Who is to say there was not something rotten in the Province of Narvonne from the very beginning - perhaps rooted in that very Ardenwood where the Etalans built Vellatesia. Or perhaps Decimus Avitus was the one rotten from the start, which would explain why Emperor Severus passed him over for a younger brother.

* The Commentaries of Aram ibn Bashear

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13th Day of the Flower Moon, 297 AC

Guiron, Exarch of Penarys, came back to himself with a sharp, panicked breath, and tasted smoke. The inhalation caused a stabbing pain in his right side, and he gasped, clutching at his steel cuirass to find it dented in and cracked.

“Your ribs are broken,” Penarys told him. “At least. Take shallow breaths, and move carefully. You need to have them set and bound, if you do not want to risk a punctured lung.”

“The King needs me,” Guiron protested, and rolled onto his hands and knees. His twin arming swords he found close at hand; one beneath the corpse of a royal guard, the other under a broken wood beam. Until an hour before, it had barred the gate of the keep at the castle Cheverny. Penarys helped the knight to his feet, and together the pair followed a trail of corpses through the entranceway and toward the great hall, where King Lothair Aurelianus held court. To Guiron’s left, the head of a squire had been crushed against the stone of the castle wall like a cracked egg; just three steps past, and lying on the right side of the hall, he winced to recognize Lady Blanche, the daughter of Sir Madoc, come from Dawn Spire not two months past to wait out the war with the Caliphate in safety. Guiron had danced with her more than once at the court masques, and found her light on her feet and as delicate as a bird.

Now, both her arms had been ripped entirely from her body and thrown aside; she lay, pale and lifeless, in a sticky puddle of her own blood. “Did you see who did this?” Guiron asked Penarys. He edged around the tacky blood, but couldn’t entirely avoid it, and left bootprints the rest of the way down the hall.

“I did,” Penarys admitted. “A man with short, dark curls, cut close to his skull. He wore a cuirass made in the old Etalan style, with the steel beaten into musculata, and then all of it enameled over with white, and gilt in gold. He strode through the broken gate after you fell, and then into the hall.”

“By himself?” Guiron hissed.

“Yes,” Penarys answered. “And Guiron, you must not fight him.”

“I’m not going to fight him,” Guiron spat. “I’m going to take his head for this. For all of this.” He surged ahead to the entrance to the great hall, swinging his twin swords to get as loose and limber as he could. Sparks of orange power flickered at the edge of his vision. He would trust to his Boons to keep him moving, and deal with his cracked ribs once he had saved the King. If it was not too late.

Guiron heard the ring of steel with relief; someone, at least, was still fighting. He turned into the hall, and his stride faltered at the sight which confronted him.

King Lothair’s head had rolled to a halt about halfway between the throne and the entrance to the hall, while the remainder of his corpse had been nailed to the stone wall behind the throne by a glaive through the chest. The glaive of Dame Margaret, as a matter of fact: Guiron recognized the fearsome weapon from countless mornings in the training yard. Margeret, herself, lay broken against one wall, but her Angelus, Rahab, hovered under the vaulted ceiling of the hall, and half a dozen of its burning whips were wrapped around the left arm of the man who stood before the throne. Like Penarys had said, he wore old-fashioned musculata painted white, and Guiron recognized him from many a court function.

“Baron Maël du Champs d'Or!” Guiron shouted across the room. “What low treachery is this?”

The Baron turned to regard him down the length of the hall, and Guiron saw now the man had the king’s nephew, Sir Lorengel, Exarch of Veischax, caught by the throat. The knight's gauntleted fingers were wrapped around Baron Maël’s unarmored hand, but all the strength of an Exarch seemed to cause the man no distress whatsoever. Veischax lay on the ground just beyond them, wings torn off the Angelus’ back, leaving only stumps bleeding golden ichor.

“Of all the impertinence I have had to endure these long years,” the villainous Baron intoned, “The use of pseudonyms has been, no doubt, one of the worst. The indignity of it; having to allow trash such as your pretender King to style themselves my superior. Any novelty has long since been lost. In hindsight, I killed him too quickly; he deserved time to appreciate his ending before it came.”

Lorengal rasped out half a breath, the Exarch’s eyes rolling back into his head, and rather than let a comrade die, Guiran knew he had to press the attack. “You admit your own treason, then; good. No need for a court. I will simply execute you myself.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Guiron slid forward smoothly, covering the distance of the long hall in only a few strides. He raised the right arming sword to his right ear, nearly parallel to the ground, while twisting his torso to advance the left arming sword, holding it out in front of him with the hilt about level with his waist. Both points were in line with the wicked Baron’s center of mass, and left Guiron with the freedom to parry or cut using either hand.

“Too weak,” Maël du Champs d'Or said, throwing Lorengal aside to skid across the stone floor. The man did not even have a weapon in hand! Guiron feinted a thrust with his left blade, then cut down at a diagonal with his right. The swing should have sliced through where the Baron’s neck connected to his shoulder and collarbone, a killing blow. Instead, with a sneer, Maël caught Guiron by the wrist as easily as a grown man restrained a toddler. The cut never landed, and Guiron gasped in pain; he could feel the bones in his wrist grinding and cracking until the sword fell from his twitching fingers.

“Impossible,” Guiron gasped. No normal man could possibly have such strength. He had slain daemons who did not have this kind of power.

“Look upon me, Exarch,” Baron Maël whispered. “Truly look, and see, and comprehend.”

A veil lifted from Guiron’s eyes, and what had been hidden was now revealed to his sight. The seeing was not a thing of the mortal world, but of the Angelus, and he now perceived the numerous threads running through the Baron’s body, meeting in a bundle at his core. The number was overwhelming, more than he could count in a glance, especially with the pain in his wrist, but it was the color that sent a shock of fear through his heart. Every single thread burned a bright, nearly white-hot blue.

No wonder this man was stronger than him: Guiron did not have a single Boon that burned brighter than yellow. With his left hand, he cut at the monster’s arm, and Baron Maël reacted the way any man would: by letting go of Guiron’s wrist, and pulling his hand out of the way of the blade. Guiron immediately scrambled back three paces, then raised the sword in his left hand, back into Plow Guard, hilt in front of his waist, tip pointed straight at the Baron’s chest. He would have liked to get his other sword, but it was lying on the stone floor of the hall only a pace from the traitor.

“Where did this power come from?” Guiron asked, playing for time and for information. If he could stall until Lorengel was back on his feet, the two of them, plus the three Angelus who were hovering above, might still be able to pull out a victory here. Penarys had been with Guiron long enough to see what his partner was doing, and the relatively fresh Angelus was holding back the other two for the moment.

Baron Maël slipped the toe of his boot under the blade of Guiron’s lost sword, kicked it up, and caught it by the hilt easily in his right hand. The knight had never heard that the Baron of Champs d'Or was much of a warrior, but the movements of the man in front of him proved that assumption a lie. This was clearly a warrior who had spent countless hours drilling with the blade.

“Where?” Maël shook his head. “Why, the same place as your power comes from, Exarch. An Accord. That is the only place that mortal men such as you and I can gain such power: from years upon years, and souls upon souls, of Tithes. You could not count the number of souls that have been sacrificed on the altar of my power, boy.”

“No Angelus would make an Accord with a man such as you,” Guiron declared, shaking his head. Admit it, man, he pleaded silently. Give me the name!

“Of course not; not at the beginning of it all, and certainly not now,” the man said, with a thin smile and cold eyes. “If the name of my patron is what you wish to hear with your last breath of life, then it does me no harm to give it to you. Indeed, it is something of a relief, to finally reclaim my true identity, after all these years.”

Guiron saw Lorengel rising, behind the traitor, but he kept his eyes fixed on the Baron so as to give no sign. “Out with it, then,” he prodded. “Let there be no more lies between us, when we finish this.”

“You will find me recorded in your history books as Decimus Avitus,” the man answered. “Son of Emperor Sevrus the Fourth. Exarch,” he continued, each word like the toll of a funeral bell in Guiron’s heart, “Of Sammāʾēl, the Sun Eater, Cataclysm of Etalus.”

“That is impossible,” Guiron responded in disbelief, before he could help himself. “Avitus died centuries ago. He would be over three hundred years old by now. Not even an Exarch could live so long.”

“With enough souls Tithed,” the daemonic Exarch claimed, “One such as us can live a very long life, indeed. Not quite immortal, I think; but so close as makes little difference. Long enough to set this day in motion.”

Guiron’s eyes connected with Lorengel’s. The other Exarch gave him the smallest nod, and then the two men moved together, as they had trained to do over so many hours in the practice yard. The King they had trained to defend lay dead on the stone, but somewhere in the Hauteurs Massif was a new monarch, and so long as Lionel Aurelianus lived, the Kingdom of Narvonne had not fallen.

Lorengel cut low, at Avitus’ legs, while Guiron went high, and they not only came at him from front and back, but also swung from opposite sides. There should have been no way for the daemonic Exarch to avoid both of their strikes. With his right hand, the traitor used Guiron’s own lost sword to set aside his strike with a ringing clang. An instant later, too quick to follow, he leapt over the blade that should have severed his legs at the calves. Then, reversing his grip on the stolen arming sword, Avitus stabbed backward, into Lorengel’s chest.

“Go!” the dying Exarch choked, blood already spilling from his mouth. Lorengel wrapped his arms around Avitus, to hold him in place, and both the wounded Veischax and Dame Margaret’s Rahab lashed out to aid him, wrapping tendrils of fire around the traitor’s body as if they were spiders trussing an insect in silk. “Find the King! Warn him!”

Guiron hesitated only for a moment. He didn’t want to admit that Cheverny had fallen, and with it the capital, but his duty was clear. With an inarticulate cry of frustration, he turned and dashed out of the throne room, Penarys flying above him, and then out through the shattered castle gate into the burning city of Lutetia. Panicked people ran in every direction, while Kimmerian mercenaries and men-at-arms wearing the heraldry of the Baron du Champs d'Or, a yellow sheaf of wheat on a green field, cut down the king’s garrison in the streets.

South. He had to get south, and find Lionel Aurelianus.