Day 430 6:10 AM
“The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look.”
― Julius Caesar
For the first time in a long while, I had a decent night’s sleep, crashing under a knight’s bed. Even so, I awoke before sunrise. The king’s vigil, as I understand this world’s equivalent of the word, should have ended with dawn, but my brave sir knight is keeping me waiting.
A whole hour passes before a man enters the room. He closes the door before dragging his heavy feet across the thick carpet. He kicks away his slippers, striking me with one, before finally falling onto the bed without a care in the world. Barely a minute passes before he starts snoring.
God, do I get how he feels. To spend a night in a decent bed would feel like a gift from the heavens. Still, no rest for the wicked.
I give him five minutes for sleep to reinforce its hold on the knight into a death grip, then I roll out from under the bed. The fully clothed knight went to sleep on his stomach, his sword’s sheath still clasped to his belt. For a moment I consider the most ironic way to murder a knight, with his own sword, but decide against the risk. Instead, I carefully slide out the ornamental blade hanging above the fireplace.
I check the edge, and it’s blunter than Batsy. A shame. I wanted to decapitate the knight, make it look like an execution, and I would have all the blood I need for my purpose. I could still do it, but I’m afraid of the noise. So, I sneak up on the sleeping bastard, hold the sword almost like a cue stick, and ram its tip into the back of the man’s head. He’s dead before he makes a sound.
I take his sword, decapitate him, hoping to use the gushing blood as ink. I sever a tassel from the rug and I have an inferior brush, but better than getting my fingers bloody.
I wanted to write a long message, but blood on the wall is a horrible medium for conveying messages.
Join or die!
Queen Eagleeye
Just in case the message is not clear enough, I write down a proper letter with ink, explaining the situation to the nobles, along with benefits that come with cooperation and horrors of resistance.
I open the door with well-oiled hinges a crack and glance outside. The hallway is empty and I sneak into the room across the hall, carrying the headless horseman’s very, very sharp sword. The other knight is also sleeping, but this one took the time to close the curtains and undress. I sever his head and write a new message on the wall.
I know where you live.
I go from room to room, leaving grim warnings and direct threats, and soon enough seven headless knights lay in their beds. Hopefully, the bloody messages will intimidate our enemies into surrendering.
It’s not even about what I have written, but how the message was delivered. I know seeing treats written in blood, next to the corpses of the country’s finest fighters would have scared the hell out of me if I were on the receiving end.
Mental note, my knights and champions are not too good, too brave, or too honorable to have regular guards watching over them when they sleep.
With the grim work done, only one question remains; how the hell do I get out of here in broad daylight? I haven’t stained myself with blood, but my dark travel clothes, perfect for skulking about, easily distinguish me from the household servants.
The ceiling is flat and too low for me to hide. Too many people will pass through here, and someone is bound to spot me. I look around the room, hiding under the bed, while comical, is out of the question. There’s the wardrobe, but it’s possible servants might fetch some clothes to dress the deceased, like they did with the king.
My eye drifts to another door.
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Well, nobody’s going in there any time soon.
With a semblance of a plan, I get to work. I gather the knights’ swords and two spare blankets, spread cocaine around three rooms, open one’s window, and go into another room’s toilet. I work the swords into the ceiling beams, and tie the thick, woolen blankets to make myself a hammock right above the door.
The chamber stinks, despite the perpetually open slit window, but I am positive nobody will visit the dead knight’s restroom. Nobody entered the king’s the day before.
I try to sleep, but I woke up not three hours ago. I’m neither sick, nor tired, so forcing myself to sleep proves impossible. After counting seven hundred and thirty-nine imaginary sheep, I have had enough, and focus on more important mental exercises.
How do I make a fridge without electricity?
The most obvious approach is to just gather a bunch of ice, dig a big underground chamber, and maybe insulate it all with wool or something, but I can bet I can do better than that.
The first scream starts after some two hours, just as I’m thinking about writing a sci-fi adventure, just so that I have something remotely interesting to read in times of forced inactivity when I find myself locked in the toilet.
“Sir Craline is dead!” A high-pitched scream I’m mentally attributing to a young woman initiates the pandemonium.
All seven knights are found dead in a matter of minutes, then the guards start shouting, bloodhowlers howl, and the important members of Garacia’s elite arrive one after another. Count Harren, Count Jilles, Viscount Olekson, Viscount Beirre, and others. All in all, the seven bigshots running the country now that the king is dead are present, and I’m guessing they ran the kingdom even before I killed the bastard.
“What do we do?” A high-pitched male voice asks.
“You are not really thinking about surrendering?” A rich baritone replies, shock obvious in his voice.
“You are not really thinking of opposing him?” the first speaker asks. “He survived Black Death, killed a knight in a duel while he was on his deathbed, he saw through the late Basson’s master plan, tamed a griffon, and annihilated an army of six thousand all on his own. And now, he is entering and leaving the castle, as if it were an unguarded meadow. Are you going to wait until tomorrow? He knows where we live!”
“He might be a sorcerer,” a third voice adds his opinion, but doesn’t oppose the notion of surrendering. “Magic would explain all his preposterous feats.”
“What magic! Are you all seriously considering surrendering?” the baritone asks, and there’s a moment of silence which tells me what the other six are thinking. “There is no such thing as magic. If he were a sorcerer, he would enter the room right now, and we would just sign a surrender treaty, accepting all his terms.”
I was already wondering how I would escape the castle with its security quadrupled compared to when I entered. So, I take the baritone’s words as my cue, get off my hammock, and quietly open the door.
Seven gloomy men, aged between thirty and sixty are staring at the bloody letters in bewilderment, likely thinking about how to stop me from visiting their homes.
I close the restroom’s door and stalk closer to them until I’m but three steps away.
“I didn’t prepare an official document stipulating the terms of your surrender.” All seven jump at the first sound of my voice, and grow limp as if their souls left them. I pretend nothing’s out of the ordinary and keep talking. “But I’m not an unreasonable man. I’ll accept whatever we draft right here right now, and I won’t press you too hard for compensation.”
The seven nobles turn towards me, three of them gripping their bosoms, a step away from a heart attack.
“I surrender,” a pudgy, pale, old man screams in a shrill voice, and I recognize him as the one who lauded my achievements a moment ago.
“I surrender.”
“I too surrender,” another two nobles say, their demeanors considerably more composed than the panicked old man.
Three others follow them, and only one keeps silent. The baritone.
“Listen, Friend,” I say, staring him in the eye, when I realize I’m not fully in control of my tongue, but it’s not Blunt doing the talking, “I can kill all seven of you, escape, and have better terms with your successors, since they will know I mean business and the writing on the wall isn’t a joke. But, we have bigger issues I need to solve, if I want to keep this kingdom. We are facing an invasion, and if I want my children to inherit my domain, I first have to drive the invaders away, maybe conquer their kingdom to stop others from getting more silly ideas. Now, are you with me or against me?”
“With you,” he says.
“With you, what?” Bargaining asks, and I can’t believe it triggered at a time like this.
“With you, Sire,” the baritone says, realizing what my skill was hinting at even before I understood its meaning.
“Good man,” I say, finally free to speak. “You will open the gates and send envoys to my wife, surrendering for the good of the country, because otherwise a foreign menace might doom us all. As for compensation, we expect the Eagleeye family’s pillaged wealth returned, and maybe Vatten and my wife have some other requests, but I will not claim property of others, well other than the Garashes, obviously. I don’t think you have anything to fear, as far as I am concerned.”
I keep talking, but the gears are already in motion, and I can’t believe how easily we captured the kingdom. My ultimate goal was to cow them into surrendering, but things escalated much quicker and smoother than I had originally expected.
Soon, Manny and I will be able to take a break from all this. We will raise our kids and enjoy life to the fullest.
A smile escapes me as I keep assuring the high nobles I won’t murder anyone, and that the baritone staying back with me is a pure coincidence and not a threat.