The city was tense however, because the admissions standards for the academy had been forcibly raised. The king did not wish for any of the young nobles ordered to attend to be squeezed out by the common folk, so only a fraction of the typical incoming class could be accepted. Testing results were posted on the first day of the festival, to give those rejected time to find other employment. Instead, they found the mead that scented the air and loosened their grumbling lips.
It may surprise you that there is little to discuss of Lucius’ time at the festival. Each day he patrolled the city like a common guard. Each night was his own. The first was revelry with his friends. He drank with Sammy and caught up with Kajsa while letting all know where he was and what he was doing. The second evening he dined on the Feugard’s coin, with his sister on to his left and Felicia to his right. The third evening had wrestling bouts with men who had served him at war, most of which he won, followed by a private grapple with Lupa.
Truly he had no reason to complain of the festival. The same could not be said of Lyam, the Steel Blade.
Shock struck the Warden Blades when Ashlynn resigned her post. It came at a heavy price to her. The king’s wages were not merely coin in her pocket, but a pension and certain benefits for her parents. A proper estate was, year by year, to accrue under her family’s ownership at such a rate she would be considered a baroness by the time she would take a husband and set about creating her progeny. By abdicating her post mere months after being granted it, not only did her family have nothing more than a farm equivalent to a subsistence plot, but she would be a mere step removed from an oathbreaker.
While it was true people knew the reason, her humiliation against Lucius had been quite public, it still caught the Warden Blades by surprise. Particularly, it severed the bond between Lyam and her, tearing a wound in his heart he hadn’t even recognized. At first the Steel Blade argued with her that she should stay. When she rebuked him, his recourse was drink.
He skipped an entire day’s worth of work, which only came to Theo’s attention after Lucius had been afforded a full day un-monitored(1). Lyam’s pay was duly docked, but a harangue from Theo did nothing to correct his spiralling. The third night of the festival, he wandered the city without armor, without badge of office. Few recognized him and fewer remarked upon him.
The revelry and good cheer of the city center was repugnant to his mood, which slowly drove him to the city walls, and then to the shabby sprawl of new buildings beyond the proper protection of the city. There he found wagon circles and converted barns well stocked with imported barrels of wine, sold by merchants unable or unwilling to pay the import tax through the gates. Naturally, the tone was different where these cheap drinks flowed.
No children ran about and the adults were not proud parents. They were scoundrels, displaced by a hundred different reasons. Some claimed to be pilgrims while others said they were forme sailors, wrung dry by the loss of their captain’s ship or other such lies. Games were played beside sputtering fires. Not the refined sort such as Trireme, but the base and chaotic games of mere chance. Others gambled upon games of dextrous skill, whipping blades through the air to plunge into rotten fruits fit only for pigs. These spectacles amused the crestfallen knight as his mind stewed.
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Given time, it is likely he would have hardened his heart and accepted the future. He would have seen that the kingdom was still filled with vigor and beauty, even if his sight was occluded by the presence of Lucius. But, these were not peaceful times. It was a period of hatred and this was one of many events well documented by my dear accomplice and fallen angel of older times.
Golden had tracked the knight throughout the festival. His patience was rewarded by circumstances which needed only a few words. While he raked in coins from the dice players, he merely informed a few of the night’s losers who the brooding fellow by the fire was. Entirely on their own accord, three men encircled Lyam with false amiability. Not one of them was old enough to be properly wise, but all had been matured by hardship, self-inflicted or otherwise.
“Ain’t no place for a knight to be wallowing in his own piss an’ tears,” one said, poorly hiding his grin behind his mug.
“I’m wallowing in this shit you call ale and I’m of no trouble to you. I wasn’t the one that took your money tonight,” Lyam said. The night of drinking had pulled down the lids of his eyes and squeezed his skull, but not robbed him of wits. He took stock of their blades just fine.
Another of the men sat on his opposite side. “You should be in the city, sucking the cocks of noblemen and hoping they cum gold. Or is it that you like our fine company that much?” The group at once broke into japes about the lack of women, half deriding Lyam and half lamenting.
The Steel Blade bore their words until they saw he had taken their measure and understood their intent. “I think you lot are in the wrong city.”
“We’re not in the city, are we?”
“You’d be better off in the south. Or better, fuck off from the kingdom entirely.”
Drinks were set down. One of the men said, “We’d be better off without the likes of–”
Lyam surged to his feet, grabbing one man by his beard and shoving him into the fire. Knives came free as Lyam used his stigmata to gird himself in steel. Daggers plunged through his coat, only to be turned aside by skin. He didn’t pull his own blade, with the group of them so close the only option was to grapple. The next man lost his teeth learning the strength of a steel fist.
Another buckled his knees with a kick from behind. One had the idea to bludgeon him with the bench he had sat upon and that drove him to the ground where he seized a dagger. He swung it around, stabbing it through a man’s knee and pulling him to the ground howling. Then he got back to his feet and the sword rang from its sheathe. Wood axes and smoldering fire pokers raised to meet him, from more hands than those who had surrounded him.
Golden laughed and clapped as blood melted ice. By the end of it, Lyam stood, bereft of his coat and shirt, body glinting as steel in the red dawn. A dozen guards had rushed to the shouts and screams. Few recognized his face, but there was only one man in the city that could turn his flesh to steel. There was no resistance when they manacled him, not even much talk. He assumed Theo would have him out and on the street again within the day.
Instead, he rotted for half a week among the scum of the city. By the time Theo saw fit to drag him out of the jail–thinking he had let the fool knight learn his lesson, six more men had died by Lyam’s hands. Nothing good of the kingdom was lost with their deaths. They were savages with shivs, offenders of the worst sort. Not merely murderous, but zealotrous. And that made the blood too deep for Theo to simply excuse.
So, a mere few days after the loss of one Warden Blade, another had to be sent to face the king’s justice. At this point, I would have assumed that Sir Montem would have thrown caution to the wind and conspired with the Troll Blade to cut Lucius down in the street. The fact that he didn’t implies he had been planning to have both Lyam and Ashelynn with him as protection. Perhaps he was afraid.
The next time Lucius was summoned to the capital to act as the king’s bloody hand, Theo returned as well. The king he found was a brooding one. He simmered like a volcano, straining against Acheliah’s whims.
- This was the second day of the festival, wherein Lucius thanked Lord Feugard for making good on his promise. For, it was Austin that brought Ashlynn away from the Warden Blades and furthermore put her into his private employ. Outside of public scrutiny, she was to begin work as a sword instructor in the north and was fairly compensated.