The night was as cold as ever in the camp of the small Bellatorian scouting force. Situated in a small clearing within the snowy woods that lie on the border between Bellator and Vanargand, it was the only home that Modestas had known for the past two months. Even under the layers of his thick woollen uniform, the biting winds of the north made him feel like he was freezing his balls off. It didn’t help that he was very much a southerner. If this is what a typical Vanargandian summer night is like, he thought, I’d hate to see what the nights are like in winter. No wonder these bastards are so cold and frigid. Living in a place like this would be enough to make the heart of even the kindest saint freeze and harden.
The thought of winter made him grimace. If there was any truth to what he had heard from his comrades, then they would be stuck up here for more than one winter at the very least. Conquest was not something that happened overnight. He couldn’t help but curse the ambitions of Crown Prince Elias. The boy was a military genius, sure, but that did little to change the fact that his hunger for more power was about to doom him and the men he now considered his brothers, and many thousands more. And for what? Just a frozen wasteland with little to offer us.
But he did not voice any of these thoughts. Any word of slander against the Royal Family was considered treason, and the definition of slander was very loose. The laws passed to protect the common man by the good king, Augustus, may have gotten rid of most of the more draconian measures that protected the royal family from the words of commoners, but it was never a good idea to risk his tongue. Besides, the Prince seemed to be rather popular in the military with all those programs and initiatives he took to improve their training and supplies for which he was begrudgingly grateful.
He nursed the cup of cider in his gloved hands as he, along with six others, sat in a circle around a fire. “And guess what the stupid bastard did? He tried to hide behind the curtains!” Laughter erupted among them, and even he couldn’t help himself. Dallard always had a way to cheer everyone up with his stories. And if his stories weren’t humorous enough for you, the way he laughed at his own jokes with his rosy cheeks and big red beard was enough to break most men.
“And his feet were sticking out from under it too! So I stomped on the rascal’s toes, and he screamed like a little girl.” Dallard took a swig from his own cup of cider and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, “And that’s the proper way of greeting any man who fucks your sister. Of course, he’s now my good brother, but that’s as good a warning as any to treat her right.”
But even as Modestas and the others made merry, he noticed that the man sitting beside him, Royce, if he recalled correctly, had already finished his drink and sat silently, cleaning his rifle, only chuckling and smiling politely. He was always silent and even though they trained in the same batch for half a year, he and the others knew little about him. So his curiosity got the better of him as he turned towards the man and asked, “So, Royce, we have known each other for what, more than half a year? And we’ve barely got a word out of you. Hells, even Dallard over there can barely get you to chuckle, much less laugh. I think it’s high time we know a little bit more about you, lad.”
The man simply smiled as he slung the rifle behind his back and rested his elbows on his knees, his fingers interlocked and his thumbs tapping together. “Don’t have much to say, Modestas. My life’s not that interesting.” One of the others, a fellow southerner named Jan, laughed and replied, “Oh, for crying out loud, Royce, no need to act all mysterious in front of us! We’re brothers in arms, aren’t we? And even if your life ain’t that interesting, I’m sure all of us would like to know more about you.”
The circle erupted in murmurs of agreement and playful jeering at Jan’s words, eliciting a reply from Royce, “Alright, alright, lads. If you want to know so much about me, I guess I’ll start from the beginning.”
“As you can see,” he said while pointing towards his neatly cut red hair, “I’m from the northern part of the kingdom, unlike most of you it seems. I was born into a minor barony as the eldest of two sons and the second of four children.” There were some minor looks of shock and disbelief on the faces of the others but they quickly recovered. Military service wasn’t all that uncommon for lower nobility, after all.
“Didn’t know we had nobility in our presence. Hope you don’t expect us to bow down to you and wipe your shit, your royal highness,” Dallard said mockingly, but there was no real heat in his voice and it was clear he was joking. “Oh fuck off, Dallard,” Royce replied with a laugh, “I’m barely nobility. Our family was dirt poor and we only had a small village and a few acres to our name. I must have tilled the fields more than you sorry lot ever have.”
“Too true, that,” said one of the others, Frederick, a man from the Capital. And it was true. He had heard often of the stories of minor nobility, mostly baronies and baronetcies struggling to keep up with the taxes they had to pay, being little more than slightly more privileged farmers at the best of times.
“So how did you end up here in the army? You said you were the eldest son, yes? Most families wouldn’t allow their heir to serve in the military,” Modestas said. Royce clenched his jaw and looked down for a moment and shook his head before replying, “Wasn’t exactly my choice. My mother sold me off to marry a neighbouring viscountess to pay off our debts. The morning after the wedding, which also happened to be my sixteenth nameday, my newly wedded wife shipped me off to the nearest outpost for my training.”
The group grew silent for a moment as they took in the words of their companion, the merry atmosphere gone. The silence was only interrupted by the wailing winds, the crackling of the campfire and the other men at camp, going about their work. He felt pang of sympathy for the man that sat beside him. He was younger than any of them there and unlike the rest of them, he didn’t exactly have a choice in joining. But his story was something he had heard before. Noble families would marry off their children to different, more affluent families for financial and political gain. And many struggling families, noble and not, would send their sons and sometimes even their daughters to the military in the hopes that the services they rendered would help them earn prestige and more importantly, money.
But of course, the funds given to the families of soldiers who died in action was significant enough that many families would get rid of their unwanted children to gain such a sum. And he had also heard of more powerful women from the lower nobility marrying younger men from less affluent families only to force their husbands to join the military and it seems like Royce was a victim of one such woman.
“So did you ever get the chance to fuck her? Your wife, I mean,” Dallard asked, breaking the silence. A few of the others glared at the man but Royce didn’t look up. Instead, the man simply smirked and said, “You know, it’s rather cruel that the Saintess has chosen to gift someone as cruel as my wife with such a beautiful body. Beautiful enough that it stops me from contemplating all the ways I could take her life but not enough to make me stop hating her,” his tone became cold and dark at the end of his sentence and he couldn’t help but feel slightly chilled.
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“And as for your question, Dallard,” he continued, his voice mirthful once more, “That is for me to know and for you to continue wondering.”
The night continued on, the wood from the campfire crackling as they drank together. But the story of how Royce ended up in the military still lingered in their minds. Times like these were enough to erase the thought of the upcoming war from Modestas’s mind, but it wasn’t enough to make him stop longing for the sensation of the sun and a gentle breeze on his skin. Nor was it enough to make him forget the feeling of holding his beloved, Maria, in his arms and the promises they made to each other. Come back to me, he could remember her saying. Come back to me alive and well and we shall marry the very next day, my love.
The simple copper band he wore on his right ring finger gave him all the strength he needed to see through to the next day. The thought of coming back to his home village as a war hero with all the wealth to give Maria the life she deserved made him soldier on through even the harshest of conditions and he could only hope that his beloved would keep her end of the promise they made to each other the day they exchanged rings.
“Well, lads,” Royce said, taking out a small disc connected to a chain from his coat’s inner pocket. A timepiece, he realised. “It seems like we are minutes away from Lieutenant Aldris coming down our collective asses. I’ll be heading for my post and I suggest you do the same. The man may be a foppish peacock but I don’t feel like pulling any extra duties.”
With that, the group scattered as they headed to their respective posts. Modestas touched the ring on his finger with his thumb, as if seeking warmth from it. The rifle slung over his shoulder seemed particularly heavy at that moment. He did not consider himself a coward but the thought of never seeing his home and his beloved Maria again terrified him. But at the same time, he knew it was out of the question for him to even contemplate abandoning his duties. By signing himself up to the military, he had given away two years of his life. And becoming a deserter did not cross his mind even once.
His leather boots took him up the steps of one of the short wooden towers they had erected next to the gates of the wooden palisade that surrounded the camp. He was unfortunate enough to have been chosen for the night shift for the week, but he still felt more fortunate than the poor sods chosen to accompany the Librarian Mages in their expeditions outside the camp to scout out, survey and map Vanargand. The whole country was a mess of ridiculously tall mountains that seemed to pierce the heavens themselves. And other than the valley in which their capital, Vetrheim, was situated, the only flatlands in the country were in extremely small valleys spread throughout the country and of course, their borderlands, where they were camped.
He found the guard he was supposed to replace leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and drool leaking out of his mouth. Chuckling lightly at the sight, he shook the man awake and said, “Verris, wake up. Your shift’s over,” to which the man jolted as his eyes shot open. The man coughed into his gloved hand as he tried to hide his embarrassment and rushed down the wooden stairs, presumably heading to his tent to rest for the night.
Sighing as he took his position, Modestas found himself appreciating the sight of the mountains in the distance. They were unlike anything he had ever seen before, having spent his entire life in the small village where he was born surrounded by small farms and miles and miles of forests and flatlands with only a few hills dotting the landscape. The Vanargandian mountains reminded him of the spires of the capital city which he witnessed from a distance as he passed it in his journey to the closest recruitment centre.
The weather was clearer than usual that night. Even though the sun had set hours ago, the radiant glow of the shattered moon that hung in the night sky illuminated the snowy landscape. He could make out some lights from the mountains, presumably a village. He did not understand why the people there would choose to build their homes there when they could have easily settled on the plains right in front of them.
But at the end of the day, none of that really mattered to him. His mind was filled with the thoughts of Maria, the taste of sweet summer wine, waking up to a rooster’s crowing every morning and so much more. But as much as it pained him to think of home and the anticipation for what awaited after he would return, it also gave him the strength to stand vigil, even as the winds buffeted his face.
And he stood there for what felt like hours to him. He once again thanked the Saintess in his mind for the good weather. On most other nights, his drab grey coat jacket along with his beard would have been covered in frost. The stars in the sky seemed to shine brighter than usual and he could make out the shape of the constellations. The Hero’s Sword looked like it was nestled between two separate mountain peaks that hid the Hero that bore it. The stars that made up The Carcass King were dimmer than the others and he could barely make them out but the glowing red star that served as its eye shined as bright as any other.
He felt a chill run down his spine. Every child of Bellator knew of the story of The Carcass King. Despite being such a reviled figure, he was undeniably important to the history and culture of the kingdom as it was because of the fact that King Augustus the First only became the Hero and the founder of the Bellatorian Kingdom because he slayed The Carcass King over five hundred years ago.
But he was pulled from his thoughts as he spotted a dot moving towards their camp. It was obvious it was headed for their direction but as far as he knew, there were no shipments or scouting forces that were due to arrive during his shift. He grew a little weary of whatever was approaching as he reached into the pockets of his uniform where he kept his standard issue far-sight. But his paranoia was alleviated when he remembered that the Illusionary Mages protected their camp with their spellweaving and he wasn’t about to doubt their work now after it had protected them for so long.
The far-sight was made of bronze and was cylindrical in shape with blue lenses on either end. Unlike the more expensive models, the military issued ones were as simple as can be. He remembered how one of the Librarian Mages enthusiastically talked about far-sights in the mess hall in the morning, talking about how there were some models made by the Royal Arsenal and their Artificier Mages that could allow one to see things that were miles and miles away as if it was right in front of them. But while his own far-sight wasn’t nearly as impressive, it had served its purpose and was built solidly enough.
Bringing the far-sight to his eye, he finally made out exactly what was approaching their camp. He almost cried out in horror as he realised that it was a shaggy horse carrying someone wearing beige robes the colour of parchment. Librarian, he realised. But it was the fact that the Librarian’s robes were stained with blood that concerned him.
He could make out little else but he knew that the rider was definitely one of theirs. There weren’t any protocols for a situation like this as far as he remembered. But then again, the more academic part of his training was something he along with many others neglected. It did not take long for him to make a decision as he shouted at the top of his lungs while running down to try and find a superior officer.
“We have an injured Librarian riding towards camp!” he bellowed, making almost every head turn towards him. He repeated his words all the way to the main hall, intent on finding Lieutenant Aldris or anyone else ranked above him for that matter.
But before he could enter the makeshift wooden building that served as their main hall, the doors slammed open as a furious Librarian slammed the doors open. The mage looked remarkably boyish but he could tell from the look in his eyes that he was much older than his face showed. “What is the meaning of this?!” the Librarian asked with dark bags under his eyes. It was clear that he had interrupted his rest.
“S-sir! I saw an injured Librarian riding towards cam-,” but before he could finish his sentence, Royce emerged too from the building. After quickly explaining what he saw, the Librarian commanded Royce to fetch a Healer and him to prepare four horses to meet the injured Librarian to make sure he made it back to camp safely.
Little did Modestas know that he may have possibly saved the kingdom while jeopardising his own fate.