by Jon Kiln
“Good point.”
Berengar unraveled the longer length of rope from his back and tied the end around the base of a solid column in the center of the room. He walked the rope out to the window and then dropped it on the floor.
“This is our escape. It is long enough to reach the ground and we can rappel quickly.”
“Are we tossing it out?” Nisero inquired.
“Not yet. We don’t want it spotted before we get back.”
Berengar moved toward the door of the bedroom. He twisted the handle down until it popped and then he waited. Hearing nothing, he pushed the door open and leaned out into the empty passage way. He slipped out and waited as Nisero stepped out along the wall. As Captain Berengar eased the door closed, Nisero listened for any sound of activity in the palace. Air gave a low whistle as it crossed the passage from one open window to another on the high floor, but he heard nothing else.
Berengar turned from the closed door and nodded. Nisero nodded back, not entirely sure what they were agreeing to between them.
The captain led them through the passage, deeper into the royal palace of the King. Nisero’s legs felt weak as he considered the full scope of what they were doing. Were they innocent before now, the act of invading the palace, no matter what their intentions, was an act of war. There might be no pardon for it no matter what they were able to prove in the future.
Nisero got a deep sense in his spirit that they were never going to make it back to that bedroom and down the rope again. He wondered what would become of Arianne once they were gone. He didn’t know if she would be able to make it back out of the city or what her husband would do, if she did.
They reached the top of stone stairs painted and encrusted along one edge of the wall with jewels. It seemed like an odd choice and the expensive decorations were almost forgotten and sad in the dark corner of the palace. They listened and heard nothing.
Berengar turned and held up a hand as if to question. Nisero shook his head. The entire city seemed to be under neglect. The food was not coming in. What food was there had grown too expensive for commoners to rightly afford, and there seemed to be no military presence even within the grounds of the palace itself.
Nisero began to think about the time they crept through the halls of the neglected castle of Faithcore, beyond the edge of the kingdom where bandits ruled. It hurt his heart to think of his own beloved kingdom one day sinking to that deep low.
The captain started down the steps with Nisero close behind. As they reached the bottom, voices echoed up from one direction. There was a brief laugh and then more conversation. It was oddly comforting to finally hear some activity even if it meant they might be at higher risk of discovery. The sound was not a party and it did not sound like guards engaged in conversation while on patrol. Nisero could not place their words.
Berengar signaled the opposite way in the passage and they slipped along. They moved again from the light of torches past high, wooden doors into darker passages again.
They descended a set of stairs in a narrow, dark hall until they saw light ahead. There was more quiet conversation and the clinking of pots. Berengar peered around the corner and rolled back smiling. He held up one finger indicating to wait.
After a few moments of peeking around the corner, he held up three fingers, rolled one down to show two, and then one. He made a fist and then waved Nisero forward. Berengar ran across in the light to the darkness in the passage across from the opening. Nisero cautiously followed and looked around as he passed through the light. He saw the kitchen with the cooks turned away, busy elsewhere.
He stepped back into the darkness and followed Captain Berengar up another set of dark steps.
Berengar reached the top and parted the drapes to peer through. After a moment, he parted them wider and showed Nisero the grand hall. There was a throne and tables set as if for a feast, but the torch light was low and the seats were all empty. The throne and wide dais too was unoccupied.
“What do you make of it?” Berengar whispered.
Nisero made a non-committal sound. “I have not understood anything going on in this kingdom for quite some time. Is this the throne room?”
“It is,” Berengar said. “I have only been in here once myself, but it is set for a feast. Yet, it is left barren. They are cooking below but nothing is being brought up. Normally there would be wine and mingling, but there is nothing. Even before a feast was set to begin, there would be more activity than this.”
Berengar pushed the drape aside and stepped into the empty throne room. Nisero waited a beat and then followed.
“I’m not sure what to do next. We need to see the King.” Berengar frowned.
“Would you have us go up to his bed chambers?”
A voice echoed through the hall. “That will not be necessary, gentlemen.”
Nisero dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword and began to back toward the drape.
The voice continued. “There are archers on the balconies above. Do not move, if you care to go on living.”
The doors around the hall swung open and uniformed guards entered. Torches were struck and the light in the hall flared up. Nisero saw Forseth now walking up through the center of the room. The other handful of Elite Guard that had survived the ambush moved along the walls, as mercenaries in unmarked armor moved into position around the room.
Men Nisero had served with for years marched in around behind him and Berengar. They pushed their backs and walked them up in front of the throne toward the center of the hall to face Captain Forseth.
Nisero glanced up and saw the archers in their dark cloaks, aiming down from balconies that normally held guests during shows or presentations. He imagined this might be the archers from the night of the betrayal that he had not managed to kill before he made his escape.
Nisero looked from the arrows to Forseth squared in front of him. “Are these the same men you hired to murder our brothers?”
“Some of them,” Forseth said with a lazy shrug.
Berengar reached for his sword and took a step forward. Two blades were drawn behind him, the sharp edges rested at the arteries of both sides of his neck. Captain Berengar froze, still glaring at Forseth.
“I did not take your swords,” Forseth said, “because I have no reason to fear them. Move your hand or die, Berengar.”
Captain Berengar lifted his hand away, but the swords remained at his neck. “You looked better suited hung upside down, Forseth. I should have bled you out there in the woods instead of letting you live to disgrace yourself and that uniform further.”
“I won’t make the mistake of letting you two walk out of this room alive. Put them on their knees, please.”
The swords drew back from Berengar’s neck and the Elite Guardsmen standing behind Nisero and Berengar stomped against the backs of their knees, driving them down hard.
“Much better. You will have a shorter distance to fall when you are both cut down.”
“Why are you doing this?” Nisero asked angrily.
Captain Forseth groaned. “Why do we do anything that we have ever done? We were ordered to do it by those above us. If the King ordered you to cut down members of his force that he considered a problem, would you refuse him? What sort of servant to the King would you be, if you did not kill who he said to kill? What is the Elite Guard except the hand of the King bearing a blade?”
“The King ordered you to kill his Guard and the prince of the east?” Berengar said in disbelief. “This is what you are confessing now?”
Forseth held out his hands to the hall occupied by mercenaries and the Elite Guard survivors. “How would I be in the throne room delivering the sentence of death upon you, if not by the will of the ruling King?”
“I see no king or nobles of any rank. You may be here like us, merely forcing your way in.”
“Nobles try not to attend blood baths. They come along after men like me have finished the work and the cleanup is completed.”
> Berengar spat on the floor. “You are a dog that licks blood and filth off the dirt before being kicked aside.”
Forseth lifted his boot and stomped Berengar in the chest, knocking him to his back. He then kicked him twice more in the ribs. Berengar grunted and grit his teeth, taking the pain. Forseth stepped back. “I owed you that from earlier. Pick him up.”
The Elite Guard grabbed Berengar by his shoulders and pulled him to his feet.
“Even if you kill us,” Berengar said, “you will be paid back for your evil. Evil men do not suffer the men that know their secrets and commit their acts of treachery for long. They will cut you all down eventually to hide their deeds and forget their involvement in what you have done. None of them are here to witness it for that very reason.”
Forseth chuckled. “You want a king present for your fall. That can happen. Bring him in.”
A great commotion rose at one of the grand doors. A man was hauled in wearing chains. From their knees Berengar and Nisero could see the man with his white beard and hair. His clothing was in rags and dirt marked his face.
Nisero narrowed his eyes. “The King?”
Berengar started to rise to his feet, but the swords reappeared at the sides of his neck and he lowered back to his knees.
They dragged the King up before the throne, bound in his chains. They dumped him on the flagstone floor next to Nisero, Berengar, and Forseth.
“What have you done?” Berengar growled. “You said you took orders from the King.”
“I don’t believe I said the King actually,” Forseth said, “but to that point, I did take orders from the King, just not this old King. His replacement commands me now. He is the one that coordinated the fall of the old guard, the eastern prince, and this former king of the kingdom. With war brewing in the east, food shortages stirring up the kingdom, and order slowly collapsing, everything is going as planned.”
“Whose plan?” Berengar pressed. “Who did this?”
Forseth waved him off. “That’s not important to you. You two are old guard and should have been killed off long before now. We will remedy that finally. We coaxed you into the palace as planned. I didn’t think it would work, but here you are, just like he said. Now, we orchestrate the assassination of the old King by the hands of those that killed the prince, and then the new King can take his place, bringing order to the kingdom and expanding east to boot.”
Nisero looked down at the King who appeared to be unconscious on the floor. “How could you be a party to this?”
“Kingdoms are overthrown all throughout history. You can either be part of the old kingdom or the new kingdom when that transition happens.”
“Is that what your new King told you?”
“It is, in fact,” Forseth said. “Unchain the old King and dress him in his fine robes for his assassination.”
The mercenaries laughed as they dragged the man up by his chains. The King’s eyelids fluttered as the shackles were unlocked from his wrists and ankles. His left wrist in particular bore open sores. He had a dark cut on his right palm. Around all the other joints, the King’s skin was creased in painful, purple lines marking the edges of the cuffs. The flesh on either side of the exposed skin was puffy and pale.
It did not escape Nisero that they themselves had brought in more than a few criminals to be chained away in this manner. Were the situation different, the King himself would have had them locked away for the remainder of their lives. It still stung to see the King treated this way.
“Where have you been keeping him?” he asked.
“I’ve been out looking for you two. Little did I know that you would come find me—twice now, it seems,” Forseth said amicably. “The King’s cousin has had him up in the towers. That’s where you keep royal prisoners after all, isn’t it?”
“The King’s cousin.” Berengar looked up from his knees. “Which cousin?”
“I am terrible at keeping secrets.” Forseth shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“His own family turned on him?”
Forseth paced in front of his prisoners. “The cousin reached out to willing nobles from exile or perhaps they used him to move on the throne and consolidate their power. The workings of royal politics are complicated and sometime incestuous. It is best to just pick the winning horse and place your wager where you can. Mine paid off. Your old horse is headed to the slaughter.”
“Cousin in exile?” Berengar narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. “Marlex?”
Forseth tapped his foot on the ground, getting impatient. “Let’s get him set up so that we can pose this assassination. This is worse than having both my nagging grandmothers present while I’m trying to work.”
As the mercenaries released the King’s shoulders after rattling the chains aside, the King toppled forward to his face and knees. It looked as if he were bowing to his captors instead of collapsing from exhaustion.
One of them shoved the King’s hip with his boot, pushing him over onto his side so that he looked to be curled up like a baby. Berengar growled in the back of his throat, but did not make a motion with the swords at the sides of his neck.
“Don’t bruise him any further,” Forseth ordered. “It is supposed to appear that he was still upon the throne ruling and feasting while the people starved and their sons were sent to war. Until these two entered to continue their reign of murder and terror on the kingdom.”
“Then Cousin Marlex steps in to take the crown to be the hero,” Berengar finished for him.
“We’ll be at war,” Forseth said. “Most will just be happy to have anyone upon the throne. If it is any consolation, history will likely mark you as the slayer of a tyrant. King Marlex rose from exile after the fall of the hated King that put him there, in order to save the kingdom that he always loved. Some will view you as heroes even though we will paint you as heartless criminals that plunged the kingdom into a costly war, one that only King Marlex could save us from. History is complicated too because of the politics, I suppose.”
Berengar showed his teeth. “Marlex is not fit to lick the boots of King Ramael.”
Nisero saw hands go to swords’ hilts around the room and the air grew as tense as the drawn strings of the bows in the balconies above them. Forseth waved his hand. “Rest easy, boys. We will have plenty of time to make them pay for their disrespect once the tyrant is slain. I’m just glad the true King was not here to hear such awful curses. Dress him in his finest robes. We need to get on with killing the King… long live the King,” he laughed.
The men laughed with him and hustled King Ramael up to his feet. They stripped off his rags and threw them aside leaving him standing naked. They laid out the robes, belts, cape, and lastly the crown itself sitting on the floor next to the chains.
“Where are his boots?” Forseth demanded.
The men looked around. One of them said, “I can go up to his chambers. Find a pair.”
“One of you, take off your boots and put them on the King’s feet. We can’t have him found slain barefoot in the throne room and expect there to not be questions we can’t answer.”
“Why don’t we take one of the prisoners’ boots, sir?”
Berengar rolled his eyes. “Because when they come in and find our bodies slain after supposedly killing the King, they’ll question why one of the assassins entered the palace barefoot.”
Forseth stared up at the high ceiling in exasperation. “Exactly. Just give him boots, so that we can kill him.”
One of the mercenaries began unlacing his leather footwear.
“Are you going to pretend the King was out hunting?” Berengar smirked at Forseth.
“What?”
“The mercenaries wear boots for creeping around the woods. It won’t look believable,” Berengar explained.
Forseth breathed out between clenched teeth. “Why are you helping?”
“To demonstrate how unprepared you are for all of this, and knowing that even if you get all the details right, this wi
ll still fall apart around you after we are gone.”
Forseth motioned to the surviving members of the Elite Guard behind Berengar and Nisero. “One of you, give up your boots already.”
One of the men took his sword away from Berengar’s neck and set it on the floor. He pulled off his boots and tossed them over in front of the King.
The mercenaries pulled the boots on the naked King first. Then, they struggled to get the pants over. As they belted the pants and tucked them into the boots, two men pulled the shirt over his head.
“Straighten his beard and hair a little,” Forseth suggested.
“Do you want us to bathe him?” one asked.
“No, just smooth his hair down a little. We’ll splatter the blood and then no one will notice the dirt.”
“You are a sick, evil man, Forseth,” Nisero snarled. “I’m sorry to have ever known you.”
“I should have left you both to die in the mountains under the sword of Solag.”
Nisero looked away. “You would have lost your command long ago without my guidance.”
Forseth drew his sword. “Finish dressing the King. I want to kill these two myself once the deed is done.”
As more of the Elite Guard gathered the robes and crown, the mercenaries tucked the King’s shirt and smoothed down his beard.
Berengar turned his head. He made eye contact with Nisero and then looked upon the King. “Your majesty, can you run?”
The King’s eyes blinked and he turned his attention on Berengar, but did not speak. All the men in the room froze in place. They held robes, capes, and a crown. Some of them turned their eyes to Forseth, looking for guidance.
“What are you doing?” Forseth snickered.
“I’m asking the King,” Berengar replied, “if he is well enough to run. Once I kill you and we make our escape.”
“You are a fool.”
Berengar kept his eyes on the King. The King gave a slight nod.
Captain Berengar sprang into action.
Chapter 14: Long Live the King
Berengar faded away from the sword that was still at his neck. Still, he took a slice across his cheek that opened and bled, and would likely create a new scar as a companion to the old one on the other cheek.
