XXVII – King for a Day

When they came down the stairs, they did so neither stealthily nor calmly, but with the memory of the horn’s call that had accompanied them into battle; but this time it was Cloet who led the way.

Three times they knocked and three times they waited at the door to Windar’s chamber.

No one answered, and Arwel commanded a Ministerian soldier to verify with his own eyes that the grandmother queen had vanished.

Alerted, and so as not to shed blood as Cloet demanded, the soldier would secretly take charge of preparing the troops with whom, downstairs, he would await the council, ready to retake control of the kingdom.

Despite Miar’s insistence upon accompanying them and not missing the spectacle, Arwel commanded that she be conveyed to safety in Celtión’s old bedchamber, in anticipation of the brawl that might ensue.

Yet ere she withdrew, she drew near to Owin.

Her intuition told her how distressed the youth was, though she never imagined the truth, nor how much her words and the gift of one of the dried petals from her bracelet—which she placed in Owin’s hand—would help.

'You know, in the darkest of times there is always a spark ready to aid us. It usually comes from those who love us. Remember, you are not alone,' she said, and with a smile at the clear gaze in the sorcerer’s dark eyes, she withdrew.

The rest made ready, and as their weapons were returned to them, Gwion beheld Cloet draw the commander aside.

'I have dreamed all my life of putting my father in his place, but now that the moment has come, I need your help.'

Arwel did not require Gregor’s lore, nor Cheas’s reflexes, nor Maed’s shrewdness, nor Gwion’s instinct to perceive it.

He had beheld it before, in the eyes of his foes in the instant ere he slew them, and in his men when they hearkened to him bidding them die for the realm. Fear—Cloet’s eyes screamed it.

'I fear you are right and that I am not up to the task,' he continued, lowering his head as the braids hanging down at the sides hid his face. 'Do not say it, but I have not passed the test yet; perhaps I never will.'

Who could drag his manhood through the mud merely to gain support? Arwel wondered, and sought to comfort him with a clap upon the shoulder.

'I see more of Narg in you than I have ever seen in Celtión. You shall do well.'

In pairs, with the council at the van behind Cloet, they joined the remainder and together they advanced toward the dining hall. The rumbling of marching boots, steady as rain against sheet metal, deafened Lerg, who, buried in his heaped plate with greasy hands, raised his head.

In the blink of an eye they had laid low the ten soldiers of Welst who guarded the entrance. The captain who sat with Lerg at the table made to rise, but Gregor’s heavy hand upon his shoulder, and the defiant look he shot him as he shook his head, gave him pause.

'There are better things to die for,' Gwion told the rest.

Lerg, seated at the head of the table, found himself surrounded before he could react. The red battalion of Ministerians had spread out across the hall whilst Arwel, Cheas and Cloet approached from the right flank and Gwion, Gregor and Owin from the left.

'Can you explain to me what you are doing?' said Lerg as he wiped his hands and stood up.

Cloet looked at Arwel and took a step forward.

'Thy plot endeth here, Father. Confess!' He raised his sword with both hands, gripping the hilt tightly to hide his trembling. 'What hast thou done with Windar?'

Lerg frowned and looked to the Ministerian soldier at his side for an answer.

'No one has seen her since last night when we left them alone, my lord.'

Discreetly, Lerg looked at his left hand, the bloodstained bandage where, until the night before, his ring finger had been.

'Then,' quoth he, and began to walk towards Cloet, 'you believe yourself to be the one who can resolve this and rule, do you not?'

His father’s right hand moved towards his waist. He swallowed hard and lifted his chin to feign confidence.

But Lerg did not relent and drew his sword.

For a few seconds they locked eyes, though Cloet found it hard to hold his gaze.

He loathed it when his eyes darkened so much that, sunken in their sockets, they judged him from the shadows.

He remained silent, out of insecurity and by choice. Had he been able to part his lips, his trembling voice would have made him a laughing stock once again. But he did not need to utter a sound for Lerg to read his son’s eyes; with a half-smile, he began to advance.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cloet sought Arwel’s support. Behind him, he gauged Lerg’s movements; he would have disarmed him at the first threatening gesture, but this was not his story, and he had to allow the future king of Welst to prove his worth, though he regretted doing so.

A few paces distant, Lerg uplifted his blade and smote it against Cloet’s. The young prince received the blow with his frame so rigid—far from how he had been instructed—that his left arm slipped from the hilt and his right followed the momentum of his sword’s weight until his breast was laid bare.

Had Arwel or Cheas desired to stay his hand, they would not have been in time. But Lerg, instead of piercing his heart—to humiliate him and show that he could annihilate him whenever he wished—threw his sword into the air, caught it by the blade and swung the hilt.

Cloet’s head whipped to the right like a lash, but it was not the blow that echoed, but the crack of his bones. Stoic, he uttered not a groan, and as the first drops of blood pattered onto the ground, in that pain, in body and manhood, he found the strength.

Standing upon his tiptoes that his chest might not buffet his father’s bulging abdomen, he seized the older man by the arms just beneath the shoulders to hinder their ascent.

He drew him near and smote his mouth with the crown of his brow.

Lerg reeled back five paces, waving his arms to regain his balance.

When he steadied himself, dizzy, he made a move to counterattack, but Cheas’s slender sword at his throat prevented him.

'Do not be a fool!' he cried as Arwel disarmed him.

Round and round he went, removing the bandage from his hand and, before his son’s astonished face, holding up his mutilated finger.

'Windar is manipulating them. They will slay one another, and that shall be our moment.'

They did not understand why, or whether it served any purpose to delve into such nonsense, but they banished the last lingering doubts that Windar, the grandmother queen, was the conductor of the orchestra about to perform humanity’s requiem.

At the opposite end, Gregor, Owin and the Ministerian soldiers held the eastern battalion in check, whilst Gwion stood motionless, observing the situation.

Had he been alone, he would surely have broken down in tears.

Pretending, before the world, to be the strong, tenacious man exhausted him, even though he understood that this was the role destiny had entrusted to him.

Amidst the hubbub, whilst his presence went unnoticed, he made his way to that place where he found safety.

That hollow in the centre of his chest cradled him and, in that peace, his body began to falter.

It was not the bodily weariness arising from want of sleep that made him dizzy, but the vertigo of what he had experienced in two days.

Motionless, he clung to the only thing he retained from his former life, when everything was simpler, when his sole reason for existing was to defend his king.

Note by note in his mind, he began to hum the lullaby.

The white song and Celtión’s crumpled letter in his hand served as his anchor.

He sifted through the thoughts tearing at the walls of his memories and focused on those that might show him the way.

He did not even consider what it would portend for humanity if Windar unleashed the darkness, or if he were to become that which he felt as his very essence welling up from his gut.

It was the desperation to save his world, his small and insignificant time upon earth, that gave him the will to carry on: his brother and his beloved.

Owin’s hand upon his shoulder, the dark eyes shining against the pallor of his face, and the gesture that showed concern, rescued him from his wonted solitude.

His comrade, with whom he had shared so much death, was the one in whom, now in the abyss of his days, he found a friend.

At that moment he did not know how he would accomplish it, but he did know in whom to trust to save them.

Cloet staunched the bleeding from his nose with a napkin he had taken from the table, and for the first time since he could remember, a smile of satisfaction lit up his face.

Thanks to his instinct and intelligence, they would save the kingdom, and surely his uncle would be proud.

At length he was becoming the man he had ever desired to be.

Drunk with confidence, he requested his compatriots to abide at his side and commanded that his father be conveyed to the selfsame makeshift cell wherein they had imprisoned the council.

Arwel, with great pleasure, chained Lerg’s wrists, but as soon as he pushed him to make him walk, Lerg looked at his son and said:

'Enjoy it; you shall be king for a day, then you shall kneel at my feet.'

Cheas read between the lines and remembered that Lerg had summoned Tloston’s troops. They had to stop them or recruit reinforcements from the empire.

Gregor witnessed the moment just as Gwion raised his left eyebrow, twisted his lip and turned his eyes towards the right flank. He knew him well and knew, upon seeing him approach Lerg, that he would provide a solution.