While Lucius wanted little more than to hear from his friends of lower station, the feast hall became a whirlwind of whispers the moment Prince Gabriel made his entrance. Personally, i think this spoke more to the poor quality of the minstrels and jesters who were supposed to be making the rounds between tables. Nobody should have been able to hear more than a table away because of the din of nonsense communication. Such gentle diplomacy was lacking from the Arandall court sadly. When Gabriel spied Lucius and scowled, everyone knew that everyone was talking about it.
This surprised Aisha, who hadn’t yet deduced what table they sat at. From her perspective, the second prince was nothing more than an ambitious nobleman of an age with Lucius. They were rivals of a sort, contemporaries at the least. The duel that morning had been done in good faith, even if they had been measuring one another up. Lucius was under no such confusion.
Lupa simply took it in stride, like a child watching a puppet drama in a foreign language For her, things happened and had few strings connecting them together. She wasn’t even properly seated at the table of course, she was officially recognized as Aisha’s maid and a maid was a very important job to aid a pregnant woman.
Bedecked in embroidered silks, the prince sauntered over. He plucked a bowl of candied fruits from a passing servant before he was close enough to sneer. He chewed a handful with his mouth open before passing the bowl to a courtier at his heels. “I say that I have never seen a man so enamored with being the center of attention. You’re just sucking it in, aren’t you?”
My pupil smiled back at the disgust leering at him. “I should thank you for that, Prince. We made quite a scene this morning, together. Quite the capstone to our separate wars, don’t you think? I’m grateful to be so close to your father’s table… I was told to prepare my best theatrics for retelling the war.”
Gabriel jutted his chin at Lupa. “The war, yes. That’s what you’ll speak of, isn’t it? We’ve all heard the other rumors, haven’t we? So it’s high time we learn how you defeated the paladin. I’m quite exhausted of hearing gossip about the trophies you bring back with you.”
Wood scraped across tile. Lucius was suddenly standing. “Perhaps you should have asked me for a lesson in manners rather than in fighting. If you knew how to speak, you might have women at your side as well.”
“Even a man should understand chasteness. You’re a blueblood, Solhart.”
Lucius considered and discarded half a dozen base insults. He smiled and gestured at the table between him and the prince. “And look where my behavior has gotten me.”
One of the jesters thrust himself between the men like a loyal bodyguard taking an arrow for his liege. His face caked up into masquerade, the jokester bellowed out a laugh as he said, “Never there was a wiser playboy in this court. To let everyone know his status and character, that the only reason he has joined the lovely ladies is to entertain them, he brings his mistresses. Let there be no doubt, no doubt sirs! The boy here is intent on stealing my job! He’s making jokes better than mine.”
Gabriel stormed off as the jester prattled and Lucius sank back into his chair, only to find Lupa’s lips next to his ear. She asked, “Why is everyone talking about you and I?”
“Because you’re loud,” Lucius said, almost giving Aisha a laughing fit.
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Now, while Lucius was chasing after the rebel army, he too had assessed the fiefs as a game board. It took him two days to feel confident he knew where Rodrick was going, but there was still a strong margin of error. He could imagine a few different scenarios, because he didn’t know precisely how cunning and rational the paladin would be(1). This left him in a scenario where he had to take a guess and test his hypothesis.
He divided his army. Putting Golden in charge of the Giordanan conscripts and one of Lord Raymi’s retainers for the Vassish veterans, he personally took charge of his wastelanders. Because the rebels would have to curve around to reach the northern reaches of the mountains, Lucius decided that it was likely an advance force would be sent to clear the way. If he was wrong, he had left orders to close in like a net, and drive the rebels away from any possible fortification in the foothills, but we already know that his guess was correct.
Marching through the night, for his blanks still did not trust the darkness and slept best during the night, he avoided detection during his nocturnal march.(2) And so, he caught the foraging scouts of Ismail’s detachment on nearly the same day that Rodrick received his khopesh blade.
The land was wooded, a blend of deciduous trees and grass that rolled like waves in the wind. Most importantly, it had a tributary river snaking through it. Lucius pressed his army against them–in the scale of tactical marching–while the rebels were in a tension of nearly pillaging the crossroads town. While the settlement had a fine dockyard for river barges, farmland it was not. In fact, the most foodstuffs available to the army was a brewery whose kegs had been smashed open the night before. A malaise of hangovers helped slow the troops down, but Lucius did not harry them hard.
Golden, bereft of his angelic powers, had grown adroit with his powers of aquatic detection, and accurately informed Lucius that a storm would strike the west. Such information is often the key to victory. Lucius focused on containment, sending out his own scouting parties to capture and kill any runners that might alert the main force.
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He did not order a charge until the river’s torrent washed through the hills, until the floodplains swelled fat and rolled over the trees. When to step back was to be swept away. Currents that had been passable on foot became as raging dragons for that day, cutting off their retreat.
This was the battle of Ford, in the Jemeaux Rebellion.
By training, his corps of wastelanders first barraged the Giordanan rebels with slings. The rebels returned missile fire with arrows, exchanging broken helmets for stuck shields as Lucius marched in. When the range tightened, his forces switched to their bows, still alien weapons in their hands. It couldn’t be said which siad was more accurate, but the wastelanders never faltered in their shield formation. They moved with machine precision while the rebels clumped and shuddered.
Then an act of the gods foiled his plans. A man revealed his stigmata, laying trees low and lashing them in place despite the current. He pulled roots from the mud and treated them like rope. Before the melee could even begin, an artificial ford had been thrown together at the back of the rebel army and they began to flee. The incoming shield wall pressed them to the river and fear squeezed them through like a bladder.
Of course, Lucius ordered a mad charge the moment he saw what was happening. He encircled the rebels, crushing them underfoot and driving through them with spears. Alas, in the essence of speed, he had brought no heavy artillery, and the carnage could only be carried out so fast. While hundreds were cut down in the frenzy, the majority escaped to the far side of the flood waters before the tree-bridge was released and the waters splintered it.
For two reasons, Lucius could not pursue them into a proper bloody rout. First, his troops had no means of staying the current. Second, the blood hunger gripped the wastelanders. They shirked his orders and ate their fill of the dead. Many of them took the surname Ford that day.
Lucius retired from the battlefield while the river still raged. He returned to the pillaged hamlet alone, shocking the locals would refused to believe the army commander traveled without an entourage. Eventually, he learned the confusion was because the burgomaster had been killed. Given the size of the settlement, and the damage already done to it, he settled for a room in the inn and a meal–both of which he paid for to their surprise.
He had intended to sow some goodwill as well as some rumors. He and I had spoken about dubbing the wastelanders as something of a demon corps. The locals didn’t dare to broach the subject however. When he was interrupted, he had been speaking with a barge captain about ferrying some messengers back to his main force. One look at Lupa and Lucius curtly told the captain to get lost. He rose from the table, shooting glances that led to doors getting shut and shadows leaving windows. “What is it?”
She shook as she held up her hands. Blood clung to her palms and spots covered her arms and chest. Her steps were tremulous, swaying as she approached him. “Lu…”
He took hold of her, pressing his dining napkin to her hands. Putting an arm around her shoulders, he squeezed her to him. “Are we under attack?”
She shook her head, burying her face against him as she wrung the cloth until it was red. “No, no. It’s just that this was the first fight. Since coming to the north, this was the first battle.”
“I have a room,” he said, turning his body. She turned with him, clinging to him. He swiped the flagon of wine from his table and together they mounted the steps. The rooms above the common area had been evacuated. Partly because most boats had fled when the rebels arrived, and partly because he had told the other guests to get out. Such was the limit of privacy he could achieve.
When he sat on the bed, a wretched box of aged straw befitting the podunk respite, she refused to relinquish her embrace. She curled against him tight, clinging to his shoulders as her mouth silently worked. “What the hell is wrong with us?”
He let her lay atop him as he stroked his hand through her hair. “It’s okay, Lupa.”
“I never… When I grew up–even when Anubi blessed me–I only knew what was normal and—” Tears choked her as Lucius took hold of the bloody rag. He pulled it from her clutched hands and turned her palms up, dry.
“I’m glad,” he said. “That you came to me.”
With a nod that pressed her face to his chest, she said, “They just started ripping into the bodies. They treated them like animals. Men who had been living more than they had. Just envy and jealousy–they butchered them. They were happy, Lu. They laughed! Some–some even… in the blood they… One of the sargeants, Leyfield, he came to me. Said he had taken a name. I don’t even remember what he said it was. Just his teeth. Like ivory. He was smiling, Lu. He was covered in blood and smiling and he wanted me to smile back at him. He had it in his hands, wanted to share it with me. He had the man’s heart.”
“Did you take it?”
She twinged and shook her head. “He put it in my hands.”
Lucius put his hand to her cheek and turned her head to face him. There was no blood on her lips. “Then you did nothing wrong.”
“But I’ve done it before!”
“When you captured me, you took care of me. You wanted me to take you north, to the land beneath the sun where the old gods reigned. I was able to physically bring you here, but you were the one that had to arrive. I’m glad that you have now.”
Her refutations were silenced by his mouth. The tension in her body melted as the two of them rolled over on the bed.
The next day, he took Lupa out of combat responsibility and gave Ambre Leyfield sub-command of the wastelanders. Immediately after congratulating the man, he ordered him to update the army registry and identify all new stigmata manifested after the battle, along with a dozen other tedious tasks.
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1. Not to get into a digression about the unsolvability of certain game theory scenarios, because if two hyper rational commanders are facing one another, seemingly irrational choices suddenly become rational. Had Lucius known that he faced the Cyclops, his pirate foe from the Misty Isles, he would have acted differently and perhaps for the worse. It is hard to say who will come out on top between two masters second guessing one another.
2. The idea of torches, lanterns, and so on to ward off the darkness had been introduced to the wastelanders, but they couldn’t bring themselves to trust tools and fire when they had lived their entire lives only needing their eyes.