“Truth, eh?” Marcus smiled.

Skeever approached him cautiously, like a sick cow approaching its driver.

“You once told me to trust you, Sire,” he said, weapon suspiciously absent from his hip.

A sign of trust? Marcus thought. He’s never been seen dead without Gatskeek’s cleaver…

“I did,” Marcus nodded, rising to meet his favored champion. “And in that capacity, you have served me well these past months. I wager I wouldn’t have had half as much success as I have in our campaigns without you. It’s almost strange to think they are coming to an end, here and now.”

Skeever eyed him warily, responding to his clever praise with trepidation rather than excitement or appreciation. Indeed, he turned away, staring at the thin flaps of Marcus’s tent as he spoke the words he had to tonight. It was almost as though they were words meant for those outside, each and every rat who was currently dreaming of victory that was soon to come.

“Grindlefecht will fall,” Skeever finally said. “Is that what you want, Sire?”

Marcus narrowed his inquisitive brows. “I’d certainly hope so. Otherwise, this would all be a real waste of our time.”

“I will be blunt then, Sire,” Skeever said, turning only now to face the Shai-Alud after checking no one nearby was listening in to their conversation. “I do not think we should return to Fleapit after this battle.”

Marcus said nothing at first. He tried to look past what the ratman had just told him. He tried to see what cogs were spinning in that battle-hardened, scarred head.

“Skeever,” he said. “You know that this is the end of the road for me. Once I find the Prime Putrefact –“

“You will leave us,” Skeever finished.

Marcus blinked at the ratman in response, relatively surprised by the creature’s interruption.

He had just become used, he supposed, to complete deference after all this time.

“I have always been honest with you, Sire,” Skeever continued. “Are you being honest with me?”

“Of course, I am,” Marcus said, keeping his tone measured for the moment. “I’ve been honest with you all this time, have I not? Ever since the very day you found me, I told you how I want nothing more than to return to where I belong. I am no rat, Skeever. I should think that much should be obvious to you, especially after all this time.”

Skeever bristled, his eyes flying to the flickering candle that provided the only illumination in the tent.

“I am thinking that…perhaps…”

“I would stay?” Marcus broke in. “That I would continue to be your Shai-Alud even after this damnable, pointless conflict is concluded? You know me better than that, Skeever. You are no naïve pup still suckling at his Queen’s teat.”

“No,” the ratman replied. “I am a hero to my people, all because of you.”

“You’re wrong,” Marcus scoffed. “I didn’t do any of the feats you performed. That was all you, Skeever Steelclaw. You always had greatness in you, you just didn’t know it.”

“As long as I am speaking honestly, Sire,” Skeever said, becoming brazen enough to plant his claws on the desk right before Marcus’s eyes. “It is you who does not know what he could be. What he is, and what he means to my people!”

Marcus was surprised to find he didn’t have a comeback. Instead, he let the ratman continue, not really knowing why.

Maybe it was his eyes. Maybe it was because he saw something in those rough-cut crimson diamonds that he barely ever saw.

Belief.

“You are leading us to greater glory than we have ever had before,” Skeever continued. “You are building an army that could rival even those of the surface-world of Thea. You are bringing three clans together under one banner – your banner – and you are leading us to our greatest victory the Underkingdom has ever seen. From dirt, you are raising us, and now…now you wish to leave.”

At the sorrow-drenched anger Skeever was exhibiting, Marcus found himself disarmed.

“Skeever,” he said. “Your world is not mine. It is not where I belong.”

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“Is the Place Beyond where you belong?” Skeever retorted. “I have heard how you speak of it. I know you hate it, Sire Marcus. I know that there you have nothing like you have here among us. Here you have power that is second only to He-Who-Festers himself. You could make real change. Real progress. Yet for all your talents, you are not able to see what could be.”

“This is not a future I can build,” Marcus said, sitting to meet the ratman’s intense stare. “Skeever…your people will never truly accept me. They venerate me now, but the second I fail them…I will be tossed away like a broken tool. Once again, I will become a ‘human wearing the skin of a rat’. The priests will turn against me and a usurper will rise. I have no interest in playing petty politics with you and your ratman kind.”

Skeever moved away but did not break eye contact with him.

“You are enjoying it, Sire,” he said. “Perhaps you do not wish to admit it. But you are enjoying it. I have seen it in your eyes during battle or during outmaneuvering your enemies. You enjoyed it when you had Verulex killed in his sleep.”

Marcus froze.

What…

“How did you…”

“It does not matter how,” Skeever said. “Sire, I bear you no ill will for this. You are doing what you must to secure power. You are eliminating opposition in a way that is appropriate for rat-kind. I thought then that you meant to keep this power. You are doing so much – what? Just for a woman? Sire, you are selling yourself short!”

“Enough!” Marcus thundered, rising and pacing away from the rat. “You forget yourself, Skeever Steelclaw. Even if I stayed, what would you have me do? Become a servant of your vestigial God? You do not even believe in His divinity, Skeever. Do you?”

Marcus watched as the ratman’s stare took on a look of desperation. He thought that he had gone too far the second those heretical words left his mouth. But he did not see insult in the rat-warrior’s face. He saw a loyal servant that didn’t want his Master to leave his side.

And it was in such a capacity that the rat knelt before him, head bowed in total supplication.

“Sire,” he said. “Hear my words. Take Grindlefecht from the Kobolds. Welcome them into your army, but do not send them to toil for King Shrykul. Hold this great fortress as your base of operations and establish your own fiefdom here. Take the Kobold farmlands, fortify the walls, and use the cannons to force the other Clans into a treaty with you. Make them accept you as a legitimate head of a new Clan – a Clan that shall lead us into a new, glorious future.”

Marcus took a step back. This…what he was hearing…it didn’t just border on the unthinkable. It was, well, it was exactly as heretical as it sounded.

“Skeever…” he said. “What you are suggesting would be to spit in the face of your own king. What you are suggesting is treason.”

“Treason?” the ratman spat. “Is it treason to know that your people are suffering because our Kings bow to Queens that do not care a jot about their spawnlings? Is it treason to want what is best for your species? I told you before, Sire Marcus, the only thing I am loyal to is my people. And my people need change. They need you.”

The rat’s head rose to regard Marcus again, and this time he was fighting to keep himself from shaking.

“I never believed,” Skeever said in all but a whisper. “I never thought life could be anything but killing in the dark, huddled with my Brothers as we all suffered. I did not believe life could be better. Until you appeared in a flash of light before me.”

“This…” Marcus said. “All this time, this is what it’s all been about for you, isn’t it? This is why you never cared a jot about me being human. All you cared about was success for your people. No matter who gave it to you.”

The rat dropped into a bow again, one so deep that he practically kissed the ground beneath Marcus’s feet.

“Sire,” he squeaked. “Do not leave us. I told you before: I shall follow you into the abyss if you ask. All those men out there, they believe in you, now. Give us the word, and we shall take this entire world in your name.”

Marcus listened with bated breath, his hands clenched and twitching with desires long locked away within his being. To be a part of history rather than just a recorder…to be a man of significance...to be more than just another student who would rot in the obscurity of a world that wanted to forget him.

“Yes, Skeever,” he said. “I could leave it all behind, if I wanted. But that would be the easy thing to do. It would be to reject personal suffering and force those beneath me to toil in my name. And Skeever, if you want the truth, I’ve had quite enough of that.”

The ratman’s eyes bulged as the Shai-Alud bent down and bid him rise so that they both knelt on the same level as the other.

“You look at me,” he said. “And you see someone you wish to follow. You see someone you wish to pin your hopes and dreams to. It’s a very human desire. Believe me. But you know who really deserves your worship? You know the only person in your life who deserves your veneration?”

Marcus placed a firm hand on his warrior’s shoulder.

“You, Skeever,” he said. “There’s no force in this entire universe stronger than the individual’s will. Men have made war based on their own desires – to follow their own dreams. The greatest men – the ones who stand the test of collective memory – they are those who saw the future of their people with such clarity that they led armies with those very dreams that you describe to me as the foundation of their forces. Their resolve drove them, and it built great things. So no, Skeever. I am not the man you need to take you into the future you want. It is not my future. It is not mine to claim. It is yours.”

The ratman listened to him unblinkingly, his hands shaking still. And Marcus thought that, even though he understood his words, that ratman looked altogether more sorrowful than he had when he had first entered the tent that night.

“Then there is nothing more to be said,” he whispered.

Marcus nodded. “I’ve made my decision.”

“Then…” Skeever murmured. “Then…you must know…”

“SIRE MARCUS!”

The voice was coming from outside, punctuated by another roar from the twelve-pounders that had been doing God’s work all night.

“Sounds like we’re needed,” Marcus said with a wink. “Are you with me, Brother?”

Skeever’s eyes did not waver. His arm flew to grab his Sire’s and yet…there was no strength in his grip. Marcus would later think that he could have understood what that meant. But with how close he was to victory, he dismissed what could easily have been attributed to perfectly normal hesitation.

Instead, he heard what the ratman said. He heard him say exactly what he wanted him to.

“To the death, Sire,” Skeever murmured. “To the death…”