to try and tell Lykourgos that his brother shouldn''t be allowed to leave. He doubted Rhema would leave, however; Lykourgos knew that his brother wanted to be here for his big day, he wanted to be a part of it and to help make it great. That was one of the reasons Lykourgos loved his brother; impulsive he may have been, but he was one of the best people the newly-coronated king could possibly have hoped to call his brother.


    He... a part of him wished his sister could have been here to see this, even now, but she was long gone. Hopefully her ascent to the heavens would have stripped her of her hatred, but he was not one to pretend to understand the ways of the Angels above.


    As more and more guests and dignitaries took their seats in the hall he made sure that Rhema was sat to his right. It was meant as a clear signal to the guests in attendance that, no matter the conflict of the year before last, Rhema was nothing less than his right-hand-man. The seat to his left was... that was a harder one to fill. He couldn''t fill it with clergymen, for this was a secular event and the clergy were not permitted to attend under church law. An exception had been made for the representative of the Most Devout Church of Aegos since to have barred the Aegan delegate would have been a snub, though they were only permitted to attend on the grounds that they did so in a secular role, not a religious one. The man had looked almost relieved at that. Anyway, he couldn''t fill it with a clergyman, and he had no interest in having some pampered noble or royal that, unbeknownst to them, would likely find themselves at war with him in the coming years.


    Eventually the position had been filled by the newly minted Grand Duke, Thrytas Sigiros. The lands of old Triarios were all but pacified now, and so both of the man''s sons were in attendance alongside him. They''d taken their positions at the table with the other delegates of import, but their father was sat by his side. By their king''s side.


    Angels, that felt good to finally be able to say. He was a king, and nothing less.


    That was the truth of it. Looking out over the sea of delegates as the first course of food and drink arrived he smiled in satisfaction. The feeling was quickly repressed, for his work was not yet done and there was still so much to do before he could feel accomplished, but for a brief moment he basked in the fact that he was already unique amongst all those kings that had come before him since the days of the old Kingdom of Klironomea. He''d successfully conquered one of his neighbouring kingdoms and, with ale and words and lamb, another had joined the fold underneath him. That made three out of seven. The remainders were either small, isolated, or weak. They would fall one after the other until he stood atop all of Klironomea as its king, its sole reigning monarch. That was the future that was laid before him, and though tonight was to be a brief respite from the woes and the hardships of the world for all who were permitted in this room, he couldn''t quite force down a smile as the first of the toasts to his health was made. He''d have to give a speech at some point later, but for now he was content to simply nod his grateful acknowledgements to the man who''d called the toast, some Licoteman lord or something, or maybe a Kortheran. He didn''t know him by name or station, for he couldn''t see any coat of arms or symbols on his clothes that suggested a particular house. Nonetheless, the fact that so many people of import had come from so far was gratifying by itself.


    Amongst those who had come here there was the Malikah of the Al-Alema, a few of her retainers in tow, one of whom had been rebuked by the Malikah after commenting on how tired Lykourgos must have been after observing the Klironomean ''queer custom of worship''. The comment hadn''t been made in bad faith, so he''d simply explained its importance to the handmaiden and moved on with his day. The King of Polaeros was here as well of course, as were Prince Mathias of Licotemos who had travelled here from Sygomidopolis with his sister, the Princess Iona, who both seemed to be just as well-read as he remembered them being and thankfully far from as arrogant as their father and eldest brother. Lastly amongst the most ''notable'' of the guests was that of, rather distastefully, a Sotenari Octarch. The Octarchs held power only in name these days, but Lykourgos still didn''t like having a man so heavily involved in the sale of people as though they were chattel at his coronation. It left a bad taste in his mouth.


    Of course the ex-kings of Owkrestos and Triarios were in attendance, one in a position of much higher status than the other, but all things considered their attendance was more a showcase of his power for the other rulers amongst the crowd. These two had once worn crowns and now knelt at his feet, so who was to say they wouldn''t join the two of them in kneeling one day?


    Strangely enough out of all the delegates who had arrived, not counting King Alekos of course because that was just a whole different mess to untangle in his head, the Malikah of the Al-Alema had been the most interesting to talk to. Their peoples had warred on-and-off with great regularity over the centuries since the Alemans had arrived in Kliskorios, with both aggressors and heroes on both sides as they''d been able to agree, but neither of them were keen to repeat the mistakes of their forefathers. Yes, they worshipped different deities and had some very different views on the world where philosophy was concerned, but they were both open-minded enough to have gotten on quite well these last few weeks. The two of them had engaged in conversation quite a bit since she''d arrived in Anaria, trading different opinions and viewpoints on events and the world in a non-argumentative and instead really rather friendly manner. There was still too much difference for an alliance to be considered, especially given the backlash back home from their respective religious organisations, but at the very least a pact of non-aggression seemed like it might be on the table. Something to discuss tonight, perhaps?


    Outside these walls there were people from all over Teleytaios that had travelled here to finally see him sat on the throne, and he had made damn sure that they''d be entertained. Beef, goat, pork, and fish had all been procured in truly great quantities for the vast crowds to consume for a fraction of what they''d normally cost, as were a variety of beers, ales, and wines. This was to be a celebration not just for him, but for all those who had worked, bled, fought, and died to see him where he was now. They had died for him, and in the wars to come more of them would die for him. He didn''t like that fact, but it was an unchangeable part of the path he was on. The very least he could do would be to ensure that they could celebrate alongside him.


    To that end similar celebrations had been organised in Stagspring and Stratiopolis, as well as the other newly-decreed cities of Aenirhen, Brycgestow, and Haestinghen, though he doubted the crowds there would be as enthused with his rule save only the people of Aenirhen. Still, hopefully the promise of cheap food and drink for all would raise their spirits if only for a night; he was their king too, and as their king he wished them nothing but the best he could give them.


    From this day until he died, he would never do anything less.


    He danced with a good number of the delegates that night, not the least of which being the Malikah, two of her handmaidens, Princess Iona, and Prince Mathias, but none of them could hold a candle to the first dance he''d had that night. Alekos was... he was perfect. Perfect in a way that Lykourgos couldn''t put into words, perfect in a way that left him disarmed and more nervous than any battle had ever made him. Tonight was, for reasons of state and of the heart, to be a night remembered the world over for years to come.


    Yes, he thought to himself as he stood to make his speech, tonight will be a night to remember. For all of them, yes, but especially for me.


    He was the king of three kingdoms, the forger of one of the first truly modern states on the continent, and his name was all but assured to echo throughout history. Most men would have been satisfied to rest on their laurels and play it cautious for the rest of their reign.


    Lykourgos was not most men. His work was yet to be done. Duty called to him still. He could enjoy tonight as much as he wished, but one thought rang true in his mind. It wasn''t pleasant, for his duty was very rarely pleasant, but it rang through his mind nonetheless.


    He would be knee-deep in gore once more in three months time.

 To Bet on Losing Dogs - Epilogue:

    <u>Epilogue</u>


    <u>The First Day of the First Moon, 874 AD.


    Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Well, let it never be said that he slumbered through exciting times.


    It seemed like Seventh had awakened him at a most fortuitous moment. From what he had gleaned from the tomes he''d read through it seemed like the first seventy years of this century had been little more than a series of famines and plagues that ravaged the land. This decade, however, promised to be one of war. This century was to be a tough one for the people of this world, a century in which new realms and ways of life were to be forged. The wills and wishes of the people were not much looked for at the moment, but the new generation of rulers would certainly see their ambitions acted out. They couldn''t all be successful of course, but those that survived the struggle would see to the complete restructuring of society in this world, or at least society on this continent.


    He had little doubts who would triumph come the end of it all. They may have been unable to use foresight as their kinfolk, Seventh, could, but they didn''t need to peer into the mysteries of the future to know that the cards had all been dealt and some had been given better hands than others. The Prince of Violets would go on to further victories, this he knew, though the growing unity of the northmen would be an interesting and unpredictable factor in the story of the young prince''s reign. The ancient remnants of the southern empire on Sothettar too were rapidly building their strength, not that anyone had paid much notice to them. They''d be acting soon, and turning their strength outwards for the first time in a millennia. That would certainly be interesting to watch, regardless of his thoughts on their less than tasteful practices.


    Times have changed since their golden age, and men do not look so kindly on those who keep people in chains as they once did.


    Still, regardless of who came out on top he''d make sure the world was ready. He''d not involve himself in their wars, for humans were fickle and treacherous things, but when the time came for him to act he would not be found wanting. Pale shadow of himself as he was, he was still the single most powerful thing on this planet with few creatures boasting the strength to rival him. He would endure, he just needed to make sure the world did as well.


    In regards to that sort of thing these great upheavals were both a great boon and a fucking nightmare. If these wars of consolidation and conquest were completed within a reasonable span of time then the world would certainly be placed in a position of greater strength to fight against what was to come, but if it went on too long...


    Well, there might simply not be enough men to hold back the tide that threatened to engulf them all, and that just wouldn''t do. His children may have been gone, but he was anchored to this world nonetheless. Why not stick around and try to keep the wheels turning? If nothing else it would make a nice change of pace for him, what with the state of the world last time he''d been stalking its surface


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    The stagnant aristocracy that had held firm for the last nine centuries was quickly being burned away in the fires of ambition, leaving behind only the young and those who were sharp enough to turn such fires away from them. The world as it had been for so long was in the process of an upheaval, the likes of which no living person could ever have seen unless they shared his longevity.


    Loath as he was to admit it, this Prince of Violets did seem to hold many of the qualities that Harald had. Of course ambition was perhaps the most obvious of those qualities, but equally as important as that was the mixture of drive and competence that enabled those ambitions to be more than a pipe dream.


    There were differences between the two of them, however. Basileous couldn''t kid himself on this matter: the Prince of Violets was not Harald and Harald had not been the Prince of Violets. Harald had been gentle, soft spoken, quick to befriend but not to anger. Harald had viewed war as a cruel necessity, something that needed to happen for the greater good but that he felt ashamed to order. The Prince of Violets did not.


    This new prince seemed to view war as something that, whilst perhaps not good, was certainly exciting. The wars he''d waged so far were points of pride for him, even if by the lad''s own admission he''d mostly had to guide his forces from the rear during the Owkrestan Campaign. He seemed to view war not as a necessary evil, but as necessary full stop. Perhaps Basileous was allowing himself to try and compare two young men who''d lived through two very different ages in the history of this world, but he couldn''t help it. Too much time spent amongst humans had made him soft. Well, not soft, but certainly softer than he once had been. The world was a more fractured and divided place than it ever had been save only the immediate aftermath of the Year of Desolation, but at least now it seemed that a few men and women were trying to pull everything back together.


    But of course, the Klironomean prince wasn''t the only one playing his hand at the moment. Far to the north he knew that those misguided souls who worshipped the man he''d once called his brother-in-arms were on the cusp of reuniting, and to the east in Dathan there was a tinderbox that was not only on the cusp of being set alight but was actively beginning to blaze even as he sat here and contemplated the course of the world. War. War was the order of the day, and war was soon to arrive once more. If the world thought that the first four years of this decade had been bloody then he had some unfortunate news for all of them with regards to the next six.


    The world was set irreversibly on the path of war, and no matter the outcome he knew that nothing would ever quite be the same again.


    He could hear the dignitaries and emissaries dancing and making merry in the hall behind him, and he bit down a bitter smile. Home had been like that once, before chaos and war had torn it all away. Greed and ambition were powerful tools, but they also had the potential to be very destructive. Most of the men and women dancing in the great hall wouldn''t live to see the end of the decade, but then none of them would live to see the end of the millennia, so he didn''t dwell on that too much.


    He looked north for a moment, then huffed out a bitter laugh. What folly he''d engaged in before. Where most felt unease when they looked north he did not. He felt only shame. Turning his gaze away one final time he looked up at the cloudless night sky, and the pale moon that seemed to hang on to the edges of this world.


    "Kinsman? Are you alright?"


    He registered Seventh''s voice but did not turn to face them, a bitter grimace on his face as he stared up at his greatest failure. Time was running out.


    "It''s time for us to intensify your training, wingling. Something dark is coming."

 The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Seedling

    The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Seedling


    <u>Blacktree Hall, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.


    </u><u>The Seventh Day of the Sixth Moon, 830 AD.</u>


    Aertax stood by the bedside of his father. So, this was it then. The man was finally dead.


    Good riddance. There was no place for such a snivelling fool at the head of one of the many Blackoak houses, let alone at the head of the very dynasty itself. There was no need for men like father.


    Men like father were the sort of people that the dull-eyed and dull-witted called ''good''. The sort of men people created love ballads about. What did witless romantics know of ruling a lordly house? Of ruling half a kingdom? Very little, he would wager. Very little indeed.


    Father had always had a mind for fancies. In the throes of his illness, even as he lay dying, he wouldn''t stop trying to get to the damned Black Oak sapling in the courtyard. He''d needed to be drugged to his ears to stop trying to fight his way past the physician and the guards at the door to get to the bloody tree that had been his family''s strangest source of obsession for so long. He had died no different from grandfather in that regard.


    Well, there was no sense in staring at the man''s corpse any longer. The Black Grave wasn''t known to linger on corpses, not outside of peasant superstitions at least, but Aertax had no wish to remain next to it nonetheless. Besides, he had work to do. A great deal of work.


    It would have to start with the matter of this ''regency council'' that had been hastily put together for him. There was no chance he was willing to share his rule with a cabal of power-hungry, spineless bureaucrats. The first order of business would be showing them the door before their jobs had even begun, and then he''d see to surrounding himself with councillors of loyalty and merit, not of lordly-wannabes.


    He would have a great many men and women of talent to pick from as well; house Blackoak and its appendages were vast indeed, almost rivalling the truly huge houses of eastern Klironomea in the number of living members they boasted, so it was hardly like he was going to struggle to find good talent amongst them. He needed that good talent by his side as well, for although he knew his own capabilities well he also knew that many would not take kindly to being ruled over by a boy of twelve years. He would need people who had seen more winters than he had to mollify the fears and anger of those around him when he started making sure that only the worthy took their place at his side.


    He strode out of the chamber where father had been laid, and immediately set himself to move towards the council chamber where he knew that the assembled hangers-on of fathers reign were waiting to play at being lords.


    Well, he hated to inform them of this but there was no vacancy for such a position. Not while he, Aertax Blackoak of Blacktree Hall, was still alive.


    He motioned for Ser Tyros, a cousin of his who had served as a mentor and friend for a great many years to fall in at his side. Tyros was older than him by some considerable margin, around twenty years older, and was skilled both as a soldier and a steward. He seemed to be a good man to keep close when a bunch of artists and musicians masquerading as nobility needed to be told, in no uncertain terms, that whilst his father may have been weak enough to want their services he had no such desires for their continued presence in his halls. They could remain if they wished, but not as councillors. Not as advisors. They would be told that they would stick to their talents, or they could leave and find employment elsewhere. He would not stand for fools in his council chambers.


    "It''s time, then?"


    He nodded at Tyros.


    "It is time. Show them out, cousin."


    The man nodded back once and, all but slamming the door open with far more force than was really necessary, signalled the guards outside the door into the council chambers.


    "Your lordship," the first of them began, "the council is terribly-"


    Aertax cut them off before they could continue.


    "The six of you are councillors no longer. You may continue to lend your services as artists and musicians to the court, but you are not advisors. You may vacate the chambers immediately."


    One or two of them men might have looked cowed, but the rest were a mix of incredulous and affronted. He wasn''t surprised of course, for such men used to being given much for so little work weren''t keen on having it taken away from them.


    "Lord Blackoak, I must protest!" The first advisor spoke up again, the only one who had the chance to do so. "It is through the guidance of myself and my peers that this castle and keep has been able to become a bastion of artistry and song, the likes of which... we... haven''t... seen..."


    The man''s voice trailed off as Aertax stared impassively at him with a raised eyebrow whilst Tyros slowly, deliberately, drew his sword from its scabbard. The two of them were silent, as were the spear-wielding guards who had been at the doors and seemed to be finding this whole affair rather bewildering but not entirely unexpected. The silence in the room was not unexpected or even particularly awkward, and the two advisors who had looked somewhat cowed almost looked as though they''d expected this outcome, but it still seemed like an important silence nonetheless.


    He stilled his thoughts and corrected himself for a moment. There was no such thing as an ''important'' silence. There was only silence, no matter what went on within it. It was just silence.


    Aertax motioned towards the door with a sharp nod of his head.


    "Go. You will still be paid by Blackoak coin and housed in Blackoak beds, but real advisors will be taking your place in the council chambers. There will be no more protesting here. Goodbye."


    And then, just like that, the six useless men walked out of the room. That was all it had taken; a few men with spears, a knight with a sword, and a twelve year old with a sense of gravitas about him. That was all that was needed to uproot father''s council who were meant to be overseeing his regency for the next four years, and who had instead lasted less than one day.


    Useless, weak men. All of them.


    "Well done cousin," Tyros'' voice rang out as the guards moved back outside the room and Aertax moved to sit at the head of the councillors table, "you''ve already done more for this house than your father."


    Aertax nodded, and motioned to the seat by his immediate right at the table.


    "I know. Tyros, you''re a man I can trust on a great many issues. I''d like to offer you a position at my right hand, literally and metaphorically. We''ll need to get some more councillors in of course, but you seem to be a solid start."


    The man smiled and took the proffered seat.


    "I''d be honoured to accept the position, cousin. Let''s see if we can''t see to forcing a rebirth of our great house, shall we?"


    Aertax nodded, smiling back.


    "Yes, indeed we shall."


    He felt strange, sitting at the table after so long spent watching a lesser man sit in the very same spot. His feet barely touched the ground, for father''s chair was large and he was short even for his young age, but he knew for a fact that even with his borderline diminutive size he would stand taller than father ever had.


    <hr>


    The next three years passed in a frenzied and yet meticulously planned series of plots and ploys. He had worked himself hard to ensure his place as a lord of the realm, to ensure he was not overlooked by the arrogant fools he was now forced to call his peers, and more importantly to ensure that none of the other branches of house Blackoak thought that having a child for a head of their dynasty made for an opportune time to cull the family tree a little and put themselves in the top position. Yes, he had worked hard since dismissing those useless advisors the day after father had died three years ago, but there was still so much more to do. He would be doing a disservice to his house if he believed anything else.


    Today, however, he was in with more than a little bit of luck. Not luck, he chided himself. These moves were carefully planned out. There was no luck involved.


    Regardless as to whether or not luck had been involved, he''d been able to take stock of a few factors and had arranged a marriage between cousin Eorith Blackoak and the elderly Lord Foredaw with the hopes that an alliance between their two houses might be made. When the elderly lord had fucking died at the climax of his coupling with cousin Eorith, well, he''d not wasted any time to act. He''d given cousin Eorith specific instructions as the head of the house to ensure that any children she had were born with the Blackoak name, with the promise that she''d sit as the sole ruling lady of Copseshield as soon as she''d birthed the children and declared them part of ''House Blackoak of Copseshield'', which would be the latest and fifth cadet branch of their mighty family. Of course such a matter wasn''t strictly legal, but a company of armsmen and guards sent from Blacktree Hall to ''keep the peace'' coupled with a few vague platitudes should have been enough to provide the king with a fait accompli.


    So long as cousin Eorith birthed a healthy boy.


    And so he had sat around and waited. For seven months he had sat and waited, praying to Demea the Angel of Fertility as well as Hydran and the First Saint, praying that the babe wasn''t a stillborn.


    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Today was the day he''d finally received the good news. Cousin Eorith had not only survived her pregnancy, but she had delivered twins! Earlier than the physicians would have liked them to be birthed, but apparently they seemed perfectly healthy nonetheless. The guards were already in place, cousin Eorith had ensured that her declaration of rulership over the former lands of house Foredaw had been drafted months ago, and he was ready to speak with the king if needs be.


    Not that he was particularly worried about speaking with the man. Owkrestos knew that house Blackoak was the strongest house, the spine of their kingdom, and as such the words of so arrogant and feckless a man would surely bend in his favour with only the slightest hint of force. The plan would succeed, for Aertax would accept no other option.


    Tyros swept into the council chambers, which had been vacant sans Aertax himself until now. Aertax always made sure he was first to their council meetings, and Tyros was always second. Always. The man never appeared more than a quarter of an hour after Aertax himself did, which was impressive as Aertax was always there an hour early. He guessed that the man always wanted to be early himself, but didn''t want to overstep by arriving before Aertax.


    Good. Tyros was a good man for small things like that. A good man for the big things as well. The knight was good to have at his right hand.


    "It worked then, so I hear?"


    Aertax nodded by way of confirmation. There was nothing more that needed to be said.


    "You''re to speak with the king soon then?"


    "The ravens will fly tomorrow," he replied, "I want this done fast and I want it done properly. We''re not going to leave anything up to chance here."


    Tyros nodded, seeming pleased with the response.


    "Good. Very good. If you give the word I''ll see to organising a meeting of the heads of the different branches of our family. They''ll need to be united under their patriarch fully for the next few moons, just in case cousin Eorith''s ascension to Lady of Foredaw goes less than smoothly."


    "Do it. Have them all meet here, and ensure we have the necessary foods and wines to host their number comfortably. Make it clear that we are not asking for their attendance, but do not be impolite nonetheless."


    Tyros grinned widely.


    "Oh I will cousin, I will. The Kindling''s Ash branch of the family have been getting uppity again, citing the ancestral significance of their stronghold. It will be good to remind them of their place."


    Aertax barely stopped himself from sneering. The Blackoaks of Kindling''s Ash had always been proud, too proud, of the fact that their castle had once been the site of the main branch of the family. Well, it mattered not a jot anymore. The Black Oak from which the family had taken its name had been scorched centuries, nay, a millennia ago. The Silence had seen to the end of the symbol of their family, save only the sapling that had been planted in Blacktree Hall. Even if the tree had still stood, what difference would that have made? A pagan symbol did not a realm make, and Kindling''s Ash was half the size of Blacktree Hall. Tyros was right; it would be good to remind his cousins at Kindling''s Ash that his branch of the family was the head of the house, not theirs. They were a cadet house, and nothing more.


    "They''re too proud. It will be their undoing one day. Sometimes I think it would be easier to cull that branch of the family and send you there to take charge of the castle instead."


    Tyros chuckled.


    "I''m flattered cousin, and if it weren''t for the fact that we''d see the label ''kinslayer'' added to our house for such actions I''d tell you to go ahead. They''re too proud. At the very least the establishment of a new cadet branch at Foredaw will ensure we have a loyal counterbalance to Kindling''s Ash."


    Aertax nodded. It would indeed, which was another reason he was pleased with this. The greater the reach of his family extended the further his relatives slipped from his grasp, and so he needed good and loyal relatives to keep the unruly and the ambitious in line.


    When he had a few sons of his own he would probably end up seizing the lands of a few of the most dangerous cadet branches and folding them into the lands of the main branch of the house, but until such a time as he had a few sons to look to the administration of those lands there was little point in voicing such an ambitious and radical plan.


    He would not want to give Tyros the wrong impression, not after all the man had done to help him already.


    "Call the family council", he instead replied, "for we have much to do."


    There was silence for a few moments, and he turned to Tyros to see if the man had paid attention to what he said. The man was positively beaming at him, as though Aertax''s actions had been everything the older man had been waiting for in a family patriarch.


    "You''re a man now," Tyros said in a proud voice, "more of a man than your father ever could have dreamed of being."


    <hr>


    It had been seven years since the events of that day, and at last it seemed as though another opportunity for house Blackoak to prove itself, to show the world that it was the only real power in Owkrestos, had provided itself before them.


    House Greymist, the lords of Miststone Hill and all its surrounding lands, had finally had enough of King Aered''s weakness and inability to effectively rule. Aertax knew why of course; the king had been extorting money from his lords in a manner that far outpaced any measure of restraint that their feudal contracts would demand, and for that matter all of the gold that seemed to pour into the royal house seemed to disappear as soon as it was gathered.


    What that weak fool of a king could possibly need so much money for was beyond him.


    Still, he understood well the want and the need to depose the king. He had been tempted initially to throw in with the rebellious Greymist and raise his banners against the king, but such an opportunity to expand the reach of house Blackoak in a way that the rest of the lords of Owkrestos would be unable to complain about was an even greater temptation.


    So it was that he had summoned Ser Tyros, now a man in his early forties, and ordered him to bring together the armies for war.


    He''d not actually led men into battle before, nor would he really need to, but he at least needed to wear his armour and bear his sword in the camps with his men so that they knew he was there alongside them, fighting against a rebellious lord that sought to depose their king.


    The men didn''t know that he harboured similar wishes, that being the destruction of house Wyldlarch''s grip on power, but such thoughts would be unwise to voice in the midst of this war.


    The thing that had been perhaps the greatest surprise was that the rebellious lord''s wife had actually been the first one to rally men against the rebellion. She had scorned her own husband to fight for the weak and feckless King Aered Wyldlarch, and in doing so had humiliated not only her husband but also every other lord who had not yet raised up their arms against the rebels. It had only been his own willingness to seize the opportunity to depose another lordly house of Owkrestos that had stopped him from being humiliated as well.


    And so he had marched his forces to meet with those of the erstwhile Lady Greymist and, after a short meeting in which she and cousin Tyros seemed to give each other more than one passing glance, they had elected to work together under his command.


    All of that had led him to now. Here he was, armed and armoured, sword in its scabbard by his belt and the many banners of the various branches of his house surrounding his camp, ready to oversee the final assault on Miststone Hill. The castle had been aptly named; situated atop a steep hill of around a hundred metres in height and half-consumed with a thin, wispy fog, it definitely appeared to have been appropriately titled.


    "Lord Blackoak."


    Aertax turned a little upon hearing the voice of his most trusted councillor.


    "Ser Tyros."


    "The men are ready, Lord. The ramp-path up to the gates will be treacherous and many of the men will find themselves dead by the end of the day, but by the end of it-"


    "This rebellion will be over."


    Tyros nodded at him, then turned to face the castle.


    "Aye. Then the rebellion will be over, and we can turn our minds to what comes after."


    Aertax turned to face the castle once more as well, still speaking to Tyros without looking at the man.


    "There''s no need; I have already decided what comes after."


    His right-hand man made a noise of understanding. Not of confusion or annoyance that Aertax had made the decision without him, but of understanding that Aertax was the rightful head of the family and as such his word was law to them. It was what made his decision that much easier, in all honesty.


    "Indeed, I know what will come next. You and Lady Greymist love each other, or at least find each other attractive enough to bed. Lord Greymist will be killed, you''ll take Lady Greymist to wed, and you''ll be made Lord Tyros Blackoak of Miststone Hill."


    From the corner of his eye Aertax could just about make out the grin spreading on Tyros'' face.


    "Well, far be it from me to deny the word of the head of the family. Far be it from me indeed. In that case I suppose I''d better start giving some thought to repairing this castle after today, shouldn''t I?"


    Aertax grunted.


    "You''ll have some support from Blacktree Hall, cousin. Think of this as a reward for a decade of honest and true service to your house. You deserve this more than some of our cousins do, far more. So long as I can continue to trust you to keep the cadet branches in line, so long as you remain true, I think Miststone Hill will do well by you. Apologies if you find the place a little too austere."


    Tyros waved away his concerns.


    "Cousin, Miststone Hill is defensible and sturdy with good lands attached. It''s bigger than many castles in Owkrestos as well, though not being one of the largest. I''m more than happy with this, should you wish it to be mine."


    Aertax just nodded again as the first wave of attackers began making their way up the ramp leading to the gates of the castle, arrows and stones raining down upon them all the way.


    "Then it will be done. Tell the former Lady Greymist that she is to become a Blackoak in the coming days, and see to producing an heir to continue your line. Thank you for your services, cousin. The Blackoak family does not forget those members who advance its goals."


    There was a clatter and a great deal of screaming as what looked like a small landslide swept over the ramp leading to the gates of the castle, no doubt the work of defenders further up the cliff face connected to the lower castle overlooking the ramp. Out of sight but decidedly not out of reach.


    Still, there was no need to worry about them. Much of the first wave was dead or dying but the second wave was already moving in to take the gatehouse. The defenders could only play that trick so many times, after all.


    As the second wave began attempting to batter down the gates, there was what sounded like a large amount of commotion brewing from within Miststone Hill. He turned himself a little to face the main keep, situated along the sheer face of the hill, to see a lordly figure fly down from a balcony of the central keep and impact upon the ground below. Hm. It seems the late Lord Greymist chose suicide rather than live with the shame of being bested in war by his own wife. The honourable way out? Coward.


    His lip curled a little in distaste at the display, but he could not deny the fact that he was glad to know that the siege was as good as over. The defenders were losing heart before his eyes with the death of their lord, and the fall of their idealistic and not at all pragmatic master had seemingly sapped them of the will and strength to fight.


    Aertax stared on impassively and at last saw his banners flying over the battlements. Not the banners of house Greymist, not the banners of any of the cadet branches of his family, and certainly not the banner of the pathetic excuse for a king who sat on the throne in Stagspring. His banner. The true Blackoak banner. To see such a banner fly over the walls of so ancient a castle was, in many ways, the greatest triumph of his life.


    No. The greatest triumph of his life so far. There would be many more days of triumph to come yet, of that he was sure. Seeing Tyros and Lady Greymist court these last few moons had made it clear to him that he just needed to see to acquiring a wife of his own first before any further great steps could be taken to further the Blackoak family name.


    Yes, that was it. He needed a wife and a son. An heir to his family home. That would be what he needed to see to next.


    And so, with the ending of this war and the establishment of the sixth cadet branch of house Blackoak under the most loyal man he knew, Aertax was certain that the rise of house Blackoak was assured.


    It was time to see about having an heir of his own to ensure things remained that way.

 The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Sapling

    <u>The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Sapling</u>


    <u>Blacktree Hall, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.


    </u><u>The First Day of the Second Moon, 868 AD.</u>


    Well, to say the performance of his son had been lacklustre so far was more than an exaggeration.


    Yes, Aertax hated to admit it, but he could not deny it any longer; his son was a fool. His head was full of arrogance and the stories of legends long laid to rest, of men who had probably never existed and if they had existed were certainly nowhere near as wonderful as the stories told.


    His son was an arrogant, blithe, useless fool.


    Of course he wouldn''t go so far as to say the boy didn''t have some talents; he was an excellent swordsman and jouster, but that was about it. Aerna was sorely lacking when one considered that he was supposed to be the heir to the great and grim Lord Aertax Blackoak of Blacktree Hall. Not a hedge-knight. Not a chivalric champion. An heir and ruler.


    His son was not a suitable heir.


    There was nothing Aertax could do to change that, however. The best years of his life were long behind him, his hair was beginning to grey, and he''d never been interested in remarrying after his lady wife had died after giving him a son and a daughter. He simply had no other options for an heir, so Aerna would have to do. With any luck the boy would make something of himself soon, would have his mettle tested and come out of the other side stronger and less headstrong for it.


    It would need to come soon as well, for Aertax wasn''t getting any younger. Just as worryingly, Tyros was a man who might have had another two decades left at the very best. Another five to ten years was much more likely. When Tyros eventually kicked the bucket there would be a crisis of leadership within the Blackoak family as the various cadet branches of their house looked to Aertax''s seat of power with hungry eyes. It was a recipe for the complete collapse of their dynasty, unless he could do something about it soon.


    Yes, there were many issues facing the lord of Blacktree Hall, and he was growing increasingly aware that he was running out of time to work through them before his son took the lordship and had a chance to fuck everything up in the unsubtle and unskilled ways of many such young lordlings who felt they knew better by virtue of their last name having some level of noble attachment.


    Fortunately, he felt he had a plan.


    See, he needed something to rally his kin under a common banner again, as he had with Lord Greymist''s Rebellion all those decades ago. He needed another quick, successful campaign, so that the people of his house would once again remember the fact that they all bore the same last name, and they all owed their fealty to Blacktree Hall. He needed to make sure that there were no attempts at any sort of foolish uprising to increase the freedoms of the cadet branches or, Angels forbid, have the cadets establish themselves as equals to the heads of the family. There was no room for such foolishness in a modern feudal state. They had to be united and to all know their place. What better way to bring them all together than by pulling them into a war? It would certainly beat yet another hunt, that was for sure.


    "Steward. Attend me."


    The Steward all but hunched into the room, bowing low as he walked. The man was a sycophant and a lickspittle, but Aertax had to begrudgingly admit that he had an excellent memory and mind for numbers. Those were both good qualities for a steward to possess, so as long as the man knew to stay loyal and do his job properly then Aertax would put up with the endless bowing and scraping from the man, no matter how annoying it was.


    "Your Lordship?"


    "My family still has a feasible and acceptable claim on the lands of house Downpour, do we not?"


    The man almost seemed to scrape lower as he answered.


    "Yes, your Lordship! Your third-cousin Saella''s marriage to Ser Herna Downpour produced an heir which, some would say, was born with a better claim to the title Lord of Downpour''s Rest than the bastard son of Lord Athela Downpour."


    Aertax nodded. He knew all of this already of course, but before he signed the papers and sent out the decree that would see him at war with another vassal house of Owkrestos it was always good to double-check your information and look for any hidden pieces of the puzzle he had not yet anticipated. The smallest things could change the course of a battle, after all; rain falling towards a marching army, blinding them as they blundered into a defending force. The rash actions of a commander, dooming a besieging force to an ignoble end.


    The realm collapsing around itself, leading to the end of a dynasty.


    He stilled his mind a mite and shunted such thoughts out of his head. He wasn''t sure where they''d come from, but he wasn''t going to let the fates dictate the course of his house''s history; he was going to take Downpour''s Rest and, Angels willing, establish a new cadet house under his suzerainty and completely secure the remainder of Owkrestos underneath the weak-willed King Aered the Unready, ensuring that in truth it would be Lord Aertax of Blacktree Hall who stood atop the realm when all was said and done.


    "And do you believe the king would involve himself if someone were to act on the assumption that the child of Ser Herna and Lady Saella should inherit the lands of Downpour''s Rest rather than the bastard of Lord Athela?"


    The steward shook his head.


    "I do not foresee the king acting to prevent so righteous an act! Why, I do not believe that any who-"


    Aertax stilled the lickspittle''s rambling with an icy glare.


    "The truth, Steward. Would the king seek to intervene himself? Would the rest of the nobility? The clergy?"


    The steward went still for a moment, then shook his head again.


    "No, Lord Blackoak. Without the support of the king the rest of the nobility wouldn''t take up arms, since they''d only enflame tensions to stand on the losing side of a war. The king wouldn''t take up arms against you because he fears you, your Lordship. He fears house Blackoak."


    "And the clergy?"


    For the first time in their conversation the steward seemed to find Aertax not scary, but amusing.


    "The church? The clergy? No, not at all. They''re too busy trying to stamp out heresies and debasing themselves for their favoured figures of worship. So long as the churches and monasteries of the lands you seek to rightfully liberate of their false rulers remain untouched and unscarred by war I see no reason for the church to make an entrance into such a war on the side of our adversaries.


    "No your Lordship, the Lord of Downpour''s Rest shall find himself alone and without friends, save only the sellswords he may hire in an attempt to defend himself."


    "Could they pose a threat," Aertax responded, "in the numbers he could afford to hire them?"


    The steward''s lip curled a little, and Aertax stymied a slight smile. His steward despised the idea of paying valuable coin for soldiers when, in his mind, a lord could simply whistle and have a few villages of people ready to do the fighting instead. A shame that Aertax then was more than willing to hire a few of his own, if the need ever arose or opportunity beckoned.


    "In the numbers Lord Downpour could afford to hire them?" The man turned his head a little and muttered to himself, running through the numbers quickly before turning back to Aertax and continuing. "No. With the current estimates I can make of the man''s treasury given the available lands and mines his lands cover, and assuming that he sells more than half of that land for the price that his neighbours would be willing to pay for it for a quick injection of wealth, he would still barely be able to afford three-thousand such sellswords. House Downpour is a poor one, my lord. There''s nothing left of the wealth they once had, not since the timbers rotted in their silver mines and the shafts flooded. Flooded mines are as good as lost, my lord. There''s no wealth in that house anymore. At most they could call on three-thousand sellswords to supplement their own forces, but in practical terms they''ll be able to afford less than half of that.


    "I don''t know the number of levied soldiers under their command, but I would find it hard to believe they could come close to your own numbers, Lord Blackoak."


    Aertax stroked his close-cropped beard pensively.


    "They are few. Not enough to be of concern. When I was a child I engaged in a similar war against Lord Greymist, Steward. The rebel lord''s hold was renowned as a fortress, difficult to take unless you controlled every surrounding approach and had the keep cut off completely. I took it with ease, despite the tricks that the man played to buy himself a little more time.


    "Downpour''s Rest is not renowned as a capable defensive fortification. It will not take long to crumble and fall as soon as the man''s forces are felled in the fields. Send a raven to Lord Tyros of Miststone Hill; I want the branches of our house mustered with their forces in no more than a moon''s time. And send for my son. I need to speak with him."


    The steward bowed deeply once more and made to leave the room.


    "Of course, your Lordship. I will see to it at once."


    Aertax let out a sigh as the lickspittle left the room and busied himself with paperwork for a few minutes before his son entered instead, the young man making his presence known with an unsubtle cough when Aertax didn''t immediately give him his attention.


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Father, you sent for me?"


    Aertax gave him a gruff grunt of acknowledgement.


    "I did, yes. Wait for a moment, boy. You''re here sooner than I expected."


    If nothing else, his son waited for his word when told to. It didn''t take long to finish reviewing the papers in front of him, so soon he turned his attention to his armour-clad son who had been sat awaiting his attention for a few minutes now.


    "You are here," he started, "because you''re finally being given an opportunity to prove yourself as a leader. As a man of house Blackoak. You are here because, despite all of my attempts to rectify the situation, you have spent more time fighting duels and drinking with your friends than you have with courting one of the many women who would be lucky to have you as a wife or learning to lead an army in times of war."


    "Father," Aerna began, "we''ve spoken on this before. You''re being unfair."


    "You''re a man grown now," he responded, "so act like one. No more playing around with your friends and hitting each other with metal sticks until your mind drips out of your ears. Prove to me that I''m being unfair. Prove to me that I''m wrong."


    "How?"


    Aertax smirked a little.


    "We''re going to war, son. I''m to lead our armies on a campaign against house Downpour, and you''ll be accompanying me. Your sister will see to the stewarding of our estate whilst we are away, so this will be a learning experience for her as well as you. The years that the two of you have wasted will be wasted no longer; you''ll both have your opportunity to show me that your long-held belief that I haven''t been fair to either of you is correct and that I am wrong. You get one chance for this, Aerna. Do not disappoint me."


    His son and heir nodded, seeming resolute but not quite as though he was taking this as seriously as he ought to.


    "If you say so, father. Tell me when we''re to leave and I''ll join you then."


    Aertax could only bring himself to sigh as his son exited the room. Fool of a boy. With any luck he won''t get himself killed trying to duel someone in an active battlefield.


    <hr>


    Quite disappointingly, the war hadn''t lasted that long.


    It was a testament to the skill of Lord Tyros that their enemies hadn''t lasted anywhere near as long as they otherwise might have in the field, but it did mean that Aertax hadn''t been able to get a good inclination as to whether or not his son was useful to his efforts in any way. Aerna hadn''t displayed fear or trepidation when with the men in their camps as they made war, but he had made his boredom known to all around him at any time; Aertax was beginning to grow worried that his son might end up doing something rash without thinking on the potential consequences in the future, what with the boy''s want for ''challenging'' and ''chivalrous'' combat.


    His son must have been the only person in western Klironomea who still tried to keep to the chivalric code, except for the most idealistic of fools. Hell, even the vaunted and painfully knightly Ser Romanos had seen the need to change and reform his own band of knights to something markedly less chivalrous than they once had been. Soldiers, the man wanted them to be, not heroes. A unit, not individuals. Aertax tried to imagine the knights of his youth agreeing to such a prospect, but found his imagination lacking. Romanos must have been a far greater leader than he appeared to force through such changes, or else the men of Teleytaios had lost their spines. It could have been either, really. Both, perhaps?


    Aertax didn''t care for any of that. Happenings abroad were none of his business, not when matters of house and dynasty still needed to be solved.


    The young son of Ser Herna Downpour had been placed on the seat of the lordship, and given that his father had married Lady Saella Blackoak matrilineally the boy bore Aertax''s family name. Downpour''s Rest was, if nothing else, firmly under the grip of the Blackoak family. One day all of Owkrestos would be, but for now Aertax was content to settle for individual keeps and tracts of land. Avalanches were made of individual stones, after all.


    Downpour''s Rest was a middling castle at best. It had a low curtain wall of stone that had been fused by fire, a four-towered square keep in the centre on a slight hill with an even slighter incline, and a handful of outlying buildings in what might have charitably been called a village just outside. It was far from the prize that Miststone Hill had been, but then he supposed that Lord Tyros had always been far more deserving of a real prize than Ser Herna Downpour had been.


    That was all done now though. His forces had been disbanded to see to the harvests, their enemies were slain, and the cadet branches of his house had, if nothing else, fought alongside each other and thus gained a measure of respect for each other. The war had helped keep the towering edifice that was house Blackoak together for a while longer yet.


    As his musings on his finished campaign came to a close, a messenger all but burst into his study. It was a brave or brazen fool indeed who deigned to enter his study with neither permission nor invitation, but the frenzied countenance of the messenger staved off his various misgivings for now.


    "Well?"


    His voice was clipped, terse. He had no wish to be distracted any longer than he had to be.


    "Message for you from the capital, from one of your men in the capital I mean, your Lordship. The king''s dead, and his wife don''t like it none. Some mad stunt she''s pulled, your Lordship."


    Aertax didn''t let his surprise show with any more than an eye brow raise as he opened the parchment and began reading.


    My Lord,


    The capital is in chaos. The king is dead, a coup some say, and instead of letting the throne pass to the bastard who is his only issue the queen has seized control of the capital and taken the boy hostage. The other nobles have raised their banners in rebellion against the queen after her treason, and already armies are marching on Stagspring.


    Myself and your other agents in Stagspring will lay low to avoid detection. The increased security in the capital means that you may receive few letters from us until the war is over. We apologise for this.


    Your men in the capital.


    Aertax put the parchment down on the table, dismissed the messenger, and sighed. Old Aered the Unready was finally dead then, was he? Good riddance. The man was a useless king and an only slightly better figurehead. His wife refusing to give up her position of power wasn''t exactly a shock, but the lengths she''d apparently gone to did admittedly give him a bit of pause. Ah well, she''ll be dead in a year. Probably less. Stagspring might once have been a great defensive bastion, but time and ill-rule had seen those defences crumble away. That was what happened when your king liked taking funds that could have been spent on such maintenance and renovations to pay for his next portrait or banquet.


    Yes, Aered had not been a good king. He had been easy to exploit, but even Aertax had to admit that Owkrestos as a whole would likely be weaker for decades to come as a result of the man''s misrule. The Queen''s defiance of common law and kidnapping of the heir-presumptive wouldn''t improve their international standing in that regard, that much was certain.


    Well, so be it. This was something that he, and by extension the rest of the Blackoak dynasty, would take no part in. The other lordly houses of Owkrestos seemed to have this handled, and it was about time they started standing up for the stability of the realm alongside him. Yes, this was their fight, not his.


    For the first time in his life, Aertax wanted no part in such a quarrel. It was time for him to take a slight step back and allow others to deal with the troubles of the realm for once.


    <hr>


    So, he thought as he read the report from one of his agents at the capital, it is done then.


    Finally, after what felt like decades of stagnation, he almost felt as though he could breath a sigh of relief. Almost. To perform such an action would have given an observer the impression that he had been worried over the events of the last few decades, but that was not true in the slightest. He had been exasperated, not worried.


    But either way, it was done. King Aered was dead, and his noble-born wife''s last act of defiance had been to close the gates of the city and keep the elderly king''s bastard child hostage to try and keep control of the throne given that she had never produced an heir for the old man through which she might rule legally.


    Impressive as such an act may have been, it was only ever going to end this way; the gates had been battered down, a company of sellswords had been spotted making their way up through the sewers, and she had been quite predictably and unceremoniously killed for her actions.


    It was over.


    Now it was time for the rebuilding to begin, if by rebuilding you meant the jockeying for power by his peers eager to use the new young king as their puppet. Aertax had a few plans of his own in mind for that one, just as soon as he was summoned to take his place as a member of the young boy''s regency council. He would be nominally an equal to his peers on the council, but he knew for a fact that he was to be the first amongst equals. Who in Owkrestos could boast more actual power than their king but him? More lands? More wealth? There was no-one to equal him in this kingdom, so he was always to be the first amongst equals within this realm. There were none that could say that they were able to rival the achievements of Lord Aertax Blackoak of Blacktree Hall.


    In some ways he was disappointed to have missed out on this war, but a poor harvest had meant that he needed to ensure that the fields did not go fallow this season. He had been the one to defend the authority of the crown in the last rebellion Owkrestos could recall, so in his mind it had been time for someone else to do the bloody work for him.


    "Your Lordship."


    Aertax looked up from his desk at the steward, a note held in the man''s hand. He seemed nervous, nay, frightened, and even more so than was the norm.


    "Yes, Steward?"


    "News from the capital, Lord Blackoak. The late King Aered''s wife is dead and the nobility have propped up the young bastard Aleksandr Wyldlarch as the new king. They have established a new regency council to rule over the kingdom and, well, they say all missives calling those who have been chosen to sit on the council have been sent out."


    The steward looked around, not meeting Aertax''s gaze despite the fact that he clearly had more to say. Aertax gestured for the man to continue in a cold, commanding tone.


    "And?"


    The steward shuffled nervously.


    "And- well, I mean to say- you are not on the regency council, my Lord."


    Aertax ground his teeth a little. A snub, certainly, but he could still work with this.


    "I see. Who have they named to the council in my stead from amongst our family? Tyros? Aerna? Lady Saella?"


    The steward shook his head again, the spineless man''s nerves obviously failing him.


    "No, your Lordship."


    "Then who, Steward? Who has the regency council named from amongst our family to represent our interests amongst the other lords of Owkrestos?"


    The steward backed up a little towards the door in an obvious sign of retreat before blurting out the bad news and, rather hastily, making himself scarce.


    "They haven''t, your Lordship. The rest of the nobility of Owkrestos have formed a united front by which to combat the interests of house Blackoak. The young king will be their puppet, not yours."


    Aertax suddenly found himself with a roiling pit of anger in his stomach. So this was how the other houses wanted to play? They wanted to shut out the family he''d spent so long dragging into greatness, to throw this humiliation upon the house that had thrown back the Triarian Invasion of 557 AD? The house who had propped up Owkrestan independence and taken the brunt of the armies of the Teleytaians who had marched into the wooded kingdom in an ill-fated attempt to dominate it centuries ago at the end of the Centuries of Iron? Well, that was fine by him.


    He would cut them out of Blackoak affairs as well. House Blackoak would become, nominally if not in law, independent. If they wanted to avoid a war with him after this disgraceful affair then he would ensure that house Blackoak and all of its cadet branches would enjoy such autonomy that the word of the kings that ruled in Stagspring would have no sway on the internal workings of their lands.


    He would ensure that his house thrived, with or without the rest of the nobility. There was nothing else for it other than to ensure his dynasty stayed united as one in the face of so powerful an insult.


    The child-king and his regents would bend for him, or he would break them. He would brook no further insults from the men of the fens and forests. They would know what ruin was if they thought to snub him again, for if he was to fall then he would drag the rest of the realm down with him.


    Oh, how they would know what ruin was.

 The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Tree

    The Oak Has Fallen: The Black Tree


    <u>The Twenty-Forth Day of the Ninth Moon, 873 AD.


    </u><u>Blacktree Hall, Western Owkrestos, Klironomea.</u>


    So, this was it then. The end of his house. One miscalculated move, the death of his old friend Tyros, and two cases of misplaced trust. That was all it had taken to topple his dynasty.


    To think, he had wanted to give his son this second chance to prove himself. Well, it seemed safe to say that his assumptions of his children''s inferiority were definitely not misplaced, not that such a thought brought him anything even resembling comfort.


    Aertax had gambled once again, and at long last the die had come up wanting. He had lost.


    "Father, we need to leave. The huntsknights can only keep their thin corridor leading to the deepwoods open for a little while longer; we need to leave now."


    There was concern in his son''s voice, worry for his life. He barely resisted the urge to scoff at the boy; his son was the one that had thrown all of this away, his son and that over-ambitious Teleytaian turncoat.


    Not that Aertax was particularly absolved of blame on the ambition front, but then how could he have been expected to predict the assassination of his long time right-hand man? How could he have expected the young Prince Lykourgos to have defied military convention and march so far in so short a time? It had defied all military convention, and had the weather been worse or the campaign taken place but a month earlier amidst the harvest and heavier rains then the Prince''s gambit would almost certainly have floundered and failed, rendering his forces tired and ineffective against Lieutenant Isen''s army of sellswords, expatriates, traitors, and levied Blackoak men.


    Instead the rains had appeared almost as soon as the Prince''s army had been set up, and according to his agents observing the battlefield the rains had been both heavy and had blown in the faces of Isen''s army, effectively blinding them until they had blundered into the prepared Teleytaian positions.


    It was almost as though the prince had garnered the favour of Hydran himself in his wars. A foolish thought posited to him by a lesser member of his house, and one that had been banished almost as soon as the point had been made. What use was attempting to pass on blame for their mistakes when the forces of the foe were bearing down on them?


    And for that matter, why would Hydran have blessed the nation of his patronage when Arnka had not blessed Owkrestos in this war? The conjecture surrounding a clash of deities over so disastrous a conflict was laughable, especially considering the people of both nations gave thanks to both Arnka and Hydran as well as the other Angels.


    "Leave. Leave?" He spat the word as he looked out over the balcony, over the spot where the only sapling of the Black Oak was sprouting. "This is where our family was supposed to rule from, my son. This place is where our family will die."


    "We do not need to die here, father. Throw away your pride and-"


    "I did not say that the people of this family will die here, boy. I said that the family will die here. With the fall of Blacktree Hall our house will be functionally gone. These are the last moments of house Blackoak. Our thousand-year stewardship of these lands is over."


    Despite the banners of the younger of the two princes of Teleytaios appearing on the horizon Aertax kept his gaze on the sapling of the Black Oak at its place in the centre of the main courtyard. He''d never placed much stock in family legends, had never cared for the writings and babblings of men who had died hundreds of years before his great-great-grandfather had even been born, but for some reason he now felt that there was something important about that tree.


    When the Silence had burned the Black Oak, had destroyed the original home of his family, legend said that his ancestors had fled to the place where Blacktree Hall now stood with the only remaining sapling from the Black Oak. Here they had planted it, nurtured it, defended it.


    It had only been a tree. That''s what he''d told himself. It was only a tree. A strange tree, one that appeared jet-black with obsidian-coloured leaves, but no different than any other tree aside from its grim countenance. It had only been a tree.


    So why did he now feel it was so important? Why, after a lifetime spent ignoring it, ignoring that slight pull to the base of the sapling, did he feel it was calling to him?


    Had the legends grandfather once spoken to him of ever been just that, or had they been something more? Had their been kernels of truth in those tales of ancient times, of magics and the fae?


    He did not know. There was no-one alive who knew. Those who had once known, who would have been able to tell him if such stories were true or if they were merely fancies and fables told around campfires, had been dead for more than a millennia. There was no-one to tell him what was true or not here.


    "-ther? Father?"


    He tuned back in to see his daughter there, looking worried.


    "Yes?"


    "Will you not come with us, father?"


    She looked on the verge of tears, his daughter. His daughter. What had she been called again? It began with an A, didn''t it? Ah, it didn''t matter. He needed to get down to the tree. There was something strange about it, and he needed to figure it out.


    He needed to see to the tree. He needed to make sure it would be alright.


    "Begone, both of you. Take up with the ''Company of the Most Righteous and Dispossessed Nobility of Klironomea Forced Abroad'' if you so wish, as if the lengthy title could substitute for its lack of true glories."


    "We could go to Anatolikoi, father. Gather all the wealth, men, and supplies we can; supplant the Mad Count of Mytenaeopolis, lay down the roots of our family there. We could take over the island in time, and one day return to the mainland."


    Aertax shook his head.


    "An island of traitors, cowards, and failures. I will not sully the name of this house by moving to so bleak a place. No, my fate lies here. You two will go, and I will stay here. Alone. This castle was our family''s second chance after the fall of our original home to the Silence, and we have faltered here as well. There is nothing left for us outside these walls, and there is nothing left for us within them either. Our family name will be but scattered legends and tales told by the smallfolk for the next hundred years before we fade completely. I will die here, alone, and the house will go with me."


    "No father," his son and heir replied, "if you are to die here then I will as well."


    "YOU WILL DO NO SUCH THING!" He roared back at his son. "Do you see the banners setting up camp outside out walls even now? Those are the banners of Prince Rhema, boy! The damnable foreign conqueror hasn''t even deigned to come here himself; we face the child that bested you, my son.


    "Go. Take up arms with the Noble Sons Abroad, or flee to Anatolikoi and earn yourself some scraps there. I care not for what you do anymore, only that you live.


    "I have been a harsh father most of my life, and you have disappointed me at every turn. Now I command you as the head of this house to live, and to make sure your sister lives as well. Do not disappoint me again."


    "Ser Aered, we need to leave now! My lady, yourself as well! We cannot hold the passage to the woods any longer!"


    Aertax locked eyes with his son, nodded stiffly, received a solemn nod in return, and then the room emptied and he was alone.


    Legends, legends, legends. He''d always despised legends. They were tales designed to keep men weak, to force then to remain content with the knowledge that they could not strive for greatness because they could not possibly hope to match the feats of those who had came before. He had hated the legends surrounding the Black Oak and its sapling the most, the legends of the Faerie King and the Lord of the Hollow Hill, of the Lady of the Whistling Trees and her handmaidens. He had hated the legends of those fae-born creatures, of mythical beings figuratively tied to the Black Oak. He hated that his ancestors had deluded themselves into thinking that such creatures existed, that their family had for some reason been chosen to safeguard the Black Oak and later its sapling when in reality it was only important as a symbol to their house.


    Yes, he had always hated legends. But that was just the thing; he had hated legends.


    Now, in his final hours, he could not help but find himself be fascinated by them.


    What if those legends and myths had been true? What if the tales weren''t all falsehoods. Angels, why had he never looked into so strange and enticing a subject sooner? Would the library even have any of the books about the legends that father had so loved within its stores, or would the bookkeepers have evicted them from the shelves as he had instructed them to when he had first taken power so long ago. Would those books have even been worth reading if they were still there? Would the retellings of ancient tales within their pages have been anywhere close to the truth of what had happened, if anything, so long ago?


    Pah, damn it all. What was even the point of any of this? He could see the last of the huntsknights flee into the woods to the north, and knew that his son and his daughter were with them. Funny, he thought to himself, that all of a sudden I should be so drawn to that damnable, contemptuous tree, can recall every myth and legend I was told by grandfather and father about it that I once forced from my head, and yet I can barely remember their names. What was father''s name again...


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    He thought long and hard. What had father''s name been? Lord... Lord something, wasn''t it? No, Lord was father''s title. And grandfather, who had he been? What had he been called? It had been so long since he had known either of them, he could hardly remember their faces. What had... what were his children called, actually? What had he named them?


    It didn''t matter what aspect of his family he tried to turn his mind to, be they the names of those once closest to him or the sigils of the many cadet branches that he was almost certain his family had. The only aspect of his family that remained in his mind was the image and the legends of that damned sapling in the courtyard.


    Well, if that was how his last moments were going to be then he may as well go and look at it properly for perhaps the first time since he''d been- well, for the first time since father had still been the Lord of the house, that much was certain.


    He stalked through the now almost empty hall of his once grand castle, only the men manning the walls and guarding the gates remaining. Everyone else who could had fled, and Blacktree Hall was quieter than he could ever remember it being.


    Strange, wasn''t it? How in the midst of war and violence everything was so... so quiet. How, despite the fact that there were thousands of armed men awaiting violence or baying for blood, they all remained silent for now. It could almost be mistaken for calm, if it were not for the dread and anticipation that hung over the air like a plague-ridden miasma.


    War had never unsettled him. Had never unmanned him. He was no renowned warrior, true, but he had never shied away from combat either. He was willing to admit that he wasn''t the greatest tactician the world had seen, but he had certainly proved his abilities to be greater than average.


    He was not a hero, for he was something far greater; he was a lord, and lords beat heroes every time.


    He vaguely recalled the wars and conflicts of his youth, in some distant corner of his mind that yet remained unfocused on the tree. He had been ruthless to those who had fallen to him, unwilling to risk having the descendants of the lords he vanquished rise up to kill him, and it seemed that in turn this new conqueror would be just as ruthless to him.


    The grand gates of the central keep, at once austere and yet resplendent, barely caught his attention as he strode on by. The evening sun was beginning to set now, the sky taking on shades of yellow and pink as the long rays cascaded over the battlements giving everyone awaiting the end within a few more minutes before darkness fell.


    And then, soon enough, he found himself stood before that damned tree. It was still only a sapling, and yet already it stood several times taller than him with gnarled branches of ebon make and glinting obsidian leaves.


    He scowled up at the damnable thing, as if it were the one responsible for the ruin now facing his family. Why in Arnka''s name had they bothered to keep the bloody thing here? Why had his family insisted on protecting it for so long? It was just a tree. It was just a fucking tree, wasn''t it?


    Just a fucking tree. What a waste of a thousand years of effort. All of that to keep a tree safe. A strange-looking tree, but just a fucking tree.


    He wasn''t sure how long he stayed there, scowling at that useless waste of a garden-plot. He wasn''t sure when he''d taken out his dagger and rolled up the sleeve of his left arm, nor was he sure exactly how much blood he''d drawn out and let spill onto the soil that nourished the confounded thing. He didn''t know. All he did was scowl at that tree, and the next moment he was like this.


    But oh, what things he saw as he realised what he''d done. Images of different places, different times, strange creatures of an otherworldly nature. So many things did he see, so many terrible pasts and lost futures, that for the longest moment he wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and weep. He, who had not shed a tear since the death of his wife decades ago, who had not cried at the funeral of his own father, wanted to weep. It seemed so strange.


    He''d seen antlered men call upon storms and shades to batter ancient monsters into submission. He''d watched as a tall woman with purple skin had clasped a hand to her mouth in horror, herself watching as a second sun illuminated the skies and rent the land as it seemed to race towards her. He''d watched the same battlefield between two mountains be fought over by a hundred armies in a thousand battles over ten-thousand years, each side leaving the bones and helms of the dead in their haste to leave the cursed field.


    He''d seen mankind at its very worst, and mankind at its very best. He''d felt creatures beneath his feet try to claw their way up from the abyss towards him, had felt them repulsed by something he couldn''t see but knew innately was anathema to these things, had seen spirals and sigils dance across his vision and flash into his mind-


    And then he had been stood there, in front of the black oak''s last sapling, and had barely had the strength to move himself to a sitting position against the trunk of the tree.


    Eventually he was able to manoeuvre himself down and rest himself on the reddened soil, old bones aching and sore as he felt the bark against his skin. It was cool to the touch, and if he closed his eyes and focused just so he was certain that he could almost feel a faint pulsing emanating from somewhere within the wooded body of the onyx tree. For the briefest moment it almost felt as though the tree had a pulse, a heartbeat, blood rushing in hidden veins beneath the surface, but it was so quick to disappear that he was uncertain whether what he had felt was real or just the result of blood loss and- well, he supposed it must have been magic.


    He hated the idea that magic was real, and apparently had been real this whole time. He hated the idea that magic had always been there in the background, patiently watching the world of man race by. He hated that he didn''t understand any of this, that no-one understood or ever would understand any of it. He hated the idea that this was magic, and yet he loved it at the same time. Touching the tree, giving over his blood to nurture it, had awakened something that he now suspected had always been in the blood of his family; it was why his family were so tied to the Black Oak and its sapling, why so many legends in Owkrestos were tied to his family name.


    There was something ''otherworldly'' about the tree. Some sort of innate connection that he had ignored in favour of a lifetime spent in the pursuit of furthering the interests of his dynasty. Did he regret that?


    No. No, he did not. It was a shame he had not realised that the family legends had grains of truth in them sooner, but he was not ashamed to have lived his live as he had. He had performed the duties of any feudal lord who found himself to be the patriarch of a family, and had placed the security and prestige of said family above all else. There was no shame to be had in that.


    He closed his eyes for a while, flitting in and out of wakefulness beneath the tree. Had it been any other point in his life he would have never been seen in so vulnerable a position, but there wasn''t really anyone around to see him anymore. There were only the soldiers on the walls, and they had far more pressing issues to deal with than their liege lord lying against a tree in the earliest hours of the evening.


    There was a slight chill in the air, the autumnal season reaching its peak before winter''s arrival, and yet he felt no coolness save that of the bark against his back and the soil beneath his legs. It was a pleasant night out, cool but not truly cold. A light chill, nothing more. Perhaps to those further north this would have been considered the warmest weather they''d ever seen, but he cared only for the opinions that he had and not the opinions of some barbarians from a region of the continent that had never known true civilisation, save perhaps when the Barracks-Kings marched forwards to subjugate them. To him it was pleasantly cool out, and that was all that mattered.


    The sun passed down beyond sight behind the curtain wall, and at last it was truly dark outside.


    When he looked up he could hardly see the leaves of the tree, the blackness of the sky mingling with the outlines of the tree so much that he almost felt as if he were leaning against a part of the night sky instead of wood and earth. Strange for his thoughts to turn so poetic and melancholic when he''d spent his whole life shunning such concepts, but then he supposed it was far from the strangest thing that had happened these last few hours.


    He closed his eyes again, and this time willed them to stay shut so he might receive a few hours of rest. He thought to his son and daughter, who''s names had fled from his memory already thanks to whatever grip the tree seemed to have on his family in their final days, and hoped that they had reached some form of safety. He''d heard of the atrocity that the invading prince had visited upon the former nobility of his homeland, and had no wish to see his own children struck down or strung up in a similar fashion. He hoped they would be safe.


    He opened his eyes a crack to see that it was now daytime, though he could not see the sun through the patches of light-grey clouds hanging over the castle. How long had he been there, asleep beneath the shade of the tree that for so long had been his family''s charge? He did not know. Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Had he even been asleep, or were the gaps in his memory simply getting worse?


    He did not know. All he knew was that the tree was special. He saw it now, understood why it was here, why it was to be protected. He saw those places that the roots reached: pockets of time in which stranger creatures and fairer folk had walked these lands. He saw the stone that the roots touched, the blood that flowed to nourish them as lesser trees and lesser men were nourished by healing waters. He had gazed into an abyssal past, present, and future, and could only find himself growing weary as he looked upon the wonders of other times.


    There was a commotion at the gates as a large boulder smashed through it at an almost perfect angle, splintering the heavy oaken doors and shattering the wrought iron portcullis. Aertax watched for a few seconds, heard the panic of his loyal men as they attempted to cobble together a barricade from the rubble where the gate and the mechanisms housing it had once been, heard the victorious cries of the foreigners outside his gates who could no doubt smell blood in the water. Very soon this would all be over, and what was left of his family''s legacy would burn.


    Not all of it, he thought to himself as he stole a last glance at the black sapling. Something here will remain.


    He had no fear of the tree being felled or burned. Not now. Not when it had been able to influence even the likes of him. The sapling would remain here, and here it would grow for centuries more. It was important somehow, important in a way that he both innately understood and yet could not grasp even the faintest idea of. Had this been how father had felt, all those years ago? He''d found himself similarly enraptured by the tree in his final moments after all. Was that why he had been so frantic to reach the tree?


    He supposed he would be able to ask the old man soon enough. Just a little while longer now and everything would be over. Soon enough the Black Oak sapling would know a new steward, one whom would carry on his families work.


    Aertax moved back through the courtyard and through the empty halls of the central keep, just about managed to stagger his way back up the stairs, and collapsed in a chair in his study. He was weary from blood loss and the weight of the world, and yet found himself to be content in his actions. Had it been nothing more than the foolish act of a man delirious with loss and bitterness? Mayhap. But if there was a chance for his blood to nurture that strange and confounded tree, to ensure it lived onwards and continued... continued doing what he didn''t know, but continued doing whatever it was that his family had once known it did, then that would be worth it.


    It would have to be, for it would soon be all that remained of his family legacy.


    Aertax thought back on his life, from the moment his father had perished up until this very moment. He had been, and none could possibly disagree, the greatest Blackoak to have lived. He would also be remembered as the last true ruler of house Blackoak.


    Oh, he knew that one or two of the cadet branches were likely to be kept around as lesser lords, ones who were more akin to administrators and tax collectors than actual feudal nobility, but the true strength of house Blackoak would be gone forever.


    There was a series of great crashing noises as yet more stones and boulders rained down on his castle, of steel meeting steel as the men fought in the courtyard, but he was too tired to concern himself with any of that. Instead he slumped down a little in his chair, closed his eyes, and waited for the end to come to him. A few moments later the ceiling itself seemed to give way under the weight of trebuchet ammunition, and the stone slabs of the roof collapsed downwards.


    "Father, grandfather, Tyros. I''ll see you soon, old friends."

 The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Klirans Exodus

    <u>The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Kliran''s Exodus</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Seventh Moon, 1470 BD.


    </u><u>Aedyrn''s Hill, Central Licotemos, Klironomea.</u>


    So it had all come down to this. They had given the Skraelings a good fight, but they had still lost. Now it seemed that the Kings of the Skraeling Greatmoot wanted to make sure they were eradicated completely, and indoctrinated into Skraeling customs.


    They hadn''t been willing to accept that.


    Now was to be a time of leaving for his people, for Kliran''s Folk. They came out of their homes and steads and joined the ever growing column of their people bound south-eastwards, away from the danger of their neighbours, and for each village and hamlet they passed Kliran knew that they''d find the column growing larger and larger as people came to him, to the column, for safety and the promise of a better life.


    It only stung that such a course meant abandoning their homeland first.


    The walls of his home seemed strong to him, even from here, but he knew they would not be enough. He''d seen the strength of arms that the Skraelings could bring to bear, and though it stung to admit it he knew that there was little chance for his people to defeat them on the field of battle. His people were strong, and were renowned for their skill with the sling, the javelin, and the horse, but they could not stand against the tens of thousands of baying warriors that the Skraeling kings could call upon. Kliran''s Folk had not been united enough, and the northern and westernmost tribes had been utterly wiped out before the rest of them had stopped their squabbling. Dragonsgrave and Aenira had both fallen victim to the conquerors in less than a year; two of the largest settlements of Kliran''s Folk, gone in a half-score of moons.


    They needed to leave. Home wasn''t safe for them anymore.


    He stood there, staring back at the walls of the once-thriving market town that had been one of many that his people had lived in, back towards Casteldala, Aenira, and Anaria, and then Kliran turned and looked away. He turned from the home his people had always known, and with a weary sigh set his sights east instead; their time of exile had begun.


    <hr>


    Their march was a long one, and fraught with dangers. Even still, the threats that lay ahead of them were as nothing to the threats that remained behind them, and so they marched on. For months they marched, a column of all those who could walk and a few who couldn''t, a column of carts and haversacks containing everything people could carry with them, a column of livestock and hawks and hounds brought by those who''d lived amongst the animals and kept them for their own. Their entire culture was on the move, forced from the lands that they called home by jealous and arrogant neighbours.


    They''d have their own back on the Skraelings one day. One day.


    "Kliran!"


    He turned to look at the man who had shouted his name.


    "Ingred. What''s happening now?"


    "Direwolves are tracking the weak again, Kliran. Nesters watching ''em from the trees as well."


    He sighed, resigned to this fate. The Umbra were ever the bane of man, and to them a heaving mass of humanity so large and vulnerable as this must have been enticing.


    "Make sure the torches are doused; fire carries knowledge to their bestial minds. They''ll not be afraid without the fires, but at least we won''t need to track them down on a wild chase far from the column. Draw up as many warriors as you can on horseback, slings and spears ready."


    The man banged a fist against his chest in a gesture of respect, then moved to go find the warriors required to defend yet another section of the column.


    He wasn''t surprised that they seemed to be under almost constant attack from the Umbra. Their Skraeling neighbours sought to wipe them out with bronze and fire, mother nature herself sought to wipe them out with the cold and the rain, and the Umbra sought to wipe them out with tooth and claw. Well, all of them had failed so far. Even when survival had meant uprooting their entire culture and abandoning their homelands to find a place to make a new home, they had been unwilling to surrender themselves to oblivion no matter the best efforts of everyone and everything around them.


    Kliran''s Folk would survive. He swore it.


    He dug his heels into the sides of his horse and stirred it onwards, towards the area under threat. He foresaw no real issue coming from the Nesters nearby, since they would do little more than gulp up the human carrion that fell behind the main column, but the Direwolves were indeed a true threat to be dealt with.


    He rode his horse down the line and gathered with a few more men who had doubtless managed to understand that there was yet another raid from direwolves on their lines, and linked up with Ingred''s boys.


    "Kliran. I''ve got the men together; give the word and we''ll charge the monsters head on."


    He shook his head and loosened the sling from its place by his side.


    "Circle them. Use javelins and slings. Spears are for when they''re injured and dying."


    Ingred grumbled a little at the call for restraint, but set his spear across his back and hefted a javelin nonetheless. Ingred was a warrior, forever wanting for glory and the thrill of the fight, but the survival of their people came first at the moment. All of them would fight without honour, without glory, and without pity. It didn''t matter who or what they were fighting, for their current exodus had taught them one thing very well: better to keep your people alive than to have them lose their lives ''gloriously''. There was no glory to be found in the death of their entire way of life, not at all. If survival meant that they had to show restraint then they would do that. If it meant that they had to slaughter the meek, then they would do that too.


    If they had to become no better than the Skraelings and force another people from their homes to ensure survival then he would see to it without hesitation or pity. He couldn''t afford to show remorse, not when it was the lives of all his people on the line.


    "Where are they?"


    "Northwest, Kliran. Half a mile or so. If we ride now we can arrive before the creatures make their attack and strike first."


    Kliran nodded, and gripped at the reins of his mount with his left hand.


    "Lead the way, Ingred. How old were they?"


    "Couldn''t have been more than pups, Kliran. No taller than a man on horseback, no larger in build than a bear. They must be more pups."


    He hummed to himself.


    "The mother still shadowing us without showing herself, is she?"


    Ingred nodded.


    "If we were lucky she''d strike forwards herself and give us a shot at killing her. That would make for a fine story and song."


    Kliran smiled a little and shook his head. Some men you just couldn''t change.


    "She''d not be so foolish. There''s a reason she''s lived so long, and killed so many. Firetouched, she is. She knows that every man she kills either means prey avoid the area going forwards or that more men, prepared and with blades of bronze, will soon be after her. She can afford to wait and let her children kill themselves on our spears. Still, in better times I''d agree with you."


    Ingred nodded.


    "In better times. Heh, feels like better times might be a long way off for us now. A very long way off."


    "No time for that now, Ingred. They''re here."


    The baying and howling of direwolves came from the treeline, though the column didn''t seem panicked by this. If anything the wretches that formed the column were so tired and weary of life that they just continued trudging forwards. Most didn''t even turn to look at the howling, save the few dogs that loped alongside the column in a protective manner.


    Kliran stirred his horse into a canter and began to move forwards, gradually moving into a gallop. The men around him did the same, javelins and slings in hand. A pair of direwolves burst forwards from the trees perhaps two-hundred metres away, their path putting them in the way of Kliran''s men and allowing them to flank the beasts.


    As if sensing the danger the direwolves turned, another of their siblings bounding forth from the forest, and made to meet the horsemen head-on.


    The men did not allow themselves to be cornered, however. Instead Kliran dropped a sizable polished stone into his sling, swung it around his head with his right hand as his left gripped the reins of his saddle, and slung the projectile towards the first of the monsters at great speed.


    His men did the same, throwing and slinging their weapons at the beasts before wheeling their horses around and splitting from each other, ensuring that not one of them was close enough to ever be caught by the beast but that they were always able to cover each other''s movements.


    There were a few howls of pain or annoyance from the three direwolves, who continued to chase down the men on horseback with seemingly little regard for the defenceless masses not more than an acre from them. Their howls and snarls were only stopped when, calmly, a forth direwolf sibling stepped out into the open and growled out a low challenge.


    The three others proverbially fell in line, breaking off their attack and joining with the newcomer. This direwolf had jet-black fur, and was noticeably bigger than the other three. Not big enough to have been an adult, but it was certainly an adolescent.


    It mattered not to Kliran. He and his men would just need to cycle their charges towards these beasts a few more times, trust in their horses to keep them out of harms way, and trust in their strength of arms to kill off a few more of the monsters that had harried mankind since time immemorial. Some things, some duties, never changed.


    He dropped another stone in the sling and manoeuvred himself and his mount so that they might weave between two of the beasts on their second run through, trusting in his sling to see him to victory. The sling and the javelin had ever been the weapons of his people, their skill at range earning them tolerance if not respect from the more ''professional'' and ''civilised'' armies of the southern men, and it certainly was still enough to protect them from these whelps born from the shadows of mankind''s fears.


    Once, twice, three more times did the polished stones find their marks. With two stones he struck the head of the leading member of the pack, a grey-furred mutt that was more bones than muscle. Both times did the impact disorient the beast and cause it to stumble, and as he rode at it head on to release the third stone he struck the creature in its front-right knee.


    Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    There was the splintering of bone as the stone found its mark, causing the pup to yelp in pain and crumble to the floor mid-run, almost inadvertently sweeping the legs out from under Kliran''s horse as he rode on.


    With a few moments to react he veered to the left, having focused on the leading pup for so long he''d neglected to look for its brethren. One of the other grey-haired curs was approaching rapidly from his right, staved off at the last moment only by the three javelins launched at him from his hunting compatriots. One missed, embedding itself in the soil beneath the creature, but the other two struck it in the shoulder and neck respectively.


    Kliran barely caught the laughter of Ingred as the man rode past, the man having thrown the javelin that struck the neck of the second wolf, but he didn''t catch whoever it was that had thrown the other two javelins. Ah well, it wasn''t like he was actually missing anything. A shame he didn''t know who to congratulate, that was all.


    He rode on for the rest of the fight, circling the remaining direwolves and staying out of their reach the entire time. His men did the same, and none had yet found themselves falling prey to the creature.


    He didn''t see when the third grey direwolf pup went down, but at some point a few of the fifty-or-so men fighting with him had been able to take it down and leave it immobile. It could have been dead actually, but he wasn''t sure. He wasn''t close enough to tell.


    After that it had just been the black-pelted adolescent. The beast had been fearsome, yes, but not insurmountable. It hadn''t been able to handle having its attention split, for despite being fearsome pack hunters direwolves didn''t do too well being put on the other end of a pack-hunting species. A few javelins, a few sling-stones, ten minutes of running around in circles, and the fucker was down.


    He trotted his horse over to the creature, still snarling with spittle around its mouth, almost lazily. The creature wasn''t going anywhere, not with the amount of blood it had lost.


    Kliran dismounted his horse and handed the reigns over to Ingred, who had ridden back alongside him, and pulled thespear from its holder across his back. With one last thrust Kliran brought the head of the spear down atop the skull of the final remaining beast, which writhed for a moment and then went still. The fighting was over, for today at least.


    He let go of the weapon, leaving it lodged in the creature''s head, and stretched his back and arms. Gods, he still enjoyed this. He gave a quick prayer to the Jackdaw, god of hunting amongst other things, for his success today.


    It seemed odd that the Jackdaw should be coming to the fore of the pantheon for them again. Once, before their tribe had settled in villages and tended to farms and livestock, their people had relied upon the Jackdaw more than any of the other gods. As time wore on and civilisation established itself the Jackdaw had become less prominent when compared to the other gods, but now Kliran''s Folk called on him again.


    Indeed, it seemed that everyone, even those who did not fight Umbra or Skraelings, called upon the Jackdaw. They did not call on the Jackdaw as a god of the hunt as the warriors did though, for the Jackdaw was the god of not one but three things: the hunt, murder, and survival. There were few who would call upon the aspect of the murder-god, but he would not have been surprised to learn that some had given the Jackdaw prayers in that aspect so that hated rivals or Skraeling heroes might find themselves meeting an ignoble end sooner rather than later.


    As for the aspect of survival, well, that felt pretty obvious.


    "Get the butchers over," Kliran shouted over his shoulder, "furriers as well. There''s plenty of meat and fur to be had here."


    "Keep the bones as well," Old Konner shouted from next to him, "we''ll need to feed as many as we can with this hunt."


    Kliran nodded at the man. What little they all didn''t eat would be gnawed on by the dogs, but right now they needed as much food as possible. That was the trouble with moving so many people at once; there was no way you could just live off of the land with that many people moving through the same area. By the time the middle of the column reached a spot the front of it would have already taken the best of the food, and by the time the stragglers made it the land would have been stripped bare.


    No, they needed to ensure that they used anything they could to feed and clothe their people, even if it meant hunting the very monsters that haunted the dreams of the southmen and had once been the bane of his people as well. It was said by the druids that to consume the flesh of the Umbra was to invite daemons into one''s mind, to become a monster yourself, but there was no choice here at the moment.


    Kliran''s folk were well versed in fighting monsters, but he hoped they were just as capable of staving off the monsters of the mind lest they corrupt his people to become true monsters themselves.


    "You''re brooding again, Kliran."


    He snapped out of his thoughts and turned to face Ingred, the larger man''s truly impressive facial hair rustling a little as his lip upturned in a slight smile.


    "Caught me again, Ingred. I was thinking, that''s all."


    Ingred scoffed.


    "You do too much of that. Always ''thinking'', you are."


    "Somebody has to." His response was sharp, but not clipped or terse. "These are my people now, Ingred. You''re a warrior, not a leader. You don''t need to think, you need to act. That''s a valuable role to play, and I''m glad that you''re there to play it, but I can''t just be the warrior you are. I need to lead my people to safety, and that means planning. It means mapping routes, scouting ahead, keeping an eye on the Skraelings who are doubtless trying to catch us, working out where the next source of food or fresh water is going to come from.


    "I need to understand how to stop sickness and disease from spreading through the column like wildfire, I need to understand and plan a place for us to stay at the end of all of this, and most of all I need to understand how to keep our people alive.


    "I need to think, Ingred. I don''t have a choice in the matter."


    The warrior patted him on the shoulder in a gesture of consolation and understanding.


    "Better you than me, friend. Better you than anyone else I know. You were destined to bring together Kliran''s Folk under one banner in order to keep our way of life alive. We will not be Skraelings, brother. We will not become yet more of Skraella''s Folk. No, we are Kliran''s Folk, and Kliran''s Folk we will remain for a thousand years thanks to your actions."


    He nodded, appreciative of the words but not quite mollified by them.


    "A shame the cost was so high for us to get here."


    "None enjoy leaving their homes behind, Kliran."


    "That''s not what I meant. Dragonsgrave. Aenira. Haestingha. The lands of our westernmost cousins, those now fled or butchered, before we''d even stopped fighting amongst ourselves."


    "The follies of our fathers haunt us still, that is true, but you aren''t giving our people enough credit for the here and now. Every Kliran chieftain, every self-proclaimed king, all have seen the way the winds were blowing and bowed down to you. I mean, look at the two of us! Our fathers and our father''s-fathers fought each other for decades, and yet here we are now. You lead us, all of us, because we know that to continue fighting amongst each other is folly.


    "You lead us because we know that you''re the best of us. Because we know that, no matter how much me and the others might joke otherwise, we need a thinker at the helm. We need a man who can actually plan for the future, can look at all the difficulties and issues with every course, and tell us what to do. Tell us why we need to do it. We need men like you in charge, not people like me or Old Konner or Wulfhelm. We''re all fighters, and good ones at that, but we wouldn''t have been able to get us this far. We''d have stayed and fought, and we''d all have died.


    "Kliran''s Folk would have died with us, even if we''d united between ourselves. But because you united us, we actually stand a chance of survival. We will survive, because of you. Think on that, brother of my kin. You got us this far, and you''ll get us further yet."


    He smiled, and turned back to face the column. To one side he watched as a team of hunters, butchers, and furriers carefully took the corpses of the four beasts apart, and raised his voice down to them.


    "I''ll have a new set of furs out of that one. The adolescent. Black furs and the head for me, black furs for the rest of the former chiefs."


    A man down by the corpses made a gesture that suggested he''d heard, and Kliran couldn''t stop an almost wolfish grin of his own from forming. He had an idea of where he was going to lead his people now, a place he knew from traders had always been in need of soldiers and workers. It might not have been a place where his people would live without a yoke about their necks, but it was at least somewhere that they could bide their time and keep their traditions and culture alive.


    It was time to head to the city of the gods. It was time to make for Aegos.


    <hr>


    Well, here they were. Aegos. Well, they weren''t actually in Aegos yet, but they were in the Aegan Empire at least. He''d treated with a few envoys of the Tyrant, Aegaed Arcander, and they had brought his people rudimentary shelter to keep the worst of the elements off of them as they waited some fifty miles from Aegos itself for the Tyrant to meet with him and pass his judgement.


    The Tyrant was here now, and Kliran prayed to all the gods that he would convince the man to let them in. They''d lost their homelands and many thousands of good folk to get here, and if they were turned away they''d lose thousands more. They needed to be accepted here.


    There were tents as far as the eye could see, tents to house hundreds of thousands of people. Their provisions were running low, their coin even lower, and their shelter was ragged. It didn''t matter. If they could just succeed here, if they could just be accepted, then this would all have been worth it.


    "Tribal leader, the Tyrant Aegead Arcander asks you to present yourself before him outside of the camp. Alone."


    Kliran swallowed hard and prayed once more. He felt Ingred''s hand pat him on the back, saw the looks of sadness and hope that Old Konner and Wulfstan sent him, and left to meet with the tyrant. He wore a band of bronze around his head and the cloak made from the pelt and head of the black direwolf he had slain on his way here about his shoulders and back. He was, in effect, wearing the finest he could wear. Broaches and rings of bronze too, all of it. He needed to look impressive for the Tyrant.


    When he arrived before the man he knelt, as he had been told to, and awaited the command to speak.


    "The tribal leader my advisors have told me about. Normally when a horde of barbaroi come this far inland they are dispersed by my legions before now, but your people showed great restraint on their way here. They purchased their food with coin, they did not raid, they did not cause harm. Indeed, the arrival of your people has given me a great deal of cash already.


    "However I sense that you come here to ask something of me. To request that you can stay here. Yes, there''s no need to look so surprised; Aegos has eyes everywhere, tribal leader. I know what has happened to your people. Come now, speak, tell me what you would ask of the most vaunted and magnanimous Tyrant of the Aegan Empire."


    Kliran swallowed hard once again, and rose to his feet at a languid gesture of the man''s hand.


    "I come here to ask for my people''s safety, mighty Tyrant. We flee the destruction of our people at the hands of Skraella''s Folk, and I would give anything to you if you would accept us in as a free people."


    The Tyrant''s eyebrow raised upwards, suggesting mild incredulity.


    "It is customary for barbaroi to be enslaved in Aegos, tribal leader. And yet, I think we may be able to come to an agreement here.


    "Your people are renowned for their skill at range, striking down foes from afar. Similarly your best warriors are renowned for their not inconsiderable skill on horseback. Supposing your people were to be taken in as soldiers of the Aegan Empire, to fight in its wars under a leader of their own kind who would in turn answer only to me, it might be possible to forgo enslavement."


    Kliran bowed his head deeply in a gesture of supplication.


    "My people would be honoured to fight alongside the legions of Aegos as free men, Tyrant. All that we would ask is the freedom to continue practicing our own culture as an equal to the people of this city whilst loyally serving you and your sons, and a place to live together.


    The Tyrant grinned his wicked grin, nodding himself in turn.


    "Yes, I think we can draw up an expansion of the city beyond the walls for your kind to inhabit. You know my terms however, tribal leader. Military service for your people in exchange for being allowed to keep to your own customs and gods. Absolute loyalty in exchange for freedom from the chains."


    Kliran nodded, and the man proffered a hand which held a gold ring atop the finger. Without a word Kliran knelt and, without making eye contact with the man, pressed a kiss to the ruby-set golden band.


    "Then it is done. Your oaths will be taken before the day is over, and your people will find themselves a new home here as the guards of the empire. And if one day your service should find you set against those who pushed you from your homelands... well, I''m certain you wouldn''t object, would you?"


    Kliran remained where he knelt.


    "We would be honoured to serve, Tyrant."


    "That is what I thought you''d say." The man''s smile was audible in his voice, and Kliran didn''t need to look up to picture the smug grin he was wearing. "You need a new title I think, tribal leader. Your kind know little of the intricate governmental positions we civilised people utilise, however I did hear them generalising a great many titles down into one word: ''Maestro''. If that is the word that your people believe should fit a leader that governs under the banner of Aegos then it seems fitting that their own leader should be granted such a title, no?"


    Kliran swallowed hard.


    "You honour me, Tyrant Aegead."


    "I know," came the reply, "now rise, Maestro Kliran. Rise, and take your place as the loyal watchdog of the Aegan Empire. There are many things to be done before your people can be said to live here truly, after all."


    He rose to his feet and nodded stiffly.


    "Yes, Tyrant. My people will start their work immediately."


    He bit down his distaste at the knowledge that his people would now serve in the armies of another. If this was the only way forwards for Kliran''s Folk, the only way to ensure their safety and continued existence, then it was what they would do.


    Their pride was as nothing compared to the threat of oblivion.

 The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Klirans Legacy

    <u>The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Kliran''s Legacy</u>


    <u>The First Day of the Third Moon, 352 BD.


    Aegos, Aegan Hills, Dathan.</u>


    The walls had to hold. If they fell then his people were as good as dead, and so the walls had to hold.


    The last few hundred years had been a constant series of disappointments for the Kliran. Again and again they were denied the ability to return home, and again and again they accepted the answer of the Tyrants. When the Tyrants became the Imperators they''d asked once more, only to be told that there wasn''t the further forces to spare on so wide-ranging a campaign. They''d conquered a small portion of their homeland alongside the Aegan Legionaries, and a new city named ''Tyranopolis'' had been founded at its heart, but that was about the only good news they''d had this whole time.


    Their populations had been kept concentrated and urban, so as to ensure that their culture remained broadly untouched. Of course with how long they''d lived in Aegos it was inevitable that some intermingling would take place, and indeed the city of the gods had left many marks on the Kliran people, but broadly speaking their culture was still as distinct and selfsame as it had been so many centuries ago.


    Kliranhen, they had called the town that had been built for them. Against the northern walls of Aegos it did lie, housing the hundred-thousand Kliran who remained in the city whilst the rest of their people formed similar communities outside the walls of the other cities in the Aegan Empire.


    Their living conditions were poor, with cramped housing and little enough food, but at the very least the Tyrants and later the Imperators had maintained their end of the bargain; they had a place of their own to stay, and they were able to continue practicing their culture and religion in peace. That was enough for them, no matter the distasteful acts they had to partake in under the orders of the Imperators. The checkmating of slave rebellions wasn''t something that their people took any sort of pride or enjoyment in, but it was something they did nonetheless.


    They had, in effect, become the mercenary bodyguards of the Tyrants of Aegos. They carried out his wishes, and in return one day they would be permitted to go home. One day.


    August thought for a moment on whether or not their descendants would understand the people they had been back here, on whether the necessity of their actions would continue to be known or whether their reasoning would fade into history.


    It mattered not, of course. They would do whatever it took to ensure the survival of their people. It was the same oath that August''s ancestors had sworn, as far back as the legendary Kliran who had lead them here, and it was one that would be sworn again and again for as long as they remained in Aegos.


    Kliran''s people would not be consigned to oblivion.


    Of course, nowadays that oath was tested more than ever before.


    When the Silence had first broke unto the world, he had suppressed a savage joy. It had been the Skraelings that had been in the way of the assault you see, by and large. There were a few raiding parties here and there, a few groups of Umbra moving in packs too diverse and large to be normal, but they weren''t really concerned.


    Then the daemons had poured southwards. The daemons and the fallen.


    Tyranopolis had fell. The legions had faltered. The Kliran auxiliaries had taken charge of the defences and had needed to tear their own shanty-towns down in case they provided cover for the enemy. These days seemed like the end times, and yet they had held out in this city and had repelled three different sieges from the walls already.


    The days were dark, the skies ashen, but mankind would not fall. The Kliran would not fall. Something would have to give, sooner or later at least. There was no chance that August would allow the walls to fall, for if the walls were to fall then the teeming masses within the city behind him would surely follow.


    Aegan and Kliran both would die. He couldn''t let that happen.


    "Peleus, where are you?"


    He shouted out the name of his lieutenant, but got no response from the man.


    "He''s dead Ser," came Melita''s reply, "looked at that faceless, winged man for too long! Went mad, kept saying its eyes were in his head!"


    August spat out another curse.


    "Blood and ash, even when dead that faceless angel is taking our friends from us! Was he put out of his misery quickly?"


    "Mercy-stroke, Maestro! He didn''t suffer!"


    He nodded at the woman.


    "Melita, you''re my second in command now that he''s gone. Poor bastard, I''ll miss him. Melita, go and find where Aegiowulf''s company is! Get them to our position as soon as you can; we''re going to need them soon."


    Melita snapped an arm to her chest in the standard Kliran gesture of acknowledgement and respect, then barked out a few orders to the soldiers around her before scarpering off with a guard and a messenger to go and find Aegiowulf''s company.


    He sighed, shaking his head a little at the news of Peleus'' death. They''d all told him not to stare too much, had all seen what had happened to those who looked into that face with no features for too long and without enough booze and intoxicants to keep your mind from processing it, but apparently he hadn''t listened.


    Poor fool. No-one deserves to die like that.


    He didn''t have much time to dwell on Peleus'' demise though, and he knew it; the assault that the Silence was making on the walls was still ongoing, and though they had already slain tens of thousands of the foe August knew that the siege had only just begun.


    Still, with the death of that faceless horror he had hoped for a moment of reprieve, comparatively speaking of course. The enemy were still battering at the gates constantly, but only with daemons that ranged in size from men to lesser Jotun. There were a few Umbra amongst the enemies number here, but their actions seemed strange. Indeed, at times it was as though some of the Umbra were fighting for the Silence and some were fighting against it.


    He had desperately hoped that things would remain that way for a week or two at least, to give them time to repair what damages that strange and terrible creature had wrought on the defences. They needed to train up the replacements for those who had died, and he had been hoping to use the reprieve to order the craftsmen of the city to dismantle a few of the damaged buildings and use them to build more ballistae; they seemed to be some of the best weapons in Aegos'' arsenal when it came to dealing with more substantially sized foes after all.


    Unfortunately such a reprieve was not meant to be, and indeed was cut short in one of the worst ways he could have imagined.


    "DRAGONS!"


    August cursed, loud, as his blood turned to ice. Sure enough, there they were; a pair of dragons, scales blackened with decay and bone bleached white about their ribs. Dead, certainly, but returned to the world of men to haunt them all. He turned to his ballista crews on the walls and prayed that they might aim true.


    "BRING THEM DOWN! FOR THE SAKE OF THE GODS, BRING THEM DOWN!"


    The rough twanging of taught rope loosing their projectiles sounded out from all around him, but even with the dozens of Kliran ballistae on the walls it was clear that it wouldn''t be enough.


    "Our orders, Maestro? Our orders!"


    "Loose everything you can at them," he cried out as loud as he could, "before they bring the walls down! Concentrate on the closest! Bring at least one down and pray for all we''re worth that the Aegans can bring down the other!"


    At his words dozens more bolts and arrows found themselves hurtling towards the airborne beasts, some of which even struck true.


    "Maestro August, we cannot focus on the dragons much longer! The moonborn are closing on the walls, Maestro! The Aegans cannot defend themselves against such an onslaught without the assistance of our men on the walls! Their soldiers cannot fell the greater Moonborn without our ballistae!"


    He cursed again, spitting on the ground to try and get the taste of sulphur out of his mouth. Fucking Moonborn.


    "It''s going to be a hell of a lot worse if the dragons breach the walls! Keep focusing on them, bring them down, and hope to the gods that the Aegan Legionaries can hold the line if they breach the gates!"


    The man looked frankly terrified, for who wouldn''t at a time like this, but banged a fist against his chest in a gesture of supplication and obedience nonetheless.


    "Understood, Maestro. I will inform them of your orders."


    At those words there was a great deal of shouting, the cries of a dozen of his men filling the air as gigantic claws raked their way across the battlements and flung good men in scale armour into the ravening horde of abominable beasts beyond the walls. Poor bastards, they''ve no hope of a burial.


    He made himself small as the creature made its next approach, ducking down low and keeping his sword of iron ready. He wasn''t sure what it was exactly that he planned to do with his sword against so massive and terrible a reanimated beast, but he wasn''t prepared to just go down without a fight.


    "Keep loosing at them," he cried as the second dragon moved off to harry another section of the wall, "keep loosing at the dragon nearest to us! We can bring it down!"


    Could they? He didn''t know. It seemed doubtful, for despite the fact that reanimation did always seem to leave the body lacking some of its manoeuvrability and dexterity, it hadn''t seemed to make much of a difference here. Its eyes were hollow, lacking the spark of thought and life that seemed so easy to miss before the Silence came for them all, but its body still seemed to be dexterous and almost graceful despite the obvious rot that had begun to claim it.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    That was just the nature of dragons, he supposed. They always had been graceful creatures, despite their potential for cruelty and immense size.


    Without the walls he was certain they would all be dead by now. The walls of Aegos were thick and tall, with plenty of emplacements for ballistae and archers to rain down a hail of projectiles on attackers, but when faced with dragons and other foes who flew there was little that the walls could offer in terms of protection.


    Still, flying foes were few and far between. There were a few that... there were a few that he''d seen, that made him wish his men on the ballistae could load and loose their bolts just a little faster, and that he suspected he''d never be able to push out of his mind for as long as he lived, but at least they were few in number and rare to join the assaults on mankind''s walled cities. Similarly he was glad for the comparative lack of siege weaponry that the Moonborn and the fallen brought with them; only those humans so depraved to have joined with the Silence possessed the skills of siegecraft, and most of those had been from nomadic-horseman cultures with little in the ways of experience when it came to scaling walls and assembling mangonels and catapults. There were a few such artillery pieces arrayed against them here, but the comparatively poor-quality ammunition and small size of the artillery made it so that it was having very little effect on the walls.


    He couldn''t help but smile at that. The Kliran people would never have made such useless artillery pieces.


    The dalliance between the dragon and his men on the walls continued for quite some time, perhaps even a few hours, but they prevailed in the end. They always did, when properly guided.


    Yes, it had taken quite some time and, more pressingly, around a hundred men and around twenty of their ballistae, but finally after the loosing of hundreds of ballista bolts and iron-tipped arrows into the air, the dragon that had remained at their section of the wall came crashing down to earth.


    A hundred men hurt to lose in a siege such as this, where trained reinforcements were almost non-existent, but he knew they''d gotten off lightly. Dragons were capable of far greater feats of destruction than that at their height. It was lucky that their flames died out in death, or else the body count might have been much higher.


    "Arthenax," came the soft voice of one of the men to his right, "Arthenax the Ironclawed. He reigned over the flats north of the Tildan peninsula, and west of us. I did not- I did not know he was dead. He lorded over the town my parents-parents-parents lived in for as long as anyone could remember. He led them in the fight against the Silence for a hundred years. I didn''t- I did not want to believe he was dead."


    August grimaced. He had no love for dragons, indeed few did, but once they had been some of the only things that seemed capable of standing up to the Silence. That delusion had been shattered long ago, but to see one of them fall and rise again in service to the Silence, to the dreaded Lamb, was far from a cause for celebration.


    "Gods rise and gods fall," he found himself replying, "the dragons were always going to fall eventually. They''ll rise again when all this is done, I have no doubts about that, but even they are insufficient to hold back the tides brought forth in this Time of Ending. No lad, Arthenax has likely been dead for quite some time now. Still, he is at peace again, or as much at peace as the bastard deserves anyway."


    A few men muttered their agreements, a few who worshipped them as gods turned away and muttered prayers, but most stayed silent. What was the use in dwelling on yet another dead tyrant, when the war against the Silence had already claimed so many?


    "Aegiowulf''s company is on the way, Maestro. They''re bringing up reinforcements and ballistae for us."


    He nodded at Melita, the woman having just returned with her guard and messenger.


    "Good work. Anything else?"


    The woman nodded at him.


    "Yes, Maestro: the Imperator saw the dragon go down above the walls. He would like to speak with you."


    I doubt he used such pleasant language, he thought to himself, but then this isn''t exactly the time for pleasantries.


    "See if we can have some of the boys pull down a few of the damaged buildings, then get the craftsmen to use the timbers for ballistae and lumber to reinforce the gates. We''re going to need more than what we already have soon enough. Get the soldiers on the wall to keep an eye out for wherever the other dragon went, and get it out of the sky as soon as possible. Those are the orders I leave for you, Melita."


    The woman hammered a fist to her chest.


    "I''ll see it done, Maestro."


    He nodded and gave her the command of the wall. It did not matter that the forces of hell were at their gates; one did not ignore a command from the Imperator.


    <hr>


    It took him longer than he''d expected to get to the palace of the Imperators, as his route kept being blocked by frantic military activity towards the walls and by blocked roads as he went further into the city, but it still hadn''t been that long all told. Not long enough to worry the Imperator anyway, by the unphased look the man gave him upon arrival.


    A goblet of fine wine was almost pushed into his hands, the servant giving him a look that said ''drink up'' as the Imperator sipped at his own goblet.


    "Leave us," the crowned man said, "leave us and allow no-one in."


    The servant bowed deeply, and all save the Imperator''s own guards and August himself filtered out of the room.


    "August. Do the walls hold?"


    He nodded.


    "They hold, Imperator."


    "I saw the dragon go down from the palace balcony."


    "One of them," he nodded, "but the other is still out there. ''Twas Arthenax that fell."


    The Imperator nodded. He felt bad for the man, at times. To take the reigns of power only because your father had died in the last siege a year ago, to do nothing but prepare for the inevitable next siege, and then to sit here waiting in the palace to see what happened? He wouldn''t have wanted to be in the man''s position. Much better to be coordinating the defences.


    "I did wonder what became of the dragon-lord of the western flats. Now we know, I suppose. I take it you''ve left orders for it to be struck down?"


    He nodded.


    "I took the liberty of ordering a few of the damaged buildings in the city to be torn down and their materials used to build new ballistae and reinforce weakened sections of the wall and gates. I hope I have not overstepped my boundaries?"


    The Imperator waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.


    "You were appointed to lead the defence of the city, Maestro. Gods know all the competent commanders in the legions are dead already, and I wouldn''t trust the rest to defend Dacaecia, let alone Aegos herself."


    August swallowed a little wine and nodded.


    "The Battle of the Talana River was hard on all of us, Imperator. None can fault you or your father for what happened there."


    The man went a little red in the face, but sidestepped the topic once again. Most of the remaining strength of the Aegan Legions had been gambled away at the Talana River, leaving the Kliran as the main military force still remaining in Aegos. Indeed, had it not been for the rearguard action of his forces then it was very likely that this Imperator would have been struck down by the foe before he was even a real leader.


    In fairness the decision to make a stand at the river Talana had been a good one, and August certainly would have made the same choice if he were the Imperator at the time. It was a good defensive position, with the river ford slowing enemy troop movements and rock formations anchoring the flanks.


    The battle had gone well, until the faceless angel had showed itself. It had been a slaughter after that.


    "Yes, well, be that as it may, I need to ask you something extremely important."


    August bowed a little.


    "What is it, my Imperator?"


    "Where the fuck are the Skraeling reinforcements?"


    The man''s lip curled as he had asked the question, almost as though the thought of having requested help from the Skraelings galled him as much as it had galled August and the Kliran.


    "What, those faithless dogs? Where the fuck do you think they are? Guarding their own and leaving us to die, that''s where! Same as they''ve always done."


    Imperator Aegead Agamemnax sneered at him in derision, for once not entirely without cause.


    "I''m not asking about your ancient hatreds, August. I am asking where in all the hells the relief army sent to aid us has reached!"


    August turned his face away a little, shamefaced. The Time of Ending was upon mankind; the sorrows and hatreds of yesteryear needed to be put to one side for now. Not forgotten, never forgotten, but put aside for now.


    "They were set upon by one of the sons of the Great-Warleader of the horsemen. They gave a good fight, but it wasn''t enough. They retreated in good order after suffering heavy losses, but will not march to aid us. Aegos stands alone."


    "The remnants will not continue their march to us?"


    "The remnants have retreated to a small fort on the Breakspear river. They''ll make their stand against the daemons there. There will be no help for us coming from the north."


    "And the south?"


    "The Sotenari have retreated westwards and abandoned the eastern portion of their empire to anarchy and slaughter. They still hide behind their river of fire. As for the Nekhtoudum... there is little enough left of them."


    "The west? The east?"


    August shrugged, the whole conversation a little depressing in all honesty.


    "I can''t tell you anything of the east. We knew little enough of what lay beyond the Drakespine mountains beforehand, but now that all links of trade have been broken there is no news of any sort from the east. As for the west, well, the Brythonians are still putting up a fight. The Greystones are still intact, even if the Black Tree is fallen and torched. Still, the Tor is... the Ouroborisian Tor is corrupted. Different. Wrong. The Brythonians have their hands far too full to attempt to land on the continent and assist us."


    The Imperator sighed heavily, nodding in acknowledgement.


    "So, the enemy seems to be destroying those links to what once was."


    "Likely why they have struck here as well, is it not?"


    For once, there was no attempt to keep the secret from him. For once, the heir to the great Tyrants of Aegos did not attempt to hide the secret his ancestors had held.


    "The catacombs cannot fall, August. The city can be rebuilt, monuments restored, people replenished, but the catacombs cannot fall. They cannot become another Black Tree, another Ouroborisian Tor. They cannot be desecrated by the enemy."


    August nodded. Another strange and mystical monument that the enemy sought to tear down for one reason or another. Still, it made little difference to him in all honesty; his men would hold the walls, or the Kliran people would find themselves destroyed.


    "Why, Imperator."


    "There are things underneath Aegos, Maestro. The wards cannot be allowed to fail. The catacombs cannot be desecrated at the hands of the foe."


    He nodded in supplication, deciding against pushing for now. That was more information than he''d been given on that topic outside of vague rumours in his whole life, so he wasn''t going to start making this a priority now whilst there were vast hordes of daemons outside the gates.


    "Understood, Imperator. We will hold. For as long as we need to, we will hold."


    The Imperator nodded, then sent him away with a wave of the hand. Pompous cunt. I won''t be staying here with my kind when this is all over.


    Yes, the Kliran people would leave for home soon enough. As soon as the Silence was defeated, surely. They had stayed hear for nearly a thousand years, and with the destruction of the Aegan Legions the Imperator really couldn''t hold them here if they wanted to leave. Some of their kind would stay here, of that he had no doubt, and he would not be surprised if some Aegans decided to travel with the Kliran when this all was over in search of a better life. Regardless of that, he needed to make sure the city did not fall first. There was too much at stake here; the city could not fall.


    He looked at the way his people hurried and bustled, constantly readying and repairing defensive fortifications and making internal fallback points within the city for if the walls ever fell, and he smiled. Not a rueful smile, not a bitter smile, but a true smile. Yes, he was certain of it: the city would hold. He knew that much as though it were a true fact, something immutable and unchangeable.


    In that moment he was struck with the premonition that there would soon be a great victory struck by the son of a humble carpenter in the north, and the Silence would almost seem to be sent reeling as a result. If there was any hope to be gained in this dark age, it was that the numberless hordes of the enemy suddenly seemed markedly less numberless than they once had. Indeed, it was almost as though their fury was subsiding and their grip on this world loosening.


    With this newfound hope in his heart he was certain that this most terrible of wars would end within his lifetime. With any luck the Silence would vanish from the world, and August could see to a far more important matter to his people.


    Vengeance.


    All he needed to do was make sure Aegos held, and wait for their saviour to strike a blow against the Silence to the north. After that the Kliran would go home.


    Vengeance. That sounded as though it could possibly be the sweetest thing of all, like honey on his tongue and sparks in his heart.


    Vengeance. Oh, how the line of Kliran would have their vengeance. He had sworn it, just as all of his forefathers had. Vengeance against the Skraeling, vengeance against the Silence, vengeance against all those who had wronged them and who ever would wrong them for the next thousand years to come, the hatreds that their hearts had carried to remain forever undimmed in the minds of their descendants who would come after them.


    Vengeance.

 The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Klirans Return

    <u>The Tribesman and the Tyrant: Kliran''s Return</u>


    <u>The Seventeenth Day of the Sixth Moon, 347BD.


    </u><u>Aegos, Aegan Hills, Dathan.</u>


    <u> </u>


    Godwyn sighed as he watched them lay his father to rest. Poor, poor August. The man who should have led them all back home. The man had been so certain that the war would end within his lifetime that its continuation had come as a genuine surprise to him, seemingly at least.


    Well, Godwyn was in charge of the Klironomoi now. Godwyn Horaxe was going to lead his people home, and damn the Imperator.


    He''d heard a few of his men singing a popular marching song amongst his people, the ''Kliran Bodyguard''s Song'', and for perhaps the first time he''d actually listened to and taken in the words.


    There were better times before this,


    One, two, three.


    For at least we had a homeland,


    One, two, three.


    Before we see those good times again,


    Our great-grandsons shall long be dead so,


    One, two, one, two, three.


    That had been the truth for so long, hadn''t it? they''d stayed here, serving a foreign ruler for so long, that there wasn''t a single one of them whose grandparent could remember a time when they were truly free.


    The Tyrant''s men, we''re paid with bread,


    One, two, three.


    A loaf to feed a dozen soldiers,


    One, two, three.


    Thrice a day you''ll earn some thin soup,


    And you''ll live your life on that so,


    One, two, one, two, three.


    Again, it was the truth. They were paid a pittance, and had lived their lives in shanty-towns and slums if they weren''t in a barracks. There was no expectation that they might contribute to any fields of theology or philosophy, only that they work as craftsmen and soldiers. That was to be their lot in Aegos.


    Only, was that really all his people could be? Of course not. That was all they were allowed to be. They could be so much more, if only they were given the chance.


    If only they would take that chance.


    But then he supposed that circumstances hadn''t really been conductive for a return home within the lifetimes of the last few generations; the Silence had only just receded from the world after all, and to try and return home with a column of civilians and possessions amidst the chaos and the daemons would have been suicidal and foolhardy.


    Now that the Silence was receding it seemed that such constraints were no longer an issue.


    Compelling as such thoughts may have been, it had been the last part of the song that had really hammered home for him the fact that he needed to get his people to leave here at last. The rest of the song had been little more than a jovial lament at their living conditions and their history, but the last verse had really solidified in his mind that their poor conditions and hope to go home really had just been a tool used by the Imperators and the Tyrants before them to ensure that the Klironomeans had stayed as their loyal hounds.


    Each morning we are drilled by southmen,


    One, two, three.


    The Tyrant makes us speak in Aegan,


    One, Two, Three.


    They promise us freedom in Kliran,


    That''s how they convince us to stay,


    One, two, one, two, three!


    And that was just it, wasn''t it? Drilled by southern men who saw them as disposable and barbaric, having their culture diluted by that of Aegos despite all promises to the contrary because in all honesty there was bound to be some level of cultural pollination after having lived here for so long, and then they would be told that their loyal service would be rewarded with assistance in taking their homeland back if they would only wait a little while longer.


    Well, he was done waiting. His people were done with waiting. They were to leave as soon as he gave the order, no matter what anyone said.


    <hr>


    He''d stayed awake all through that night, as had what seemed to be most of the city. Indeed, perhaps the remaining world was awake all through the night, for all knew that tonight was something special. Different.


    When tonight ended, then they would see the sun without shade or ash blocking it for the first time in a very, very long time. Indeed, he was almost certain that the sun had not shone bright and clear since before he was born. He was excited, and perhaps even a little anxious, for what it was to come. For what the setting of the darkened moon and the rising of the cool winds was to mean.


    It meant war. Not a war for survival or for the continuation of humanity, but a war for baser things. A war fought for those things that humanity had squabbled amongst themselves for for so long. It meant a war not fought with the unity of mankind against those who dwelled in the darkened and blackened places of this world, but against the unity of mankind for the sole purpose of carving out their own realms in the new world.


    The Terraneans had done it with their uniting and expanding across Tildan and Dathan, so why shouldn''t the Klironomoi as well?


    Of course, there were some that said now was the perfect time for mankind to truly unite as one and let the wars of yesteryear be forgotten. To allow all humans to come together under one roof and heal the scars on the world. They called for greed to be forgotten, and for violence to be a thing of the past.


    Indeed, now might have been the perfect time for that. If all the leaders of the world who still remained could be persuaded to set aside ambition, then the coming years would be filled with peace and celebration.


    But did humanity care about any of that? Did her leaders? Did Godwyn?


    No. He cared about his people, and about going home. He cared about building a kingdom, and empire, in which his people would live freely at their lord''s commands. He cared about avenging the First Saint, the son of the carpenter who had led humanity to its victories against the Silence in the northern continent and who was subsequently hanged by the Skraelings for blaspheming against the gods, gods that Godwyn''s own people had once held to.


    But what had the Corvid gods given the Klironomeans? Had they helped the ancient Kliran tribes defeat the Skraeling invaders, or protected them as they fled to Aegos in their exodus? Had they granted them strength enough to turn away from the bosom of the Imperators and head home, or honour enough to free those slaves that raised their arms against the Tyrants? Had the Raven heard their calls for war, the Owl their cries for mercy and for wisdom, the Crow their pleas for salvation?


    No. No, they had not. But the First Saint had struck down the Silence as it seemed unstoppable, had turned back the tide of foulness and death that had rampaged across the continent.


    The First Saint had been a man whom the Klironomeans could follow. His cult had spread like wildfire across the Klironomean populations of Aegos, and when the blessed Saint''s mother had preached the words of his divinity, the Klironomoi had listened. When the blessed Saint had been hanged in the streets of Aegos by Skraeling forces invited in for the victory parade by the Imperator, they had been incensed. When she was crucified afterwards, they had wished for nothing more than to intervene. The Imperator had kept them tethered, and called their beliefs foolish.


    Well, that was the end of it. That was what had made him march his way to the Imperator, and demand an audience. Not request one, as every Maestro was supposed to do. He demanded one.


    The Imperator had been a man grown when Godwyn''s father had first led their people. A young man, but a man nonetheless. Given the fact that the Terranean armies were marching from the Tildan Peninsula and across Dathan, it seemed as though he might be the last Imperator of the Aegan Empire.


    The Klironomoi had led the Aegan Legions to victory over the first of the Terranean forces arrayed against Aegos already, but there would undoubtedly be many more to come. The ancient powers of antiquity were melting away, and younger powers were taking their place. The Terraneans were one, and it was his duty as the leader of his people to ensure that the Kliran were another.


    He stormed into the grand halls of the Aegan Imperator, a certainty set across his face and in his mind that he had not felt since long before his father had died.


    "Maestro," the smarmy man said as a servant pressed a goblet of wine into his hands, "it seems you have forgotten your sense of propriety."


    Godwyn pushed the goblet back into the hands of the servant. He didn''t drink anything stronger than small beer, since he always found that it tended to impede on his decision making. That wasn''t something he was going to allow to happen to him, not with how he''d seen some of his men end up after drinking too much for far too long.


    Instead he simply continued walking forwards, towards the Imperator, ignoring all the unspoken rules around such a convention. You were not supposed to approach the Imperator unless you were summoned to him.


    "You seem to lack your father''s sense of understanding for traditions, boy. Be thankful I am not as cruel as my own father was in the face of such insults."


    Godwyn stilled his hands, which at some point had balled into fists and begun shaking, as he spoke in as level a tone as he could manage to the man who was supposed to be his Imperator.


    "You invited the hated enemies of my people into the city. You allow them to hang the divine. For a thousand years our people have been your loyal subjects, have kept your family in power. For a thousand years we have weathered the demands and whims of the Tyrants and an indifference that has bordered on criminal from the Imperators. We have served loyally.


    "But we can''t. Not anymore. Not since you invited those barbarians into our homes and bid us break bread with them whilst they mocked and derided our misfortunes. Not since we were made to stand by and watch whilst the most revered Saint was hanged. We will not stand for this anymore, Imperator. Not any more."


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    The Imperator, for his part, stood there with that same smile on his face. Even though Godwyn had closed the distance across the room and was now mere inches from the man''s face, he still wore the same smarmy, condescending smile as he always did.


    "Well, never let it be said that I am not magnanimous. Your people are free to leave, if they so choose. They can return to a land almost completely razed and salted by war, and try to eke out a miserable existence between famines and diseases. They can go home to a land that has not known them for more than a thousand years, a land in which their enemies have ruled with a millennia in which to entrench themselves and their culture, and see how they fare.


    "Or they can stay here, in Aegos. In the cities of the Aegan Empire. They can stay here, where their districts and towns shall be rebuilt with modern amenities and a greater standard of living, free from famine, where they will be able to assist the Aegan Empire in launching an invasion of their homelands in the future with the security of knowing that they will have other homes to return back to if needs be and the wars go ill.


    "It''s your choice, Maestro Horaxe. It''s your people who will perish for this damnable crusade of your fathers."


    Godwyn turned away a little, but then steeled himself. He couldn''t let the man convince him to stay, not when all of the promises from the mouths of all of the Imperators were and always had been empty.


    "Your forefathers have talked for a thousand years of conquering Klironomea and allowing us to resettle in our homelands. One thousand years have passed, and to date only the lands surrounding Tyranopolis were claimed. Your kind have had their time to act on their end of the deal, just as my kind have always upheld ours; we were the loyal hounds to be let loose on your enemies, and nothing more. We are done being the middlemen of empires, Imperator Aegead Agamemnax. The Klironomoi are yours to command no longer."


    The Imperator''s face flushed a bright red for a moment, but then it was gone and the man''s mask was back on. The Imperator turned to walk away and waved dismissively at him.


    "On your way then, ''Son of Kliran''. I hope your people have more sense than you do and reject your rank madness for what it is, but I don''t hold out much hope. Your people always have given too much weight to ancient hatreds. Leave Aegos, and attempt to reclaim your homeland. Abandon Aegos when it needs you the most. Abandon us when the Terraneans are baying at our doors. See how long your people last in the wilderness.


    "And when it all comes crashing down, Godwyn, know that the shades of my forefathers will be laughing at you. Know that all the Imperators and all the Tyrants who took pity on your folk will curse you for abandoning the fruits of their kindness.


    "Most of all, know that your own ancestors will disdain you for ruining their only chance at going home.


    "Goodbye, Maestro Godwyn Horaxe. I relieve ''Kliran''s Folk'' of their service."


    <hr>


    He stalked out of the palace and back towards the gathering of his Lieutenants. He knew that he had been lucky not to be shortened by a head for so brazenly defying the authority of the Imperator, but he was not willing to stick around and see whether or not the man would stick to his decision of allowing them to leave. He knew well that the Imperator was an arbitrary man at the best of times, and he had no desire to be on the receiving end of the man''s arbitrary nature.


    His Lieutenants, chief amongst them Melita, snapped to attention and hammered a fist to their chest by way of greeting.


    "Melita," he started, "have you recieved word of the attitude of the rest of the city yet?"


    The dependable veteran nodded.


    "I do. The people of this city are scared, Maestro. The Silence may be gone, but they know that the wars against the Terraneans is only just beginning. They know that it is a war they cannot win. The Terraneans are marching again, Ser. The Aegan people are worried that these newcomers will supplant them."


    He pressed his lips into a thin line, but did not budge from his convictions.


    "Well then, perhaps it''s time to allow the newcomers to end their reign. Come on, get the boys together, their families too; it''s nearing time for our people to return home. We''ll seize the lands north of the Tylana river and use Tyranopolis as a staging post. Keep that part quiet for now, but make sure the people are ready for a fight if needs be. Not that I think we''ll need to do too much fighting; we''ll just supplant the local garrisons and tell them that we''ve been sent by the Imperator. With any luck we''ll arrive before the news of our freedom does, and we''ll be able to effectively seize control of the northern reaches of the Aegan Empire."


    His Lieutenants gave each other a variety of looks that ranged from worried to excited, but all of them were clearly trying to run through the logistics of so monumental an endeavour in their head. The Klironomoi had been sedentary for so long; would it even be possible to mimic the grand exodus of their distant ancestors?


    It would have to be. It needed to be. They would take all they could and reclaim their homelands, no matter the cost.


    Melita hammered a fist to her chest, the motion quickly followed by the rest of the Lieutenants and commanders amongst his personal council.


    "We''ll have it all ready before the week is over. The skies are showing signs of starting to clear, and at times the light seems almost blinding compared to what we''re used to during the day. If ever there was a time to go home, then the first day under fully clear skies would surely be the time to do so. Our people will take it as an omen, Maestro."


    "Not Maestro," he replied, "for that office has been stripped from me by the Imperator. If you would will it so, I would call myself king. The first king of all the Klironomoi, the first of any of our kind to be known as royalty since we left our homes and our ancestral lands behind. I would call myself king, and my child after me, but only should you all will it. Only if our people will it. I await only your decision."


    Melita and the others looked around at each other, grinning more than a little.


    "Godwyn, ''twas your forefathers that saw us to safety. Once, long ago, your ancestor was chosen by the leaders of our people to get us to safety. He succeeded. Since then it has been the charge of those descendants who came after your legendary ancestor to ensure that we remained safe and, if nothing else, capable of weathering the storm. By the Saint, your father led us to victory against the Silence; I fucking watched the possessed corpse of the great dragon Arthenax go down over the walls of this fucking city, and I was there when he organised the rearguard that salvaged as much as we could after the disaster that was Talana.


    "If there was anyone that I would follow home, it would be him. With his death, there can be none alive who calls themselves a child of Klironomea and thinks that August''s son would not be the right man for us to follow.


    "Your father was tested in the waning of the Silence, Godwyn. Your test will be to see us home. Lead us, King Godwyn Horaxe, First of your Name, and see us home!"


    He smiled a large and true smile. He had the backing of his Lieutenants, and through them he would have the backing of his people. Not that he had ever truly doubted that he would be willingly followed of course, for at the end of the day his people were only focused on their vengeance. Knowing that he was the best person to deliver it to them, there was never really any doubt as to the fact that it would be left up to him to bring his people home. Still, it was nice for the confirmation.


    He nodded stiffly at his Lieutenants, his voice thick with emotion as he spoke.


    "Thank you, my friends. We need to start putting the word out amongst our people immediately. When the skies turn blue and grey, when the ash is gone and the blackness fled, we move home. We give the Skraelings no time to recover, no chance at preparation.


    "We set up a temporary mobile administration, a mobile capital so to speak, to act as our court until we reach as far west as west goes. Until we reach Anaria."


    A few of his Lieutenants exchanged looks.


    "You mean... we''re not just taking back our own lands the Skraelings forced us from, but-"


    "But all the lands we once laid claim to. We sweep them back north of the Aenir, into their ancient homelands that have now been ravaged by the horse-lords. We see them kneel to us, or we sound their death-knell. We take it all back, and Anaria will be the greatest city of Kliran''s Folk once more. This I swear to you, as an oath. Should I be found wanting then may the divine strike me down!"


    There was a smattering of good-natured grumbled support at his statement, and Godwyn knew in that moment that he had to deliver victory to his people.


    The Kingdom of Klironomea would be forged, even if he had to wade through blood knee-high to see it made so. His people had suffered enough.


    <hr>


    The last week passed by in a frenzied blur of preparations made in half-secret. Everyone knew that his people were more active than normal, more active even than during the last siege of Aegos, but none of them were entirely certain of what was to come.


    Well, until the night before they were to leave. He had spoken, as had his Lieutenants, in every city square and local hotspot about their leaving. They called not only on the remaining Klironomeans, who had already known of the plan, to come home, but for the people of Aegos to join them. The Imperators had not always been gracious hosts, submitting them to cruel living conditions and borderline squalor, but the people of Aegos had treated them well enough. Besides, a few merchants and skilled workers travelling with them might have some solid economic benefits once the Skraelings were torn down and cast aside.


    When the sun rose the next day, it was to a changed world. It was to a world free from ash and fire. It was, by all accounts, a world freed from the daemons that had tormented them.


    For the first time in his life, he saw a sky undimmed by ash and darkness. For the first time in his life he bore witness to unfettered sunlight, to blue skies and the singing of the larks. His banners billowed against the clear sky, charcoal black axeman against a dark-yellow field all the more striking for its contrast with the true natural world. For the first time he knew that the world was at peace, and that things were getting better.


    The world was healing from the gaping wounds that the silence had inflicted upon it, and most of the world would simply begin the long and arduous process of picking up the remains of what once had been and piecing together a new world with whatever scraps they could find of the old.


    But the Klironomoi were not like most of the world. Godwyn stared out over clear skies and glittering waters, and he snarled. The Klironomeans cared not for the needs of the Tyrants and Imperators they had served, nor did they care to mate the uprisings that had been fomenting in this society for so long. They had fulfilled their purpose here, had done their duty and suffered in bleak conditions.


    No longer. The sons and daughters of Kliran were going home.


    "The war against the Silence is over," he said to Melita and his other Lieutenants as they gathered in front of the assembled crowd by the gates, "and as such so is our service to the Imperator. We defended his cities, forced a stalemate with the Terraneans, and have done as his ancestors bid for a thousand years. But the Imperator is weak, and he pays us dismally. What need have we for a leader who will not uphold his ancestral contracts?


    "Our time of exile is over," he continued, "for peace is as nothing without a homeland. Gather all our folk and tell them to bring everything they own. The Klironomoi are going home!"


    Yes, to the rest of the world this was to be a time of healing. Of rebirth. Of peace.


    But to Kliran''s Folk there was nothing that could possibly be as bitter as the sting of exile, nor as sweet as the taste of vengeance.


    <hr>


    In the north, there is word of a legend. It is a legend so old that it was only a half-remembered thing when the mighty river Aenir was young, and when all men of the north lived together under one roof.


    Once, long ago, the lands of the northmen were united as one under the Great King.


    The Great King reigned over an age of gold for a thousand years of plenty and freedom, and mankind was happy.


    The Great King had two sons, Skraella and Kliran.


    The two boys loved their father at first, but as time wore on and his reign showed no sign of coming to an end, they grew embittered and jealous of the man''s position of power.


    Skraella, the eldest of the two, challenged their father for the throne. At the height of their duel when their grief-stricken father seemed likely to strike down his wayward eldest son, Kliran''s knife found its way into the Great King''s back.


    Their father dead, the boys celebrated that their own reign might finally begin.


    But of course, they did not want to share power with each other. They did not want to share their reign.


    Skraella struck down his brother and forced him to flee, no matter that Kliran had won him the throne. No matter that his younger brother had saved his life.


    Yes, Kliran fled. But Kliran remembered. Kliran remembered all. And his followers, Kliran''s Folk?


    Well, they remembered as well.


    They would be the youngest sibling no longer. Their revenge would be total.


    The rest was history.

 The Ravens Laughter Part 2: High Flies the Kestrel - Prologue:

    <u>Prologue</u>


    <u>The First Day of the First Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Thrytas looked out over the sea of faces in the banquet hall, seeing those of his sons amongst them.


    So, he was no longer a king. Well, it could have been worse. He''d at least been able to negotiate the way by which he left his crown behind, had been able to become one of the most powerful men in this newly-forged realm, so he was quite content. One look at the despondent face of the once-King of Owkrestos, Aleksandar Wyldlarch, and at the lack of any form of crown about his head, told him all he needed to know as to whether or not he''d made the right choice.


    His boys, the Angels bless them both, had been more understanding than he''d thought they''d be even given his high estimations of both of them; they''d seemed to all but immediately understand his reasons, understand the potential for profit, and assuaged any doubts that may have remained as to his choice to swear fealty to the then-King of Teleytaios and Owkrestos.


    That Teleytaian was now the King of Triarios instead of Thrytas as well, but the charming man wasn''t concerned. ''Grand Duke'' was a good enough title for him, and if it came with a slew of monopolies and trading charters for his family industries then it meant that they would be making more money as vassals than they ever had as kings and princes.


    Of course, not everyone was pleased with his decision. Most of his lords, most of his old vassals, had seen his deal as a betrayal. It was, as they had so eloquently put it, "A deal with a daemon". Quite frankly, he didn''t care. Most of his southern lords had been away from their holdfasts with their men launching seasonal raids into the northern Tildan peninsula, and the rest hadn''t had the time to gather their forces together before his sons, with the forces of the family, had put down their petty rebellions.


    The vassal-houses of Triarios had found their rebellion choked in its cradle, never to rise as a threat to the newly-minted Grand Duke of Stratiotheros. His new title had been so named for the core lands of his reaffirmed domain, that being the city of Stratiopolis and the rich hills surrounding the urban centre, but in reality he now held control over the fertile fields and ore-plains of the Arthaxan Plateau as well. The rest, those lands that were little more than forests and shepherd''s hills? Those now belonged to his new king.


    Oh, there was profit to be made from those lands as well of course, he knew that, but the richest and most fertile lands he had been sure to secure for himself. For his family. The rest was a sacrificial lamb to ensure the young King did not find the deal too equal and fair for his liking.


    Thrytas knew from his own men in Anaria that if there was one thing King Lykourgos, then Prince Lykourgos, was known for amongst the courts and commoners of Teleytaios then it was that he despised the nobility, and despised working with them even more. A deal to turn Thrytas into a lord beneath Lykourgos was always going to need a little grease to make sure things went smoothly.


    But of course, matters of state weren''t the only thing on his mind right now. Neither were matters of war or business, come to that. No, the other thing on his mind right now was faith.


    Thrytas was not a faithful man. He wouldn''t particularly call himself impious, but he had claimed to follow either the Old-Church or the Cult of Anawroth so many times and had gone back and forth between those churches for so long that he was certain that there was bound to be some sort of punishment awaiting him in the world beyond this one. Still, he wasn''t impious. He believed the stories of the First Saint, of the carpenter''s son, he believed in the divinity of the seven Angels that had aided the greatest man to have ever lived in the war against the Silence, and he believed in the divine right to rule given to kings and lords.


    What he did not believe, could not believe, was that the man who stood at the King''s side was an Angel. He''d heard the rumours, had seen the wide-eyed looks of his spies and agents in the capital as they reported to him with all they knew, but he could not believe them. He couldn''t.


    Because if Hydran was still alive then Anawroth was still alive as well, and that thought frightened him to no end.


    Thrytas was a soldier, a general, and a businessman. He did not fear dying ignobly on the battlefield, nor did he fear the assassin''s blade finding him in the dark. He did not fear death. What he feared was the thought that out there, somewhere, walking amongst men, was war incarnate. He did not wish to think on the destruction such a being could bring about, the evils their powers could be used for in the wrong hands.


    This figure by the King could not be Hydran. He could not be. There was too much at stake for him to be a true Angel, no matter the words of his agents.


    Anawroth was said not to be like the other Angels: according to the priests of his cult there had been some sort of grudge that had grown between him and the other Angels, or multiple grudges according to some people.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    To some it was the Angel of the Wilds, Arnka, besting him in an archery contest. To others it was when the Angel of Death, Aenethar, refused to let him keep the souls of those felled in war as keepsakes. Some even claim the grudge began when the Angel of the Seas, Hydran, proved to the Angel of War that the turbulent waves of the oceans contained a rage greater than any that a mere man, that a warrior, could possibly possess. It didn''t matter what or who you believed, for all that mattered in the end was the consensus that Anawroth did not mix with the other Angels as he should of.


    If this figure really was Hydran, and Anawroth was truly out there, then he feared that the world might be rent asunder by their meeting.


    "Father, you really must stop worrying so much."


    He turned to look at his son, Kyrian, and smiled a little.


    "I''m not particularly worried at the moment, Kyrian. A little apprehensive, but not worried."


    His son raised an eyebrow at him before continuing.


    "So you say, father. Your face gave you away, however."


    He cursed a little under his breath.


    "And I had thought I was doing so well. What was it about my face that gave me away?"


    "Nothing," came the only slightly amused response from his youngest boy, "but your admission just then gave it away. What is it that bothers you? It can''t be our crown industries, for myself and Kyrtos gave you the latest figures not one sennight ago and they were more than good. Nor can it be the unrest in the lands that we now control, but once belonged to our vassal houses. I know that my brother is sceptical that our new King can pacify his own new territories, but I have faith in him. You do as well, else you wouldn''t have taken that deal.


    "There''s something else bothering you. Something harder to explain. Is it anything that Kyrtos and I can help you with?"


    He smiled again at his youngest boy. Sometimes he wondered just how it was that they''d become more observant than he had ever been.


    "I don''t think so, son. Not with this matter. Ah, it''s most likely nothing anyway. Where is your brother, anyhow? I don''t think I''ve seen much of him since the festivities began."


    Kyrian made a noise of mock dismissal at the mention of his brother. The two boys bickered endlessly, but he knew that they loved each other just as surely as any family was bound. He was proud of both of them.


    "Pah, you know him. He''ll likely be entertaining a few of the guests with stories of his own on the balcony. Some of them might even be true."


    He chuckled to himself. Yes, that certainly sounded like the Kyrtos he knew. His eldest son was nothing if not charismatic, and if charisma required a lie or two to get people laughing then Kyrtos was certainly not averse to embellishing his tales.


    "Of course, how foolish of me. I really should have checked there first. To change the subject, Kyrian, have you had the chance to speak with our eminent King yet?"


    His son shook his head looking a little sheepish.


    "Ah- no, father. I have not. Well, I should not say I haven''t had the chance. To tell you the truth father, he... well, I will not say that he intimidates me per-se, but there''s something about the way he looks at people that... well, makes me uneasy."


    He stayed quiet, and gestured for his son to continue.


    "Well it''s just... you see it when he looks at you, surely? It''s not like he''s sizing you up, it''s more like... ah, I''m struggling to put this into words. It''s less like he''s sizing you up and more like he''s studying everything about you. It''s as if he''s seeing the people he looks at as pieces on a deicide board, and is tracking what he knows about them so he knows who to sacrifice for the greatest profit in a given situation."


    Thrytas nodded in appreciation for his son''s thoughts. It was good to have an outside opinion on matters such as this.


    "Then in that case we shall have to ensure that we become indispensable to him, mustn''t we?"


    They both turned and looked to their king, who was dancing with the King of Polaeros. Both young men had fond smiles on their faces,


    "I have to say, it is rather strange seeing the young man who conquered Owkrestos dancing with someone from his past. It''s a little difficult to reconcile the person in front of me as being the same as the person who has fought and won through two wars now."


    "Three," he replied, correcting his son without looking away from the king, "unless there''s a reason as to why you''re omitting the Twilight Rebellion?"


    He saw his son shake his head out of the corner of his eye.


    "Ah, I forgot about that one. To think, an entire war dedicated to tearing down the nobility, a perfect example to exact royal control over the second-largest kingdom in the Heptarchy, squandered in its final moments by a king too cowardly to see his victory through in totality."


    Thrytas chuckled.


    "The boy''s father was a fool who couldn''t see the talent that was in front of him all along, or else looked for talent in all the wrong places. This king isn''t as weak-willed as his father, neither is he as prone to bending this way and that with the wind. He''ll pick a course, and he''ll stick to it. Our job, from now on, is finding a way to turn his course into our profit. Failing that, we''ll have to find a way to make him change course."


    "Not make him," his son interjected, "because he''d never accept that. His pride and past would never let him be swayed by nobles under his command. We''d need to convince him, and probably whilst using someone else as a proxy. There''s little chance of him listening to us, despite our arrangements with him."


    He nodded at his boy once more. Angels, what had he done to deserve such smart boys? Their sister was dead, may she rest evermore, but at the very least his sons were still here. He''d always clung to that since she''d passed.


    "I think you may be right, son. I think you may be right. Well, that''s our path forwards. Now we just need to swallow our own pride and keep our family safe."


    "Of course, father. By your leave?"


    He nodded, and his son left to go mingle with the other attendees. He smiled a little, despite the fact that he no longer wore a crown about his head.


    It might have wounded his pride to kneel to a boy less than half his age, but he didn''t fret. Anawroth was the Angel of War, and if there was one thing that his family had learned whilst leading Anawroth''s kingdom then it was surely that there was no battlefield more cutthroat than the market, no army that could march without smiths and industry behind them, and nothing that could possibly be worth fighting for more than the promise of profit without end. At the end of the day, war was just business after all.


    House Sigiros had come very far on the back of business. He did not intend to see them stall in their rise just yet.

 Cardinal Spyridon I: Winter Greys

    <u>Cardinal Spyridon I: Winter Greys</u>


    <u>The Eleventh Day of the First Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    Fascinating. The words of the book had been truly fascinating.


    Cardinal Spyridon was not a heretic. He did not align himself with those beliefs that were seen as too unorthodox even for the mainstream churches. He did not believe in them.


    That did not mean that the words themselves were not fascinating.


    Saint Khidon had truly possessed a way with words, and having now read the most widely-known and reviled of his works Spyridon was under no illusions as to how his deceased friend had fallen to worshipping such beliefs. The words of Khidon would surely have been enough to make almost any man believe, for not only were they the words of a gifted orator and author but also the words of an academician, of a scholar. They were words for both the faithful and the learned, for the rich and the poor, the humble and the proud.


    Perhaps above all, they had been words that could reasonably have been applied to almost any faith in the world instead of just to the Church of the First Saint. Barbaroi corvid-gods, southern winged-men and slavers, Terranean pagan cults, all could coexist with the words of Saint Khidon.


    It was no wonder the churches of old had seen him as such a threat to their influence. To their power. Of course, given that a not-inconsiderable section of the book had been dedicated to the ''proper'' way for a priest or monk to live out their lives, that of course being a life steeped in ascetism and revolving around charity, he had also been a threat to their wealth. No wonder he''d been executed for heresy.


    Spyridon was no Khidonean, not by a long shot. He believed in the words of the more mainstream sects of the church, when they weren''t being used to burn and torture the innocent that was. He was no follower of Khidon''s words, and yet he could not deny that many of the criticisms the ancient man had put forth so long ago still applied today.


    Indeed, it seemed that many of them were more applicable now than they ever had been before.


    His readings and preparations had carried him through the first half of winter''s chills, the thought that he might avenge his friend keeping him warm even on the coldest of nights, but now the preparations were made. It was time.


    There had been no word from Aegos for more than a month now. The last thing they had heard was that the last of the old guard had been fighting in the streets with Admeta''s loyalists after the death of Adikos, and that scouting parties wearing the sigils of the Imperator north of the river Daedala had been seen on the outskirts of nearby villages.


    That told them that war was coming. It may even have been already here, cloaked behind the veil of chaos surrounding the capital that none wished to go near at the moment.


    The news had been carried by the Aegan watch, who were more afraid of coming under inquisitorial oversight than they were of risking everything by abandoning their posts and marching to Athio. They''d been accepted with open arms, warm hearths, and hot soup by the members of the church in Athio. It was important to remember that, for every clergyman and woman who had willingly blinded themselves to the cruelty of the regime, there was another who had tried to help people whilst not drawing suspicion on themselves and getting their charges killed. There were still plenty of good people in the Aegan hills, and now they flocked to Athio for a chance at overthrowing the towering edifice that lay at the heart of all their ills.


    But of course, any major campaign would have to wait until the worst of winter was over. To march an army through snows such as these would be madness, and to expect them to fight at the end of it would be even more so. Athio could not take the fight to Admeta or the Imperator at the moment, and so instead the people within its walls waited.


    They cooked meals for the hungry, they sewed both clothes capable of withstanding the weather and gambesons capable of withstanding attacks, they fletched bolts and arrows with feathers from birds they''d caught for food, repaired weapons and maintained armour, ran drills, and most of all they prayed. Oh, how they prayed.


    Spyridon was a Cardinal in the church, he had seen many prayers in his lifetime, but he''d never seen any quite like this. No matter the chill, no matter the snow, people huddled into the grand Cathedral of Athio and the dozens of churches and chapels that dotted the cityscape, and they prayed for salvation.


    As he delivered his weekly sermons Spyridon got the sense that the people of this city were not used to being spoken to by their Cardinal. It made sense, for Sin had never been one for conventional prayers or the giving of alms, but if nothing else it gave Spyridon the sense that at least he was able to do something for these people. When he delivered his sermons calling for the people of the city to set aside the dogmatic views that had been forced upon them, that had been forced upon him, and learn to live alongside the other sects of the faith in harmony, he felt as though he were actually helping to make a difference in this city. His rhetoric of community was helping to push change forwards, and even those members of the other cults had begun to be accepted back into the city as equals. They had come back cautiously at first, afraid that it was a trick, but when they had realised it was no trick they came in their hundreds.


    All of the sects of the church were welcome in Athio again, and soon they would be welcome across all of the Aegan hills.


    Except for the Church of Bloodied Purity. Because fuck those slave-owners.


    He''d... he''d not talked with Hawk all that much, honestly. The two of them weren''t on bad terms, and they both completed all the work they needed to daily, but they didn''t talk to each other much. Spyridon was fairly confident that they both sort of knew that if they started talking about Sin again, which they doubtless would, the conversation would only end in a row surrounding who''s plans were the correct way to move forwards, and who was to shoulder the blame for their shortcomings. Neither of them needed that sort of environment at the moment, so they decided instead to meet up with each other after Spyridon had delivered his sermons once a week and review the progress they had made in their work and question the other about anything strange they had seen in each other''s reports and paperwork.


    In short they still communicated well and worked together, but their teamwork was at arms length and tooth-clenched at the best of times. He had no doubts that if either of them could lead this rebellion without the other, they''d do so in a heartbeat. They couldn''t however, and so their cooperation continued on.


    The last of the harvests had already been brought in by the time the Day of Ascension rolled around, the last of the winter barley and winter wheat crops having been harvested in the eleventh and twelfth moons respectively, and so it was now simply a matter of keeping an eye on the tallies of food they had stockpiled in the city and waiting out the winter. As soon as the snows had melted and the chill was bearable, the armies that had coalesced in Athio would march on the city of Aegos and put an end to the Most Devout Church and it''s reign of blood and fear, never mind the morass of mud that the melting snows and spring rains would leave all around them.


    They only needed to stick to the roads, after all. If the old Tyrants and Imperators of Aegos had left anything behind, then it was the straight and well-maintained roads that linked the great cities that had once formed the heartlands of their empire. Those roads were all the armies of the various warring factions in Aegos would need to take themselves to victory, and whoever controlled the roads would be able to severely restrict the movement of the other armies for as long as that control remained. He might not have had a military or strategic mind, but he knew that control of the roads would be pivotal in any quick conflict. People would adapt to not using them and traversing the countryside with their armies if the war dragged on long enough, but the opening months would certainly stick to the roads.


    Hawk seemed to agree with him on at least that much, which was nice. The man seemed to not enjoy agreeing with him, but as someone with far more experience than Spyridon on military matters it was nice to know that when the man disagreed with him it was because Spyridon was actually wrong, and not just out of a sense of pride and distaste.


    Yes, the two of them didn''t get on very well, but they hadn''t let that interfere with their goals. They couldn''t afford to, not when the freedom of all Aegos was on the line. Not when the death of Sin was still fresh enough in their minds to seem like an open wound on some days, oozing with lost futures and half-dreamed memories.


    If there was anything he could say that would make it clear that he was helping their rebellion, then it was surely that he was a wonderous administrator. Sin had done a well-enough job here, and everything was neatly organised and filed away so that he could easily access papers and files whenever he might need it, but Spyridon was more at home here than his much lamented friend could ever be.


    Spyridon was known for bookkeeping and organisation, for giving out alms and managing tithes. He had little experience leading people into battle, but plenty at telling them which files told them what and where they were all kept.


    All of that to say that Athio was being run better than it ever had before, and though his own demesne of Chytos was likely suffering under slight inefficiencies due to the island city now being run by messenger birds, he knew that there couldn''t have been any administrative crises that had developed over there without his knowledge. He''d left their administrators in far too organised a state for that to occur.


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    It was only his knowledge of bookkeeping that made him feel like he was actually making a difference here. Not only was he responsible for ensuring that these lands ran smoother than they ever had before, but also it was surprising to him just how transferrable some of those skills were to times of war; Spyridon would still make no claim to being ready to lead people on the frontlines, but at the very least he found that his knowledge of administration had given him something of a head start when it came to learning about supply lines and the home front.


    The winter skies were dull, the winds cold, and the frost deadly. He couldn''t send an army to march through such conditions, and so the soldiers had hunkered down in the many monastery-barracks scattered around Athio and continued with their drills whilst they waited for his command to march. It would be Hawk''s command, in truth, but Spyridon was still the figurehead. It had to look like he was the one in charge, if for no other reason than he already had some level of repute amongst the people of Aegos whereas Hawk was entirely unknown.


    If people knew the leader of a rebellion, then they were more likely to join the fight compared to a rebellion with an unknown leader. It was that simple.


    The saving grace of winter was that no-one else could send armies around on the march either. Until the campaigning season started in the third moon of the year, it was unlikely that anyone would risk making a move. They were content to remain in Athio for now, biding their time, and Admeta''s forces likely still had their hands full restoring order in Aegos itself before winter fell.


    And as for Imperator Thrax, who''s forces north of Aegos across the river Daedala had definitely been watching the events in the Most Devout Empire intently and waiting for an opportune moment to strike, trying to ferry an entire army across a river without a real bridge across it was already difficult enough. Spyridon doubted that the Imperator would attempt to make things even more difficult for himself by doing so in the winter and causing many of his men to freeze to death or drown after going into shock if they fell into the waters of the river. Imperator Thrax had been a very successful general before he''d tried to seize complete power of Aegos as part of his rivalry with Archcardinal Adikos, and Spyridon doubted that the man''s mental faculties had deteriorated so much so as to allow so suicidal a manoeuvre.


    For now though, such thoughts could be laid to rest. They were only really distracting him from the papers he was filing at the moment anyway, and there was always enough work to take care of that he couldn''t really afford to waste time thinking on currently unrelated matters. They might technically have been in open rebellion against Aegos, but that didn''t mean that matters of state and economy could be left to fall by the wayside.


    Especially not under the cold and dark cover of winter.


    <hr>


    The paperwork and musings continued long into the gloaming hours, the fog outside only being kept at bay with what almost seemed to be a wall of candles burning bright. An exaggeration of course, but the mental image made him smile nonetheless.


    It was only when those candles suddenly blew out as one, however, that he looked up from his paperwork. As he did so, the suddenly-extinguished candles seemed to ignite with a blaze of light brighter than any flame he had ever seen.


    At first he was terrified, convinced that this was some moment of great import and perhaps even of divine origin. It didn''t take long for such delusions to pass him by of course, but the fact that they had occurred at all should probably have showed just how fragile a state his mind was in at the moment.


    He stuck his head out into the hall outside his room, and called out to see if anyone was there.


    "Hello?"


    Nothing. That''s strange; there''s nearly always a few servants and menials performing tasks out here no matter the hour.


    "Anyone?"


    Still nothing. He lit a candle at his desk, contained in a chamberstick, and held it before him as he stepped out fully into the hall. He wasn''t sure why he was entertaining his mind''s flights of fancy, but this seemed as good a time as any for a break from paperwork. If nothing else it would give him a good excuse to stretch his legs for a bit before returning to his evening work.


    He was almost immediately ready to decry the candles as nothing more than a trick of the light, as something not entirely real, but at that moment the candle in his chamberstick seemed to blaze as those candles in the windowsill had. Not only that, but it almost seemed to go against the breeze and point to his left.


    He turned to face the direction the flame had pointed, and was surprised to find that although he was now stood facing directly into the breeze that rose from the corridor the candle pointed in that direction still, unflinching and unflickering.


    He set off walking in that direction, more curious now than anything, and tried his best to keep his footsteps light. He wasn''t sure why he was being so cautious, for he was in the most secure building in all of Athio, but it still felt warranted nonetheless.


    There were many corridors in the main keep of Athio, he''d come to realise these last few months. There were many corridors indeed, and they were spread out on many levels and stories. All of those above ground were well-maintained and in use, as were the basement levels, but the under-basement levels were old indeed. Old, and hardly understood. If a map ever existed that charted the labyrinth that lay beneath this keep, potentially beneath all of Athio, then it had gone missing long ago.


    Still, Spyridon had no intention to go quite that low. Not willingly, anyway. The keep was safe, and whilst the under-basement levels were supposed to be safe as well it wasn''t something he was willing to stake a bet on. He would play it safe and satiate his curiosity a little further, but no more than that.


    As he continued trudging in the direction of the flame, he began to see a shadow on the wall. It moved always away from him, just as fast as he could move towards it, and as such he could never seem to get any closer to whatever it was that was casting the strange form onto the walls around him.


    He didn''t feel frightened in that moment, despite the fact that he''d already descended three flights of stairs and was set to head down into the first basement very soon, but he was still apprehensive. The shadow looked like that of a person, which might explain why it was moving away from him so effectively; if it was a person that didn''t want to be seen, then heading downwards and away from him was certainly the best way to do it.


    It was only there, on the steps heading down into the first cellar which for so long seemed to have stored nothing more than wine, that he thought he might have been able to cover just an inch of the distance between himself and this mystery figure. He recognised that he was being monumentally foolish in coming here, following this person here, by himself, but for some unknowable reason he felt perfectly safe whilst following whoever this person was. It was something he would have to consider later, certainly.


    There, as he descended down the forth set of steps into the wine cellar, then down a fifth into an under-cellar, for the briefest of moments he caught sight of the slightest hint of crimson cloth. It was only for an instant, and then it was gone back around the corner. He moved to follow, but no matter how close he got the figure always seemed just as far away as before. He had remained in Athio for a couple of months now, but still felt far too inexperienced with traversing the dark hallways and granite chambers of the keep that had once been his friend''s home. He was hardly certain he remembered these halls at all, for he rarely descended down into the under-cellars of Athio if he could help it.


    There were too many secrets held by the dead for him to feel welcome down there.


    Curiosity had compelled him to come this far, but upon realising just how many steps down he had gone he stilled. He wished to learn who this figure was, yes, but not enough to risk descending down into the only-partially mapped catacombs and mausoleums beneath the silent city.


    As he came to a stop so too did the figure, or at least the shadow which Spyridon had been following the whole time did. Perhaps it was simply some sort of street-urchin, or one of the many dispossessed and forgotten dregs of society which were rumoured to survive beneath the city?


    Myths, a voice in his head told him. Intriguing, said another.


    He bit back a small huff of laughter. Was he really choosing now of all times to get curious, or was it simply something about Athio itself that drove people into that most dangerous of insanities known as curiosity? Sin certainly seemed to have held curiosity in spades, and he had been a native of the city, after all.


    Or at least, he had been pretty sure that he was. Sin had struggled to hold on to most memories of who he was before the Most Devout Church of Aegos had taken him in. Before Archcardinal Adikos had taken him in.


    He suppressed a shudder as he thought merely of the name of the man who for so long had been their twisted ''protector'', their megalomaniacal saviour. Adikos was gone, and he couldn''t hurt them anymore. He couldn''t. He was dead.


    He hated the man. Despised him for what he''d turned the three of them into. Hated him with a passion that belied his meek form, his bookish disposition. And yet he hoped the man had died cleanly. Hoped he had died well. Hoped that the last rites had been performed, so that he may be laid to rest properly.


    Did that make him weak? To wish that the man who had tormented him and his friends had died at peace? Or did it make him strong, better than the man had been, rather than hoping for some foulness to befall his soul. Did it make him weak or strong?


    He didn''t know. He didn''t know if he cared anymore either. He was Spyridon, he needed to act, and by all the Saints was he acting as he never had before. That would have to suffice for now.


    The candle was blazing now. It seemed impossible that so small a candle should burn so hot, should be able to engulf the entire room in a yellow-orange light. He didn''t know what had caused it to burn so strangely, but it must have had something to do with whatever it was that had brought him down here.


    "Who are you?" He called out, and the figure stilled at his words. "Come, I mean you no harm! I have fresh food and clean water for you, friend."


    The shadow on the wall remained for a moment longer, as though contemplating his words, and then bolted away. Spyridon frowned and sighed, but otherwise said nothing. Ah well, it was a mystery for another day. He would just have to station a guard at the mouth of the stairwell by the hall connecting to his room in the keep to make sure that there was no threat to him from whoever that figure was, but given that at no point had the figure tried to come near him whilst they were alone together in darkness, he was pretty sure that there was no harm intended towards him from whoever that had been.


    The candle settled down, burning as it normally had. The amount of tallow that had already melted made it appear malformed and strange, but it was now burning normally. No real direction to the flame save that decided by the wind, no almighty blaze, and no sudden snuffing out of the wick. He was grateful for that last one, as he really wasn''t keen on the idea of making his way back up five sets of stairs and through the winding corridors of the keep with no light to guide him.


    Still, the events of the last hour had been more than passing strange. More than a little strange indeed. He got the sense that there was something going on here that he didn''t quite understand, something that would come back to him one day.


    Well, he couldn''t dwell on it any longer. He needed to get back to his desk and keep up with his work, for he had far too much to do at the moment to warrant giving his attention to whatever that whole escapade had been about.


    There was a revolution coming, and he needed to keep his mind focused on the plans he had made alongside Hawk instead of focused on strange figures donning bolts of crimson cloth.


    He got back to work, attempted to sign the papers, and most of all he tried to blot out the image of crimson cloth and candles burning themselves out far too quickly


    Oh Sin, what strange mysteries did you leave behind for me?

 Cardinal Spyridon II: Crimson Words

    <u>Cardinal Spyridon II: Crimson Words</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Forth Day of the First Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    He set the book down as he heard a knock at the door. He hadn''t been expecting any visitors, not at the moment anyway, but he was always willing to talk to someone. Well, he was always willing to talk to most people anyhow; some people would never be worth speaking with, but they were few and far between.


    "A moment, if you please," he called out, "I''ll be with you in but a moment."


    He could have let them in right now, of course, but he''d rather hide the book first, just in case. He slid the book that Sin had left behind for him to find into a small drawer in the desk he had been working at, and then rose to open the door.


    "Good evening, friend of Sin. May I enter?"


    He stood there, stunned, for a moment. Before him was one of the Sisters of the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon, resplendent in plain yet striking crimson robes. She looked... well, at a glance, she looked forgettable. Not in a bad way, but more as though she were intended to look forgettable.


    The thing that had shocked him though was the fact that she had talked to him. The monks and nuns of the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon did not talk to those outside of their order, or at the very least it was so rare as to give rise to the belief that they never talked to people outside their order. He''d heard that they all talked fine enough within their monasteries and other assorted bases of operation, but never outside of them like this.


    He nodded, recovering from his daze, and invited her inside.


    "Please," he said, "make yourself at home here. I apologise if I haven''t any food nor drink to offer you at this moment, for I was just catching up on some reading and paperwork and lost track of time. If you would care for something to drink I could see to getting you some clean water?"


    The woman shook her head, but smiled nonetheless.


    "You are too kind, friend of Sin. I am well satiated at this moment, however. If it is of no issue to you, I would like to speak with you for a while. The order sent me so that we might know who you are, friend of Sin. Our vows prohibit us from speaking outside of our sacred grounds, just as they prohibit outsiders from entering uninvited, which put us in a bit of a conundrum: we could not speak to you out here, but no-one would invite a cardinal in there. My vows were therefore suspended with the understanding that I would talk to you, here, with no-one else and nowhere else. I am here to learn of you, and of how well you would work with our order if we were willing to make it so.


    "Does that sound amenable to you, friend of Sin?"


    He nodded, still mildly cautious and a little confused. Why were the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon coming to speak with him? Before now they''d always just had one of the members of their order send written letters and reports to him or Hawk to showcase their support, so why the sudden change in their policy? What was it that had convinced them to step forwards out of their monasteries and speak with him in person?


    It was with no small amount of curiosity that he eyed the newcomer, who claimed to be of Khidon''s order. She wore the robes of the initiated, moved as he''d seen those that formed their processions moved, but there were other factors that made him wary; he knew that the uninitiated such as himself were not supposed to be spoken to by members of the order, hells, even Sin hadn''t been allowed inside their hallowed halls, and that was forgoing the fact that this was not supposed to be an order which really kept to the teachings of Saint Khidon, first amongst the arch-heretics who''s work was considered to be damned in perpetuity by the church proper. This order had been sanitised, stripped of all that had once made it unique save its ascetism, and most assumed even that to be a farce. Spyridon didn''t believe it to be so, but in all honesty that was only because he''d seen the comings and goings of wealth to and from their places of work, and had tracked how much of that had been spent providing for the needy.


    They literally couldn''t have been rich, not unless there were seams of precious metals like silver beneath their monasteries with smelters and mints beneath each priory. There was literally no way they hadn''t kept to their ascetism, but he only knew that because he''d seen the evidence. To those outside, it would have made more sense to give the rumours of ascetism an eyeroll. Many were the monasteries that claimed to have forgone opulence, and few were those who did not dine on seven course meals each night. And if, as the claims amongst the clergy went, they had indeed abandoned the rest of Khidon''s doctrines, the man''s heresies, why would they keep to the one that was only to their detriment?


    Sound clergymen such as himself knew that they had forgotten everything they had once been given by the real Saint Khidon, save only their names and their relative ascetism, for the teachings that the arch-heretic had once preached were long gone from the order''s memory.


    Or were they? Sin had certainly seemed to believe that they''d maintained something of the old teachings, if the man''s half-rambling journals were anything to go by. He seemed to think that there was still an element of mysticism in their secretive ways of worship, rejecting the more words-as-written orthodoxy of the mainstream New-Church. Spyridon hadn''t spent enough time around them to truly attempt to work out their belief system, but if Sin was capable of being a Khidonean and keeping it a secret his whole life then who was to say that the most secretive order of monks in the known world wouldn''t be able to keep such a heretical creed themselves?


    It was something to consider as he let the woman in and pulled the chair out for her at the desk. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the woman, save that she had a mild sort of intensity about her gaze, but even that wasn''t anything truly out of the ordinary given that she was a spokesperson for the monks of Khidon.


    She took the seat opposite him, and nodded at him in what seemed to be appreciation after giving a cursory glance around his office.


    "You keep little wealth here, friend of Sin."


    He pursed his lips a little. Was this a test of some sort, or was she merely noting a fact?


    "I have little enough need for gold and jewels. Jewels pay for alms, coins for arms, and all the silks and spices in the world would do little in the hands of someone who wouldn''t know how to use them.


    "I live comfortably enough, of that I will not lie. I sleep in a featherbed and have never needed to forgo a meal due to lack of coin, but you will not find me with spools of golden thread and jewel-encrusted gowns."


    The woman looked at him a little longer, glanced around the room again, and nodded before continuing.


    "So seems to be the truth of the matter. The blessed saint would be proud. Tell me, friend of Sin, if you would be so kind? What do you make of his other teachings? What do you make of his life''s work?"


    He shifted a little in his chair, suddenly feeling as though he''d just been put on the spot.


    "Well, it''s... Sin''s life was dedicated to protecting people. To keeping them alive. His life''s work is what we all should have been doing."


    The woman nodded, a small and yet predatory smile on her face.


    "That is not the question I asked you, friend of Sin. True though it may be, it is not the question I asked you. What do you make of the blessed Saint Khidon''s work, friend of Sin?"


    "I... I don''t-"


    "Then you have not read his words, friend of Sin? Do you not think others have taken notice in your readings as of late? Of your... journeys downwards?"


    "What are you-"


    "You follow flames and chase shadows, friend of Sin. You read from books that you should not. So tell me, if you would be so kind, what you make of his teachings?"


    A chill ran down his spine as the smile fell from her face a little. He didn''t know what the correct answer was here, didn''t know whether she was trying to find out if he was a heretic to try and get him killed or to offer him support. In the end he simply took a deep breath, and elected to go with the truth.


    "I do not believe in them. But they are fascinating to me. I cannot bring myself to find truth in his words, but I can see why so many others did in those ancient times. Why some still do today, hidden from public eye though such worship may be.


    "I don''t believe in his words of mysticism, though I do agree with his words detailing reforms to the structure and laws of the church. And, though I would never have admitted so even but six moons ago, I can see that the man was a truly skilled orator."


    The woman looked at him a little while longer, and then shifted back in the chair a little.


    "Well," she started, a curious glint in her eye, "it seems that you might be just the person the order has been looking for. We would have liked to continue working with your friend, but his actions grew too rash and the voice too loud. You''ve got a sounder mind, freed from violent impulse and irrational action. You lack his killer''s mentality, of course, but then we can''t all be perfect.


    This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    "The Monastic Order of Saint Khidon has already pledged itself to your rebellion, friend of Sin. Many people forget that, though Athio has been our home for so long, we are only here because we were forced from Aegos long ago. We built things here and there that have remained hidden for a very long time, friend of Sin. Powerful things. They will not help you win this war, but they will help keep us safe through the second war that matters.


    "Keep your eyes trained the same way as the statues within the cathedral are trained. Look as they look. You''ll see what we fight when the time comes.


    "As for Aegos, well, we''re bound there in a way most do not understand. Even within the priories of our order, they do not understand. There are a few who know within the nunnery from which I hail, and from the three monasteries of our order. I would also be surprised if those atop the hermitage do not know, for their ways are strange and mystical even to the rest of us who don the crimson robes of our most blessed saint. Even still, there are few who know. Few who understand.


    "The Monastic Order of Saint Khidon will fight alongside your rebellion, friend of Sin, in order to go home. We must go home, for we have been away for too long. The wards need repairing and maintaining, and a new heart must be found. We have been away for far too long.


    "Our order was never large, but we are not without militants. We will fight with a fervour you would not believe, should it help us get home. Lead us there, friend of Sin, and the order will be loyal to you for as long as you walk this world."


    He swallowed thickly, barely understanding portions of her speech. Her eyes seemed to have glazed over a little in parts, as though searching through a long-gone memory, but there was something about the way she said things that made it abundantly clear that she believed every word that she said. There were no lies, intentionally at least, leaving her mouth.


    "What do you mean, wards? What heart? We welcome your support, and I thank you most profusely for it, but you speak in riddles and half-finished statements."


    The woman smiled to him, and slid a piece of parchment over to him with a what looked to be a list on it.


    "See if you can find these within the libraries of the keep, or indeed the wider city. Let me know how many you can find, and what you think of them. I will meet again with you shortly, that I can promise you."


    He gave a brief read through the list, and felt his eyes widen a little more at every name. Many of the names were fragments of Saint Khidon''s other works that the man had been writing before his disappearance or execution, and though the others might not have been as well known or penned by authors as widely revered or scorned, they were all texts that would surely have gotten him killed even before the church had taken over Aegos.


    They were all works deemed heretical to the utmost. They were all deemed to be dangerous.


    "These are all... I''m sorry Sister, but all of these works are illegal to possess!"


    The words rang hollow even to him, a weak attempt to say he wanted no part in this when both of them knew he did. Sin had dedicated half of his life to learning about these things, about the more mystical creeds that coexisted alongside the faith and had long since been stamped out by the legalist creeds that formed the modern church, and Spyridon knew that he would not be able to stop himself from continuing the unfinished work of his friend in any aspect.


    In some ways he was living Sin''s life for the man, instead of his own. He wasn''t sure if that thought comforted him or not.


    She smirked at him.


    "So was the one left for you at this desk by our late friend. That has not stopped you from reading the knowledge left behind within its pages. Or is it merely that the first was given to you, and you fear having to search for yourself?


    "There is nothing to fear from the books I present you, friend of Sin. Fear is merely a vestige of the primitive mind that inhabits and inhibits us all. The books will not report you for reading them, nor will they tell others of the secrets you keep within yourself. The only person you may feel justified in fearing through such a course of action would be your own conscious mind, as it roils and rebels against the upheaval of the old. It is no more than the sheepdog fearing the hungry wolf, and yet the dog stands guard over the flock all the same. It cannot allow itself to be scared, or at least not in a way that matters. Not in a way that would cause it to doubt itself, to doubt its ability to defend the flock; where doubt goes, failure shall follow.


    "You cannot allow yourself to be afraid anymore, friend of Sin. You cannot be scared of finding the answers you seek with your own hands. Find these texts, when you can. Read them through. I would like to hear your opinions on their works at some point, and to see which texts you think would be good follow-ups to these ones in terms of learning. I do look forwards to our next visit, friend of Sin. I look forwards to seeing what you get up to.


    "The eyes of the heart are upon you, friend of Sin. Do not let them find you wanting."


    And then, without waiting for any verbal permission to do so, she left the room.


    <hr>


    He sat there for quite some time after that, lost in thought. In all honesty he was trying to piece together half of what she''d said, for it almost sounded like she was giving him a riddle at times. What did she mean when she said that the order were bound to Aegos? Was there some sort of deeper meaning to her strange, half-nonsensical ramblings about sheepdogs guarding from wolves and fear that dwelt within the mind, or was it simply a poorly-constructed metaphor?


    The eyes of the heart are upon you. Do not let them find you wanting.


    The eyes of the heart.


    The heart.


    There was something important about that, he knew. He hadn''t read anything about the ''eyes of the heart'', whatever that was supposed to mean, but he did know that the heart was a recurring motif in many of the passages in the Book of Saint Khidon. Were they penned by the man himself, or one of the many authors who had doubtlessly had a hand in ''adding'' to the book since the man''s passing? If they were his words, were they simply some sort of archaic and poetic turn of phrase? They certainly had seemed to be something else at times, something different.


    He knew that he had read more than one passage that mentioned a heart before, and more than once in the context of the city of Aegos as well. Was it- no, that was too far back, it had been-


    Aha!


    He smoothed out the pages a little for ease of reading as he found the correct section, and though he had no need to aid his own reading he still found himself tracing his position on the pages with his index finger to make sure he kept his place and didn''t end up with his vision jumping up and down lines in confusion. He needed to make sure he read this properly if he wanted to confirm his hunch.


    As soon as he found the section on the page he wanted, he started to read aloud. It was only a whisper, for he was still worried of someone overhearing him, but he read the words aloud nonetheless.


    "And so the unfavoured child did take on the favoured''s mantle, and he did raise his voice of timidity into the din of war. And there, amid a sea of slate, was the blood bid to be spilled gathered by the thousand-head in sacrifice to the spirit of all mankind. He did raise his hand and raise his voice, and it was the voice of the favoured that left his mouth, and all the lands of the kindred he walked amongst were overturned in war."


    He continued reading raptly, almost certain now that he was reading too far into what could only be vague ramblings but fascinated nonetheless. He hadn''t given this passage any thought until the Sister had made that comment about the heart, but now he was kicking himself for not trying to read into it further.


    "And they did make war upon each other without pity nor remorse, for none save the Saints knew that the heart of Aegos lay not in its senate nor in its people, but beneath. The veins of the city did run dry, with nothing left to spill. And so the unfavoured child did become the heart that beat within Aegos, and found that the weeping was lost to him evermore."


    And there, all too abruptly, the chapter ended. He could piece together tiny pieces of what the book was trying to say, could see that it was alluding to the rebellion against the Most Devout Church of Aegos which seemed insane by itself, but the finer details of what was being hinted at were lost to him. He needed more information, and he needed it badly.


    What did the passage, and the Sister for that matter, mean by ''the Heart''? Was this all in some way related to that strange night not so long ago, when his candles had formed an inferno and a shadow had called him far beneath the keep?


    He chewed his lip a little in trepidation. All it had taken was one conversation and one book, and he was already sliding into heterodoxy. This line of study was sure to damn him if he continued, may have already damned him already.


    But then he had his duty to the people of Athio. If he could use this somehow, if this did end up being a tool by which he was able to exorcise the Most Devout Church from Aegos, then surely he had an obligation to use it? What else was there for him to do, if not push forwards through his doubts and act as Sin would have?


    He supposed that in order to get a better idea as to what he needed to do, he should probably ask himself some questions about what he had read. Were there more passages like this? What else had Khidon seen, seen and hidden in his works for people so many years later to find? Would such texts still remain today, or would they be long since lost?


    He didn''t know. What he did know was that he had a long day of sifting through the libraries of Athio ahead of him. He needed to find out what else Khidon had predicted, needed to see if there was anything that might foreshadow the movements of Admeta or the Imperator, needed to use this as a resource as well as an inspiration.


    Maybe, he thought to himself, these texts might describe that which I need to become to prevail here. It was a long shot, sure, but it was better than nothing. Besides, the Sister seemed to know something that he didn''t; she wouldn''t have recommended those other texts just to provide him with some light reading before his evening rest.


    It was confusing. All of it was confusing. That didn''t matter though. There was something deeper buried in these texts. Something important. He wasn''t a believer in the words of Saint Khidon per-se, and it would certainly be a strange day indeed if ever he took on such beliefs, but there was something different in these texts. He wasn''t reading this to reignite a faith that had long since burned away, nor was he particularly interested in becoming a pawn in whatever game the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon was playing. No. Right now, he was interested in ensuring the success of the revolt he was heading with Hawk. If that meant he had to play the game of the maybe-actually-real-Khidoneans that made up the monastic order for a while, then he''d do it. He was still not convinced by their faith, no matter the oratory skills of their patron, but he respected it nonetheless. He had needed to, ever since finding out that Sin had tied his beliefs and identity to them in secret.


    Spyridon wasn''t willing to commit himself to the label of Khidonean, not given that he lacked the belief in what came after which was at the core of the tenets of the doctrine, but he knew that in pursuing this path he wasn''t going to be following the orthodoxy of the faith either. He would be, in a sense, blindly stumbling down his own path.


    Well, so be it. He was going to unravel the game that the order wanted to play with him, he was going to find a way to win this revolution as swiftly as possible, he was going to ensure that the Imperator was ousted, and he was going to avenge his friend. He would make sure that, no matter what, the name ''Cardinal Sin'' was not soon forgotten. He was going to make his friend proud, and he was going to keep his people safe.


    He was not going to falter. He was not going to let this all come falling down.


    He stared at the book again, that damnable and yet so very interesting book, and smiled.


    "You left me more secrets than I thought, didn''t you Sin? Well, I suppose it can''t be helped, can it?"


    He rose from his desk and made to leave his chambers. He had a library to visit, and a list of texts to find.


    "If you had left me some more instructions for this matter things would be easier, but I can''t hold it against you.


    "You always did have a flair for the dramatic, after all."

 Lykourgos I: Sea Spray and Stony Shores

    <u>Lykourgos I: Sea Spray and Stony Shores</u>


    <u>The Sixth Day of the Second Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Anaria, Western Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    It had been a little over two moons since his coronation now, and somehow things felt different. Not in a grandiose or extravagant way, for the state of affairs was almost exactly the same as it had been before his coronation, but different in a way that suggested things back home were beginning to return to normal.


    Peasant families were preparing to sow crops in the spring, fishermen were intensifying the maintenance work on their ships in preparation for the voyages they would make when the seas were more hospitable, and soldiers of all stripes looked to clearing skies with stony determination. All of them knew that the peace was not going to last, but Lykourgos was determined to ensure that only the last group was forced to fight. He had already won one war without calling up a levied force of untrained lowborns, and if he could he''d rather repeat his method of rapid advances with a column of highly-trained and motivated soldiers so as to avoid the worst of the economic burdens of war.


    Dead peasants could not till the fields, and dead fishermen could not ply the waters of the Bay of Saints. It was better to let them stay home and work at their trades, lest his kingdom plunge into financial ruin despite all his military victories.


    There was no such risk of his coffers running dry at the moment, of course, but whilst administrators were still being found or trained to oversee the running of his newly acquired Owkrestan and Triarian territories it was clear that he wouldn''t be earning quite as much from his lands as first thought. A pity, to be sure, but one that would be resolved in time. The wheels were already in motion, and now he was just waiting.


    Even so, the royal coffers were more full than they had been in quite some time; the seizing of wealth from the nobility of Teleytaios had more than paid for his campaigns in Owkrestos with enough left over to begin renovations on Anaria, and the whilst he had not seized quite as much wealth from the nobles of Owkrestos after his conquest there was certainly a decent hoard to be made out of the gold and silver that had been found for him there. The crown''s finances were, at the moment, fine.


    But wars were expensive things. Very expensive. Even if he were to sack and pillage his way across those parts of Klironomea to which he did not yet lay claim, which he had no intention of doing, it would still not cover the financial burdens of war. Nor was he willing to wish risking more Teleytaian lives in war, not when they''d been subjected to two civil wars and an invasion during the last five or so years. He wanted to let his people take stock of their losses and rebuild, to allow prosperity to take root once more. The army could fight, and the people would be left to their own lives. That was the way he wanted to do this.


    If there was one thing that he didn''t want to do, then it was become sedentary. Sloth. Lazy. He''d never understood how kings and queens could be content to rest on their laurels and do nothing with their reigns, how they could sit their and languish in a self-made prison of banquets and feasts and dances. He''d never understood how they could allow so many capable advisors to go unheeded, whilst useless sycophants and lickspittles were able to run free with royal ascent.


    Ever since he''d been called ''King'' after his coronation, he was pretty sure he understood why now. There was something about the status that came with kingship, of the prestige imbued within such a position, that called out to him. It told him that he needed not struggle anymore, for he was the king, and the king always had others to struggle for him. It told him he was above the machinations and schemes of those around him, that they would never dare to involve him in something without his knowledge and consent.


    It told him to rest. To rest for decades, and to do nothing from now until he died. It told him he didn''t need to do anything else. It was only that other part of his mind, the part that told him duty reigned eternal and that he wasn''t allowed to rest until his duty was done, that stopped him from falling into such a slothful state at times.


    Funny. He never thought he''d be thankful for that fucking sense of duty that had all but crushed him as a youth.


    Still, the wars could not continue until the campaigning season began in the spring. Foolish indeed was the man who attempted to march through winter''s biting winds, who tried to force his men to ignore the bitter cold seeping through their armour and nipping at exposed skin. Winter was no place for an army, save only one that was comfortable encamped with good shelter and plenty of food to go around. Men got hungrier far quicker when working through the winter, this he knew.


    He would not blunder away his army by marching too soon.


    It didn''t matter though, at the moment. He would be calling together his professional forces to muster within the next few weeks, though it would be at least a few more weeks before he could be joined by the forces of the Grand Duke along the road. It was a far greater distance for the man and his thousands to travel than Lykourgos'' own forces, after all.


    He shook the thoughts from his mind and moved to leave the palace. He''d received some news that something interesting might be going on at the docks soon, and he didn''t want to miss it. Nothing of great import, not really, but something interesting all the same.


    He briefly passed by his friend and spymaster, Elikoidi, in the hall as he was on his way. He thought for a moment, and then called the man over.


    "Your Grace. To what do I owe this pleasure?"


    He smiled at the only slightly snarky tone of the man.


    "Come on Eli, I told you to call me by my name. I was just heading down to the docks and wondered if you might like to join me?"


    The man stared at him for a moment, slightly confused, but the expression was quickly replaced by one of neutrality.


    "The docks? Well I don''t see why not. It''ll be good to have someone following you as well, so that the rest of us know you aren''t preparing to be stabbed again. Sure, I''ll come along with you. You will be taking guards this time, I assume?"


    Lykourgos smiled and rolled his eyes.


    "Yes, yes, don''t worry about that. Eros is training at the moment and Dreamwulf is... you know, I''m not actually sure what he''s doing. I think it was something to do with renewing his vows at the church, something about his past when he was still an Oblate at that small monastery, but I''m not really sure.


    "Anyway, the point is that my usual guards won''t be with me, so there''ll be a couple of palace guards shadowing us. A little further back than we are, so we can still enjoy the outing, but still close enough that they''ll be able to assist us if anything does happen to one or both of us. Does that allay your fears?"


    His friend scoffed good-naturedly.


    "I don''t think there''s anything that''s ever happened since I''ve met you that has come close to stopping me from worrying about how you''re next going to try and get yourself killed, but I suppose it will suffice for now. Well, lead the way, my King."


    Elikoidi emphasised the last words with the amused tone of someone who knew exactly what they were doing, and Lykourgos couldn''t help but give a mildly embarrassed smile in response. He quite liked being called ''King'', he''d found out over these last two months. The word had a sort of elegance about it, a sort of gravitas, that he hadn''t really appreciated before his coronation. But now he was the king, truly, and he was called it by almost everyone he happened to walk past. He had even more work to do now, if such a thing were even possible, but being called ''king'' made it all worthwhile.


    He set off out of the palace through the postern gate leading towards the west, Elikoidi at his side and a few guards following them in a manner that was at once both noticeable and discreet. It was clear that they were always there, but they were just far enough away so as to not make him appear paranoid when walking through the streets of his own capital city.


    ''The Queen of Cities''. Heh. What a nickname. You''ve seen better days, but by the time I''m done with you there''ll be none in the world who can deny your beauty, your splendour. You''ll earn your name again, live up to your storied history. I''m going to heal you.


    He smiled a little as he walked, hands clasped behind his back. It was no easy task, uprooting and rebuilding an entire city, but it was easier when you did it by district. He would have done it by block if he had to, tearing down wood and thatch to make room for stone and mortar. He would do away with dirt and gravel, replacing it with cobbles and paved roadways. It was a lot of work, yes, but then it was always a busy day when you were the king. Busy life or not he still felt as though it were at least a little important to find the time to take a trip down to the western district of the city and see the construction projects going on for himself.


    The renovations that were being made to the city were, in his mind, not only needed to start reverting the slump that it had fallen into recently, but also to show his people he was more than just a conqueror. He was an administrator as well, who knew how to improve the lives of those within his kingdom as well as how to push their borders ever further.


    If there''s one thing that can be said about the construction projects, he thought to himself as he walked down the steep, winding path that led from the palatial complex to the docks, then it is surely that they are really rather noisy. The docks and the wider western district as a whole sat lower than the rest of the city, for they were all but on the same level as the sea whereas the rest of the city sat beyond the cliff face behind it. The cliff itself was almost stepped, with naturally occurring and yet semi-regular ''levels'' allowing for small buildings to be set along the pathways that snaked their way underneath the looming palace above.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Most of the docks were on the base level, however, and it was there that most of the work had been done. The fact that they were a good hundred metres below the rest of the city had been a problem for traders back in the days of the old kingdom, for the main path that led from the southern district into the docks was too steep for wagons and carts to be pulled along, but one of the first things that house Sperakos, Lykourgos'' own ancestors, had done when they had seized control of the city after the Year of Desolation was carve out an actual road with a far more gentle slope down to the docks. The palatial path was still rocky and steep, for it was not intended to be used regularly at all, but the main road from the western district into the wider city had been one of the first things that house Sperakos had given the people to show them that they had the capabilities to rule well, not just strictly.


    He liked to think that he was upholding their legacy, in some way; by tearing down the old wooden and thatch buildings that for so long had been a mainstay of the docks, by rebuilding them from stone and mortar, by carving small buildings such as homes and barracks into the multi-levelled cliff face, by expanding the piers and wharfs and building new quays and berths the port at Anaria would soon be the greatest in the world once again. And, of course, the clergy of the Agiathos Kymatavathi had been invited back into the district, to much jubilation from the locals and sailors alike. The Cult of Hydran had always been pervasive down here, and their absence since his sister''s apparent madness had been sorely felt by all who called the harbourside their home.


    Such renovations were expensive, but he would not budge on these renovations. The Queen of Cities deserved no less.


    Still, the renovations were endlessly noisy. The fact that the docks were a good hundred metres below the ground floor of the palace, and that he could hear the construction from his own chambers another thirty-odd metres up, meant that there was one hell of a din coming from down here.


    Still, he was at least providing a hell of a lot of work to the stonecutters and masons of the city. Well, and the labourers as well, he supposed. Anaria had been subject to a plague of vagabonds, of men without work, since the old workshops had been closed to make way for the noble manses in the southern district, so it was good to get some temporary work for the otherwise workless. He''d tear down those empty manses soon enough to make room for the workshops once more, but for now he''d settle for renovating the western and eastern districts.


    He stepped down the path, making sure to keep his footing so that he didn''t stumble down the rocky and steep route from the postern gate at the rear of the keep. Another group of workers stopped moving as they looked at him, a little wide-eyed, and he gave them a small smile and nod before continuing on. He barely caught their hurried attempts at respectful bows as he continued on, a slight smirk on his face as he left them behind him. It wasn''t a malicious smirk, more just a sign that he found it mildly amusing to know that the people down here really weren''t expecting so see their king in person.


    "You know, at some point someone''s going to start spreading rumours that you''re frequenting this district."


    He laughed a little, and turned his head slightly to talk to Elikoidi.


    "I hardly think once every two or three sennights to be ''frequent''."


    The spymaster shrugged, a dismissive expression on his face.


    "I mean, compared to your siblings and your father its certainly frequent. You used to come down here occasionally as a child, so I recall from the stories you tell and from my own experiences, but that was quite a long time ago. Besides, I didn''t mean anything bad by it; it may do you some good to be seen wandering around your capital, given that you didn''t exactly spend time here after the Twilight Rebellion and couldn''t sit still after you woke up from your coma. These little trips of yours are likely to be some of the only times these people have ever seen you in the flesh."


    He smiled at his friend as they made their way lower down, now about halfway down the cliff path and approaching the more built-up lower areas of the docks. Already he could that a few of the cranes were now housed in stout stone drum towers, and that those cranes that were looked markedly more stable than the older ones without such housing. Off in the distance he could see the low stone figure of what would soon be a lighthouse, but for now appeared to be only one or two floors tall and only had a few men with lanterns stationed around.


    Elikoidi caught his gaze and smiled a little, his scars stretching into what looked a little like a rictus but that Lykourgos knew was an actual and genuine smile.


    "Hardly anywhere near as bright as the old bonfires that used to burn there, are they?"


    Lykourgos couldn''t help but laugh.


    "You know as well as I that it''s still being worked on. It''ll be brighter than the old bonfires were, and safer too. You know how many times the docks have burned down this century because of ash and soot causing tar and wood to catch?"


    Elikoidi snorted.


    "Yes, I do recall you mentioning this to me. Several times, in fact. Still, I''m uncertain as to why exactly you wanted to come down here. I know you don''t have anyone to meet, so why exactly are we here?"


    "Why my friend, I just want to see my own capital! I want to see the improvements that are being made by the council, of which we are both a part!"


    Elikoidi furrowed his brows, then sighed a little.


    "There''s a Brythonian Leviathan-Ship coming in to port, isn''t there?"


    Lykourgos tried to keep his voice monotone for comedic effect, but with his excitement showing through it wasn''t very successful.


    "I''m genuinely surprised you didn''t notice until now. They''re hardly small, hence the name."


    "Well, I can''t see my self even attempting to deny you the opportunity to see something you''ve found interesting your whole life. Much like your obsession with those sigils scribbled into the forts you visited and-"


    "Shh," he hushed with a slight expression of measured urgency, "we don''t need to talk about it out here. Most people still think that the Angels amongst us are but rumours. Given how the Angels wish not to have thousands of people battering down the doors to see them, I would prefer us to keep it that way."


    Elikoidi scoffed, but did not object.


    "Very well, your Grace. So, a Leviathan-Ship. You wish to watch them at work?"


    Lykourgos shrugged in response, still smiling.


    "Something like that, yes. I think, given that the new wharf built specifically to cater to the truly gigantic Leviathan-Ships is soon to start construction, this will be one of the last Leviathan-Ships to dock at the natural harbour of Anaria. I''d like to be here to see it dock, and unload its cargo.


    "Did you know that their ships catch only one or two items of quarry every voyage? They''re so large that their meat can feed entire tribes on their home islands for weeks, and their fat can make enough oil to burn a signal-fire for years! Angels, they''re truly huge creatures! Some aren''t even umbra, they just grow that big naturally. Magnificent, aren''t they?"


    His friend gave him something of an amused look as his rambling continued. It was nice to be able to indulge himself a little, even if he knew that he was only distracting himself from his duties at the moment. He had left behind the documents in his chambers for a few hours, needing a break from reading about the re-introduction of water powered mills to western Klironomea at large in favour of some fresh sea air and a little bit of excitement, even if it was in the form of little more than one of his childhood interests.


    Right now, just for a little while, he felt carefree. The scents of the sea and the docks, all salt and fish and smoke, filled his nostrils. The air seemed... cleaner, down here. Cleaner. That was a good word for it. The stench of mankind still hovered over this place, for it was still a part of Anaria, but it was at least dampened and masked under a hundred other scents before it reached the nose.


    He looked around a little, taking in the scenery as the Brythonians continued with their work, and waved in acknowledgement at the occasional passer-by who recognised him and bowed in respect. For the first time since becoming king, he noticed a complete absence of frost on the roads and paths of the docks, the lack of visible chill on the Brythonian sailors, working shirtless for although it was still somewhat cold out they were used to far colder than this.


    The cold was leaving them, and war came with its absence.


    Winter is ending, he thought to himself as he watched the gigantic slabs of meat and blubber and bone were hoisted out of the ship. Winter is ending, and spring will soon be upon us. The campaigning season will soon be upon us. I have spent enough time as the administrator, have spent enough time at rest, for now. It is time to prepare for the next war. It is time to call up the men in preparation for the Nordican campaign.


    He''d tried putting it off a little, had held himself back for two whole weeks from sending the missive to Grand Duke Sigiros and the commanders of the royal armies. He had tried, but he couldn''t wait any longer. Duty''s siren-song was calling him towards the rocks of work and war once more, and he was powerless to stop himself falling for her demands.


    "Eli?"


    Elikoidi turned away from the sight of a group of shirtless sailors hoisting barrels and crates to-and-from the Leviathan-Ship, his ''appreciation'' for aesthetics still remaining as shameless as ever.


    "Yes, Lyk?"


    "How fast can you get a message to Lord Sigiros?"


    His friend''s expression fell minutely, doubtless already knowing exactly what Lykourgos was asking for, but he nodded nonetheless.


    "By messenger bird? Three weeks, perhaps two. Likely only two weeks, if the message is sent by horse and the new waystations are finished along the Woodsroad and Soldier''s March. Are they finished?"


    He shook his head, to which Elikoidi sighed dramatically.


    "Oh well, I suppose that was to be expected. It must take time to get all the horses, the stables, the farriers and grooms and such, all together in one place. Or, well, a series of places I suppose. What is it you''d like the message to say, and should it be signed by your hand?"


    He nodded.


    "I''ll sign it, yes. And I know that you know what it''s going to say. Tell him to gather his armsmen and his knights, or what few Triarios may have if there are any at all, and march to Haestinghen. We''ll camp outside the city with our own forces soon enough, and when he joins we''ll march north-east. We''ll march to Nordicos, to their capital city of Corthraxiopolis, and we''ll seize it for our own. One more crown subjugated beneath Anaria''s rule. Do you think you can convey a message in my hand and under my name that gets that across to him, whilst being a little more diplomatic than I am capable of myself?


    Elikoidi just grinned at him.


    "Who do you take me for, old friend? Of course I can manage that! I''ll have a draft sent to you for reading in a few hours, and it''ll be sent by raven as soon as you give the go-ahead. Just do one thing for me, won''t you?"


    "Of course. Name it, Eli."


    The grin grew wider.


    "If you are planning on marching as far east as Klironomea goes, please don''t make me sit through a siege in a tent. I can hardly imagine anything worse than waiting in those bloody fields for months on end with no entertainment to be found in anything around me, still less the fact that I''d have to sleep in a tent and be around the sick and starving all day."


    Lykourgos just rolled his eyes.


    "I''m sure we''ll be able to find better accommodation for you, spoiled though you might be."


    Elikoidi punched him lightly in the shoulder for that one, but the light smiles they both wore as they watched the Brythonians at work, with their wild manes of red hair and their pale, blue-marked skin, told him that the two of them were having perhaps one of the first moments of genuine carelessness they''d had in quite a while.


    War would be upon them again soon, but he resolved to enjoy this day for just a few moments more. His mind, even now, was in conflict with itself. He knew that he needed moments like this, but the knowledge that he was putting off his work only made him feel a strange sense of guilt instead of relaxation.


    He stayed and stared at the work of the Brythonians a little longer, their long red hair blowing in the wind and the patterns of blue on their skin almost mesmerising him, then nodded at Elikoidi before turning and walking away.


    He had far too much to do to waste time on flights of fancy like this.

 Svaltha I: The Herald of War

    <u>Svaltha I: The Herald of War</u>


    <u>The Eighteenth Day of the Second Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>The Great Warcamp, The Isanford, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Today marked the first day without snow since the end of the autumn moons.


    Maybe some people hadn''t noticed, but Svaltha had. There was still residual snows on the ground that hadn''t been melted by the waning sun yesterday, but no fresh snows had fallen today.


    Winter was finally coming to a close, and though the temperature was still fucking cold it was not quite freezing.


    All around her people hustled and bustled down well-trodden wooden-laid paths, through winding ad-hoc streets and seemingly endless fur and leather tents with the odd wooden shack thrown in for good measure.


    The Great Warcamp was truly huge. If she''d thought that Dyfed''s Warcamp had been large, then this was doubly so; with all those who followed the Great Jaerl or the Valkyrie Queen here, in one place, there was almost an entire people crammed into the confines of one sprawling tent-city. For a moment she wondered how on earth this many people were sustaining themselves in terms of food, but she cast it out of mind immediately. Most people had brought their entire stockpiles of food to this city, in many cases enough to last years. Even with some waste, there was plenty of food to go around.


    If there wasn''t, then the raiders would soon find some for them in the south.


    It was not only those who followed the Great Jaerl and Eyvindottir either, for the majority of the few remaining neutrals across Scelopyrea were here as well. They were farmers and fishermen for the most part, hardy folk who knew the land and sea well and were not keen to be drawn in with the promise of war and bloodshed. Well, they''d felt the way the winds were blowing, had smelt the coming storm as it roiled on the wind, and had decided that it was best to join with the massive conglomeration on the southern coast before they were left truly isolated up here.


    There would doubtless be a few stubborn fools who remained, those who thought that the coming calamity might pass them by or else had decided that it would be worse to leave their lifelong homes than to die there, but most people were coming here. There were others as well, merchants and raiding vessels, all of whom seemed to have something to sell and more importantly information to give to the married rulers of the northern lands.


    But the main centrepiece of the Great Warcamp were the vast clearing grounds by the waterfront, and the great mass of ships chained and anchored in the bay. It was there that the single greatest northern host in all of history was being assembled, with more than a thousand ships and scores of thousands of warriors of all different stripes waiting until the time was right to strike south.


    There were Shieldmaidens, Huscarls, mounted warriors, hunters, berserkers, marauders, and dogs of war all assembled. Several more storied and famed groups as well; the Ravenwives, the Hildisvini, and the Ulfhednar, had all quartered themselves in this ramshackle approximation of a city, the latter two clashing a great many times given the rivalry that their orders had maintained over the years. Of course, however, there was only ever one group of soldiers that she was keeping her eyes upon; the Jomsravens were also here.


    When she had been a child, it had been the Jomsravens that had captured her attention and captivated her wholly. She had wanted to see them more than anything, to watch them in battle, and when her wish had finally come true she was not disappointed. The only times she could think of that any armed groups had come close to displaying the brotherhood and cohesion of the Jomsravens were when she had seen the huscarls fighting in their own different but still effective form of cohesion under K?til.


    She was worried about K?til, honestly. No, not worried, for she never worried. She was perhaps a little apprehensive about his recent changes in mood, however. K?til had never particularly been one for the sort of quiet anger that now fuelled him, not since she''d met him anyway, preferring loud and aggressive acts of force to showcase his displeasure. That was not how his divinely-given rage seemed to be showing itself at the moment.


    These last few months, she had watched him do little else than train and brood. Well, the two of them still made time for their nightly activities, and at the very least he didn''t seem as prone to brooding then, but even when drinking with Krai and Syren he seemed quieter than usual. Not subdued, for K?til had too much force of personality to ever truly be subdued, but he was definitely quieter.


    None of them had any doubts as to what had caused it, of course; his father''s marriage had been a great blow to his confidence and plans, and the subsequent news that the Eyvindottir was with child had only caused him further distress. It anyone asked him how he was doing he would give a non-answer, ask him how he felt that his father had got the Valkyrie-Queen with child and he would just shrug and say that it was always going to happen from the moment the two of them married. Such answers did little to allay the concerns of his closest companions, and especially not her.


    She knew that she''d need to drag him out of his own head at some point. A great calamity amongst the Scelopyrene may have been narrowly avoided, but there was still going to be a war soon. People were flocking to the Great Warcamp east of Murkmire''s ruins, longships were being assembled, and there was an ever-increasing amount of talk amongst the layfolk of descending down into the rich and fertile lands of the weak-spirited Klironomoi to the south. She knew it to be true as well, if talk from Syren''s meetings with the Great Jaerl was anything to go by. Gossip about what the druids had been talking about as well, or so she''d heard. She didn''t have any of that information first-hand, however.


    She''d been mostly avoiding the members of her order at the moment. They had to have known that it was her who had tipped off the Great Jaerl, and even though he''d somehow already known about the plans of the druids that didn''t mean she wasn''t going to take the blame for the mess that the druids had since found themselves in; they weren''t shunned, as no true-blooded northman would ever shun a druid, but they had certainly found themselves with less influence than they might have otherwise been used to these last few months. Some masters of intrigue they''d all turned out to be. Honestly, now that she''d met both the Great Jaerl and the Eyvindottir she wasn''t sure what the druids of her order had expected at all; the two rulers of all the Scelopyrene were so far above her fellow druids that it must have been rank madness that compelled the order to think that not only were they going to be able to outsmart the two rulers, but outsmart them in so grandiose and terrible a fashion.


    That plan was never going to work. Not against the two of them.


    So, seeing that she wasn''t meeting with her druidic compatriots, she was instead spending her time alongside her three companions.


    First there was K?til, of course. She knew him better than she knew herself at times, and knew that he''d need to be helped out of his half-angry and half-melancholic state soon enough, but thinking of him was what had started her down this trail of thought to begin with.


    Then there was the unkillable man, Krai. Krai had been his usual self, and by that she meant that he had been a solidly good warrior, a dependable companion, and simultaneously accident-prone and impossible to kill. The man had somehow got himself kicked in the chest by a mule, which was an injury even she found herself wincing at, and had somehow already made a full recovery from the cracked ribs he had been sporting. Honestly, she wouldn''t have been surprised to learn that the man had found himself with the blessings of the Bloody-Handed Raven himself, what with his apparent inability to die.


    As for Syren, well, he was a strange one. Stranger than he always had been, anyway. There were times when she caught him looking at her for just a little bit too long, and not in the same way that she and K?til looked at each other. Sometimes he seemed as though he were... watching her. She didn''t believe he had any ill intentions, but the young man''s paranoia and suspicions seemed to be running wild. Fair enough when she was still working with the druids, for he would have been right to worry then, but she didn''t do that anymore. Not since her god had told her to abandon the foolishness of the druids, to stick with the rulers of Scelopyrea and force a new path under them.


    Krakevasil, what had she been thinking back then? Had she been so deluded by her past that she''d assumed the druids were right? Had she actually believed in their methods, their goals? She wanted her god to return, that much she knew, but had she believed that such a course of events was what the druids wanted? Truly? Was it what they wanted? She didn''t know. She hoped that it was, for she truly wanted her god to return, to lead all of them.


    She did not want to have the years she spent under the druidic orders be for nothing. Not when she could have spent that time better serving the Lord of All Slaughter, He-Who-Makes-Heroes.


    Thinking about Krakevasil turned her mind back to the moment in which she had seen and spoken to her god personally. She hadn''t seen him again since, but had heard his voice once more. It wasn''t much, wasn''t the full conversation she had engaged in with the greatest warrior amongst the gods before, but it was just as clear and loud in her head.


    It had simply told her to ''Prepare''. The voice had been as ice shifting over a lake of fire, of ancient forests toppling and falling all at once. It had been a great and terrible thing to behold, as befitting so ancient and powerful a creature. All it had said was prepare, but it had not said how or why or what for. It had told her nothing else.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    What was she to prepare for? Was it just a broad statement, a message telling her to be ready for when the true message came in time? Was it supposed to be something specific, and she had not been worthy of hearing it with clarity? Well, until she knew what it was she was supposed to be preparing for she couldn''t really do anything, could she? She did her best, sparring to keep herself sharp and keeping her ear to the ground in case her fellow druids had a second plan of sorts that she might need to somehow thwart, but that was all she felt she could do at the moment.


    She spent more time in prayer and communion with her god than she felt she ever had before, but it was almost silent.


    Not silent though, the wind whispered to her, for I am always here. I am a part of you, my most devoted child. Never forget that.


    She shuddered a little, and smiled. Barely perceptible though it may have been, and though it was certainly far from the booming thunder of glaciers crushing each other over magma, but she could at least make out his messages on the wind and in the leaves. That was always something she could cling to, no matter how dark things seemed.


    Being so close to the coast now seemed to have given her a new sound to attune to, to listen for the voice of her god in; the crashing of waves along the shoreline of the river Aenir, though technically the Aenir was still a river, was for all intents and purposes nothing less than the fury of the sea personified. She''d heard the voice of the god of war in the rushing of water through the Isanar before, but this was different. Louder, more violent.


    Perhaps it was just because she was less attuned to listening for Krakevasil through such a channel, but she struggled to hear his faint whispers here more than anywhere else. There were of course stories that the Raven God feared the sea, feared drowning, for one of his brother-gods had bested him in such a theatre, but that was surely nothing more than vile lies and deceit spread by the jealous remnants of the Raven God''s kin who were still worshipped on the Brythonic Isles. Krakevasil did not fear, nor could he be bested by his traitorous brethren. This was simply a test for her to overcome, and by his will did she intend to overcome it. None would stop her, and if one of his brother-gods really was trying to dampen the link she had to her god then she would fight and slaughter him herself, by the Raven God''s will of course.


    Any who tried to stop her from enacting the wishes of her god were certainly welcome to try. She would make sure that none were able to try twice.


    "Oi, Svaltha! I''m talking to you!"


    She blinked a few times, her mind catching up with her as she realised she''d been zoning out. She turned to face the approaching voice, and just about kept down a wide smile from forming when she realised it was Krai.


    "Aye, you were, and I was ignoring you. What''s got you so insistent on talking to me at the moment? Don''t you have another injury to go and collect?"


    Krai threw his head back and barked out a laugh.


    "Nah, I had my fill of that for now. Here, what''s got your head so up in the clouds? I was just looking for you ''cause the other two were busy at the moment, so I figured you were probably as bored as I were."


    She couldn''t help but smile a little as she put a sarcastic inflection in her words.


    "Well, I was bored I guess. How''s it you''re up and about anyway, Krai? I figured you''d be milking your place in the healer''s quarter for all it''s worth."


    Her friend gave an exaggerated shudder at the mention of the healers, though given how haphazard and uncaring they could be it might not have actually been exaggerated.


    "They patch me up, so all respect to ''em, but I ain''t staying anywhere near that death trap if I don''t have to. Figured I''d come and hang around you for a bit, since you were away from the boss man for a while. The three of you are bloody impossible to separate at times, and it doesn''t help me none that I''m stuck in some buggering healer''s hut whilst you all go out having fun."


    "Do you think we''re trying to leave you out? I promise we''re not."


    He made a noise of dismissal and smiled in amusement, which admittedly did allay her fears. Though she may have intended to use Krai as nothing more than a method by which to control K?til, and the same with Syren, such thoughts and plans had long since left her mind. They were her true companions now, and though she wasn''t prepared to be any more sappy and sentimental than she had to be, she did care for them in her own way.


    "It isn''t that, I just mean that you three are always getting involved in some wild shit whilst I''m bedridden cause I can''t seem to stop getting myself injured."


    She looked at him.


    "You''re our friend as well, Krai. Don''t think you''re not."


    He smiled and waved her worries away.


    "Nah, don''t worry, I don''t mean like that; you guys are the best companions I could ask for. All I meant was that you guys are both a lot closer with the boss than I am."


    "How so?"


    "Well", the young man explained, "K?til and Syren go way back, even before the two of them started going out on their hunts and skirmishes together. Syren''s always been the boss'' eyes and ears, watching his back and shit. He''s fucking strange, don''t get me wrong, but I love the bastard like a brother and he''s kept the chief safe this whole time. As for you and K?til, well, no offense to the big man but I''m not prepared to start bedding him like you have, so I''m not as close as the two of you are either.


    "I was just brought into this group ''cause I''m a fucking good fighter and damn near impossible to kill. I''m happy to basically be the bodyguard here, not that any of you need guarding of course.  Apart from that I''m just glad to be such close friends with all three of you, even if I''m a little less attached personally to the boss than you and Syren are."


    She nodded and took in what he was saying. He wasn''t completely wrong, for it was definitely true that he was less close to K?til than the rest of them were, but there was one thing he seemed to be forgetting.


    "That''s true, Krai. However, you''re also closer to me than Syren is, and closer to Syren than I am. It''s not like you''re a complete outsider here, and you''re certainly not just tagging along with a group of three. Besides, even when I''m not around you''re always cracking jokes with the other two; Krakevasil only knows how fucking depressed they''d be if you weren''t around to lighten the mood. I mean, fuck, do you remember how miserable everyone was on the route back to the Great Jaerl''s Warcamp after getting me out of that ruined convoy? I''m pretty sure you''re the only reason K?til didn''t start braining people who were getting on his nerves.


    "Also, between you and me, our nights out are way funnier when it''s all four of us out together. Even if you do end up getting yourself injured so frequently that every healer north of the Aenir knows you by name.


    "You''re just as much a part of this group as the rest of us Krai, and so help me if you try and leave us I''ll break your legs myself."


    The man snorted in amusement at her.


    "I think people usually threaten to kill someone instead of breaking their legs. More effective."


    She shrugged, raising an eyebrow.


    "Threatening to kill you in particular is fucking useless, because no matter what happens you somehow seem to never fucking die."


    Krai opened his mouth to respond, no doubt with some manner of light-hearted remark about how it wasn''t impossible to try and kill him, it was just impossible to succeed, when they were cut off by the sound of lumbering footfalls. The two of them turned and watched the source of the noise, all but marvelling as four lesser Jotun walked down one of the main ''streets'' of the Great Warcamp with what looked like newly-maintained or otherwise repaired colossal swords and bucklers slung across their backs.


    Lesser Jotun were joining with the Great Warcamp with increasing regularity these last few weeks. She was pretty sure that, as soon as the first few members of each tribe realised it wasn''t some sort of trick to wipe them out, they''d sent word back to their families and friends to join them. Life must surely have been better down here than eking out an existence in the mountains after all, and it wasn''t like the giant folk were going to try their luck with the horse-lords of the Skonisnomas to the east; Jotun could not ride on horseback, and so to the Skonisnomas they were fit only to be put down like lame dogs.


    Here, they were welcomed. Many traders native to Scelopyrea had already had dealings with the Jotun, as had most of those who''d come from the northernmost villages and holdfasts. There was good food for them here, and booze as well. More than that, there was iron and steel; the Smithsons, the only Jotun tribe to actually keep up the old practices of smithing amongst their people, had eked out an existence by repairing the swords of their giant comrades in exchange for food and security, but they had never been able to get their hands on enough iron or steel to make new ones. Making swords that large was tough work, and expensive as well; it was rare indeed for them to make new weapons.


    Nowadays, within the confined of this camp, things were different. As more and more giants came down to join them, there was more and more of a market for the Smithsons to ply their trade to their cousins in the other tribes. This had meant that not only were the Smithsons the first tribe to come down here in their entirety, around one-hundred and seventy strong, but it had also brought in more traders with iron and coal to trade with them in bulk. Effectively, they were witnessing not only the largest gathering of Jotun since the Burning of Jotunheim, but also a rebirth in Jotun martial culture.


    She wouldn''t have been surprised to see Jotun wearing gigantic plates of armour soon, nor would she be surprised if they started swapping out their cabers and gigantic swords for great maces and hammers; the sword was a treasured and seasoned weapon to the Jotun, for swords of such great size were their main weapon of choice against the dragons. Such large blades had once enabled them to slice open scaled stomachs and tear wings to tatters, but they were far less useful against massed human opponents. Hammers and maces would be far better for sweeping arcs and crushing blows delivered to entire ranks of human soldiers, whereas giant swords would be lucky to hit more than a few people at a time.


    Still, it had been a long time since their people had been free to forge and smith as they wished. It made sense for them to take their time and enjoy their newfound connectedness by ensuring more and more of their remaining people could get their hands on the weapons that for so long had been the bane of the dragons, even if other weapons might be better for fighting the armies of men that awaited them to the south and the west.


    Of course, she was more hoping they''d see sense and start armouring themselves in more than just thick furs soon enough. Jotun were resilient, yes, but the armies of Brythonia and the coastal southerners alike were renowned for their use of the longbow. A cowards weapon, but one that could see even the giants laid low if there were enough bowmen loosing upon them from afar.


    Despite the mass movement of the lesser Jotun to the Great Warcamp, the greater Jotun still ranged far from this place. From what she''d heard, though from second and third-hand sources mind you, they were very different from the lesser Jotun in more ways than their size. Apparently they did not ''think'' like the lesser Jotun did, or not anymore at least. Apparently they were more like forces of nature than sentient beings, unable to be reasoned with or made to listen. Despite the lesser Jotun seeing their greater cousins as something akin to ''lesser'' gods, if such a term could be applied, even they could not predict the movements of their cousins.


    Word was that the last of the greater Jotun had moved north. Far, far north. Beyond even the furthest mountain ranges of Scelopyrea, where black clouds hovered over the skies and where there was nought but glacial ice and fields of fire-mountains for an eternity beyond the horizon. What madness could be drawing them there, she didn''t want to know.


    She felt a chill run down her spine, and for some reason was struck with the knowledge that her god did not want to know either.


    But he did know, and had always known. Svaltha did not know what it was that Krakevasil wished was not there, but whatever it was she got the distinct sense that it was getting closer.


    She hoped that they sailed south soon.

 Lykourgos II: The Flowers of Spring

    <u>Lykourgos II: The Flowers of Spring</u>


    <u>The Fourteenth Day of the Third Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Haestinghen, Eastern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    So, here he was again. Haestinghen. Wars seemed to have a habit of drawing him to this town, or rather city since he''d finally given it the charter it had long craved alongside a few other townships, and it seemed that in spite of the boons he''d since granted the settlement it was not entirely enthused to see him march through again.


    Ah well, no matter. It''s only for a day or so before we continue marching to the border. With any luck Grand Duke Sigiros will have joined with us by them, but if he hasn''t then it shan''t matter. He''ll just have to live with the knowledge that his men acted as the rearguard and reinforcements of the campaign, rather than as a part of the glorious van as he was originally promised. It''s hardly my fault if he''s too far away to make camp with us before the start of hostilities.


    The people of Haestinghen had given him a lukewarm response, all told. War had brought him twice to their town already, once with flame and anger and a second time with mysticism and mercenaries, so it was of little surprise when they weren''t exactly enthused to find he was back to marching across their urban and mercantile lives with war at his back once more.


    Never mind the investments that had begun to pour into this newly-minted city like water since he''d taken the crown and throne. These people''s memories went deep, and still they eyed him with suspicion.


    However, the new Gentleman of the town had been rather more content with working under the crown than the old Gentleman, Manfred, had been. Iochford, he was called. A somewhat mousey man, but canny nonetheless. He''d seen the value in his hometown''s new status as a city, and wanted to make the most of it. The man was also smart enough to know that working under the auspices of the crown would be much more profitable for him in the long run than working against it, especially if that meant royal assistance every five years when the mayoral keys of the city were to be passed to whomever the populous of the city decided most deserved it.


    The man owned a manor house in the nearby countryside around half a mile from the city walls, and it was there that upon his invitation Lykourgos, as well as his entourage and councillors, had been housed for the night. Whilst the manor was nothing compared to the royal palatial complex at the heart Anaria, it still had its own sort of charm. A well kept garden, no larger than an acre at the most, gave him a lovely place to rest and gather his thoughts. It was almost a shame that he was to move on from this place tomorrow or overmorrow, but he wasn''t willing to spend too long here; he''d already dallied in Haestinghen and spent too long inside its walls in both of the other wars that had called him to the city, so he didn''t want to go three-for-three on that one.


    Speaking of people who weren''t keen to that the army was passing through Haestinghen again, Seventh certainly seemed to be near the top of that list.


    It was understandable, of course. The poor thing had been closed off and frightful as they approached, jumping a little every time they heard steel-on-steel whenever the soldiers trained and knights sparred, but if Lykourgos had been kidnapped here he didn''t think he''d want to make his presence known here a second time. There was a reason he had hardly visited Seastream after that little incident with the cult, after all. Nasty business, and he hadn''t even been cut open.


    He was unsurprised, therefore, that the seer had hardly left arms reach of Rhema these last few days on the approach to Haestinghen. They were certainly never out of eyesight of each other, a precaution that Lykourgos knew was to be just as much for Rhema''s peace of mind as it was Seventh''s. He had caught himself wondering which one of them needed the company of the other more, would break first without it, but so morbid a line of thinking he didn''t really want to think about and so he had shunted the thoughts away.


    The thoughts of his brother needing to be near the seer at all times brought forth images of Alekos to his mind. The Polaeran had stayed a few days after the coronation, and had spent the vast majority of his time with Lykourgos, but had needed to return home soon afterwards. It was just as well he did, Lykourgos thought, because otherwise I''d find myself so distracted that even the simplest of duties would surely flit away from me.


    He pushed those thoughts away as well. He didn''t want to be distracted at the moment.


    Not when there was another war to win.


    <hr>


    It was in the gardens that he met with a few of his commanders, namely Romanos and Crowe, but this time they were also joined by the young Lieutenant Aetvia. Aetvia was one of the new generation of Lieutenants being trained by the Mistress of Iron, a position that was sorely lacking in talented people to fill it given that most of the last generation were now dead. Of all the old Lieutenants there were only a few left, and Lykourgos knew even less of them by name. That was why he was trying to make the effort to include the new Lieutenants in his war-councils one-by-one; he knew that he was going to need to rely on a few more of them in the coming wars and as such needed to know which ones were the most likely to follow his orders where applicable and bend the rules to achieve victory where not.


    As of right now, Aetvia was his favourite of the ones he had met. He actually liked her more than he liked some of the old Lieutenants, especially Marren and Daniil. Actually, Daniil was starting to grow on him a bit more as of late. He still preferred the new Lieutenants to the man, but he was as good as his word in making sure his gaggle of traitors and reprobates remained loyal and true. He knew they were all on their last chance, after all, and had offered his own head once to his King already. If he was found lacking, the man surely knew that Lykourgos would make good on that offer.


    As for Marren, well, the less said the better. The man was still loyal, and one of the best minds in the known world where siege warfare was involved, but he was not as sound as he had once been. He was... he was losing himself. To guilt, Lykourgos thought, but he wasn''t really sure. Not that it mattered anyway, so long as the man did his job properly.


    It was Wulfstan that Aetvia had been attempting to emulate, and whilst she couldn''t quite capture that same half-mad look that the young man had carried himself with on the field she was certainly extremely close. More than that, she was just as capable as Wulfstan had been whilst leading men as well. He was glad to have her on side, not least for the loss of his two most favoured Lieutenants had been something of an administrative issue since the end of the civil war until now. Having a worthy successor around did much to improve the efficiency of the Armsmen as they looked to their Lieutenants for inspiration.


    That was another thing that had begun to happen as of his coronation; the dead Lieutenants were starting to be honoured by their replacements. Isen, Wulfstan, Ingfred; he had learned that the younger generation of Lieutenants now looked to the older generation, to those men, as something akin to minor saints. The old Lieutenants were now something either to emulate or to shun, and with how they spoke of them it seemed as though it would only be a matter of time before their status as folk-saints amongst the soldiery would be cemented.


    Those who yet lived were not exempt from such borderline hero-worship either. At least, the ones of note were not. Both Marren and Daniil had their admirers and students amongst the ranks of the new Lieutenants, according to Crowe anyhow. He wasn''t sure how either man could warrant such admiration, but then he wasn''t a Lieutenant or Sergeant, or even an Armsman. For all the respect he had for them he was royalty, and so he knew that the situation on the ground for his favoured soldiers would be sorely different than his own and as such give rise to what seemed to be strange new traditions to him but to them seemed perfectly logical.


    He could see their titles in his head even now: Wulfstan, the fearless. Ingfred, the veteran. Marren, the engineer. Daniil, the death-seeking.


    Isen. The traitor. He supposed every portion of the church down even to its folk sects needed villains to sneer at, even if the thought of Isen having earned some form of immortality through remembrance made him uncomfortable.


    He wondered for a moment how this newfound hero-worship amongst the Lieutenants, and some of the other ranks as he had been informed, might interact with the so called ''Bastard''s Boys'' and other assorted groups that had pledged their undying loyalty to their king twice over. Would they but heads and refuse to work together, in which case the new beliefs would have to be rooted out no matter how useful they might prove, or would they end up blending and forming some sort of militant cult within the church wholly loyal to Lykourgos alone?


    If it were the latter, then he was certainly going to encourage it.


    "So," Crowe started, her voice a hoarse rumble, "I take it we''re here to plan out the campaign."


    It was not a question, but a statement. She was right, of course, but Lykourgos felt the need to nod anyway.


    "Our plans as of now amount to marching along the Riverroad, tearing down the walls protecting Corthraxiopolis, and then continuing east. I was hoping that the three of you would be willing and able to cover the large gaps that so simple a plan leaves."


    There was a grunt of assent from Crowe, and she nodded to Romanos as if signalling for him to talk. If the motion had been directed at Aetvia it would have made sense, for she was of a lower rank than the woman who was still technically the Mistress of Iron on the Inner Council but would definitely be losing that position when the Grand Duke met with them, but Romanos was her equal. It was strange to see them acting so... well, strange, around each other.


    Peculiar.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    "Haengen makes up the western territories of Nordicos; there''s nothing there but rocky hillocks. Not even true hills, just hillocks. It might prove uncomfortable for the army to move through such an area logistically, but there shouldn''t be any places for ambushes or the like along the road either. So long as our supply lines are maintained it shouldn''t be an issue. Megalothiriopolis is just off of the road, and so taking it should be the main priority. Not that we should worry about that; the city remains unwalled, and will likely declare itself neutral in the conflict as the army marches by if the Nordican''s own forces aren''t nearby to come to their aid."


    Lykourgos nodded.


    "Good. The rocky landscape might not be the best for the campaign, but it''d be perfect for setting up mining operations. Good mineral wealth. I have little doubt that the Grand Duke will pay handsomely for the rights to prospect and begin operations in such areas. As for the rest of the campaign?"


    Romanos continued.


    "After that we''ll move on to the city of Corthraxiopolis, but as per your plan the army is to ignore the rest of the Archic foothills and continue east along the Riverroad to move through the remainder of the kingdom. After that we reach Licotemos, and the rest is for you to decide."


    He nodded at his friend, and turned to face Crowe when he heard her start speaking from where Romanos left off.


    "The important thing in this campaign are the urban centres of Corthraxiopolis, Megalothiriopolis, and Rochaven. Most of Nordicos'' value comes from its cities, not its countryside, so by taking them we''ll have a stranglehold on the rest of the nation. Megalothiriopolis and Corthraxiopolis are, as the Grandmaster noted, both either on the Riverroad or nearby. As such they will be in the path of the army as it marches north-east and then east. Rochaven is situated further south, and as such will need to seized likely by a smaller force sent purposely to secure their surrender."


    Aetvia spoke up, seemingly a little embarrassed at having spoken without the assent of her superiors, but was calm nonetheless.


    "I reckon that the smaller force sent to Rochaven should be left behind instead of ''ttempting to march to the main army; since that''ll mean that if the forays into Licotemos go bad then the smaller force can set up in the hilly highlands of eastern Nordicos and ensure that the army has a series of prepared and provisioned fortifications to fall back and regroup behind.


    "I''ve no wish for us to fail in Licotemos of course, yer ''ighness. But I feel as though it might be better to prepare for failure in case."


    Lykourgos remained silent for a moment, and then smiled whilst nodding.


    "Yes Crowe," he said whilst turning away from the Lieutenant and facing the Marshal, "I see what you mean. This one certainly has potential."


    He turned back to face the Lieutenant, who now had a slight tint to her cheeks suggesting the beginnings of a blush.


    "You''ll do well in the Armsmen, Aetvia. Well indeed. Alright then, I think that should roughly cover that which I wished to know for now. We''ll send out scouts to get the lay of the land in the coming weeks, but I think that we should fear little save their massed army in the opening months of the war. Great defenders on the battlefield they might be, but they aren''t as well-versed in matters martial as they once were. Too many years of declining interest in their knights and armsmen have left them soft, and given that the only real fighters they have in the Grey Company are busy fighting in Dathan at the moment there isn''t too much that will stand in our way here."


    "I think it might best be noted, yer ''ighness, that ye''ve got two of the Scorpion-Engines amongst yer Armsmen as well. They mightn''t be the nimblest of things, but they''ve got their uses where breaking a shieldwall is concerned."


    Aetvia''s words were coated by her thick Low-Klironomean dialect, which reminded him distinctly of the way his blind bodyguard talked. The way she spoke was different of course, her regional accent from central Teleytaios differing from Dreamwulf''s accent, for his was of the northern lands beyond the Einarbrycge, but it was Low-Klironomean all the same. Though her accent may have made her sound ''common'' he didn''t much care for such discriminations. She spoke sense, was loyal, and knew what her job was as well as how to best carry it out. If anyone told him that he was a fool for trusting people like her in positions of leadership then he would just accept that they were being monumentally foolish themselves for believing in such rhetoric.


    He nodded at her words with a slight smile and bade her to continue with a gesture, politely ignoring the fact that she''d referred to him as ''Highness'' instead of ''Grace''. High and Low Klironomean differed in the use of such terms, Low-Klironomean not differentiating between the two as High-Klironomean did. She could hardly be held accountable for speaking the language of the majority of his kingdom, now could she?


    "Well, I only mean to suggest that if we draw the Nordicans out into the field, they''ll have a few Scorpion-Engines of their own to throw at the lines. Not only that, theirs is the fucking Widow-Engine. The lads ''ll try to hold ground, but there''s only so much a billhook can do against something like ''at. Get the Grand Duke to chuck his lot in ahead of us, the Scorpion-Engines I mean, and we''ll at least be able to keep theirs busy."


    He nodded with consideration, and then when the silence had stretched on long enough that he was satisfied she was finished talking, began responding with his own thoughts.


    "Good points. Succinct ones as well, might I add. Good. I''m glad for your insights, Lieutenant Aetvia. I must confess to holding rather a measure of dislike for the Scorpion-Engines, both individually and as a concept.


    "You see, as a concept it is treated as something new and radical. It is not. All a Scorpion-Engine is, at its heart, is a chariot. A large chariot capable of holding six men manning crossbows in the back as well as a driver and a Scorpion operator at the front, yes, but still a chariot. A chariot encased in a layer of armour to afford protection for those manning the contraption, as well as to ensure that the horses have no knowledge of where they are running to making them all but completely loyal to the steering of the driver, but still a chariot.


    "They have been made for thousands of years, and thousands of years ago they stopped being used in warfare for the next reason I will mention; they''re too expensive to maintain.


    "Chariots were powerful. Chariots broke enemy lines. But they were too expensive and resource-intensive to maintain, especially when you could arm a hundred men with bows, spears, and swords for around the same price. With all the added expenses related to the excess gear of teh cScorpion-Engine, that price has gone up by an order of magnitude.


    "I could arm, armour, and train nearly a full thousand men for the upfront costs of one Scorpion-Engine. A Scorpion-Engine can only be in one place at a time, but a thousand soldiers can be in a thousand places at once. A soldier can fight in a building, a street, a marsh, and a chariot cannot.


    "I loath the idea of the Grand Duke keeping his own Scorpion-Engines around when for that same price he could field another two thousands. It''s too inefficient."


    Romanos placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping his tirade.


    "Better him than you, Lyk. It''s not your coin he''s wasting on maintaining those things, merely his own. Besides, if all three of them, both those of the Grand Duke and the Widow-Engine operated by the Nordicans, end up destroyed in battle then that''s a good excuse to use the rest of them for scrap when push comes to shove. I''m not the biggest fan of those things either, as you no doubt recall."


    Lykourgos couldn''t help but let slip a grin at that, his friend''s repeated and vehement statements of dislike for those contraptions having been made abundantly clear in the years since the Twilight Rebellion.


    "Show pieces. The lot of them. I''d sooner have a score of good men or a pair of ballistae at my back, but very well. If we aren''t paying for them, there''s no good reason to let them go to waste. It would be remiss to ignore the fact that both sides in the coming conflict are to have these contraptions on their side, even if I believe their use to be primarily aesthetic in nature."


    There was a muttering of assent and a snort from Romanos, whilst the two women nodded. Lykourgos smiled, content. Yes, the gardens here were quite pretty. He did so adore the flowers that sprang forth and sprouted in these earliest days of spring.


    He tried not to think about how many of them would have wilted and died come the summer.


    <hr>


    "- I believe it will be for the best."


    Lykourgos turned the corner and entered his tent, raising his eyebrow at the noise as he found his spymaster and cupbearer in what seemed to be stubborn conversation with each other.


    "Ilias. Eli. To what do I owe this pleasure?"


    Elikoidi, who seemed to have developed a habit of showing up unannounced out of thin air to upend some small facet of his life, smiled humourlessly at him. Ilias, for his part, just bowed.


    "Lyk."


    "Your Grace."


    The two of them spoke at once, Ilias looking away soon after almost bashfully.


    "Elikoidi," he continued, "I believed I heard some measure of disagreement between the two of you. Might I ask what the issue is?"


    "Oh, certainly." His friend began with a flourish. "I''m sending that one away from you for a while."


    That wasn''t what Lykourgos had been expecting, and he was taken aback a great deal.


    "I beg your pardon? Have you taken leave of your senses, Eli?"


    His friend responded with a somewhat-sassy gasp, though Lykourgos was pleased to note that Ilias seemed a little happier now that he had some support.


    "We need a spy in the Licoteman court. Our little friend here seems to be the best bet."


    He continued to stare at Elikoidi, unimpressed.


    "And why might that be?"


    The Master of Silver rolled his eyes.


    "Because the king of Licotemos is out hunting and has left his eldest son in charge, his son does nothing but hold banquets, jousts, and tourneys most days, and as such we need someone who has been trained to wait upon the orders of lords and princes to have access to their banquet halls as a serving-boy.


    "It can''t be one of my rats, because they''re all urchins without a single idea of how to cater to such ''noble'' men and women. It can''t be someone too old, as the lords and ladies will want a prettier face to look at during their feasts rather than some wrinkled old crone, and most importantly it has to be someone we trust absolutely.


    "Can you think of anyone else that can fit those criteria for us at the moment, my friend? Because please, if you can, tell me. If not, our little Ilias here is the perfect candidate to compile a report on the Licoteman court from within. My informants are not nearly so numerous that far from Anaria."


    Lykourgos turned his head away a little and swore under his breath. Elikoidi was right, at the end of the day. Ilias was the best candidate for getting to know what was going on in Licotemos more intimately before the campaign into the verdant plains of the east began. Ilias, for his part, already looked to be resigned to his new role.


    "I don''t want to leave your side again, your Grace."


    The cupbearer''s words were small, but not quiet. The boy took a deep breath, then continued.


    "I don''t want to leave. But if it means it will help you win, then I''ll do it."


    Lykourgos smiled at the boy again, once more wondering why Ilias seemed to have developed a sense of hero-worship for him. There seemed to be a lot of that going around at the moment.


    Elikoidi broke in once more, tone suggesting that he was saying a lot more than he sounded like he was saying on a surface level.


    "I''m almost surprised you aren''t more enthused. I thought you''d appreciate the chance to serve your King away from some of those around you."


    There seemed to be a silent conversation between Ilias and Elikoidi at that, not that Lykourgos could decipher it, and afterwards Ilias seemed a little more... on board, with what had been said.


    "When do I leave?"


    Elikoidi looked to Lykourgos, then to Ilias, then back to Lykourgos, then to Ilias again.


    "Tonight. Pack your things and saddle a pony, then follow the road east. I''ll see to it that you''re given supplies and coin to get your way there. Remember, show no more money than what you intend to spend, sleep with one eye open, and use a cover story the entire way there."


    Ilias nodded.


    "Got it."


    "Good. You''re leaving tonight, before this one gets too sappy and changes his mind."


    Elikoidi pointed over his shoulder at Lykourgos with his thumb at that, to which the King merely rolled his eyes and lowered himself to eye level with his cupbearer.


    "Be safe, alright?"


    The young man nodded, smiling slyly but not without an unmistakable sense of gravitas.


    "I will, your Grace. By your leave?"


    Lykourgos nodded, pushing away the thought that he was sending away someone who trusted him to the moon and back without so much as having known it twenty minutes ago.


    He really hoped Elikoidi and Ilias knew what they were doing here, for if anything happened to one of his friends he thought the stress might kill him.

 Lore Chapter: The Cathedral of Saint Mikah

    My second-in-command recommended keeping a journal to better organise my thoughts, so I thought I''d give it a go. I never used to be able to write as a kid, but the church taught me well. It taught me many things, actually, but of them all I think that writing was the best. The most useful, surely; there can be no priest of an organised faith who cannot read and write, for the breadth of religious law they would be required to know by memory would surely mean that all bar only the smallest number of people would be able to spread the words of the faith.


    I learned to read, as my classmates did, in the Cathedral of Saint Mikah. Not only there, you understand, for our lessons were scattered in classrooms all across Aegos, but it was there that the bulk of the hard work was done. My favourite of all the places we used to stay was the Church of Lycaon, for tales of King Harald II of house Whiteshield were legendary even to little boys such as myself at the farthest fringes of his old kingdom''s influence.


    Saint Mikah''s Cathedral overshadows it by an order of magnitude, however. It is a truly gargantuan building, imposing and towering in equal measure. It is a testament to how deeply rooted the Church of the First Saint is in Aegos, for even if the city of Tilda is the political heart of the church it is Aegos that remains it''s spiritual heart. It is Aegos that holds the words of the church at the highest regard, even when it shouldn''t. It is Aegos that decided to celebrate their piety by building such a monument to the Saints. To the First Saint.


    It was cursed from the start. The site that had been selected for its building had once housed a great temple to the pagan gods that once held sway over Dathan, a temple that had stood long before even the Kliran people sought refuge in Aegos after being forced from their homelands. After that temple fell it was replaced by another, this time worshipping the seven black-feathered gods of the Kliran and Skraeling peoples which they called their ''Corvid Gods'', before that too was burned to ash by dragonfire sometime after the Age of Silence.


    It was there that the Cathedral of Saint Mikah was built. On the bones of dozens of other temples, other faiths, that had came before it. The lands had been cursed by foul magics from the armies of the Silence, torched time and time again by rioting mobs and invading armies, and was even scorched by dragonfire, but it was still there that the temple was built.


    Saints, what fools they must all have been.


    I can''t say I don''t understand why they chose that spot, however foolish I may think their decision to be. The cathedral was supposed to be a symbol of hope, you understand. It was never meant to be what it is now. It was supposed to stand where the false gods had failed, to showcase the resilience of the faith to all when compared to the old pagan religions that had come before it.


    They didn''t think that thousands would die in its construction. They didn''t think it''d drive the young republic to the brink of bankruptcy and lead to the chaos of the Third Aegan Civil War. It feels strange to write that now, knowing that we''ve just ended the forth such war, but then I suppose these habits never really go away; civil war is just a way of life in this city. It had happened to most of the temples that stood before it, though I never was really able to look into the faiths they preached as much as I would have liked.


    The Church of the First Saint thought that their temple here would be different. They were certain that it would stand forever, and be a beacon of piety and progress to light the way for those who had not yet given themselves fully to the faith.


    They genuinely believed that all the issues that the old religions had faced when building their gargantuan temples would pass them by, that they wouldn''t be subjected to those same happenings.


    No one thinks the misfortunes they read about will happen to them. No one thinks that they''re at risk of falling to the same maladies as those less fortunate that they have heard about.


    Nobody ever thinks it''s going to happen to them. But it does, and it did. Oh, how it did.


    See, a wonder so grandiose was always going to need more men, more money, and more resources to build. In the days of the old Aegan Empire the city of Aegos might have had enough of each of those things, as well as the authoritarianism required to finish the construction with some measure of speed at the cost of expedited human suffering, but the republic? A republic that had only stood for one or two centuries and had already become famed for its corruption, a republic that had already lost all of its Klironomean territories and more than half of its Dathanian lands and tributary-cities, a republic still left scarred by the Age of Silence and the leaving of the Klironomoi?


    They were never going to be able to build such a grand design without a myriad of issues. It just wouldn''t ever have been possible.


    The endless delays and failures must have dampened their spirits somewhat, but then what did we expect? What did our forefathers think would happen? To build the largest, the grandest, the greatest house of worship in all Saintdom, they needed blood. Oh, how they needed blood.


    Every carved grey stone from the Drakespine, every block of marble from Kortheros, every statue hewn from basalt in the Wasteland Hills of Drakefyre and bronze-lined leaden window from far Sothettar; all of it needed labour, needed bodies, needed cruelty to extract and build. How many lives were cut short to build the greatest monument Saintdom had ever seen?


    The work was dangerous, even for the time. Such huge blocks of stone were hardly safe to transport over such distances, and the worst of the work tended to happen on-site; though cranes had been built to assist with the construction and lift the blocks up to the higher level of the cathedral site there were no Klironomean engineers hired to assist with their creation, and as such many of them buckled under the weight of the leviathan blocks of stone each twice as tall as a man and five times as long.


    Countless. Surely, the numbers were countless.


    Even putting such construction-related deaths to the side, the numbers would still have been staggering. How many men and women starved because money that could have been sent to importing food or assisting with the renewal of the lacklustre farming going on in the Aegan hills was instead earmarked for use to hire Aegan-born sculptors? How many children went without alms because the church instead donated vast sums of wealth to purchase the finest marble from abroad?


    Too many. Even one would have been too many.


    Every spire was one less village fed. Every antechamber was another city block left to fester and rot. Every single fucking residence in that place was a prince''s ransom in silver, capable of tearing down the slums of Athio or Chytos and rebuilding them into something more worthwhile. I''m going to tear those slums in Athio down myself now that I''m going there, but it doesn''t change the fact that it could of and should have happened centuries ago.


    Saint Mikah''s Cathedral was built on blood and bones. I knew all of this, even as a child. I''d been taught my histories surrounding this place, truly I had.


    But none of those things made me hate that cathedral. It wasn''t any of them.


    It was the fucking cells. Those fucking cells, I swear to you, I didn''t-


    I didn''t believe in the hells when I was a child. Not at first. But when they put me in those cells, I started believing.


    When they forced me into the oubliette, I realised that this world had been hell all along.


    The oubliette was the worst thing I''ve ever gone through. Nothing in my life has come close. It didn''t matter what else they did to me in those cells, the things they put me through. That oubliette was the worst.


    It seemed almost laughably simple, at first. It was nothing more than a small hole in the ground covered by a grate, perhaps half a metre by half a metre, some five or six metres deep. That was it. The walls were sheer stone, without a single handhold to speak of. It wouldn''t have mattered if there were, for you wouldn''t have been able to move your arms around to grasp them.


    You couldn''t move at all. You couldn''t even sit, for there wasn''t the room. You just had to stand there, still, in place, for days on end. You could feel your legs buckle and give way, but there was nowhere to rest them or even to collapse when your muscles failed. You were stuck like that, until someone did you the mercy of pulling you out or killing you.


    If you went in at the wrong angle you could easily miss the water drip that was your only source of sustenance for as long as you were in there, and there were hardly any voices to keep you company save only the odd chittering sounds from above where the rats were waiting for you to be weak enough to eat alive.


    I think that was the cruelty of it, in truth; your tormentors would not even give you the dignity of killing you themselves, of being the ones to cause you pain. They would simply leave you there, and let your own atrophying body take care of the rest.


    When I was hauled out I couldn''t walk properly for days, and I was one of the lucky ones. Some people I knew couldn''t walk for weeks afterwards, and needed dedicated care before they gave up the use of their cane afterwards. The oubliette was hell, in its purest and most distilled form. No flashy, gaudy punishments. No glamorous and creative method by which to make the sinners pay. Just an uncaring box with sheer walls built into the floor, silent save the chittering of rats and the dripping of water.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Still, as awful as the oubliette was, the cells weren''t much better. The only real differences were that you could sit down and, if your punisher was so inclined, you might find yourself with one or two cellmates rather than wallowing in loneliness. It was preferable, if you got on with them that is. I know I did with the two I was always stuck with. Lovely people, at the time at least. I suppose the cells left their scars on them just the same as I. None of us were ever the same after that, but I thank the First Saint that I had them through it.


    Is that selfish of me? To be glad they went through such horrors along my side so I didn''t have to suffer through them alone? Does that make me sinful?


    Sinful. Heh. Sin. Strange name for a Cardinal of the church, don''t you think?


    But yes, those cells were the reason I hated that cathedral so much. They''re the reason I can''t stand to look at the place if I don''t have a weapon to hand, as though a weapon might stop the memories and the cruelty that still takes place even now within my mind.


    It was dark down there, blindingly so. After a few days you start hearing things around you, and you''re never certain whether what you''re hearing is actually there or not. After a week or so you learn that screaming for help is futile, both because nobody is listening and your voice is too hoarse to continue. It''s hardly like you have the water to keep your throat dry, after all.


    As for the rest of the cathedral, it''s mostly silent these days. Always was, in truth. Most people were turned away by the intimidating nature of the structure, opting instead for more traditional places of worship. The pews are almost always empty, the lamps rarely lit, and the books within the library still pristine even now thanks to their lack of use.


    I think some of them are probably still brand-new and unopened, their bindings pristine and spines unmarred. A strange thought for a place that our forefathers thought would be the centre of the faith for centuries to come.


    I can complain endlessly about their stupidity, about their apparent lack of self-reflection, but then it''s far easier to say that now with the benefit of hundreds of years of hindsight. It''s far easier to get caught up in the fervour of those around you when you''re being told it''s the greatest thing you''ll ever do by those who are supposed to see you to the heavens.


    I know I got caught up in it these last few years. I hate our ancestors for building that church, but I hate myself more for knowing full well that I''d have been one of those people who genuinely believed that it was the single greatest way to show our dedication to the First Saint, he who died after bringing us the dawn.


    I think about that, sometimes. About how his life''s mission was a success, and he''d defied all the expectations and prophecies that he would martyr himself in battle to bring about the end of the silence. Of how he was killed soon after not by the daemons everyone had been so certain would kill him, but by jealous men and women who believed he was besmirching their gods.


    Was he scared? Had he only just reconciled with the fact that he would be able to continue his life and spread his gospel, would be able to feel love and joy and heartbreak? Was he at peace, given that by all accounts he''d been expected to die anyway?


    Would he have wanted thousands to perish in the building of a series of empty halls everyone was promised would preach his word? Would he have wanted them to die even if it did?


    I don''t know. I can''t claim to ever know the divine, for in my head lives Sin. It''s why they named me, I think. Maybe this was my name all along, but I''m almost sure I had a different name when I was with the travelling actors. Whatever that name was, it''s gone for good now. Everyone who might have known it is dead, and I cannot remember it. If Adikos knows, then he will not tell me. I do not believe I will ask again, not after last time.


    I despise that man. He is, in many ways, a human version of the Cathedral of Saint Mikah; he is overbearing and intimidating, thousands are tormented and have died at his hands, and most of all where piety should echo there are merely empty halls and untouched scriptures.


    The man is a monster, and the cathedral is silent.


    Oh, damn it all. Did they think they were being clever, building such a monument? Did they think it would make us, make mankind, better? Well it didn''t. All it did was show us exactly how bad the worst of our people can be. All it did was show us that there was a reason the Angels are gone. How, when we make use of so evil a place, can we claim moral superiority? Even myself and my friends, who thought we were here to help usher in a new age of righteous charity and peace...


    Did we ever think that? I''m fairly certain I did, at least. Before I was wounded at Thermanthus at the end of the civil war that was.


    I can''t believe you left me behind after Thermanthus. You two were the only people I had in the world, the only people that mattered to me at the time, and you left me after promising you''d always be there for me. Did you think you were being kind, leaving me there? Did you tell yourself it was the right thing to do as you both rode away from each other never to reconcile, leaving me behind in my unconscious and injured state?


    Why did you leave me? I refuse to believe it was my fault. Not this time. I spent so much of my life certain that it would be my actions, my voices, that drove you away from me, but it wasn''t. In the end you two hated each other so much it overpowered your care for me. You cared more about spiting each other than you did upholding your promises to me. That''s not my fault, not this time. I won''t take the blame for what happened to me there. Not anymore.


    I''m done with being the guilty party here. I''m done with standing idly by. I''ve only just recovered from my wounds, and I''m now being told to go to Athio. Well, go I will. I''ll go there, and I''ll make sure you never want to set foot in that city. I''m going to make you terrified of me, to push you so far away that you''ll never get a chance to get close enough to abandon me again. I''m not going to let you do that to me again.


    I fought and killed and bled to ensure our victory, but now I wished I''d fought to uphold the republic instead. That ship sailed a long time ago however, and now all that''s left to do is to try and right some of the wrongs that have already begun to crop up in the wake of our victory.


    If the ''Archcardinal'' wants to rule over a land of ashes and pyres, then that''s fine. I''ll let him turn every man, woman, and child in Aegos to ash. If my former friends want to follow down that path, then they can do the same in their own cities as well.


    But they will not have Athio. They will not have the city that has been given to me. I''m going to terrify everyone, to ensure that everyone is so afraid of me that there is no need for Adikos'' new watchdogs to maintain a presence in the city. I''m going to ensure that there''s never the need for an investigation into my conduct, and that everyone beyond the walls of this city chooses to not so much as breath my name for fear of what might be done to them with my appearance.


    Because you all left me behind here. You were all I ever had in this world, we were all that each other had, and you promised me that you''d always be there for me. You promised me that you''d wait for me. Well, you''ve taught me a valuable lesson here today; if I am to embark on this path, then it will be years before either of you are capable of earning enough trust from me to even hold a cordial conversation. It will take more than one act of good faith for any sort of rapport to be rebuilt between us. Before waking up here I would have given anything at just a word from one of you two, but that wasn''t enough for either of you. It wasn''t enough for me to give everything, for I had to despise that which you despised as well.


    And when the two of you grew to despise each other, how could that possibly be fair? To turn my own devotion towards the two of you against itself, leaving my mind and heart to consume themselves endlessly.


    Maybe you got your wish in the end. Both of you. Admeta, for you I give the knowledge that I hate Spyridon. Spyridon, for you I give the knowledge that I hate Admeta. I hope both of you are happy with this, because for all the damage Adikos did to us I do not believe even for a moment that it could possibly amount to the betrayal I felt from the two of you.


    I think this entry was supposed to be writing down my thoughts about the Cathedral of Saint Mikah at first. Guess I got off track, but then with all that''s happened at the moment I think I can be forgiven a few moments of unfettered emotion.


    We never left each other behind before. We never used to sell each other out, or plot and scheme against each other, in the hopes of avoiding a punishment. We all cowered, yes, but we cowered together. We hid together, and when we were found we helped each other recover from our punishments. We were inseperable, the three of us, and despite how I''d seen that same devotion fall apart in others I never thought it would happen to the three of us.


    No one thinks it will happen to them. Not until they learn otherwise, one way or another.


    I hope that we''re able to meet again as friends, one day. I hope that the two of you come to your senses and realise what you''ve done to me, what your abandonment meant. That you didn''t intend for it to be abandonment matters not, not when it was hatred for each other that ensured that the two of you left me in my moment of greatest need. I hope so much that we can grow past this and connect as we once did with each other.


    Most of all, I hope you choke on your guilt. I hope you see me, bloodied and injured, behind you every time you use a mirror. I hope your dreams are haunted by the sounds of men and women dying on the battlefield, just as mine are, for it isn''t fair that I should be left alone to deal with such torment when it was all of you who abandoned me, and not the other way around.


    I want you to come before me and grovel and beg for forgiveness. I want you to come here and wordlessly embrace me, to tell me everything''s going to be alright. I want you to tell me that the love you both held for me overrode your jealousy and hatred of each other.


    I want all of that and so much more. My feelings towards the two of you are a self-contradictory mess, positives and negatives and neutrals flying about my skull with reckless abandon. The voice claims that I was never enough for either of you, but in this I know he is either lying or wrong. I remember the way you both looked at me, the way we all looked at each other, and I know that we were always enough for each other. The three of us could have done so much and healed so many scars, if only we''d stayed together.


    That''s the strangest part, I think; I know that we were enough, and yet we fell apart anyway. Maybe it just wasn''t meant to be.


    If nothing else, I know that I''m glad to have had both of you with me in the cells under Saint Mikah''s Cathedral. I''m glad I had you there with me to soften the blows, and because it made a start on the penance you must be undergoing right now. I''m glad that I was there with you, to help make things easier for the both of you as well. I loved you both so much back then, and I still don''t know where it went wrong.


    Actually, that''s a lie. I don''t know when it went wrong, but I know where it went wrong all to well.


    It all went wrong in a little cell beneath the greatest cathedral that man has ever built.


    It all went wrong in a cathedral that would have horrified Saint Mikah to the centre of his soul, if only he could have survived to see it.


    It all went wrong with three scared children, forced to grow up too fast in a dark cell beneath the Cathedral of Saint Mikah.


    -Cardinal Sin, First Cardinal of the Holy City of Athio, faithful servant of Archcardinal Adikos of the Saintliest City of Aegos.

 Cardinal Spyridon III: The Eyes Upon Him

    <u>Cardinal Spyridon III: The Eyes Upon Him</u>


    <u>The Twenty-Forth Day of the Third Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Athio, Aegan Hills, Western Dathan.</u>


    Meeting with Hawk always felt like a chore, or at the very least it had felt that way as of late. The man clearly hadn''t been sleeping well, likely due to the encroaching springtime which would start the civil war in earnest, but why did that mean the man had to be so prickly and take his annoyance out on Spyridon in every conversation they had?


    Perhaps the man''s worries were not completely unfounded, for Spyridon had a few secrets of his own that he yet kept, but the two of them were still on the same side and fighting the same war against the same new tyrants; they should have been trying to work together, not constantly arguing against each other!


    "And the remnants of the Aegan Watch?"


    The man''s voice broke him from his thoughts, and Spyridon was silent for a few moments as he reminded himself about what they had been talking about.


    "Ah, the watch, yes. They''re well trained and well equipped, and know the streets and defences of Aegos like the back of their hands. They''ll be an excellent asset for us in the battles to come."


    Hawk stared at him for a moment.


    "You seem absent-minded, Cardinal. Is there something distracting you? Something on your mind, perhaps?"


    Spyridon shook his head slowly, not quite understanding where Hawk was going with this line of questioning.


    "No, I do not think so. I remain as committed to our cause as I ever have."


    "Do you? That is good to know, although..."


    The man''s voice trailed off, and he stared seemingly at nothing for around half a minute. It was only when Spyridon made to speak, to break that silence, that he did raise his voice again.


    "Why is it," Hawk started, his tone suddenly very dangerous, "that I hear you''ve been rooting around in the libraries for banned books? Now don''t get me wrong, I know that Saint Khidon''s order would be of quite some help in the days to come, but if you can''t give me a very good reason why you''ve been reading from texts that even Sin did not dare read then may Saint fucking Lycaon himself save you from what I''ll have done to you."


    Spyridon swallowed. Hard.


    "This revolution is for the expression of the right to worship as one chooses."


    "Not," the man responded through gritted teeth, "to the extent of this- this madness. I tolerated Sin''s worship of Khidon, for I loved him almost like a son. His beliefs were his own, and I respect them. Saint Khidon''s work, I respect. But to expect me to turn the other cheek when I know you''ve been reading Oashen''s Grimoire? The twin texts of Nartashe ''the Mad''? Even the Book of Amerys? What were you thinking!"


    Spyridon felt a rush of anger, of indignation, at the man''s accusations. He would not sit here and take this from someone who claimed to love Sin as a son and yet was unwilling to admit that Sin would gleefully have read these texts had he been given the chance.


    "And what if I have?" He spoke with a snarl, lips curling and eyes glaring with a level of spite he had seldom felt before. "What if I did read those books? What, you''d have me killed? You''d signal for your guards to come here, take me into custody? Tell them. Ask them to do it. Now.


    "But you won''t. You won''t, because you''re just as fucking aware as I am that we''re partners here. You''re just as aware as I am that what happens to one of us happens to both of us. You can''t win this coming war without me, Hawk.


    "All I have done is read the texts that the representative of the Monastic Order of Saint Khidon told me to read. Nothing more."


    Hawk, though seemingly rather surprised at his outburst, quickly rallied himself. There was a glint in the man''s eye, mistrust leavened with anger.


    "You know as well as I do that those texts are not for reading, boy! I am more lax than most when it comes to what people should be allowed to read, how they should be allowed to worship, but this is too far. You''re defending texts that venerate tyrants as though they were Saints themselves! As though they were gods!"


    "I''m not defending them!" He shouted back. "I''m a theologian! It''s my job to understand the faith! Sin knew far better than I that you can''t understand something properly if you only look at the parts you agree with; I need to read these texts. I have to. The people they speak of are monsters, and those who wrote of them were surely mad. That does not matter.


    "I have already gleaned insights from the Book of Saint Khidon, insights that may yet prove themselves to be useful to us in the days to come. I do not believe that these texts hold similar insights, and yet what if they do? What if an answer we need, a question we didn''t know we needed to answer, a foe as of yet unrevealed to us, are made known through the pages of these maddening scripts?


    "I''m not scared of the unknown anymore, Hawk. I''m not a boy cowering in fear at the prospect of the cells beneath Saint Mikah''s. I''m a man who is to lead others to war in the name of a friend who he had to watch die, and I am not going to be bullied and frightened by you because I READ A FUCKING BOOK!"


    Saints, he had watched Sin die. It haunted him even now, though he wasn''t sure he''d ever verbalised such a thing. He was sure Hawk knew that it haunted him, though he doubted the man cared. Hawk had only cared for Sin, and Sin was gone now.


    But by what right did Hawk judge him for continuing Sin''s work? Was it Hawk who watched Sin choke and sputter on poison? Was it Hawk who had fretted every day in the capital as to what Sin would do to get them both in trouble next? Was it Hawk who had watched Sin''s face, that visage once coveted by so many and known to be so handsome, be smeared and crushed across a metre of ground?


    No. He did not have to live with that image engraved into his mind, behind his eyelids. Spyridon did.


    He would not be browbeaten by this man. Not anymore.


    There was silence again for a few moments, save only Spyridon''s heavy breaths as he calmed himself. Then, strangely enough, Hawk began to laugh.


    It was not a loud laugh, nor even particularly mirthful, but it was not mocking or quiet either. It was a strange sound to hear from so serious and unhappy a man.


    "Angels, you really are turning into him. Piece by piece, he''s coming back to lead us.


    "I don''t like what you''re doing, Cardinal. But I will not stop you. Just remember that this path was your choice, and do not dare to drag me down it alongside you.


    "If you want to cavort with dangerous mystics then fine. I need you to know that you are still very, very uninformed as to the structures and beliefs of the Khidonean Doctrine. Even within so esoteric a faith such as that of Saint Khidon''s, there exist internal differences. Sin stayed true with the more worldly legalist doctrines, for those are the beliefs that align most closely with the beliefs of the mainstream faith.


    "You cavort with the mystical sects, if unknowingly. You engage in scriptures and talk to those whose beliefs are all but completely removed from the church, and all but maintain the iconography of the church as a fa?ade.


    "Be very careful, Cardinal. You still don''t know what it is that you''re reading about in the slightest."


    He stared with an expression of thinly-concealed anger at Hawk. He knew the man must have meant something by that what he said, but he couldn''t understand a word of it. That seems to be a relatively common occurrence at the moment, he thought with a more than slightly annoyed mind.


    "Of course I don''t," he responded, "for despite the number of people surrounding me who seem to know exactly what it is all of your cryptic messaging means, you and the Order of Saint Khidon that is, I know little of what it means.


    "Your messages are seemingly designed to be cryptic, and I know little of the doubtless centuries of meaning behind such words.


    "But I am learning. I am continuing to learn, and endeavour to learn more. That is why I read those texts, Hawk. Amerys was a monster, of that I will offer no refute. He was truly evil. That does not mean that nothing can be learned from his most ancient of reigns. He was evil, and indeed even beyond measure was it so, but we can learn what not to do if nothing else from his reign."


    Hawk was silent another few moments, then sighed deeply.


    "Well, I suppose you cannot be argued with there. The boy was insane, and if not then he was mad. Well, from what we know anyway.


    "Regardless, I do not condone your readings. I suppose, if you''re anything like Sin, then my non-condoning will not matter. Whether or not you are actually like Sin I have yet to truly discern, and yet you display his traits more openly with each passing day."


    He stared at the man, more than a little confused.


    "How do you mean?"


    "Well, you''re thinking more aggressively for one."


    "Aggressive?" He argued. "I am not aggressive. We fight this war defensively, to defend others, not aggressively!"


    Hawk held up his hands in a sign of peace.


    "I did not mean that form of aggression. I mean less... filtered. Less controlled. You''re saying and acting with less meticulous forethought and with more emotion than before. Still, I suppose I can''t argue with that too much; Sin left a mark on more than a few people, after all.


    "I still don''t trust you. I spoke with too much emotion before, threatening you and all, but I think I understand you a little better than before.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    "Sin would likely have acted as you would have, yes. I would have tried to stop him too, if he yet lived of course."


    Spyridon sighed deeply, forcing the residue of his anger deep down inside him. Hawk was antagonistic and prickly, but meant well. Well, sort of anyway. He had the sort of dynamic that would no well have worked wonderfully with Sin, but less so with someone as high-strung and sensitive as Spyridon himself was. That did not mean that he was easy to get along with, by any means.


    "I''m sure you would have, and we both know you would have failed in such an endeavour. Sin could not be stopped when he had set his mind on something, as we both well know. If we are quite done with this squabble over theology, could we please return to the just as important business of ensuring that we are ready for war?"


    Hawk pressed a hand to the bridge of his nose for a while, and was silent for a little while before nodding.


    "Yes, yes, we should. We shall. The men are drilled as much as they can be, their weaponry and armour maintained or otherwise made ready for combat, and spring is about to break.


    "Indeed, I have heard that spring has already arrived in the west, carried in on warm air from the sea. Spring will arrive here soon, and then our forces will march. We stay to the roads, for the spring rains combined with marching feet will churn fields into mud, and aim to seize Aegos before the Imperator gets there. I would not be surprised if he has already repaired the bridges across the river Daedala over the course of winter, and if he has then he will have the advantage of time over us.


    "We are outnumbered, possess few defensible positions, lack the extensive armouries of the capital, lack the coin to purchase weapons from abroad, and lack the local mercenary talent needed to bolster our ranks with sellswords.


    "I lack the exact numbers of our forces at the moment, but I know that we are sorely outnumbered by the forces of Admeta and only nearly equal to those of the Imperator. We will need to strike fast whilst the element of surprise is still there if we want to succeed in our endeavours."


    "I am aware of this, Hawk. We will fight, and we will die. That is to be our lot here. Either that, or we fight and we win. We have no choice in this matter."


    The man stared at him a little longer, then waved his hand almost dismissively.


    "Pah, I''m not afraid of death. See to the men, Cardinal. We march in a sennight."


    Spyridon nodded and rose to his feet. War would soon be upon them, unless they could bring it to their enemies first.


    <hr>


    "You know," he started, walking into his chambers only to find that same Sister from the Order of Saint Khidon sat in the chair opposite his desk, "my colleague found out about those texts you bid me read. He was frightfully unhappy, and I''m pretty sure he threatened to kill me at one point."


    The woman tilted her head consolingly, though if the gesture was sincere or mocking he wasn''t sure.


    "The order suspected he may act as such at some point. We thank him for his work in seeing to the wellbeing of our mutual friend, Friend of Sin, but there are those who believe his care for the late Father may impede his judgement and decision-making even now. He has embarked upon the journey that lies beyond the veil of life, and to mourn him now is folly. He is where he needs to be, where he is supposed to be, and that will be consolation enough for the order."


    Spyridon nodded, but said nothing. No matter the beliefs of Sin and the woman sat opposite, he was still no Khidonean. The scriptures were fascinating, and perhaps there were some merits to be gleaned through their beliefs, but he would prefer to do far more research on this topic before tying himself to their beliefs.


    After all, if the words of Hawk were anything to go by then he still understood almost nothing about the true breadth and depth of the beliefs held by the Khidoneans.


    The Sister, realising he would not respond to such a statement, merely nodded and moved on.


    "Ah, my apologies. Sometimes I forget that your beliefs do not yet align with my own. With those of the order."


    The use of the word ''yet'' in that sentence did make him a little uncomfortable, what with this faith''s holy text apparently containing references to future happenings, but he pushed those thoughts aside for now. There were too many other things to consider.


    "You read those texts, you said?"


    He nodded. It had taken him a fair few sleepless nights, but he''d read through ten separate texts and documents containing information that, had he possessed even a fragment of one of them growing up, would certainly have seen him burned.


    "I have. They were interesting, by and large, if not disconcerting. I had forgotten that there was a forth Book of the Lamb, in truth. Disturbing imagery, all of it."


    The sister smiled a little wider.


    "Ah, the forbidden pages of Anawroth''s followers. The Old-Church did not like the forth of Anawroth''s holy texts, what with it''s statement that the other Angels left Anawroth bleeding and broken, abandoned to fate. They did not like the fact that the text stated that there was to be a war in the heavens when Anawroth finally reawakened.


    "And so the forth Book of the Lamb was burned where it was found, and the other three kept. They contained no such ''blasphemies'', and so were kept."


    "And do you believe that book?" He found himself asking. "Do you believe that he really is out there, somewhere?"


    Her smile turned false, something in her eyes dimmed, and she hunched for a moment as if injured. Then she was back to normal, and Spyridon had to wonder if his lack of sleep had simply been him seeing things.


    "There is always a mite of truth in such legends and myths, Friend of Sin. Whether I believe he yet lives or not is irrelevant.


    "The more important question is what do you think, Friend of Sin? What do you think of those texts you have read that the church has deemed to be forbidden?"


    He thought for a moment, working his mind and mulling over what he had read. The people within those texts were vile, more than vile, and almost all of them spoke of times when common practices had been far different than they were now.


    For all the evils in the modern world, Spyridon was very glad that he had been born now and not then.


    "I think that the texts were interesting, if nothing else. I still find their arguments lacking from a theological perspective, but at the same time I cannot fault some of their reasonings for reaching such conclusions. Nor can I fault some of their criticism of some of the church''s practices and structures, for that matter. There are, as you said, mites of truth in each of those texts."


    "And what," she replied, "did you think of the Book of Amerys? What did you think of the boy who thought he was a god?"


    His lip curled even at the recollection of such an abhorrent tale of misdeeds and woes. Spyridon severely hoped that the things he had read about in that book were lies and hyperbole spread by the church, perhaps in an attempt to discredit so ancient a people, but if they were true then he knew that the boy had deserved far greater than the death he had been granted.


    "He was monstrous. Moreso even than the creatures that served him. He was vile and choleric, arbitrary and maddened.


    "He was a murderer and a tyrant. I would not think on him any more than absolutely necessary, and not at all if I had the option. He was a monster."


    The woman nodded at him.


    "Yes he was. Yes he was indeed. And yet I would still as you to tell me this, Friend of Sin; tell me, what could we stand to learn from the boy who thought he was a god? What could we learn from Amerys?"


    ''Nothing'', his first instinct was to spit such words out, but he stopped just short of letting such an opinion be known. Such an answer, though intended to mean the denial of so cruel a tyrant''s accomplishments, was untrue. There was always something to learn from the misdeeds of others.


    "We learn that cruelty will not prevail eternally. We learn that to play god is to invite death unending to our homes. Most of all, we learn of what men are capable of achieving when they have shorn their mortality and are worshipped as divine."


    "Did you know it was one of his exiled cousins that taught us of the heart?"


    He blinked a few times, almost frozen in place at that little revelation. Had these mysterious ramblings and whispers about the ''heart'' really been going on for so long? Long enough to predate the church by... well, by many thousands of years at least.


    That was a revelation indeed, but he could find no words to respond. In the end, he said the only words that felt right to say in response to something like that.


    "The heart beats, still?"


    The phrase came out more like a question than he had intended, but the Sister did not seem to mind. If anything, she seemed all the happier for it. She was silent for a moment, before a proud grin came across her face. Not proud as in self-aggrandising, but more like the pride of a mother watching her children grow and learn.


    So long as he did not meet her eyes, that was.


    Something in her eyes changed at those words, calculating and deadly in a way Spyridon did not understand. She was proud of him, yes, but he got the sense that the crimson-robed Sister was also feeling something akin to sorrowful with her thoughts of him.


    Her smile was warm, and yet so desperately cold.


    "The heart beats, still. By the First Saint, how it beats. It beats endlessly, in defiance of those around them. It beats endlessly, in defiance of the tyrants that fear its power. It beats endlessly, in defiance of...


    "Well, it would not do to repeat such misdeeds, would it?"


    He didn''t know how to respond, not really. There was something deeper in that phrase, in the heart that beats, but despite his continued readings he was still no closer to realising its meaning.


    He''d seen one or two more references to a heart within the sections of the Book of Saint Khidon he''d so far read, but his brief skims through the other books hadn''t yielded any sort of mentioning of the heart in an esoteric capacity.


    Perhaps if he were to go through those texts more fully and mark down each and every mention of a heart in any context he might find a pattern?


    Ah, he was getting off track. He looked back up at the Sister, finding her still smiling intently at him with cold eyes.


    "I will not pretend to understand all of your mysteries yet, Sister, but I am trying. I hope you understand. For one such as myself, raised all his life to reject... to reject all of this-"


    He gestured at the small pile of books and scrolls on the table before continuing.


    "- to then try and turn himself about so soundly is difficult. That does not even go into the difficulties of balancing such an endeavour against my pre-existing duties; we are still preparing for a war, Sister."


    The woman held out her arms in a gesture of supplication.


    "Peace, Friend of Sin. I meant no ill-will. The Order understands that these things take time, but you need fear not. The most mystical amongst our ranks would prefer you dedicate yourself entirely to this, for every day spent on this issue now will be worth a week''s work in a decade''s time, but our eldest understand the need to balance these things.


    "The heart will beat endlessly a little longer yet. You have time, Father. You have enough time. When the endless beats of the hearts cease, you will know that the sands have run out. At that moment, you will have run out of time.


    "But that will not be for many years yet. Continue with your studies Cardinal, but the Order will take no offense should you deem matters of warfare to be of greater value at this moment in time.


    "Should Athio fall, so too will the last of those who can renew the bonds beneath Aegos. The Order will fight tooth and nail to ensure that this war ends in your favour, but you must redouble your efforts in the aftermath. Time is of the essence, Friend of Sin."


    He swallowed thickly and nodded, despite not understanding. How could a heart beat endlessly if it was destined to stop beating at some point?


    "And if the heart should stop ''endlessly beating'' only after I have discovered the truth? Discovered what I must do?"


    She smiled at him, and that smile said a thousand things at once. It cheered "we will prevail", it cried "I''m sorry", it comforted him in the gentle voice of his mother with an "I forgive you".


    I forgive you.


    I''m sorry.


    "Then the bonds will be renewed, and the heart will beat endlessly. The heart beats, still, friend of Sin. You must first determine where it beats; only then can our work begin anew."


    The heart. The heart. Where was the heart? That was surely the first question he needed answered. If he could find the location of the heart, then he could see to unravelling its mysteries in person. Where was the heart?


    Where? That was obvious of course; it was in the Aegan hills somewhere. Aegos, he was sure of it.


    Where? That was impossible, of course; Aegos was the largest city in Dathan. Aegos was a city that had been torn down and rebuilt a dozen times. Aegos was a city built atop a city built atop ruins.


    It could be in a church somewhere, or cathedral. It could be in the cells beneath Saint Mikah''s upon the bones of one of the temples that had come before it, or those beneath the Senate. It could be located somewhere under the ruins that lay beneath the districts beyond the inner walls of the city, where Kliranhen once stood.


    It was impossible to know.


    It was obvious, and yet impossible. He wanted to scream at the frustrating simplicity of it.


    But he did not, of course. Such a display would have been better suited to his beloved friend Sin than Spyridon himself. Better to keep a lid on such things and allow cooler heads to prevail, so as to enable him to think over the issue more clearly.


    "Thank you for your time, Sister. I thank your order for their input as well, study-wise I mean.


    "I must ask for some time alone now, however. There is much work to be done."

 Rhema I: Moss, Stone, and Blood

    <u>Rhema I: Moss, Stone, and Blood</u>


    <u>The Thirty-First Day of the Third Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>Faeford, Eastern Teleytaios, Klironomea.</u>


    Fucking finally.


    It felt as though it had been far too long since he''d last been on the march. He''d come to quite enjoy life within a military encampment, what with the somewhat predictable and yet entertaining nature of each day. It also provided him with a good example to apply that which he had learned about armies on campaign in recent times and, hopefully, continue learning so as to become a better commander of men in service to his brother.


    He had promised Lyk that he would be a reliable and dependable right hand should he only be asked to step into that position. He might still have had some ways to go where other subjects were concerned, but at the very least he could assist his brother in matters of war just as he had promised.


    He intended to keep that promise, even if it ground him down into nothing more than a husk wearing a suit of armour with axe and blade in hand. He would not let Lyk down.


    The last week or two they had been camped somewhere on the Riverroad just short of the border-regions between Nordicos and Teleytaios, a few miles behind any overlapping areas of influence to ensure that they were solidly within Teleytaian territory whilst they had waited for the Grand Duke to some and join with their forces. The man had been promised the vanguard after all, and as a result the war could not have begun until the man himself arrived.


    He''d ridden pretty far from the camp some days, Seventh in tow. Well, really it was more like Seventh was riding out with him in tow; they were camped only a few miles from the southernmost trees that made up the Farwald, an area Rhema actually knew would hold some interest to his friend due to conversations he''d had with Lyk in the past about the ruins and strange runes in the area. That sort of thing was far more his brother''s area of expertise, or at least it had been before he''d thrown himself into forging a new order out of the chaos that had defined the continent for so long. Nowadays his brother didn''t seem to have the time for that sort of thing, or at least not like he used to.


    Still, being camped so close to the Farwald had meant that Seventh had wanted to ''feel their energies'', whatever it was that such a thing really meant, and Rhema had been more than happy to accompany them as they did so.


    Seventh was... growing, he supposed was the right word. It wasn''t just that they were learning more about their powers and abilities, but that they were feeling more confident in their use as well. Rhema had no intentions of claiming he knew a surefire way to quantify just how much their friend had learned, but just from what he had seen and experienced he knew that they had expanded not only the power of their magics but also the control which they exerted over them.


    They wore their blindfold less now. Still most of the time, sure, but they were no longer deathly afraid of being caught without a piece of cloth tied around their eyes. It was a marked improvement in their confidence, and Rhema for one was most pleased to see such a change.


    A side-effect of this growth was that, for one reason or another, it was seemingly impossible to get Seventh to stay away from ''wild'' places for more than a week at a time. That''s why the two of them were here now, actually.


    "You know," he started, "despite everything that''s happened, I''m glad we''re back on the march again."


    Seventh turned in the saddle of their palfrey, a young thing with a jet coat that Rhema understood to be something akin to a ''gift'' from his brother to the seer. Well, as close to a gift as he thought Lykourgos was going to give a magical creature he barely understood anyway.


    "What, felt too caged in when we were back at the palace did you?"


    Rhema snorted a little. That wasn''t what he had meant, though it was certainly true. He knew Seventh had felt the same way as well, after the first month or so that was.


    "No, no. Well, a little bit. No, I''m glad ''cause it means the two of us get to spend plenty of time together without your mentor and my courtly duties getting in the way. Out here we get to be freer than we are back there."


    Seventh smiled a little at them, seemed to think about something, then pushed their palfrey onwards a little more. It looked like a damn fine horse in all honesty, which made it all the more surprising that his brother had given it to Seventh; the seer wasn''t exactly renowned for riding much. Still, a swift breed such as that definitely suited Seventh more than some massive warhorse like the one Grandmaster Romanos sat astride; the knight''s horse was so tall that it would surely have dwarfed the one Seventh was riding twice over!


    He pushed his own destrier into a trot and made to catch up with his friend.


    "So what is it we''re trying to find here? There''s usually something you want to see on one of these trips, and I know from my brother that there''s more than a few ruins scattered around the Farwald and the foothills of the southern Archic mountains."


    Seventh flashed him a toothy grin.


    "You''re right! There''s an old fort somewhere out here, built from unmortared stone and held together only by the thick ivy and moss that has grown all over it. Well, according to my mentor anyway."


    That last part was said with a little bit of what almost tasted like venom from the young seer''s lips, and Rhema stifled a smile at his friend''s expense.


    "Still giving you shit, is he?"


    Seventh just nodded.


    "Ever and always. I don''t know how he hasn''t gotten tired of being such a miserable old so-and-so yet, but I truly do wish he''d stop."


    Rhema sucked in an exaggerated breath through his teeth.


    "Didn''t you use to refer to him as your ''god''? I''m not trying to pry or anything, I''m just curious how someone could see their god in the flesh and blaspheme."


    That got a little chuckle out of Seventh.


    "I seem to recall you making a few comments about him, and he''s the patron Angel of your homeland unless I''m mistaken. You''re hardly free from guilt on that front."


    Rhema made to chime in, probably just with a "touch¨¦", but all of a sudden Seventh''s tone changed as they continued. Their voice was a little quieter, a little more forceful, a little less as though he were there in the moment.


    "And he is still my god. For all his flaws and failings, for all I may deny it to his face, he is still my god. My lord, my king, and my god. I cannot change that, for he needs my worship. More than he realises, I think. He''s been through a lot, and will only go through more as the years roll on by. He will need someone like me looking up to him, if for no other reason than to make sure he keeps holding himself to the standards he claims ''our kind'' should live up to."


    Rhema coughed awkwardly, then asked a question that had been on his mind for a little while now.


    "Do you, uh... do you sometimes still look into the future? Behind your mentor''s back, I mean?"


    The way that Seventh turned slightly in the saddle and remained quiet told rhema all he needed to know.


    "Neat. We haven''t performed a scrying in a while, Sev. You fancy doing one of those soon? You know, given that you seem to want to stick it to your master a little at the moment?"


    They smiled at him again, and Angels but it was a lovely sight.


    "I think I might be down for that, yeah. Beats communing with him on an evening anyhow."


    They said the word ''him'' with enough emphasis that it was very clear who they were talking about, even if no name was uttered.


    "Personal feelings about him aside, and the fact that we''re gonna scry again soon aside, I will confess that he has spoken on a topic I have been worried about for some time recently. He did... he did give me some advice. Relating to your brother, I mean."


    Rhema raised an eyebrow.


    "Oh?"


    Seventh just nodded in response.


    "He said that your brother''s heart would be in the right place, but his mind will always win out. That if he feels my abilities might give him the advantage over his foes then he will push and push and push until he gets what he wants from me.


    "My mentor told me that he''d push me too far and I''d grow more than a little displeased with him, not that I''d act against him of course!"


    That last part was  tacked on a little hastily, as though Seventh had just remembered that this was still Rhema''s brother they were talking about.


    "But you of all people understand how much these things can... well, affect me. It''s rarely clean or nice to see when it goes wrong, and I don''t like the idea of being used for those abilities and nothing else. I don''t want to just be a tool in someone''s hand, you understand?"


    Rhema nodded, but he didn''t understand, not really. How could he, when he was actively trying to mould himself into the perfect tool for his brother to use at a whim? There was a part of him that struggled to fathom anyone wishing not to be used as a tool by Lykourgos, but he knew such a part of him was even more blinded than the rest in matters such as this.


    At the end of the day Seventh was in control of their own will, their own body, and their own abilities. No-one with a power and a heart so grand as Seventh''s should be able to be forced to act if they did not want to.


    "I can talk to him, if you like. My brother, I mean."


    Seventh grimaced a little.


    "The offer is kind, but I fear all you''d do is put the idea in his head that he might be able to get something out of my visions. If it''s all the same I''d rather just... well, I''d rather have them when you''re around so you can relay them to him. At least then there''s no pushing or... or pressure, on me."The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    He nodded at his friend. They were probably right, in all honesty. They usually were. Still, if this came about naturally anyway and his brother overstepped then he would step in to talk it over with him. Lyk would mean well, he always did, and apparently Seventh''s mentor thought the same thing, but when he had his mind set on something he always saw it through to the end, for better or worse.


    If nothing else then it was definitely something to consider whilst they looked for this strange fortification in the woods out here.


    "Sorry for dragging you out here, by the way. I think people assume you''re just my bodyguard at this point."


    He huffed out a laugh in response. How could that possibly be a bad thing, to be the guardian of an angel?


    "Nah, I''m happy with this sort of thing. You need to remember that I spent most of the last few years down at Castelos, meaning that all I saw were the Brokowa mountains and then a shitload of flatlands behind them. Trust me, I''d much rather be able to look around somewhere like this than somewhere as dull as that."


    Seventh pulled a bit of a face at that.


    "That was still strange to see, in all honesty. The lands behind the Brokowa Heights being flatlands, I mean."


    "How so?" He inquired, genuinely curious.


    "Well," his friend replied, "when I was born it was still a part of the Greatwald, the forest that now covers most of Owkrestos and western Triarios. It used to extend out far further than that, all the way to the coast where Brycgestow is today."


    Rhema blinked a few times in surprise. He''d never known that.


    "Its easy to forget that you''ve lived a lot longer than me. When was it cut back? I assume it was done by the early petty kings after the Year of Desolation, or else by one of the first Teleytaian kings in order to deny cover to any enemy forces in the region. That and to free up more land for farming as well as giving them a whole lot of timber to sell for a relatively quick profit."


    Seventh nodded.


    "I assume that''s the reason for it, yeah, and if that''s the case then I''d guess we''re talking somewhere around the second or third centuries? The forth at a stretch. Regardless, a few hundred years ago but far after I''d fallen into my long sleep. Speaking of which, whilst I may have ''lived'' a lot longer than you, it''s important to remember that not only do I not age the same way you do, but that I also was unconscious for most of that time. In reality I''ve only been awake and not a baby in the cradle for around the same time you have."


    Rhema sighed with more than a slight hint of amusement in his voice.


    "I''m not sure that makes the slightest hint of sense whatsoever, Sev. Still, I''ll take your word for it. Anyway, just trust me when I say I''d rather be somewhere like this than somewhere like the Brokowa heights. I don''t like mountains."


    His friend laughed.


    "Well, unfortunately you''ll be seeing a lot of them soon; Nordicos isn''t exactly known for its forests or flats, after all."


    "Oh joy of joys. What fun."


    <hr>


    He entered his brother''s tent to find him already deep in conversation with the Grand Duke, though it seemed less like a conversation and more like Lykourgos was arguing with himself whilst the Grand Duke watched on with a mildly amused and more than a little bemused countenance.


    "-but he''s not that stupid! Whether or not I respect the man, whether or not he is a good person, his primary concerns will be the same as mine! They will be the same as any in our positions of power, anywhere in the world: keep your neighbours in check, your subjects loyal, and your coffers full. Even someone as headstrong and foolhardy as him can understand that, surely?"


    The Grand Duke bowed to Rhema as he turned and saw him, which Rhema returned with perhaps a little less sincerity than was customary. His brother turned, saw he was there, and sighed with what was almost relief.


    "Thank the Angels, it''s you. Brother, please tell me I''ve not gone mad. Tell me this is definitely too good to be true?"


    Rhema glanced at the Grand Duke, then looked back to his brother. The older man still looked amused, though perhaps less confused than he had before.


    "Okay," he started, "I''ll bite. What the hell has happened that''s got you worked up like this?"


    His brother wiped a hand on his own face, using the other to gesture to the Grand Duke.


    "Tell him. I feel like I''m going mad."


    He turned to the Grand Duke and waited for the response.


    "Your Grace," Thrytas started, "you are aware of the concerns we held that the remaining kingdoms of the Heptarchy might form some form of alliance, league, or coalition, in order to attempt to defeat this, I beg your pardon, your brother''s realm?"


    He nodded. Though diplomacy bored him a great deal he had tried to take in as much as he could from his brother and those around him, so as to keep up to date on happenings and be of more use in that field.


    "I recall, yes. Has such an eventuality come to pass?"


    That would certainly explain his brother''s state, but not his words. Who was it that should surely have known better?


    "It has not, no. Something a bit more... unexpected, shall we say, has happened."


    "Unexpected?" His brother cut in. "That''s certainly one way of putting it. I don''t know whether to laugh with joy at this turn of events or brood for a week on what it might all mean."


    He turned back to the Grand Duke, wanting to know what had happened even more now than he had before. The man, with a small amount of what almost seemed to be disbelief, continued.


    "It seems that... well, it seems that most of the advisors of the Kortheran king drowned in a freak accident whilst crossing the river Talana, in Dathan. They were speaking with the Confederation of Falcons, sometimes referred to by name of its central city of ''Kannagrios'', over some sort of alliance relating to the chaos that seems to have engulphed Aegos as of late.


    "On their return a freak wave seems to have capsized the craft they were using to cross, and many drowned. Some say it was the will of Hydran himself."


    The man looked at his brother as he said those last words. Lyk muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ''-having words with him later'', but none of them said anything else on that topic.


    "Okay," he replied, nodding slowly, "so most of the Kortheran king''s advisors are dead. Why''s that so ground-breaking?"


    "Because," his brother continued, "those advisors were the only thing stopping the king''s triplet bastard brothers from deposing him. The nobility of Korthera already don''t like their king, given how his injuries have stopped him from riding his horse. A man who cannot lead them in battle is not a man the Kortheran lords will willingly follow."


    He nodded again.


    "So now the Blackpit triplets will take control of the kingdom?"


    "Indeed," finished the Grand Duke, "and instead of forming an alliance with the other eastern kingdoms to stymie our advance, the Kortherans have declared war against the Licotemans. I don''t know what they hope to gain, but the armies of our two strongest remaining opponents will now surely be spent fighting one another. Our wars should continue in a few days, and if Anawroth is good to us then I cannot foresee the Licotemans being able to interfere in our conflict with the Nordicans.


    "Their peasant levies are numerous enough that they will surely have the manpower to fight both the Kortherans and us at the same time, but such a mobilisation of forces will take time. Too much time for them to assist their allies by marriage in Nordicos, at least. And of course, with the bulk of Licotemos'' professional fighters busy in Kortheros, we''d be fighting their massed hordes of peasants and mounted squires.


    "They will be many in number, but lacking in discipline, equipment, and decent commanders. Licotemos arms its levies better than most kingdoms, that is true, but they don''t have enough boiled leather cuirasses and castle-forged spears to arm two separate fielded armies at the same time.


    "When Nordicos is knocked out of the war, following the plan of your Grace the king, then we should move straight into Licotemos across the Riverroad without stopping until we encounter a massed force to fight. This will be the best time to see your visions enacted, my king. We cannot overlook this opportunity."


    His brother exhaled a shaky breath and ran a hand through his hair.


    "You''re right. This just- it all feels too good to be true, at times. All of this because the waters of the Talana swelled and drowned a few Kortheran advisors?"


    The Grand Duke shrugged, still smiling amiably.


    "Stranger things have happened, your Grace. I believe we should take these gifts of fate as they come, rather than dwell on them overmuch. We haven''t too much time to dally and waste, after all."


    Lykourgos nodded. The motion seemed heavy, as though his brother were still wrestling with some sort of emotions or thoughts. Rhema didn''t really understand why he seemed so apprehensive, after all, this was all just a positive for them, surely? Still, Lyk had more experience than him on these matters. Besides, even to him it did seem a little too good to be true. Their two strongest enemies tacking each other, preventing any sort of united front from forming? That was lucky, definitely.


    Well, not to the kingdoms of eastern Klironomea. But it was certainly lucky to those lands under his brother''s crown.


    "Is that everything, Grand Duke?"


    The man nodded, and Rhema nodded back.


    "Then I would ask you for a quiet moment with my brother, if it please you?"


    The Grand Duke smiled back at him and, upon the acknowledging gesture from Lyk, turned to leave.


    "As you command, your Grace, your Grace."


    He bowed to Lykourgos and then to Rhema himself in turn, acknowledging them both as ''Grace'', which was something Rhema still hadn''t gotten used to since his position had been reinstated by his brother.


    The two brothers sat there for a little while in silence. It looked to him that Lyk was staring off into nothing at the moment, thinking deeply as he rubbed his chin with a hand.


    Rhema had thought his brother must surely run out of patience soon, what with his constant pacing and muttering from the last few days and now this state of deep thought. He knew, practically, that they still needed to wait a few more days to allow the rearguard of Thrytas'' forces to catch up with them and rest for a day or two before continuing the march. What he also knew was that, upon hearing this news, Lyk was going to want to try and march through Nordicos and into Licotemos before anyone had a chance to react.


    But of course, that wasn''t the only reason his brother would have been on-edge recently. Though Rhema might not always have been the most observant of people, he had noticed a few things recently. Chief amongst which was that, well, Ilias had been sent away.


    Yes, his brother''s favourite little one had been sent away recently, the cupbearer that was. Ilias had seemed a pretty good cupbearer, if a bit too forwards with Lykourgos and too skittish around Rhema himself, but good nonetheless. It seemed a shame that he had been sent away, and Lyk didn''t seem to want to talk about why, but Rhema knew that his brother would have his reasons. He always did, after all.


    "So, we''re gonna win this one as well then?"


    His brother smiled at him, some of the tension leaking from his frame.


    "Yeah. Yeah, of course we are. We would of anyway."


    He rolled his eyes.


    "I know that, obviously. But it''s gonna be a hell of a lot easier now than it was before, right?"


    "In Nordicos?" His brother questioned, and continued at the nod from Rhema. "Definitely. In Licotemos though? Perhaps not. A dying man will fight with all he had in him, and both the royals and lords of Licotemos will surely know that they''re as good as dead if they lose the coming war. They''re likely to throw everything they have at us, whether they can truly afford to do so or not. When they realise that they can''t win, they''ll want to make our victory as painful as possible. It won''t be like Owkrestos, where we were able to cut the head off of the snake before staking claim to its den.


    "No, this is a conflict that''s likely to last years, and continue long after the castles have been seized and armies shattered. The remnants will harry us, just as the old rulers of this land harried them after being deposed decades after the fact. This will be a long war, brother. It''s going to test us both greatly."


    Rhema nodded, a slight grimace on his face.


    "And you worry for him, don''t you? Your cupbearer, I mean."


    His brother stilled a little at that before continuing.


    "Of course I do. But it was for the good of the realm. It was my duty to see him sent away. Believe me, I wish there was something else I could have done, but there wasn''t. Not that I could see, nor that anyone offered me anyway.


    "Still, no use worrying about that now. The boy will be fine, hopefully. I trust him still and wish him the best for the future."


    "Just not a future here working for you?"


    His brother turned to him and huffed.


    "Let''s not get too ahead of ourselves yet. I may... change my mind, soon. Well, soonish anyway."


    Rhema huffed out a laugh of his own.


    "You, changing your mind? Well, there''s a first time for everything I suppose.


    "Don''t brood here for too long, brother. Your presence will definitely be missed in the camp if you hole up in here for the rest of the day. I''ll see you for a spar later?"


    He asked the question a little hopefully, and he knew that his face must have lit up at the answer he received.


    "Well, who would I be to decline that offer? I''ll see you in a few hours, brother. Try not to beat too many others to paste before I get there."


    He grinned back at his brother and clapped him on the shoulder before turning to leave the tent.


    "No promises. No promises at all."

 Lykourgos III: The Stand at Haengen

    <u>Lykourgos III: The Stand at Haengen</u>


    <u>Fifth Day of the Fifth Month, 874 AD.


    Haengen, Western Nordicos, Klironomea.</u>


    Megalothiriopolis lay to the south, Corthraxiopolis to the east, and the lands under his command far behind him. The army had made good progress marching down this road, and he thanked the Angels that the Nordicans had maintained their stretch of the Riverroad far better than had been initially expected.


    He wasn''t sure exactly why the well-maintained nature of the roads had been left out of the scouting reports brought to him, but he supposed it didn''t matter at the moment. Still, it was something he''d like to make sure didn''t get left out in the future.


    The Nordicans had marched out to meet them, as he suspected they would. They had to, lest the second largest city in their kingdom fall to him without a fight. The terrain here was good, the enemy arrayed in ranks before him, and for the first time since he had stormed Stagspring he was being assailed by flights of arrows and ballistae bolts.


    In short, it was all very exciting.


    The army before them was somewhere around three times smaller than Lykourgos'' own forces, though given that he''d only brought fourteen-thousand soldiers to this battle in practice it was closer to two times smaller rather than three times. Still, the quantity advantage was solidly within the realm of the young King''s forces.


    There were no armsmen amongst the ranks of the Nordic army arrayed before him, and by his estimations they''d still be garrisoning Corthraxiopolis and seeing to the protection of house Petrinos in their palace. Nordicos had never held the potential for a large army, but it did maintain a solid core of light cavalry around which the rest of the army acted.


    Those light horsemen had played havoc on his lines in the earlier portion of the battle, but in the melee that now dominated the field?


    Most had now dismounted to join their comrades in holding the line. There was little more they could do from horseback to keep their fellows safe.


    "LIEUTENANT CORVAN! GATHER AS MANY OF YOUR MEN AS YOU CAN AND PUNCH THROUGH THEIR LEFT FLANK! TAKE THE HILL WITH THOSE SCORPIONS!"


    The man, Corvan, struck down a Nordican knight with what looked like a small but noticeable amount of exhaustion, then turned and nodded.


    "Aye, your Grace!" He turned about once more, looking to a few of his men closest to him. "You heard his Grace, get to it! Thousand, on me! Advance!"


    Lykourgos couldn''t help but smile as a few dozen men moved with their Lieutenant to carry out their orders, swiftly joined by many of their fellows as soon as they realised what was going on or the orders otherwise made their way down the line.


    It was only for a few more moments that he looked over his men, and then he got back to the sinful task at hand. The four Nordican levies stood opposite him seemed uncertain as to their chances, even as to how they should approach him, and so he couldn''t quite keep the smile from his face as he lowered the faceplate on his helmet once more.


    He swung his sword about his head in a wide arc, forcing his opponents to keep their distance from him. His sword was far greater in length than the longseaxes and shortspears that the levies arrayed before him wielded, and there was little chance he was going to let them out of his sight before the fight was done.


    One of the men surged forwards and swung their blade about in an arc, and though there wasn''t the opportunity for a riposte the attack was easily parried.


    Lykourgos swung his sword out in front of him a few times almost lazily, the movements having little force behind them save only enough to make a chopping noise as it cut through the air. These peasants wouldn''t be able to touch him here, and even if they could it would hardly make a difference; full plate armour with mail and a gambeson beneath it was more than enough to render almost any blow they might have been able to strike him with worthless.


    They could hope to bruise him, and little more.


    Twice more did the same man surge forwards, testing his defences with  . Lykourgos'' blade bit back with a slash across the man''s chest, and his opponent toppled to the floor in shock.


    He turned to look at the other three Nordicans surrounding him, levelling his sword at each of them in turn. After less than a moment the three men dropped their swords to the floor, defeat in their eyes.


    "Smart move." He turned his head and nodded at their fallen comrade on the floor. His wounds looked serious, but not quite fatal. "Carry him behind my lines. He fought bravely, and I can certainly use men like that. Go, now!"


    He snapped out his orders to them, and at once the men obeyed. Two of them moved to pick up their friend, whilst the other looked at him with an expression that made it very clear he was glad not to have been killed here. He spared them no more than a half-second''s glance, and then moved forwards to the next set of soldiers to face down. Be they men he would spare or men they would slay, he would face them down all the same.


    There were few amongst the ranks of the enemy that had phased him so far; most of them had been veterans of the Grey Company wielding their polearms and axes in tightly-packed ranks, since they knew well to keep each other''s flanks guarded and were hell to separate from each other in order to face. They knew where there strengths did lie, and they utilised them well.


    Still, the Grey Company itself was busy fighting for Licotemos against the invading Kortherans as far east as Klironomea went, and so those veterans were few and far between. That by itself was noticable in how the Nordican lines buckled and bent under pressure, although to their credit they had not yet broken. It had been close a few times, but they were still fighting. It was a testament to their courage, their morale, and it made them a worthy opponent.


    The enemy had picked a good place to face him, in all fairness. It wouldn''t be enough by itself, for simply having the terrain on your side wasn''t ever going to win a pitched battle by itself, but they''d chosen to face him at a place that would have been one of his first choices if he were fighting on the other side of this battle.


    The terrain was hilly and rough, though not enough to truly impede the goings-on of the massed infantry in their formations. It had rendered his advantage in heavy horse almost null, as there was no way in hell that a heavily armoured rider and mare would be able to manoeuvre up and down the small rocky hillocks effectively. This was a battle for blocks of infantry, for soldiers on foot fighting in small bands, and whilst he still had an advantage in both quality and quantity there as well it was still countered somewhat by the many chokepoints and hilltops that needed to be taken piecemeal.


    Though this may have seemed prideful or vain, or perhaps even reckless, he couldn''t escape the fact that he was glad that this was an actual fight instead of a massacre. The battle he''d fought in at the Einarbrycge had just been a festival of gore and slaughter, save the storming of the Starling''s camp.


    Huh. Strange to think about, but that battle was now two years past. Time seemed to really have flown by since then.


    Still, he couldn''t shake the excitement that came with knowing that he was in a fight to the death, knowing that he could kill those who stepped in his way with few able to stop him. He was as a daemon on the field of battle, perhaps not as agile or strong as Rhema but certainly with the stamina and staying power to outlast him. Did it make him sinful, to enjoy fighting? Maybe. He''d have to ask Nasos for absolution later. He''d ask Dreamwulf as well, but the man was no longer a monk as he had been. Besides, monks didn''t absolve people of their sins, for that was a priest''s job.


    Ensuring that he''d saved that thought for later, he brought his focus back to the fights going on around him. A pair of men armed with longseaxes rushed towards him, and he moved forwards at a brisk pace to meet them halfway.


    He struck forwards with his shield whilst swinging his sword out in an arc to his right, feeling the crunch as a man''s nose shattered under the force of the shield and the jolt as his sword caught itself in another''s spine. A quick follow-up after pulling his sword free of the man to his right made sure that the man with the broken nose soon found such an injury to be the least of his worries.


    The two men fell to the floor, their eyes already glassy and their limbs sprawling. They were, without a doubt, dead.


    Angels forgive him for saying this, but he truly did enjoy this. He knew he shouldn''t, not really, but he loved it nonetheless. He couldn''t help it, he supposed; he''d been raised by a man who was more a soldier than a lord, had grew up around military men of all stripes and walks of life, had even made his fame leading them during the Twilight Rebellion. Soldiery and warfare was in his blood, however pretentious or belligerent it may have made him sound.


    He loved war. He loved fighting. His whole life he''d had to be calm, calculating, and stern, but in times such as this he could almost feel his mind embracing the same wild nature that he knew dwelled so very deeply in his beloved brother''s soul.


    They were cut from the same cloth, he and Rhema, and there were so very many times he felt things would be so much easier if he could just give in to impulse and relish in bloodshed as much as his younger brother did.


    He couldn''t, though. He just couldn''t. There were expectations bearing down on him, ones that his brother had shorn a long time ago. It wasn''t Rhema''s fault and he''d never think less of his brother for it, of course not, but it just meant that the two of them were living with very different expectations riding upon their backs.


    Rhema was a warrior and a dependable right hand, as loyal as it was possible to be and someone who genuinely tried their best to apply themselves when necessary. But, by his own admission, he wasn''t cut out to rule people. He wasn''t a king. He knew the basics of stewardship and administration nowadays, and that was definitely something that made Lykourgos intensely proud of his brother, but he had his limits.


    Lykourgos wasn''t allowed those limits. He had to keep moving forwards, had to keep learning, had to make sure he wasn''t falling behind in any of the subjects that a man who wanted to rule over an entire people needed to keep himself alive and those people thriving. He had to keep moving forwards, and he had to make sure he never stopped.Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.


    Bloodshed stripped all that away from him. Bloodshed allowed him to, even if only for a day, remove the cloak and crown of duty and responsibility and instead relish in the inherent artisanry of death on so grand a scale. He was whole in these moments, and when he felt his sword cut through the sword-arm of a woman who''d thought to take him by surprise he was the most at peace he could ever remember being.


    He felt a grin slip over his face as he cut her down with a follow-up swing, then allowed himself a moment to relax. The enemies nearest to him were dead, this hillock taken, and so he looked out over the others nearby where his brave soldiers were fighting. He watched them fight, alone or in groups, as though they were born for it. They cut Nordican levies and knights down with an almost surgical application of force, their lesser commanders knowing where and when to strike the foe and reinforce their comrades.


    For a moment he wondered if any of his men would catch sight of him there, would see him looking over them whilst covered in the same blood and guts that they were whilst his slickened armour glinted as it caught the sunlight of the golden hours.


    He was no painter however, and so however kingly such an image may have appeared there was little use for him to dwell on it at the moment. There was still more killing to be done.


    <hr>


    For two further hours did he fight and kill, moving from hillock to hillock alongside his guards as though they had been made for this war. Dreamwulf was at his side, as was Lieutenant Aetvia and a few men she''d handpicked from her thousand. Of course he was impressed with the skill by which his men carried and wielded their weapons, the authoritative tone with which the Lieutenant barked out orders, the way they were followed to the letter but still with room for improvisation, but the thing that really stood out to him was Dreamwulf.


    The blind man was once again proving himself in the sport of battle, and he was an opponent that Lykourgos was very happy to say he''d never have to face.


    He wasn''t really keeping track of who had killed how many people this time, since he was more concerned with achieving victory than the petty dramatics that had characterised his war against his siblings two years ago, but he was glad to see his bodyguard fighting again. There was something about the rough and yet somehow perfectly timed movements the man made whilst fighting that captivated him, well, when he himself felt closest to letting go of his inhibitions and embracing his wilder side as well.


    He knew that some amongst the Scelopyrene barbaroi were rumoured to allow themselves to fall into battle-trances before a fight, rendering them unable to be harmed or slowed until killed. There were times such as this where Lykourgos wondered whether or not his friend had a little northman blood in his veins flowing alongside that of the Skraeling and Klironomoi as well, such was the ferocity and tenacity with which he fought off the advances of the foe.


    Of course, it didn''t truly matter where it was that Dreamwulf''s ancestors might have come from, nor did it matter as to what people they belonged to. Dreamwulf was Dreamwulf, and he was a ferocious fighter.


    There was a cry from some of men below, a commotion that heralded a shift in the way that one of the battle-lines was moving. He moved down towards the men, signalling for Aetvia to hold the hillock they had been standing atop with her men whilst Dreamwulf moved alongside him after a quick "With me".


    "Your Grace! Your Grace! It''s the Axeknights! They''re here!"


    Lykourgos cursed and wheeled around, immediately moving to face one of the new arrivals.


    "Dreamwulf! There''s three men coming, heavily armoured and wielding polearms. I''ll take the one in the centre, you take the one on the left; our boys already have the one on the right occupied."


    The bodyguard nodded, not a hint of doubt or argument in his voice.


    "Aye, friend! Don''t worry for me, I''ll see us out''ve ''ere."


    Though the man couldn''t see it he nodded, as though on impulse, and concentrated on the knight who was to be his quarry for the ensuing fight.


    The Axeknights of Morna were hulking fighters, matched only in size and the weight of their arms by the Knights of the Bloody Cross in Haraldia. They were tall and well-built, each man covered from head to toe in full plate whilst carrying a truly huge poleaxe.


    The thing that really set them apart however was the haft of said poleaxes; the Axeknights of Morna worshiped the Angel from which they took their name, and to honour the Angel of Stone and Steel the hafts of their greataxes were carved from stone rather than wood, with leather-wrapped handles. Lykourgos knew that each one must have weighed a great deal, but the Axeknights handled them nearly as deftly as any other man might have handled a traditional poleaxe.


    Nearly.


    He knew he would have to be agile to win this fight here, for brute strength and any attempt to outlast one of these vaunted fighters would fail. They were stronger than him, and they certainly had more endurance than he did. He needed to be faster on his feet and with his hands than the opponent stalking towards him right now.


    Moving at a brisk pace he readied his sword once more, and as soon as he was within his weapon''s reach of the man he swung in a wide arc towards him. The blow was easily parried, as he''d expected, but in the half-second after that first swing he''d confirmed what he''d been worried about.


    The jarring feeling made from his steel sword hitting the stone haft of his opponent was going to drain the muscles in his arms very quickly. Very, very quickly.


    He swang a few more times, each one attempting to strike at a different area around the knight before him, but every one of them was turned aside by the haft of the poleaxe wielded by his opponent. It didn''t matter that Lykourgos had been able to effortlessly strike down all those who had stood before him before now, for he knew that he was now facing a true warrior with skills to match his own and a physique that surely surpassed him.


    He tried for an experimental jap forwards, and swore when the parry left him open to the resulting riposte. How the man opposite him was able to wield a weapon with a haft of solid stone so effortlessly was a mystery to him, but more to the point it was a mystery that he definitely wouldn''t have the time to solve right now. He needed to kill this man, and recover before moving on to the next.


    He was vaguely aware of the people around him fighting with other Axeknights of Morna, and facing similar struggles. The warriors-knights of the mountain had earned their reputation as stoic fighters and excellent soldiers, and although he hadn''t known whether or not to doubt the tales of their resilience before today he certainly knew not to doubt them now.


    Turning aside blows meant for him or otherwise moving himself out of the way, he danced backwards as the knight advanced on him. A nasty blow to his shield had made it obvious that the best way to avoid dying here was not to block, but to dodge. Well, as much as he could anyhow; the Axeknight seemed adamant that he was to be struck down, no matter what.


    He swung his sword twice more, grunting with exertion as he felt the steel blade make contact with the stone. A jarring feeling rang down his arm, and after the same such feeling had ran down his sword arm so many times he could feel it starting to go numb.


    That wasn''t good. It wasn''t good at all. He could draw his longseaxe and swap to fighting with his left hand whilst his right arm recovered, but that would mean either clumsily attempting to swap his shield over to his right arm or abandoning it altogether and relying on the much shorter blade to carry him through.


    He didn''t like his odds in that scenario.


    Instead he ducked under the blow that came his way and rammed forwards with his full body weight behind the shield, crashing into the knight and causing him to stumble. He would have liked to be able to take advantage of the position that put him in, but an armoured fist crashed down on top of his back and caused him to fall to the floor. He quickly turned himself around so he was facing upwards and scrabbled back a little as a slight glint of light caught on the man''s helmet and axehead as it was raised high overhead, and in that moment Lykourgos braced his shield for the blow.


    The poleaxe broke through the wood of the shield and crashed against his arm and chest, and although his plate armour prevented him from being seriously injured from such a blow he knew that there was going to be some serious bruising across his front as the air was knocked out of him.


    Without wasting a second, without so much as thinking, he reached upwards with his tired right arm and twisted his body so as to thrust with as much force and reach as possible with his sword, straight through the chink in the armour of the Axeknight where the breastplate met the tassets. He pulled back just as fast as he had thrust forwards, and the knight stumbled backwards whilst pressing a hand to the wound.


    The tall man drew his hand away, and levelled his gaze at Lykourgos once more. For all the King''s stamina, he knew he was flagging here. He had wounded his opponent severely, but evidently not enough to stop the man from fighting on.


    He raised himself to his feet as fast as he could, gasping a little from a mixture of exertion and the pain in his shield-arm, and readied his sword once more. He glanced at the remains of his shield, and decided against tossing it aside; there was a gash down the middle and the item was certainly not in any shape to be used after today, but it wasn''t as though it would have no use in the continuing fight. He needed to be able to protect himself with something after all, and all things considered he''d rather that his bruised left arm get injured than he would his sword-arm.


    He wasn''t exactly as skilled as his brother was with his non-dominant hand, after all.


    The large knight may still have been standing, but he was now losing blood. It was only a matter of time before he came crashing down as all the others did, and all Lykourgos now needed to do was keep himself standing longer than his opponent.


    With another grunt of exertion he forced himself to bolt forwards, and launched into a flurry of blows with his tired sword-arm. The man opposite parried and attempted to do the same, but eventually settled for punching Lykourgos in the stomach so hard that he felt it even through his armour.


    His sword fell from his hand with the force of the blow, but he sprung back up and hooked his shield around the head of the man''s axe and pulled forwards so that the axe similarly fell from the man''s grasp whilst he was batted in the face by the bottom of the shield.


    Lykourgos dropped the shield and threw himself at the knight, the two of them toppling over and grappling on the ground whilst wearing full plate armour.


    The knight soon righted himself and all but threw Lykourgos off of him, the two of them standing once more and continuing to grapple and grab at the other.


    Lykourgos punched the man a few times, his chest heaving and cries leaving him with every punch that he threw. By this point he was thoroughly exhausted, his reserves of energy more than spent, but he had to keep fighting. If he won here, then he could claim to have bested one of the Axeknights of Morna in single combat. That wasn''t a feat many people, many Kings, could boast of!


    As for if he lost, well... there was little use dwelling on that.


    He punched and kicked at the knight, wincing and groaning as the return blows fell, but he soon found the opening he needed; a momentary lapse in the other man''s concentration, a slight turn of the head to where his sworn brother had just been laid out by Dreamwulf.


    The King wasted no time in pressing this advantage, throwing himself at the knight and knocking them both back to the floor. Almost as soon as he felt the jolt of hitting the floor he scrabbled with his hands at his belt, pulled out a blade, and struck it through the eye-slit in the visor of the Axeknight.


    Just like that, the man was dead.


    Lykourgos withdrew his blade from the man''s helmet, and stared for a moment at the blood on the steel as ichor pooled around his opponent''s head and waist.


    His dagger. He had intended to draw his longseaxe, but he wasn''t going to complain about drawing his dagger. It had saw him through the duel well enough, after all.


    A pity there was no room to negotiate with the man who had tried to kill him. He seemed as though he would have been a truly excellent fighter to have fighting in the rapidly uniting kingdom.


    He slowly rose to his feet and picked up his sword and shield, leaning on the battered kiteshield as he attempted to regain his breath. What had made an ostensibly religious order fight alongside his enemies after he had been declared the Defender of the Faith? Well, although the church pretended to be united he knew better; the actions of the bishops in Owkrestos had taught him that the Council of Patriarchs was not being respected as it should have been, and as such his influence over religious affairs was limited outside his demesne.


    Of course, this also gave him somewhat of an excuse to begin meddling further in church matters himself. Perhaps it was growing steadily towards being time to talk to Patriarch Olyver about some of the man''s ideas for reform, since if nothing else they would certainly help centralise more power in Anaria and take it out of the hands of disloyal middlemen hundreds of miles away.


    But those were thoughts for another time. He stared down at the corpse of the Axeknight, still sat upright with one hand clasped around the haft of the great stone-handled poleaxe, and exhaled a very shaky breath.


    The battle here was all but over. With Lieutenant Corvan''s soldiers taking the enemy''s scorpion emplacements, his forces had all but won. Though he knew the war was not yet over, he could not help but smile.


    Another foe bested in honourable combat. What sweeter thing could kingship bring than that?

 K?til I: Small-Hour Sunrise

    <u>K?til I: Small-Hour Sunrise</u>


    <u>The Twelfth Day of the Third Moon, 874 AD.


    </u><u>The Great Warcamp, The Isanford, Scelopyrea.</u>


    Bitterness.


    That''s what everyone seemed to expect of him at the moment. Just bitterness.


    He supposed he couldn''t blame them really, for he was indeed still extremely bitter over being denied his glory in the greatest battle the north had ever seen, but the sting wasn''t quite as raw now as it had been back then.


    But time moved onwards, and overt anger had given way to a colder and more brooding form of discontent. Not enough to do anything about it, not yet at least, but still lingering in the back of his heart and his mind.


    Eh, who cared about that at the moment though? He was just one person in a sea of tens of thousands, ready and waiting for the preparations to be finished so that they could all move south across the mighty river Aenir to strike at the divided and decedent lands of the southerners.


    That was where he would earn his glory, he was sure of it. Their lands were rich and well-populated, so much so that he was certain he''d be able to take ten, no, a hundred-thousand thralls to serve his every want and desire. He would like in a grand hall of stone and dine each night on fat-fed beef, and a river of ale would flow from the lands outside to his table.


    The druids had foreseen it, not that it would have mattered if they hadn''t; he''d known this was to be his future for months now. He would stake his claim to the lands of the southerners, and he would rend them should they choose to stand against him.


    If nothing else however, he knew that his three companions would always be by his side. They were as loyal and true as it was possible for people to be, a feat which had earned both him and them some level of admiration amongst others in the Great Warcamp given the old-guard''s love of the old virtues that characterised their people.


    Loyalty, ferocity, and tenacity. K?til and his three companions had all of them in spades, but it seemed to him as though some could be applied more than others to his friends.


    Take Syren, for example. The bastard was good in a fight and tough to get off his feet for long, yes, but where he really started to stand out was in his loyalty; K?til had never once known the man to shirk tasks or even consider wandering astray, even back when the two of them had first met and became friends. Though all of them were loyal to each other, it would have been a disservice to the man to avoid acknowledging his devotion.


    Then there was Svaltha, who above all else embodied ferocity. She fought with the grace of a falcon on the wing, and with the strength of a bear starved to madness. The voice of their god rested within her mind, his visage also, driving her to greater and greater feats of bloodshed, which was something that had not gone amiss amongst her peers.


    None of them cared all that much for the opinions of her peers, however. She was their friend, K?til''s lover, and they knew her far greater than those windbags ever would.


    As for Krai, well, that one was rather obvious, wasn''t it?


    The big bastard just would not die. He got injured all the time, seriously injured at that, but he never stopped fighting. He was a constant reminder of what it meant to keep pushing forwards, to keep going on, to keep bloodying the foe no matter the pain you were in, and more than once had K?til personally watched the man take an injury that would have killed a lesser man on the spot and simply stand back up to carry on fighting. Krai was tenacity, was toughness, personified.


    As for K?til himself, he''d been unsure which of the three virtues described him best for quite some time. For a while he''d contented himself with the knowledge that he contained all three within his soul, more than doubly so now that he was carved with more runes than the average northern standing stone, but he knew that he couldn''t be the only one who didn''t embody a virtue.


    It had not been his friends or even the druids that had solved his conundrum, but his father and new ''mother''. There had once been more than three virtues extolled amongst the northmen after all, and the two of them saw in him the virtue of willpower, of all things.


    It had taken some time for him to come to terms with that, to understand that strength of presence was not a second-rate virtue, but when he realised what they had been saying it all sort of clicked in his head.


    His was a talent in leadership. It was a skill in adaptability. Most of all, it was the strength of character to look failure in the face and sneer, continuing on your way and trying again.


    How could one who embodied willpower allow something as trivial as a stolen succession, as stolen glory, to halt them in their tracks? How could it be allowed to dictate their life, their thoughts, their hatreds?


    It couldn''t, and so the bitterness was forced down for now. Not forgotten, never forgotten, but forced down. He would wait, he would see what new opportunities prostrated themselves before him, and he would have his pick of futures to choose between.


    If he wanted to serve a boy who had not yet been born, then he would. If he wanted to strike out with an army of his own and carve out a new kingdom alongside that of the one his father would make, then he would.


    If he wanted to marry a fucking druid, then he would. Fate was dared to try and stop him.


    He embedded his sword into the abdomen of a straw dummy, pushing it through to the hilt, and left it there as he panted in exertion. For all his bravado and bluster about virtues, he still needed to let off steam now and again.


    "Long day, boss?"


    Krai''s always-chipper voice called out to him from somewhere to the right, the fact that it was five in the morning and the sun was already blazing through the sky not seeming to bother him at all.


    He huffed out a half-amused and half-annoyed laugh. Wherever his trail of thought had been going, it was certainly beyond his recollection now.


    "Something like that. You''re up early."


    The man shrugged noncommittally.


    "Eh, I couldn''t keep myself asleep any longer. Too many nightmares."


    K?til raised an eyebrow, and nodded towards the north.


    "Yep," came the response, "same as anyone else. I''ll be glad when we move south, there''s no mistaking that."


    K?til huffed out another laugh.


    "It''ll come for the south as well, Krai. You know that as well as anyone else does."


    The man just scoffed.


    "Yeah, but not for a while yet. There''ll be enough time to whet our blades and draw southern blood before the real war begins. Whatever the ''real war'' is supposed to be anyway."


    The druids had told them all that something was coming from the north. They''d all already sort of known that, somehow, but it was one thing to suspect it and another for your religious and spiritual leaders to warn you of it. The druids had confirmed it, but no-one knew what it was that was chasing them.


    Well, almost no-one. They all knew something was coming, but of them all only Svaltha seemed to suspect that their god knew what it was but did not wish to speak of it.


    If that was the case, then he was looking forwards to moving further south too.


    "Still," his friend said whilst gesturing at the sky, "we''ve got some time yet. Can''t remember the last time I saw the sun this clearly before we set up the Great Warcamp down here. Certainly struggled to see it while we were up north, that much I know."


    His friend spoke the truth, as ever; it was good to see the sun again so much. It was so often obscured by cloud and ash further north that it seemed as though it was almost gone forever. The skies were clearer this far south, as far south as Scelopyrea went.


    But he knew from his own scouting and riding that the clouds were moving south again. This place wouldn''t know sunlight for much longer, but if the legends of their horse-lord cousins to the east were to be believed then the blanket of ash and cloud would find its advance halted at the Aenir river.


    K?til hoped the Skonisnomas were right; they believed the Aenir to hold some form of magic within its waters, and if they were right then it would at least buy them all some time to prepare for what was soon to come after they moved south.


    Krakevasil, he hoped that they were right.


    "Aye," he settled on saying when he realised his friend was still waiting for a response, "we have some time yet. Best not to waste it. You seen any of the jotun recently?"


    His friend nodded.


    "Saw one of them speaking about making a mace. Wouldn''t want to be on the other side of that, personally."


    "Krai, I watched you get struck by a jotun''s caber and live. If anyone could survive it then I''m sure it''d be you."


    His friend smiled at him.


    "Oh, I know that boss; I didn''t say it''d be able to kill me. All I''m saying is that the caber hurt bad enough, and I don''t want to be picking links from my heavy chain out of my ribcage anytime soon."


    That made K?til laugh. Properly, not a huffed laugh like the usual as of late. Krai was funny as fuck sometimes, especially where his own mortality was concerned. Yes, the man was more mortal than they all liked to believe sometimes, especially with how often he got injured, but he when he wasn''t in danger his abnormally high chances of survival were always funny to joke about.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    "Funny, Krai. Very funny. Here, you got a reason for standing around here? You got something you wanna ask, or do you wanna spar?"


    The man smiled wider, his face showing the signs of what seemed to be a very hastily surpressed grin.


    "What, I can''t just come over to spend some time with my mate? Come on boss, you sound like you ain''t appreciating my company."


    "But..."


    "But yeah," the man shrugged while still smiling, "it was both of them actually. Just wanted to ask you some shit and spar with you. Especially since the other two are both still asleep, so they''d be no fun to fuck with."


    That was another thing that had changed between the four of them; more often than not they slept in the same room or tent as each other now. They''d fallen asleep alongside each other plenty of times before now, but not usually when they were safe in their own camp. This was less about safety, survival, and being shitfaced, and more about simple comfort and familiarity.


    With so many people around that the four of them didn''t know, and from a group they had been fighting not so long ago, they all felt as though a little familiarity was warrented in their lives at the moment.


    "Couldn''t just wake one of them up?"


    Krai barked out another laugh.


    "Ha! Chief, you know full well that Syren would somehow know it was me trying to wake him up and stay sleeping, and if I tried to wake up Sval then I''m pretty sure I''d be having a little more than just a sparring match; she''s bad enough when it''s you that tries to wake her up when she''s tired. Admittedly, she''s still not as bad as when we try to wake you up. I think you threatened us in another language last time."


    He laughed at first, knowing that Krai''s words about Syren and Svaltha were true, but his laughter trailed off into confusion at the end of his sentence.


    "Another language? What did I say?"


    Krai shrugged, seemingly just as confused.


    "I don''t know, truth be told. Sounded all guttural and strange. A little bit like Skraeling, actually, just more guttural and throaty. Don''t really know how else to describe it."


    K?til furrowed his brows a little in thought, but as soon as Krai said it sounded ''a little bit like Skraeling'', he knew exactly what the man was talking about.


    "Oh, that was definitely Skonis. The language of our cousins to the east sounds pretty guttural, and I know that they took a lot of their words from the old ruins that they claim were the hillforts and villages of some Skraeling people who lived there before their struck south and tore them down.


    "Weak people, the Skraelings. They never used to be, according to father, but some time around the Time of Woes their strength left them. They were subjugated and conquered piece by piece, until today when there''s barely anything left of them."


    Krai hocked and spat on the floor.


    "Let them die, with all other worshippers of the traitor pantheon. I heard that those that are left still worship the other corvid gods, under new guises and forms. As if a new cloak and suit of mail could disguise the coward donning them."


    K?til laughed again, this time with more than a little derision in his voice.


    "My old man says the same. He knows a lot about the southerners, my father. He''s studied their ways, their... I don''t know, their everything, for years. He says we can learn from some of it; their halls of stone and the great stone-throwers that can tear them down as two examples.


    "But other parts of it will need to be left behind. Some of them even worship dragons alongside the traitor-gods. Dragons, Krai. The fuckers that burned Jotunheim, that enslaved both us and them for so long. Dragons."


    If Krai had shared his look of derision before now, he looked downright disgusted now.


    "I shouldn''t be surprised, not really, but the fact that anyone would choose to give praise and offerings to the monsters that our forefathers put down like lame dogs is fucking awful. How can someone lower themselves that much?"


    He just shrugged again.


    "A lust for power? A subservient nature? I don''t really know. My father is certain that, were we fighting the sons of Skraella, they''d cower and buckle before us as they once did so long ago."


    "I''m sensing a ''but'' coming along now."


    "But," he continued, acknowledging his friend''s interruption, "we won''t be fighting the sons of Skraella. The people who rule there, as weak and soft as we may see them as being, are the sons of Kliran. Father claims they are a hardier people than most of us give them credit for, and ones with a long history of making war on a scale we never have before this gathering of all our folk


    "He claims that their horsemen are some of the finest save only the Skonisnomas, and that their men with bows can strike down a man before he gets within a hundred paces of him.


    "Of course we''re still stronger than they are. Our lives, our people, revolve around killing. For all the inherent toughness of Kliran''s sons, they''ve let themselves forget their martial roots. They''ve contented themselves with farming their fertile soil and mining their seams of ore, whilst their rulers are happy to sit by and watch whilst gorging themselves on the fruits of those born beneath them."


    Krai spat again.


    "Fucking layabouts. Fertile lands, good iron, plenty of space for living, and they waste it all by becoming weak-willed and feckless. I don''t like that they''re all we get to fight down there; no sport with those fucking... those..."


    The man threw his hands up in the air in frustration, apparently unable to think of a fitting derogatory term to use for them.


    "... I don''t know, bastards or something. Why is it that when I get my hopes up for the people we''re to fight it either never happens or they turn out to be weak and pathetic?"


    K?til snorted as his friend worked himself up into something akin to a sulk.


    "Well, they might well be more trouble than we think. If my father''s words are to be believed anyway, and you know full well that I''d take his word on this."


    It was true; for all the disagreements he might have had with his father other issues both great and small, for all he thought the man lacked wisdom and knowledge in a few key areas, it would have been damned foolish not to accept that the man had what was probably the best knowledge any northmen had on the lives and ways of those folk south of the Aenir.


    Well, their lives and ways outside of how they acted during the raids that were often launched against their verdant lands. Every northman knew how to conduct themselves in those festivals of slaughter.


    "So what''s the issue then? We''re to fight a group of people that are, to hear you say it, has-beens. I don''t see why we need to fear anything."


    "My father said it, not me, and we still don''t need to fear. We just need to remember that, though they may have forgotten it now, they once were a people just as martial as we were. That fact is, according to both my father and the Valkyrie-Queen, something they seem to be slowly remembering. They''re shaking the dust from their armour, cleaning the rust from their blades, and their leaders aren''t content to just become pampered oafs like their fathers and forefathers were. Their leaders are becoming warriors once more, and are remembering the old traditions they cast off.


    "That''s why my father is worried. He wants us to strike as soon as we can, before they remember what it means to sit atop the world with a fist of iron. We''re being pressed for time, both from whatever it is to the north moving south towards us, and from the fact that the southerners might forge themselves into something we will struggle to defeat when the time comes."


    Krai was silent for a moment, a thoughtful smile on his face, and when he spoke his voice was strangely soft.


    "Is it wrong of me to hope we''re too late? To hope they make themselves into an enemy worthy of our rivalry? It''s one thing to slaughter farmers who''ve never held an axe save to cut wood, but to test myself against their trained fighters would be..."


    "A worthy endeavour."


    "Completing." His friend eventually settled on, seemingly ignoring the proffered assistance in finding his words. "To fight a foe like that would be something that made us. That proved to Krakevasil that we were worthy. Does that make me cruel, or foolish?"


    K?til couldn''t stop himself from agreeing to that point. By the Raven-God, it would be a far more worthy battle. If the stories that father had shared with him were true, of their warrior-kings and armies of steel-clad huscarls numbering in the tens of thousands, then it would truly be a worthy battle.


    "I don''t think that would make you wrong, cruel, or foolish. All told, I think it would make you one of us. It would make you Scelopyrene. To lust for battle, one where the worthy are pitted against an equally worthy opponent, to fight with someone that truly pushes you to the very limits of your endurance, your skills, your strength; all of that makes you like me, Krai. It makes you like all of us.


    "I don''t think any man worth his salt up here could possibly disagree with you on that notion."


    Krai went to open his mouth in response, but was cut off by the deep voice of a much larger figure looming behind them both.


    "A little deep for five in the morning, son."


    The two of them immediately moved into a more respectful position upon realising who had come across them.


    "Great Jaerl."


    "Father."


    The large man nodded at them both in turn, then continued speaking.


    "You weren''t wrong about wishing for a stronger opponent, young huscarl. It is the want of every good person from these lands to wish for a valued foe to prove themselves against.


    "But remember that something is coming. We will be conserving our strength here, by slaughtering the meek and the unworthy, but we will also be adding the strength of Kliran''s sons to our own; the worthy warriors amongst them, their leaders who bear axe and mace and sword instead of sceptre and jewel, will make for fine equals to our own folk. Yes, I see your face my son. Equals.


    "They will need to be taught how to properly rule of course, and how to properly fight, but they are just as worthy of taking thralls as we are. Let them fight us in the field, and once they have been beaten we will extend our hand out to those who fought bravely and defiantly. We will accept those who showed that they had the strength and the fortitude to continue fighting even in the face of an army of berserkers and giants, for any men that can do so are worthy of being called ''brother'' when the dust settles."


    K?til nodded at his father. He might not have entirely agreed, but he could also understand the logic in such a statement. It was, perhaps the more pragmatic way of looking at things; tomorrow''s enemy could just as easily be overmorrow''s brother.


    "How come you''re up so early, father? I assumed you''d be sharing your bed with your new wife."


    There was something of a challenging tone in his voice, one that both his father and Krai must surely have noticed, but save a small measure of tenseness in the air it was not addressed.


    "Nightmares, as childish as it may seem. I had hoped that seeing the sun might settle my nerves somewhat.


    "I believe that you said much the same, Huscarl. I don''t recall hearing you mention why you were up so early though, my son."


    K?til shrugged, and settled on the truth.


    "Sleep escapes me sometimes. I find I need precious little of it nowadays anyway. I just want to fight and kill, or drink and- well, you know that."


    His father actually laughed at that, though not without an underlying hint of worry beneath the bluster.


    "You and your druid like to fuck, yes, I know. It''s a miracle you don''t wake half of the warcamp some nights. Huscarl Krai, how do you sleep in the same room as the two of them?"


    His friend, the traitor, shrugged.


    "You get used to it after a while. Learned to tune it out like howling winds and snoring huscarls."


    Now his father was really laughing. It was mirthful and jovial, more suited to an evening feast than it was to the chilly air of an early morning in a small sparring grounds. It was nice to hear, even with the tension between his father and himself, and K?til found himself smiling as a result. His father soon got his laughter back under his control however, and continued speaking.


    "You are stressed. I understand that. Stress is what is keeping you from sleep, even if you don''t believe it to be so. Keeps me up plenty of nights, that much I can tell you. I''m glad you''re choosing to spend your time honing your skills instead of spending it fruitlessly trying to gain rest that won''t come; I wasted so much time when I was younger and my father was trying to unite our people trying to sleep when none would come. Better to accept it as it is and get on with your day."


    K?til nodded, and Krai did likewise. It made little sense to waste precious time squeezing your eyes shut when you weren''t going to be able to sleep, and even less sense when you''d had a nightmare and didn''t really want to.


    "We were just planning on sparring, father. Care to join?"


    At that offer, that proverbial olive branch, his old man looked very relieved indeed.


    "Aye, I think I could make the time for that. The day is still young after all. Come on then, you as well huscarl. You two against me! Sound good?"


    "What do you think, boss?" Krai''s voice came from behind him to his left, the tone resting somewhere around excited teasing. "You wanna stick it to your old man?"


    K?til grinned and just pulled his sword from where he had stuck it in the straw dummy, Dyfed tossing another to the excited huscarl.


    "I think we can show him what we''ve learned, Krai. Come on now dad, let''s see if you''ve still got some fight in you."


    Krakevasil, for all that the man might have infuriated him at times, he loved his father so much.


    He was so lucky to have a man like that for a father.