by Winfred Wong
“Shut up. Shut up!” Rogen hissed, brandishing his sword sullenly. “Who would believe you?”
“That is the truth, Rogen. Believe it or not, but it’s true,” Andon claimed and levelled his sword forward. “I’m just executing Consul Pancho’s order to eliminate the Knights and that annoying centaur. I have always been faithful to Consul Pancho, and I will always be.”
“Huh!?” Rogen uttered, as the betrayal wrenched at his heart even though he hardly knew him. “Consul Pancho’s order!?”
“Now you will die, Rogen.” With a vicious smile, Andon then charged forward. “Take this!”
He feinted with his sword and then lashed out an upward kick, but, in spite of the stiffness brought by the wound, Rogen beautifully evaded it and shoved his shoulder before he could regain balance, pushing him away, and he seized the opportunity to make a bolt for the entrance. However, right as he reached out for the flap and was about to drive it aside, Althalos rushed in and collided with him, and they both plunged down into the hay and howled.
“What are you doing in here, Han!?” Althalos, who had never seen the real Han, said, playing his hair as he rose, and Rogen stared at him, slightly amazed by how much he and Chavdar looked alike.
“Argh...We...We’re practising,” Rogen sputtered on the hay nervously, nearly blushed, and his eyes fell, avoiding eye contact.
“Practising?” Althalos said doubtfully. “I thought you were not feeling well!”
“I was,” Rogen lied. “But after I retched up everything, I feel a lot better.”
Then, to be more convincing, Andon walked up to Rogen in a friendly gait and patted his shoulder, profoundly and forcefully. “So what brings you here, Althalos?”
“Right, I almost forgot,” Althalos said. “Your horses. Ernald thinks it would be better to have them in the stable because they’re marching out very soon, so –” He pushed the flap aside, showing their brown-maned horses outside. ”But now that you two are here, I will just leave them to you.” He turned around, yawned lazily and headed out, and Andon patted on Rogen’s shoulder again, rhythmically and menacingly, exuding his eagerness to beat him to death.
“Hey, Althalos,” Rogen suddenly said when Althalos had just planted one of his feet out of the tent, the flap covering his body.
“What?” Althalos retreated a step and asked.
“You have a twin brother called Chavdar, right?” Rogen questioned.
“Yes,” Althalos drawled. “So?”
“Do you want to see him?” Rogen said alluringly. “I know where he is.”
Profoundly stunned for a moment, “You know where he is!?” Althalos piped happily. “For real? He is still alive? Where is he?”
“Yes,” Rogen said firmly, stood up, breaking free from Andon’s tap, blood still sliding down to his fingertip, and flounced out of the tent before Andon could react. “Let’s talk outside. It’s stuffy in here.”
“All right,” Althalos said and chased after, but, as he stepped out, he saw Rogen lifting himself up to a sitting posture on the saddle. “Hey! Where are you going? Tell me! Where is my brother?”
“Sorry, but I have to go...” Rogen paused dramatically when, above the whistle of the night wind and the incessant light tread of soldiers marching, he heard Andon slashing the flap into pieces with his furious sword and him stomping off, and, at the moment Andon stormed out, he spurred his horse toward the lake, which lay behind the trooping men.
“Rogen!” Andon roared, elbowed Althalos away violently, and rushed to his horse.
Mingled with bewilderment and astonishment, Althalos murmured, scratching his head, “Rogen?” when Andon whipped his horse to pursue him.
Galloping along with the gentle wind, Rogen instantly realized he had to find a way to circle around the marching enemy as soon as possible and reunite with the Knights to warn them about Andon and Consul Pancho, however, as Andon came into his view from behind, he, on a whim, veered off toward the enemy squarely, lifted himself off of the saddle behind a tree quickly and blended in with the army before Andon could catch up.
The armor he was wearing provided him the best camouflage he could ever find, allowing him to disappear into the unruly crowd, who were striding forward in a very disorderly manner, but, as he continued to go alongside them confidently and naturally, the unruliness of the resistance’s soldiers ironically became a problem to him; their gaits of marching were very unalike, almost contrasting. His was filled with strength, purposeful and smooth, but theirs were slouching, undignified and stiff. He tried to imitate their manners, but it was just too difficult to make such an adjustment in such a short period of time.
And soon after they began to descend the slope, he discovered that everyone was wittingly keeping a distance from him, creating an empty circle around him, setting him apart from others, while some were gawking at him oddly, some peering with suspicion, and some louring, and so, he halted jerkily midway down the slope, retreated a step and immediately resumed moving downward, trying his best to mimic their peculiar manners, though, despite his effort, the resistance’s march ceased completely.
“Kill that man!” Andon, galloping on the right wing of the soldiers to where Rogen was, shouted, pointing precisely at Rogen. “He is a spy!”
“No! Don’t kill him,” Althalos, riding on Ausber on the left wing toward Rogen, yelled, loudly and defiantly, with every scrap of courage he had ever owned, and never stopped until he came close enough to shield him with his body, although his body was trembling, which was, for him, inevitable.
Trotting his horse slowly into the vacant circle, Andon reined his horse and glowered at them.
“Why are you helping him, Althalos?” Andon questioned interrogatively, pacing his horse back and forth within the circle. “Don’t you understand? That man you’re helping is a spy, our enemy. He’ll leak out a lot of information about us. You want to get us all killed?”
“No. I understand, I know,” replied Althalos, nervously. “But he knows where my brother is! I can’t just let you kill him. I need him!”
“Just get lost!” Andon ranted, glided out his sword and swung it left then right, slashing the air fiercely.
Quivering, “No,” Althalos quavered, beads of sweat exuded on his brow.
“Last chance! Get! Lost!” Andon raged.
The indescribably intense vacillation between stepping aside and standing firm was ripping his fragile heart apart, forcing him to frown and bite his lip, and, after a pause that he took to defeat his tremendous fear of dying for Chavdar’s whereabouts and for his promise to Keira, he finally wept, with his eyes shut, in a barely discernible tone, “No,” without realizing that Andon won’t just give up because of him.
“You don’t have to do this,” Rogen whispered in Althalos’s ear. “Just walk away.”
And Althalos repeated, eyes still closed tightly, “No!”
“Then you shall die with him!” Andon blustered, raced forward then lunged his sword at Althalos’s chest, aiming to finish him off with one blow.
As the tip of his sword was about to pierce through his breastplate and split open his skin, Ausber, automatically and miraculously, trotted forward, as if the impending danger Althalos was facing had somehow dawned on him, causing Andon to miss by a hair’s breadth, and, hissing, the momentum of his charge carried him to the other side of the circle.
Althalos, opening his eyes frighteningly, heard a voice saying, “Go now!”
He snapped his head from side to side, looking for the source of the voice that saved him once again, but he couldn’t find anything or anyone that matched the comforting voice.
“Die!” Andon flashed Althalos a withering look and mumbled, charging toward him from behind, going for the back of his throat.
“Watch out!”
By the time Althalos turned and faced Andon, his blade was only an inch away from his vulnerable neck. It was a swift sweeping movement that can hardly be dodged, but Rogen helped him to ward off the strike th
is time, by propelling his sword in the opposite direction with both hands, and, as the swords clashed, a sudden thought flashed through Andon’s mind. He pretended to be outpowered, luring Rogen to stride forward triumphantly, then, exploiting the advantage of riding on a horse, he kicked out brutally at his ill-protected wrist repeatedly until Rogen moaned, loosening his grip on the sword, and had to step away unwillingly, leaving Althalos in jeopardy.
Grasping his chance to attack as Althalos hesitated, Andon quickly heaved up his arm and thrusted his sword down at him with an unstoppable force, but, at the moment he drove his arm down, a tiny, fast-moving water sphere, so fast that it looked like an illusion, showcasing his dominant power as a mind-wielder, struck at his elbow precisely, and the intolerable pain inflicted on him impelled him to drop his sword grudgingly.
“What are you doing, Andon?” Dulais, cantering up the slope, asked, in his signature calm tone.
Turned his horse around, looking at Dulais with an innocent look, Andon asserted brusquely, pointing at Althalos, massaging his painful elbow gently, “He tried to stop me to kill the spy! I’m just doing the right thing, make no mistake about that.”
Then Dulais directed a suspicious gaze at Rogen, and Althalos beseeched, dismounting, and walked to stand in between Dulais and Rogen, “Please don’t kill him.”
“You know him?” Dulais questioned.
“No, I don’t,” Althalos admitted and took a deep breath, eyes glistening. “But he knows where Chavdar is.”
“He is a spy! A spy who would get us all killed!” Andon interrupted, hoping Dulais would kill him.
Dulais’s gaze then immediately turned into a wild gape as if he hadn’t heard Andon, and he asked Rogen earnestly, “Is it true? You know his whereabouts?”
Shocked by the abrupt change of attitude, Rogen stammered, “Y...Yes. I saw him yesterday.”
“Tell me where he is,” said Dulais, grinning acceptably. “You’ll tell me the truth, right?”
“Sure. He is somewhere in... the city, somewhere in the city,” Rogen equivocated.
“Well, then come with me,” replied Dulais and headed back down the slope when others resumed trooping, with the same easy pace of their unique gait, and he beckoned at the hesitating Rogen, who was baffled by what to do.
To trail along behind the man, who caused the death of Lee, submissively, instead of waging war against him dauntlessly like what he thought Lee would do for him, was a haunting, bitter humiliation to him, let alone the fact that he was just rescued by him. He felt aggrieved and harboured frustration against him as he did understand that he didn’t really have a choice.
“But he is a spy! At least, you have to chain him up!” Andon yelled, though Dulais, who by that time only considered Rogen as someone of little significance, ignored him once again, when Rogen began to straggle behind Dulais, and Althalos rode next to him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
A gust of current was silently tearing open a rift in the muddled clouds that covered up the dwindling moon, opening up a space for the staggering lustre of the peaceful moon to go through, when they were walking alongside the stream of stressed soldiers behind Dulais, with a slightly faster pace than the soldiers.
“Althalos, you can go back and wait for us in the yurt,” Dulais said when they reached the foot of the slope, and they all suddenly changed from trooping to scurrying quietly. “You don’t belong on a battlefield.”
Steeped in the stressful ambience exuding from the complete quietness of the environment, “No one does,” Althalos replied, slightly shivering.
“Rest assured, my friend,” said Dulais, persuadingly, crushing his determination intentionally. “Even if he is dead, I will still find him and bring him back to you. I can’t take care of you while fighting.”
Rubbed his face with his hands in agony, Althalos reined in Ausber and said, “...I...”
“Just go.”
And he left, galloping away, fighting the compulsion to stay he felt, shedding tears over his sense of immense powerlessness that impelled him to blame himself.
“What’s your name, spy?” Dulais asked Rogen, in a calm tone that Rogen didn’t expect.
“Kreon,” Rogen lied.
“Do your friends know that we’re going to launch an attack tonight?”
Winking incessantly, Rogen tried hard to come up with the best answer that can deceive him into thinking that it’s still safe to carry on the attack, but he couldn’t, and so, he simply remained silent.
“Who sent you here? Pancho?”
“Consul Pancho? No, of course not. I’m just a small potato,” Rogen answered when they reached the front of the army, where Ernald, Galahad, riding on a white charger, and Barnett were cantering their horses side by side, taking the lead, and Barnett stretched his arm up in the sky to order a halt as he feared that the guards on the walls would be able to see them if they continued to march forward.
“What happened back there?” Barnett turned his horse around and asked Dulais.
“Nothing. Nothing worth notice,” Dulais answered.
Heaving a long breath of indecisiveness, Barnett said, staring back afar at the south castle walls, pondering which way they should go, left or right, the longer route or the shorter, “Even though we have already sent out scouts, I’m still kind of worried. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Maybe be we should split up into two groups?” Ernald suggested.
“Maybe we should call off the attack,” Dulais interjected resolutely, giving everyone a scary jolt.
“What?” Barnett gawked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“No, absolutely not. We can’t just call it off for no reason at all!” returned Galahad. “Don’t you realize how much effort we have put in for tonight? Look at the battering rams that we built in only three days. We have got to take down the castle tonight! Morale will plunge if we call it off now! And look at the men behind you! They’re all good men willing to sacrifice themselves for the others who are suffering! Can you even imagine how confused and disappointed they will be?”
“Of course I can imagine that. Calm down, Galahad,” Dulais said. “You don’t think we should carry on to march into a trap and get us all killed, right? And I can tell you that the enemy knows we’re coming.” And everyone who heard him was greatly stunned. “I caught a spy. Kreon, come here. Tell them what you know.” He beckoned at Rogen, who had been strenuously restraining himself from stabbing Dulais from behind, and he walked up.
“Is it true?” Barnett asked, scowling down at him. “They know that we’re coming?”
“No,” Rogen replied, quickly and resoundingly. “I never get the chance to inform them of the attack.”
“Ernald, tie him up,” Barnett then commanded, and Ernald ordered a soldier to do it.
“A spy is never trustworthy,” Dulais said. “I guess they’ve already set up an ambush for us at somewhere, waiting to make a raid on us, to eradicate us once and for all.”
“Agree,” Barnett sighed in anguish after a proper pause for assimilation. “It’s undesirable, but we can’t afford to risk it. Ernald, what do you say?”
“I think we should pull back now. It would be an irrevocable defeat for us if they succeed with an unexpected ambush,” replied Ernald. “As you said, we can’t afford to take the risk.”
After a delay to pull himself together, “Well, then let’s go back,” Barnett mumbled very discontentedly, growing more and more despondently, and trotted back directly toward the camp without giving the soldiers a needed explanation, causing a decline in morale, as the bewildered soldiers blindly followed him with complicated looks.
“Dulais, look, I’m sorry,” Galahad apologized.
“Don’t be, my friend,” said Dulais. “You did what you had to do.”
“What about this spy?” Ernald asked them.
“Leave him to me,” Dulais pleaded. “I need to talk to him.”
“Well, so be it,” E
rnald agreed and rode away.
∫∫
The night was still as dark as ink when they got back, but the intense tension that swathed them had already fizzled out; warmth and tranquility took place instead.
Rushed to Dulais, experiencing a sense of bafflement about why they returned so hastily, and darted a strange glance at Rogen, who was straggling behind Dulais, “Called off!?” Althalos shirked when Dulais, clutching the rope on Rogen, was explaining what happened to him.
“Sadly, yes,” said Dulais, dismounting, and untied him. “The last thing I wanted.”
“Then what about Chavdar? How are we going to find him now?” Althalos babbled agitatedly.
“Be patient. One way or another we will eventually find him when we have the chance,” said Dulais.
Then a soldier, who had already taken off his armor, wearing a simple-designed, plain garment, ran over and said, “Barnett wants to see you and the spy. He wants to meet to discuss our next move. Galahad and Ernald have already arrived.”
“Do you want to come?” Dulais asked Althalos, whose mind was obviously soaked in some rare deep thought. “Soldier, take my horse to the stable. I’ll head to the yurt right away.”
Then, after a friendly pat on Althalos’s arm that was reminiscent of the pat Andon had given to Rogen, he walked away, but, as he stepped, a name suddenly tripped off of Althalos’s tongue like honey off a hot plate, and a thought flashed across his mind, “Andon!”
Heard his voice, Dulais looked back at him.
“Andon! It’s Andon!” Althalos said, and Rogen peeked at him.
“What about him?” Dulais said.
“I think he is a spy too,” he asserted excitedly. “Remember when Ernald asked me to take their horses to the stable right after Han almost fell down and Andon carried him away? I happened to bump into them in the stable! I think he infiltrated by pretending to be Han, which means Andon, who came together with him, is also one of them!”
“If so, then why would Andon want to kill him?” Dulais asked. “It doesn’t make any sense. They are on the same side.”
