The King's Blood

by S. E. Zbasnik

  But sure enough, his hands came to rest upon a small town with the name Carthas, still visible in a hasty script. Perhaps the fact the ends of the map were chewed off by sharp teeth was what hastened the cartographer.

  "Now," he laid out the second sheet, a proper map of Arda, drawn before the Empire started collecting lands like they were limited edition vases. "What town has it become?"

  Sure enough the rivers, the mountains, even some of the larger landmasses matched up from the ancient half eaten map and the fresh one. Ciara flipped up the new map to look at the older, and pulled it down, then a bit to the right until the dot below was joined by a much smaller one named "Putras."

  Ciara said the town aloud, and looked at Aldrin. "Sounds like a place the ill go to die," he said, lifting the map up to stare at the one below.

  "You are not far off, princeling. Putras is the last vestige of the Church of Nostrum for the Goddess Hospar where those facing certain death make one last plea, one last roll of the die, before the raven."

  "Charming," Ciara said, shuddering at the thought of hundreds of ill people, moaning, dripping and oozing green things while dying about the crumbling halls of an almost godless church.

  "And that is where you must head," Medwin said solemnly.

  "Wait, what? Why?" Ciara said, she'd quite like to spend as little amount of time near any barbers as possible. The fact the barbers also buried the people they failed to save didn't alter her resolve.

  "Carthas is rumored to have housed a library, an ancient library, dedicated to Casamir. It seemed suspect to me, as the hero was never mentioned visiting that land in any of the primary texts. But if Liam was from there, then perhaps Liam can lead you to his namesake."

  "Monks can't read," Ciara said, thinking back to the few priests who passed through the Albrant's halls promising blessings upon the castle in exchange for a bit of bread which quickly turned into a four course meal for a fortnight. They'd sing a few prayers, substituting in one god for another, promise to send whoever didn't believe in that particular god straight to the depths of the underworld where they'd spend lifetimes climbing through the slits in the earth hoping for another chance. Then off they bugger, looking for the next rich person who had more blood on their hands than they thought was acceptable.

  "True, the humbler priests of Putras do not read nor write, keeping the sermon in song as is tradition. But they still maintain most of the library. Many clerics pass through and pay the Bishop a rather handsome sum to watch over some more controversial tomes of theirs."

  Medwin's fingers slid out searching for the edges of the map, and he picked it up, expertly folding it up without putting strain on the crease. "You will require some documentation before they'll let you into the stacks, but I think I still have a few passes in my drawer," the chancellor muttered, returning the maps to the filing cabinet.

  Aldrin coughed into his fist, "Does this mean you won't be coming with us?"

  Medwin paused as he crawled back to his chair and his white eyes turned on Aldrin, causing the boy to gasp, "The Historians are not welcome amongst the church. I cannot risk the lives of everyone under me for research, no matter how tantalizing it may be." The white eyes continued to bore into Aldrin's soul, "A choice lies before you. We will wait at the fork of the road in the North. There you can turn either to the left and on to Tumbler's End, or right and on to Putras."

  Aldrin looked over at Ciara. He seemed to yank his next statement from out of a prepared pocket, "I cannot ignore my duty to the witch, but I would not ask you to risk your own life again for me when the end is so close."

  She leaned back, surprised at the choice the boy laid before her. Ciara was used to everyone deciding her life for her. Her mother was training her to take her place; her father tossed her into the wide world with little more than the clothes on her back. And would it be so bad to roll into Tumbler's End, give the army the Prince, and let them decide whether or not it was worth indulging a witch's whims when Aldrin was protected by over four hundred strong sword arms?

  "I said I'd get you to Tumbler's End alive, and that's what I'll do. Even if it means having to take a detour through a hospice," Ciara said, knowing she was going to regret it the moment the choice left her mouth.

  Aldrin smiled wide and, in an overly emotional display, wrapped his arms around Ciara's head and pulled her face into his concave chest. Her arms hung limp at the absurdity of the boy on the box hugging her. After a moment, as reality set in, Aldrin awkwardly dropped his arms and grabbed her hand instead. At that, Ciara gripped his forearm and shook, sealing the promise.

  "I assume you will be taking the gwrach with you," Medwin said. "whether you like it or not," he added.

  "Isadora?" Aldrin said, "yes, most likely," he didn't mention the other person living in the woods following with them. Neither Ciara nor the prince thought it prudent to bring up the assassin. What could ten men in red robes do? Shake their quills at him? Lob a few ink wells?

  "Then," Medwin said solemnly, "I suggest you pack your most fire resistant pants."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Smoke rolled across the streets half barricaded with pyres clearing out the litter. Marciano yanked the helmet off his head. It slid easily from the sweat of battle pouring off his face and down his back. His trousers were a veritable swampland.

  The vipers were embedded deeper than he suspected. Seeds of discord grew unchecked for far longer than the few months the Ostero King lay in a pile of ash. By the time his men rode up to the harbor city of Magton, the gate was barred and the walls heavily fortified.

  A siege of a couple hundred men against a city that opened up to the freedom of the greater sea was about as likely to work as a strongly worded letter asking them to consider what their mother would want. But not everyone inside the harbor city welcomed mob rule, and cracks began to form while his scouts worked the edges.

  It took one man, an expatriate of the Empire who settled into a very lucrative fishing business with the backing of an Emperor who wanted the right kind of people in charge of the gold flow. As the fisher watched his angry neighbors eyeing his extravagant house with greedy eyes, he cloaked himself in darkness and took his small fleet up the coast. The logistics of moving two hundred men and horses in a handful of leaking fishing boats wedged a permanent knot of pain at the back of Marciano's brain. But they got almost forty-five percent of their company inside the walls before the rebellion realized they were ambushed.

  Then it was a matter of the dirty business of fighting through the stone jungles of your enemy's home. Most of the rebels had at best rusty old swords, a few bows that needed fresh stringing and an impressive array of harpoons. The latter did the most damage, sinking one of the boats and drowning half the crew under panicking horses.

  Marciano despised fighting rebellions. Walking into someone's home and claiming what was once theirs as yours was straightforward and to the point; normally upon an agreed battlefield, far from the home you both want to keep standing for the winner. But rebellions were like fighting shadows in the daylight. Knowing which were your friends and which were your enemies was about as easy as knowing which way was east on a cloudy night. He'd have been better off flipping a coin or burning the entire city to smolders. Luckily, for the few citizens who felt loyalty to neither side, Empire steel won out over peasant weapons and there was no need to go about destroying the entire nest to cut up the snake.

  The General noticed midway through the battle there was no sign of the head, however. If the Queen had ever been here, she made her escape long before the fighting began. Which meant he'd continue to face resistance through every contested mile of this frozen wasteland. A rebellion is like trying to finish off a weed, no matter how many times you pluck at it, it'll always grow back. The only salvation is digging out the root and salting the earth with blood.

  "Sir!" one of his men called to Marciano. Behind him, one of the vanguards carried two boys, a smaller one tucked under his arm while he clutched th
e larger one captive by his ragged shirt collar.

  "What is it, soldier?" Marciano said, dismounting from Peter. The horse sniffed cautiously as the wind shifted the smell of burning hair in the wind but remained steady on his hooves.

  "We found these two carrying encoded messages."

  The general wiped the sweat on his forehead, smearing it with blood instead. He walked over to the prisoners as the youngest was dropped to his feet and held by his shoulder. "Who do you serve?" Marciano asked, towering above them like an immovable statue of the gods.

  The younger's lips began to wobble, tears rising out of his eyes. But the larger of the boys struggled much of his life on the streets and stood up straighter in the face of authority.

  "We fight for the King!" he said proudly, slapping his emaciated chest. Were it not for the coats, most likely stolen, overlapped across his shrunken frame, he'd blow away in the rising sea winds.

  "The King is dead," the general said coldly.

  "There's always another one," the boy responded, not easily deterred.

  Despite himself, Marciano laughed once, mirthlessly. How true. "How old are you boy?"

  "Fourteen!" he proclaimed to the winds.

  A lie, clearly. The only spots on his face came from grime and not the cruel thumb of puberty and his voice was artificially lowered so he could join up with the rebels. A boy, at best twelve, and looking to make his way into a cruel world.

  "Where were you taking your messages?"

  The boy slapped his hands over his mouth and through his pale fingers mumbled, "You can't get nuffin' out of me."

  "I see," Marciano said evenly. He drew out his sword, almost the length of the small boy still squealing in terror.

  "You have aligned yourself with the enemy of the Empire," the General said. His gauntlet fingers pinched into protruding collar bone as he pulled the older boy forward and, before the child could register what was happening, stuck his sword through the tiny body. It offered almost no resistance, like cutting up a holiday bird.

  The younger child screamed in terror as his fellow spy's body crumpled to the streets they'd grown up on. His eyes followed the General's arm as he slowly cleaned the child's blood from his blade and sheathed his sword.

  Marciano leaned into the soldier's ear and whispered in Avari, "Let the child go, but follow at a distance. In his panic, he will lead you to the final nest. Burn them all out."

  The soldier nodded slowly and let go of the child who, finding himself free, broke into a headlong run past the bodies roasting in the streets, around the broken store fronts and slowly freezing corpses that hadn't found a pyre yet, screaming the entire time. He never noticed he was being followed. The General picked up the small body and placed it onto the cremation pyre noting that it was going to need more fuel before the town was cleaned. His stone heart would bleed later. You never knew whom you'd find at the end of your sword during a rebellion, as Marciano knew all too well.

  "My lord," a voice, squeaky as a trod upon rat, called from the setting sun. It would be night soon and the only way to navigate these foreign streets would be by the cremation pyres.

  Marciano sighed. None of his men dared call him "Lord." It was either one of the locals hoping to get a good word in from the Emperor or the priest demanding more of his men stop and give thanks to some ass in the sky for not killing everyone today.

  He was correct in that it was a priest; the ivory robes were a dead giveaway in the ashing world of grey, but he wasn't the priest who appointed himself the soul of Marciano's battalion. That bishop would not set foot outside his ring of bodyguards as long as a speck of danger hung in the air.

  "Yes...Father," he added begrudgingly. The weariness of battle sunk into his bones as the final vestiges of adrenaline drained away.

  "Our Sire awaits you," the scrunched up priest said. His eyes watered in the rising smoke, which clung to Marciano like a wool blanket. He wouldn't shake the souls of the dead from his skin for months.

  "What are you on about?" the General had had enough of the titles and banners game during his retirement. He did not humor it when he was working.

  "The Emperor, of course," the priest said, burying his hands under his sleeves for fear of touching anything.

  "By all in the tree, Vasska is here?" Marciano's bones snapped to attention at that. Despite over thirty years in the field, the threat of your boss coming to peer over your shoulder still sent the body reeling.

  "He arrived only this afternoon," the priest said, as if it were common knowledge that Emperors preferred to travel in the middle of war zones in their luxury ships.

  "Take me to him, then," Marciano said bitterly. He glanced back once more at the bodies, their limbs twisting in the high heat of the pyre. At least these poor bastards are far from the Emperor's merciful hand, he thought, falling into line behind the priest.

  After winding around the barricades, past the soldiers hunched down in the street trying to find a moments peace, and through the back alleys which were quiet for a change, the priest deposited Marciano in front of a door. It looked as though it were some local's home, a rather nice one at that. But for as long as the Emperor was in town, it was the house of the Empire.

  Crossing his fingers, Marciano pushed open the door. He'd expected a few dozen or so guards, sworn to devote their lives to keeping the Emperor safe but the entryway was void of life. An archway welcomed any visitors into the home, and now had the Banner of Vasska hanging from it. The previous tenants decorating style was tossed in the corner.

  A few of the guards ran past, one carrying a pile of Dunner cushions, another a vase full of flowers. These were twelve highly trained killing machines and Vasska had them decorating his port in the storm. Settling his hand over his sword's hilt, Marciano placed his helmet on the small end table that also housed a fresh idol of Arashu, the goddess of journeys and now foyers.

  He walked under the banner, ducking deeply, and rose to find the living quarters even more ablaze with activity as a handful of priests waved about something wrapped tightly in leaves puffing out clouds of green smoke. Marciano choked at the smell and tried to cover his nose. The lone baldhead in a sea of tonsures looked up at the noise and scampered over to the general.

  As his eyes began to water Marciano tried to bow to the Emperor, but Vasska was on his own schedule. He took the General by the hand and led him over to a makeshift shrine honoring Argur. It was set into the fireplace, which was damped down despite the cold blowing off the sea infesting into the stones. The Emperor called any fire not used for cooking a decadent waste of the bounty Argur entrusted to him.

  The cold didn't burn into Vasska's bones as he wrapped his frail body with a fifth fur, but every servant spent most of the winter in his company jumping up and down any chance they had. Luckily, the Emperor considered hopping to be trying to get closer to the gods and encouraged it; even going so far as to offer a special bonus to whoever could jump the highest before Soulday.

  Vasska's frozen fingers dropped from Marciano and he turned before the shrine, folding his hands into a prayer. Marciano partly mimicked his Lord, but didn't close his eyes in fervent belief. Instead, he stared at the small stick figure, weaved from bundled grasses and tied up with witch's bane. It was the kind of idolatry those who had only enough coin to decide between food or gods came up with. But despite the vast wealth of the empire at his fingertips, Vasska still crafted one at every stop he made.

  Most likely, the priests were burning the leftovers of Argur in a chance to prove how pious they all were and shift any lingering spirits still clinging to the stones. It caused Marciano's nose to stuff up worse than the time his daughter snuck a cat into the home for three weeks before anyone discovered it.

  Vasska placed his fingers to his forehead and stood, the fervent dedication still beaming from his sharp cheekbones as his lips slid into what most would call a smile. To Marciano it looked more like a wolf growling before biting into its prey's throat.

  "Com
e, come, General. Tell me what news you have," Vasska pointed to a pair of cushions placed upon the ground.

  Internally Marciano groaned. He'd heard that the Emperor had been flirting with Dunner culture, even going so far as to order a set of gelding shears to use on his closer guards but the talk of prophecy pulled him to his latest conquest and saved his men their testicles. Trying to fold up his legs, Marciano aimed his weary ass towards the cushion and, for the first time, prayed that it would hit something soft. Vasska paid no heed to the trouble he'd put upon his general, he never paid much heed to anything outside his own visions. As the Emperor curled upon the red cushion, stuffed with three other cushions to raise it above everyone else; Marciano's metallic backend mercifully met with a tiny scrap of fabric before crashing hard into the stone floor.

  "My cabinet talks of war," the Emperor said, and for a brief moment, Marciano wondered if he meant the legions of priests or his actual oak cabinet.

  "The Ostero Queen is proving to be a greater problem than anticipated," Marciano admitted, "We took some loses in freeing Magton from her venom, but nothing the Empire cannot overcome."

  "Good, good. I trusted I put my best man on the job," Vasska beamed upon the boy he liked to claim he picked from obscurity to become his greatest General, as if Marciano's own hard work were whiffs of smoke in the air.

  "Once we secure Magton, I shall take a hundred of the men who survived the battle and the extra hundred we picked up along the way to finish off the Queen's army before she gains any more footing."

  A hundred men to guard the Emperor seemed a bit excessive especially since no one seemed to know he was here, but Marciano knew the man preferred big round numbers. Seventy-five would be worse than fifty. And then fifty would turn into ten and soon the man would be standing alone naked on a hill, just like when they cast their Aravi shadow over the western folds.