After Lucius swore his vendetta against Rodrick, both armies fractured. Desertion particularly plagued Rodrick’s forces after so many so clearly saw the lack of divine providence behind the paladin. Without having truly lost a battle, the rebellion became a rearguard chase. Weakened as he was, Ismael chose that moment to grow a spine of his own and marched his Giordanans south.
Whenever an army’s forces are split in two, a commander’s cunning is tested. Both the one who was reduced, and the commander who must deal with two forces at once, smaller as they are. This was the point that the dukes most wanted to interrogate. While the king chewed through slices of beef liver cooked in a vinegar glaze with a side of honey roasted vegetables, he listened to his right hand men question Lucius.
“How did you know the size of Ismael’s force?” Duke Ashe asked.
The boy answered, “I only had a guess. I’d seen a good deal of it at the river, and after interrogating the captain that intercepted Ismael in the hills, I had some idea of the size. Enough as could make a difference. In my position, I had four options and not a very good one. My army had two points of division I could make, each roughly equal in size. I could leave Ismael to escape to Giordana, possibly rallying a larger army, possibly allying with Aillesterra against us. He could be quite a thorn in our side if he had gotten good steel from the forest folk. Because of that, I felt I couldn’t put all my forces against Rodrick. Of the three nationalities at my disposal–”
Feugard snorted into his wine glass, but had the decorum to say, “My apologies. I’m not used to thinking of the cannibals as a nationality.”
Lucius smiled. “Neither are they, my lord.”
“On with the story,” the king ordered while his eyes were fixed on his spurious son making a scene across the hall.
“So, if I must at the least harry Ismael’s forces while dealing with Rodrick, I had to choose if I would task the wastelanders with it, the Vassish, or the Giordanans. I believe none of you would be surprised that I thought it a dangerous idea to task men with hunting down their own countrymen. Further, I had just sworn a vendetta in the name of saving one of theirs. As a description of Aisha spread among the soldiers, grew as it were, they were quite enthusiastic. The mercenaries alone, well, you should never arrive to a fight with just mercenaries. Even if you know your enemy is poor. I had to take with me either the Vassish, or the wastelanders and the prudent decision was to keep the southerners with me. Lord Raymi’s man, may the Shepherd rest his soul, was more than skilled enough to keep Ismael in check. It wasn’t fighting that did him in afterall.”
“So you sent an undersized force against an untrained foe,” Duke Ashe said, his graying brow tight and curled with thought.
Lucius nodded. “I did, but with clear instruction that he did not need to fight Ismael in open combat. All he needed to do was to attack his scouts, raid supplies, ride ahead to deplete supplies or poison water supplies. Whatever he needed to do to keep Ismael from achieving anything while I dealt with Rodrick. Then, I would come down on whatever remained of the rebels. The plan worked, afterall.”
“Why,” Duke Feugard asked, “Didn’t you return to the city of Jeameaux?”
The boy grimaced. At the time, there had been nothing wrong with his decision. We only learned later what the cyclops had done. He bullshitted magnificently however. “Given the state of the expanded city, bringing a tired army into it was a hazard. First, men would have expected a few days of leave, and then many of them would have gone AWOL. Second, we would have been vulnerable to attacks from sympathizers. I’d say I’ve learned my lesson about garrisoning an army in enemy territory. Keeping control of the soldiers out in the field and merely exchanging supplies was both quicker and safer.”
“Even if he had been there,” Duke Ashe said, “What would he have done? The kingdoms were in chaos after Aurum’s rage.”
The king said, “It was right to let the city guard deal with the unrest. Now, tell me. You chased this Sir Rodrick into the serpent’s marsh, did you not?”
“I did, my lord.”
Acheliah arrested their attention with her voice, gliding over the heads of several servants before turning and alighting her rear upon the king’s table. “And I suppose, boy, you know what the namesake of that marsh is.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
No matter how many times Lucius faced down a monster, he never felt comfortable doing so. Of course, that didn’t mean he shirked from a fight, but he was all too aware that he was a mouse standing before a lion. Just because he had sharp teeth and could eat his way out from the lion’s gut didn’t mean his instincts did not shudder with fear while looking into the eyes of one such as Acheliah. I never wanted to train that reaction out of him either. It kept him from ever being complacent. Even in later years where his war campaigning seemed to drag on without end as he was thrown into one melee after another, cutting and killing until all was blood, there he might have grown slack in his mind.
It was reminders like this that kept him sharp.
“How could I miss it?” he asked.
If she had been playful with him the first time she met Lucius, she was no longer. “Somehow you missed ever encountering an angel while you marauded the central kingdoms. Practically the only man who didn’t see one the way I hear it.”
“That’s because other men boast. Stories are always better firsthand rather than secondhand, but I would not lie here.”
The angel was not amused, and both dukes were sufficiently cowed to not even speak up. She asked, “And there are situations you would?”
“To the enemy.”
The king cleared his throat. “Most pragmatic. Now then, would you continue? The wallows. Tell me about the wallows.”
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The Serpent’s Marsh, or the wallows as some call it, refers to one of the most fetid lands in all of Lumisgard. After two weeks of marching and logistics, which to some lesser historians would call into question entirely the matter of Lucius’ vendetta having an effect on the morale of the soldiers(1), Rodrick at last committed to an escape route from the war.
The place was a battlefield of the dead like no other. It’s much dried out nowadays, the passing of decades has finally begun to restore the farmlands. Ironically, when Lucius threw his army into it, the place was harder to cross than the day after it had formed. I should know, I was there personally.
The serpent, a godling of almost unimaginable size, ripped through the firmament some three hundred years prior. Long enough for entire cities to be built in the shadows it left behind. What had once been leagues of grain, striped through by wild trees that were home to the most royal of venison in all the world, became the bursting nest of an anathema.
The serpent came to be known as the world-eater, or the city-eater, depending on the nationality of the bard at hand. With scales like steel, it had dug through the rock and soil, treating the world the way a fish treats the sea. It dove and swam, tripping it to shreds and killing thousands as it basked in the chaos.
It took half a day for Aurum and his siblings to arrive, but their fire could do nothing more than make the godling sluggish. They had been able to do little more than steer it back to the lands it had already ravaged while it digested. Beasts from Aillesterra, from Drachenreach, and even Acheliah herself and to swarm to the breach. All joined shields to fight as one, and I with them in my own way.
Seven emissaries of the gods were broken that day, in exchange for stalling the serpent. Front line warriors and very brave, the beasts gave their lives so that others could break down its hide. Only when we were done carving our will into the serpent did the lances and flames break through and shred the godling’s flesh.
In their sorrow, the angels ripped apart everything but the bones. They stripped the godling of its might and heaped its power onto their fallen brethren. They were able to restore the bodies only. It was after that fight that Aurum took on the mantle of the head of the church, a station ill-suited to his dispositions.
Now all that remains are the great, arcing bones of vertebra and rib. The ivory bridges between the flooded ruts of the land where only twisted life can eeke out survival.
It was here that Rodrick had his men fashion a bridge to the east and upon the last swath of dry land that he set his defenses against Lucius.
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1. The historian Gregor von Brey of Skaldheim is most famous for his absurd analysis of the Jeameaux rebellion. He, despite never being there or even having a trustworthy firsthand account given to him, claimed that because Lucius would have long since healed from the blood oath wound on his chest, that rumors would have undermined him. According to Gregor, only a few hundred at best could have seen the act and then many times that number would have been contrasting one claim against their own lying eyes that the boy’s chest was healed and not even scarred. From this, he speculates that the moral foundation of the war was wildly overblown. Gregor makes Lucius out to seem like a slave driver, as if he could treat Giordanan mercenaries the way he could treat the wastelanders. Needless to say, this is pure nationalistic propaganda disseminated among the northerners to sneer at the emperor. I shall set the record straight. Lucius spent the entire march enraged. He had a brooding anger that neither Lupa nor Aria (though she was still much a stranger to him, through this time she developed a respect for him) could assuage. He was a wildfire and nobody held a cup of water large enough to even think of trying to douse him. Consequently, his stigmata worked feverishly. He burst with energy and could barely sleep until he had drunk himself silly, and that was just to subdue his body with poison which was swiftly flushed out. Naturally, the trifling cut of a blade couldn’t stay upon his chest. That was why, on no less than five occasions, he had to renew the blood oath among new witnesses.