Chapter 138: Blood and Gore
*Geoffrey*
Smoke carries the smell of burning bodies.
I hear a terrible silence where there had been the screaming of children. Everything is so awfully, terribly silent.
More smoke rises from the crops in the field, and the last of the women and children who had run in there to hide shriek in agony before there is, again, terrible silence.
I want to throw up, but can’t. I am the leader of the Rallegrad army, after all. It would show terrible weakness if I lost my lunch, especially a second time.
“Is this really necessary?” I ask the man King Maximus calls my steward. He seems to be more in charge of things than I am.
“Oh, yes,” Boris replies. “We must make them fear us. We do this now so we don’t have to later.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I tell him.
He sighs, clearly despairing of me ever being a king worthy of waging war. “What we’re trying to do is to scare the Shadowglade forces into submission. That’s why this is necessary. We must do something to scare them. That way, we don’t lose as many men because the Shadowglade army will just surrender when they see us. Because, they know if they don’t, there will be more of this.” He gestures around us.
I stare around us for a while then make a decision. “I would like to see if they are scared enough now to surrender.”
“Pardon?” he asks.
“I’m going to write a letter to the regent and the queen and ask for their immediate surrender,” I clarify. “That way, we might avoid more bloodshed.”
He looks as though he’s trying very hard not to laugh. He bites his lip, wipes a tear from his eye, then schools his face into something more serious. “Yes, of course, Your Majesty. You do what you feel is right.”
What I feel is right is to call this whole thing off and sit at a negotiating table with Regent Zeke Winters and Luna Queen Ainslee Bleiz-Poe, but I know the Rallegrad army will mow me down under their boots if I suggest it. I may be King of Shadowglade, but Rallegrad’s army will not answer to me. I know it.
I know because I have not given a single order, nor has one soldier looked to me for guidance. Everyone looks to Boris.
I’m not going to accept that I’m completely helpless, however. If I get a letter of surrender, then they can hardly continue this nonsense.
When we stop for the night, I take out pen and paper and write a letter demanding the immediate surrender of Shadowglade to Rallegrad. I’m not sure it’s very good; my reading and writing is still rather rudimentary. But it will get the point across.
I hand the letter over to a messenger. “Take this to Shadowmanor Castle, and wait for a response,” I say. “Do not leave until you have the regent’s answer.”
The messenger bows, and I think there may be something mocking in it, but then he straightens up. He takes the letter. “Yes, Your Majesty.” Then he goes to mount a horse and rides off.
I’m sure, within a few short days, this will all be resolved. Surely, we’ve frightened them enough by now.
Three days pass, and there is no news. We continue burning, pillaging, killing, and destroying everything in sight. I mostly stay back from all of it. Boris tells me I should so I’m not hurt or killed, but I think he knows I might try to interfere if I am forced to be in the middle of it.
I want desperately for it all to be over. But three days turn to four, four to five. I wonder what’s keeping the regent from making a decision.
Finally, on day six, a messenger wearing Shadowglade livery approaches the camp, just as we are having our morning breakfast and getting ready for more carnage.
“Where’s our messenger?” I ask.
The Shadowglade messenger grins and tosses a bag at Boris’s and my feet.
It’s bleeding.
“Oh, Goddess.” I breathe in sharply, unable to pick up the bag.
“The Regent’s answer is in there as well,” he says with a wide smile.
Boris, fortunately, has no such qualms. He opens the bag, upends it, and my messenger’s head comes tumbling out.
The Shadowglade man snickers.
“Is there something funny about this?” Boris hisses, and the man falls silent.
“Sorry, just, the look on his face.” He points to me.
“His Majesty is to be respected,” Boris says blandly. He turns the head so it’s facing us. I can see, with the tiniest knife, there is pinned to the messenger’s forehead a scrap of paper with the word “No.”
“See where mercy gets you?” Boris admonishes me.
I hang my head. I’d thought we could be civil, but obviously, the Shadowglade leadership is made up of complete savages.
Boris plucks the knife from the messenger’s forehead and some brains seep out. I feel bile rise in my throat. “You still think this is funny, prick?” he asks the Shadowglade messenger.
“A little,” the man replies with a grin.
Boris grins back, then darts forward and slashes the Shadowglade messenger’s throat with the very knife he’d taken from my man’s forehead.
He gurgles, clutching at his neck. Boris takes his head clean off, and the body falls over in a pool of his own blood, the eyes in his disconnected body going wide and lifeless.
Boris wipes the knife off on his pants, then hands it to me, handle first. “Let this always be a reminder to you.”
My hand shakes as I take the knife.
With a nod, he leaves, barking to the soldiers to get rid of the head and the body.
I have to excuse myself to go be sick. I’ve gotten a man killed. Me. Two of them, in fact.
Anger curls in my gut, and I look at the blade in my hand. No, I will never forget this lesson.
I’m about to put the blade in my belt when I note something curious. On the butt of the handle, under a well-polished ruby, is the Rallegrad standard.
I stare at it, wondering how a leader of Shadowglade had gotten such a blade, and why they would have used it instead of something with the Shadowglade standard.
Anger turns to horror, then deep-seated suspicion. I doubt this blade came from Shadowmanor at all. Someone who wanted this war to continue must have stopped my messenger on his way and killed him, sending the head back in order to scare me into not sending another plea for peace.
Whoever this is, they want me to accept the cruelty of Shadowglade and be shocked into siding with those who wanted the pillaging to continue. I might not be an educated man, but all this seems obvious to me, now that I’ve taken a closer look at the blade.
My hand closes around the handle, and I storm off to show Boris and tell him my theories, when I stop dead in my tracks.
What if it was Boris?
He is one who wants the war to continue. Maybe my messenger hadn’t gotten far at all. Maybe Boris had him held for a few days, then slaughtered him and created the macabre scene.
In that case, he’d also just killed one of our own, another Rallegrad messenger in Shadowglade livery. We do have some vampires in our service after all. I’m sure the “Shadowglade” messenger had found it particularly funny because he was in on fooling me.
He hadn’t counted on being killed himself.
All the pieces start to fall into place, one after the other. Yes, it was probably Boris who had arranged all of this. And now, I am as much a hostage as my messenger was.
I want to beat my fists against something. I am powerless to stop this war.
I am powerless.
How can I be a king and be so powerless? It makes no sense.
I go to my tent and sit down on my cot, staring at the knife as I hold it in my hands. When Rallegrad takes Shadowmanor Castle, will I still be this powerless?
King Maximus told me he will help me be a good king and teach me everything I need to know. Wasn’t that the same as him ruling in my stead?
I feel like such a fool. I’m not really meant to be king at all. I know that now.
Maybe the lesson of the blade is to not cross Rallegrad.
Maybe the blade was a mistake.
Either way, I know if I don’t want to be on the ground with my throat slit, I need to go along and get along.
I swallow against a lump in my throat, another possibility coming to me. Had my messenger gone to King Maximus instead of the regent?
Was it King Maximus who sent back the answer?
I curl my fingers around the handle of the blade. There was one lesson for certain that I was learning from it.
I can't trust anyone.