Day 77, 01:00 PM
“For the times they are a-changin’”
― Bob Dylan
A week flashed by. Time diluted my fear of the assassin. There’s no helping it, getting used to extreme circumstances is a part of human nature, but I find the slow disappearance of my attentiveness to potential ambushes worrisome.
There is little doubt this is all a part of the assassin’s master plan, but there is little I can do, other than trust Sense of Danger and stick close to Manny. I’m standing next to her, listening to her speech and greetings to all the rebels who came to her side these past seven days.
There’s twenty representatives in the throne room. Manny’s decision to marry me thrills none of them, and I can tell from their looks that four of them loathe my guts. I don’t understand why. The news of Manny and me pacifying a devil outbreak have greatly increased our popularity and people’s trust in our competence.
However, the former lords turned renegades, mercenaries, and bandits, don’t seem to find our exploit particularly noteworthy.
Manny doesn’t care about their attitude. As long as the fifteen hundred trained men these former nobles lead join our ranks, they can think whatever they want. Her reasoning follows Warfare, it always does. But I disagree with that book more with each passing day, as I gather experience in politics and this world’s history.
The four middle-aged men giving me especially ugly looks lead the biggest companies, about a hundred men each. I think they all planned to marry Manny, for all the reasons she wrongly assumed I was freeing her a lifetime ago.
Her crimson lips and white teeth mesmerize me as she speaks of the bright future. I believe her. She looks like a queen. She should be one, and I will do everything in my power to deliver her to her rightful place at the head of the state.
“Her majesty will accept your vows of fealty.” Vatten says, standing beside the duke’s empty throne to Manny’s right.
Milon, one of the four major players, rushes to be the first. He’s dashing, with a rugged face and pushing forty, but his body is as solid as a rock. His hair is blonde, kept short in a way of professional warriors and men who have a high chance of catching fleas.
“I swear to serve and protect my liege.” He goes down on one knee.
“And I swear to reward your loyalty,” Manny says, outstretching her hand so the man can kiss her.
He steps closer, and I feel a pain in Manny’s abdomen.
“No!” I shout and jump in front of her, and the universe seems to slow down.
Vatten is staring at me in shock, Manny opens her mouth, then sees Milon unsheathing a thick needle from a strap inside his sleeve.
The end he’s holding is shiny silver, but the lower half is black as tar. Manny’s face contorts in terror, and I can’t kick her or push her away because of the damn duchess throne. There’s only one thing I can do for her. For our child.
The needle stabs into my left forearm. It hurts more than anything hurt in my life.
[Rage activated.
Duration - two minutes six seconds]
Shit! Manny run! I’m about to shout the words, fearing I would kill her during my blackout, but, surprisingly, I can’t speak, and I did not black out.
I stare at the needle, which sears my arm like a sun. There’s a faint, black dot in my skin, already spreading around the wound.
Black death. Potent, incurable, poison. The only way to survive is a swift amputation. Emergency Treatment plants the information about the nature of my wound straight into my mind, and my right grabs the dagger at my hip.
Milon stares at me, his mouth agape, as I hack off a disturbingly large chunk of flesh from my forearm. Red blood sprays his face from severed veins and arteries as half a pound of rapidly blackening flesh lands at his feet.
The terrified man tries to move away, but I let go of my dagger and grab him by the shoulders. He screams as bones pop, the first sound to break the silence after my shout. Blood sprays from my wounded arm as my muscles tighten and my fingers dig into his flesh.
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I’m burning with fury, with rage the likes of which I have never felt. The shit before me tried to rob me of my woman, of my unborn child. He screams and thrashes as more bones snap. I have never hated anyone as much as I hate this man.
Then an oddity strikes me. I’m not gritting my teeth. In fact, my mind is relaxed, like I’m sleeping or walking, stuck in an extremely natural state of absolute tranquility.
“No,” he screams, and that’s when I realize what I’m doing. “Please!”
“Aang!” Vatten’s voice is thick with panic as he shouts behind my back, but I don’t care about him. I only care about Manny.
My muscles grow tauter, blood spurts from my wound again, and whatever force had kept Milon together gives way. He rips in half, and I toss the two chunks left and right. Grown men scream in terror, three of them topple down, one of them clenching his chest, maybe suffering a heart attack.
I catch all of that before the two slabs of bloody flesh hit the polished floor. I stare at the so-called loyalists, who have come to kill my wife. My mouth moves. I half-expect I would say something, but I just heave a breath, and the former nobles still standing take a step back, their faces paler than linens.
The room is quiet. There are no new threats. I rip my shirt and tie a tourniquet, using my teeth and right, but I’m an arm short.
“Let me help,” Manny says, calm and beautiful like a goddess. She steps into a puddle with a splat and grabs my rags. Surprisingly, I don’t rip her head off. Blood sprays her face and dress, but she doesn’t bat an eye, and helps me stop the massive hemorrhaging.
“Thank you,” she says, her beautiful eyes like swirling galaxies, binding my soul with their gravity. “You have saved my life yet again.”
I want to say something. I want to kiss my bloody goddess of war with burning passion, but my body doesn’t obey. Instead of doing anything any remotely heroic protagonist would do, I nod and wrap the shirt around my wound, surveying the room, and making sure all threats are pacified.
“Bring Master Thunderwax to check my husband’s wounds,” Manny says, no longer calling me general or lord, despite the gathered crowd, and a guard runs out of the room like hell’s legions are chasing after him.
A moment in which the world turns still passes, and I smell a foul stench and look down. The chunk of flesh, which I had severed, has turned into a disgusting black mass, and the corrosion is slowly spreading into the puddle of blood in which it rests.
I try to recall the poison’s name, but Emergency Treatment’s hint has already slipped my mind. It was irrelevant information anyway.
I just breathe and exist in the room until Rage passes. A dizzy spell smashes into me, and I regain control of my body. I’m no longer riding shotgun, the dull distant pain flares in my mind. My legs shake, and sweat streams out of my every pore, as if someone had breached a dam somewhere inside me.
I take a deep breath and look around the room. The impossible calm is over. I can feel my own fury, the rage, which must have burned all this while, just outside my body’s perception.
“If anyone tries such stupid shit ever again,” I growl, the world swimming before me, “you’re gonna wish you were this guy, because what I’m going to do will be much much worse, and last much much longer. Got it?”
The room is dead silent.
***
Ripening 17th, afternoon
“Your Royal Highness,” count Loren bowed deeply before the crown prince, “We have brought a minstrel who witnessed those traitors singing and inciting people to rebel.”
The chubby, balding man, well past fifty, rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“Oh?” The prince stretched. “Bring him in.”
He waved his pudgy hand, and a pair of knights clad in full plate armor pushed in a young man wearing a bright red, yellow, and green tunic. The youth’s face was fair, his oiled hair reaching his shoulder, all of it combed on one side, following the capitol’s latest fashion. At least, the most recent update he had received.
“On your knees, peasant,” count Loren shouted.
The knights went down on one knee, planting the bard’s face into the tent’s fluffy rug.
“Your Royal Highness,” the knights boomed in unison, saluting with a thud of metal against metal, but the unfortunate young man could only let out a muffled grunt.
“At ease,” the prince said, and his knights stood, hauling up the unfortunate bard.
“I have heard that the enemy is trying to influence the common folk through offensive songs against myself, my father, the king, and the established order. So I sent a proclamation, demanding to hear those lyrics myself.”
The bard quivered, his lute left in the tavern from which count Loren’s men had kidnapped him the day prior.
“Well?” The prince’s voice lost some of its sleepiness and disinterest, revealing displeasure.
“Sing, or I will sever your head myself,” count Loren shouted, and the bard’s chin quivered.
If I stay quiet, they will kill me, if I sing they will kill me. The young man’s world blurred, then he sang, tears streaming down his eyes.
“We’re not gonna take it,” he started with a shaky voice, but found courage in another man’s defiance, and the bard’s timid proclamation grew into a call to arms. Into rebellion.
The prince’s face grew stiff, then red, then purple.
“Off with his head.”
The bard had already known his fate when they brought him before the prince. He knew it even before he had reached the camp, when the scarred guard told him why he was wanted.
He was unwilling. He despaired. Yet all that was left before death was rage, indignation, and the desire to leave a name. To die not an unknown coward without a cause, but a rebel, a martyr.
“We ain’t gonna take it, anymore!” Quivering, not with fear but rage, he jumped to strangle the prince, to bite off a chunk of royal flesh before dying.
He failed. A sword flashed, and blood sprayed.
“Throw the body into the latrine.” The prince wiped the unknown bard’s blood off his face, still disgusted by the unsettling song and the common peasants daring to attack his Royal Highness.