The Primus twirls the longsword readily, sinewed muscles bulging through his garment.
A crackle of lightning jolts my heart. A great clangour, akin to some massive body of metal being dragged against its will across the sky. Heaven's forge gives out a last clanging gong, its final warning. It resonates and reverberates in a concussion of sound, a deafening convocation of peril.
"Should we really be out here?" I turn my gaze to the writhing sky. "It appears the heavens tend to wreak havoc."
He settles in a fighting stance, nothing but pure foreboding in this move.
I suppose I have little choice.
I lower myself slightly, drawing my sword hand back, extending the empty one. Dribbles of glassy rain speckle over us, a-twinkle with silver. The Primus erupts into a vicious assault, power from his lower body conducts into his snapping wrists just before the impact of blade against blade, ringing out a shrill that cuts through the grumble of irate thunderclouds.
The rain falls like the devil's spit, hot and hissing, the air heated despite the illusion of winter. In its haze, it bears a phantasmal aspect, slowly swelling in the bosom of the open front yard of the castle. His silhouette is like a spectral blur against the abyss-black of the churning skies.
I dart back for a respite. I swing at him and he parries it away—I rift the gap to strike him and pain explodes through my fist as if crushed against a mineral as strong as iron. I shake out the stinging flare—he flashes to me with the edge of the blade against my neck, threatening a severance. Each of us soaked to the bone, wisps of black clinging to his moonlight-cream skin.
"Pity." He eyes me down scathingly. "I expected better."
Anger converts into fuel and I burst into explosive movements that catch him in a backward stagger. His head jerks back to evade a potential decapitation.
"I do not know what prompts your displeasure towards me." Our blades connect and we circle each other, metal glinting in the obscuring outpour. "Reserve your enmity, but I will not be disrespected."
A brazen act of defiances renews his rigour. The intention behind his onslaught darkens. Each metallic strike resounds with spite. He moves with the force of star and storm and blazes through the air with the ferocity of a thousand thunderstorms.
The Primus lifts his boot—the blow sends me spiralling through the air, crunching to the ground and rolling in fresh puddles, water spattering, splashing onto my face. Pain ruptures my insides, nausea pulsing through, disorientating me for several hot seconds. He strides after me. He swings up the blade to rest it upon his broad shoulder, his advance foreshadowing only agony.
My hand gropes desperately for my sword, but it is well out of my reach.
His vacant stare clamps on my soul in a chokehold.
He looms over me. I shoot out a warning hand.
He disregards my silent plea and slices at my head—I catapult myself away from the stroke of death.
"Enough!"
He does not relent.
"Primus," I screech, "stop—please."
"Begging inspires only pity, then disdain." His voice growing louder, his bellow sharpening the shafts of lightning. "You wish to be shown mercy?"
His boot unites with my ribs, launching me into the air—weightless for too many heartbeats—the ground raises to capture me. Pain roars through my ribs, shattering my vision for an instant, agony pounding down on my head, deep stabbing pain like knives through my torso. Tears camouflaging with the rain, thankfully unseen in the wake of the Primus's heartless cruelty.
God strikes his hammer against the aether, cracking the dome.
I rotate my head, spitting out a glob of blood, staining the drenched green.
His cold shadow falls over me. "You are weak of spine; a weakness that shall inflict a swift death. The other purebloods will be starved of the pleasure of slewing you themselves. For your own hubris has ensured your own demise."
***
"Duce Merian, where are you taking me?"
"I think the answer is apparent."
"The why prompts my concern."
I hobble off the last cobbled step. Pain flares through my gut, seizing it with a breath-taking grip. The stone walls of the dungeon are mottled, mould encroaching on every brick. Unceasing groans and rattling clamours from the surrounding cells. The sounds excavate through my mind like a worker with an iron pickaxe in the mines. The air reeks of the copper tang of blood, the stench of hollowed-out bowels. The network of dark-stoned warren passages tunnels limitlessly, a dimly lit abyss. And the prisoners besieged within its rusty maw, prisoners that are no longer people; a retribution that denudes them of their rights to mortal dignity. Reduced to nothing more than empty, savage vessels.
Duce Merian's stare pokes at my periphery irksomely.
"Is there a cause for your gawking?"
"Do you need a tonic for your pain? If it were my choice, I would not let you be presented to His Majesty with such a bruised face."
I quash my irritation, refusing to give rise to anger. "Your sympathy lends such comfort, Duce."
We round a corner and there the High King swivels to face us, his crimson cape whirls around him with a flourish of grace. He stands in the centre of the carnivorous passage, accompanied by his own league of elite guards, flanked by cells brimming with a fresh batch of prisoners. However, these are no mere commoners or persecuted scoundrels. By the look of their clean and pampered faces, elaborate jewellery and deluxe weavings embroidered with foreign sigils, they are highborn; foreign nobility.
"Hera." His smile is a flash of light that banishes the gloom.
I bow my head at him solemnly. "My King."
"I would like your counsel on a delicate matter." He spins around to survey the overflowing cells. The firelight in the passages deepens the grooves of both his cheeks and jaw. "These prisoners all belong to Allahad, a medley of foreign dignitaries and nobles living within our borders at my behest. I allowed them to take up residence as an oath of hospitality and an act of peacekeeping, which I did not intend to break."
He faces me again with his face tilted to the ground, darkness enveloping half of his frame.
"With the secrecy of espionage, embedded spies were intercepted that some of this fine company were harbouring. The spies were apprehended and tortured and the only information we were able to extract is that whatever information—however detrimental to Urium—has been passed on already."
My mind connects to only devastating outcomes. "Have you interrogated them separately?"
"Of course I did." A touch of affront in his voice. "A formal inquisition was issued, questioning everyone in their radius, from fellow aristocrats to the servants that do their bidding. No one has breathed a word of it, only resonating the lie of their innocence."
"They are not all culpable."
"They are not all free of blame," he retorts. "This breach of trust cannot go unheeded. One of them bears knowledge of sensitive intelligence, those spies they wished to arm Allahad with state secrets that could surely cripple the welfare of our realm, weakening us further. They would've been successful if their spies had not been found in their treachery."
My eyes sneak to the cells, both women and men and their adolescent children with them.
"I am aware not all of them are guilty—possibly only a handful of the lot are." The High King gives a helpless shrug. "I extended my kindness and let those who are culpable come forth to spare the slaughter of their people, but none have claimed responsibility."
"High King Urus," a woman squeaks, a sob shaking her words. "None of us hold the truth you seek. But if you will not enact justice for us all, at least show it to our children." She steers a tall boy by his shoulders to stand in front of her. "My son—our sons—" he gestures to the other bug-eyed youths, "are innocent."
"I have no guarantee that your offspring are not tainted by the sins of their parents. Urium cannot afford that chance. There are diplomats among you. Allahad would have grounds to demand their release, along with the leak in their midst. I could be handing them the necessities they need to diminish our realm."
"My King, they are foreign nobility," I say, advocating on their behalf. "If you let the guillotine fall on their necks, Allahad will have what they want; war."
"Their spies were caught in their treachery. I should lay waste to their lands and crush them before they reap the gall to draw first blood. If they had received the verification of Urium's fracturing, it is exactly what they would have done. This is why they test our borders, prod at our burrows, their constant passive aggression infringing on a fragile peace. A peace they long to obliterate."
He breezes towards one of the overcrowded cells, four of them occupied by dozens.
"This act will prove to them I do not fear the radical course if it means safeguarding my kingdom. Perhaps it will stave off further aggression or encourage it. Either way, a stand must be taken and I will not be bullied. It will show to all our enemies that we are not weak, as is the current perception. Only those conquered have fallen prey to such weakness; and Urium will not be conquered. A realm is only as strong as its king."
Countless future alternatives war with my conscience. I blink fast, malfunctioning.
"Your Eminence, you cannot justify a massacre of all for the sake of a few—or even one. If the bearer of this harmful intelligence forsakes his kin to uphold their allegiance to Allahad, by delivering this information. Should all their fates be shared because of one?"
"How can I offer mercy if the perpetrator of their demise seals his mouth? Condemning not only himself but those who they know and their children." He elongates his spine, his face devoid of remorse; a cold mastery of his emotions. "You know what the sensible course is, you merely fear to face it."
Horror claws into my gut, silencing my pain. "Yes, yes," I exclaim feverishly, "I fear it, I fear a massacre and one done by your hand—"
"You know why it needs to be done." His tone is cured by frosty frankness, "You know." He sweeps aside and outstretches his arm to the stone-faced guards. "I want you to give the order and sentence them to death."
I swivel around, searching for another voice to dissuade him but Duce Merian has retreated to the corner, spectating silently for he already knew what was going to unfold even before he retrieved me.
I rotate back, slowly. "I cannot…" my gaze flits past many teary eyes, "...I will not."
"And that, lovely Hera, is why you will never rule," he says with forbidding finality. "To rule is to know when to dole out mercy and when to thwart your enemies so brutally they fear ever rising up against you. It requires a measure of detachment that will scar your soul if not dissolve it completely."
He glides to me with a brooding gait, observing me, eyes teeming with disappointment.
"You die to yourself to prevent the death of others from occurring." His gaze wanders to the glossy-eyed masses. "And sometimes make sacrifices for the greater good of the realm that will keep sleep from your eyes. But it must be done. Is that not the adage of your lineage? A sentiment your father greatly understood and I thought you would, too."
He brushes past me and my eyes follow as he stares at Duce Merian.
"Duce Merian opposed my belief and claimed you to be weak of will in that regard." He spins around to face me with something fiery burning behind his eyes. "But it was the counsel of my Primus that led me to desert his words. The Primus said you were strong of heart and would find the will to do what needed to be done." He inhales a steadying breath. "And yet you could not, failing us both. I do not know what you did to merit his uncanny faith in you, but he has never been wrong. Until this day."
I trip into a pit of silence, struggling to get out, my mind suddenly overwhelmed.
"You must be mistaken. The Primus despises me and finds endless faults in my character."
"If he did, why did he recommend you so? And why would he make a personal appeal to be your drillmaster, instead of another that was supposed to be in his stead? Yet he insisted on overseeing you himself, why if not a tribute of faith?"
The revelation leaves me in wordless befuddlement.
The King turns to address his guards. "Then I shall render my verdict—"
"Wait!" An older boy nudges his way to the front of the third cell. Dark freckles splattered across his blanched face. "Your Majesty, wait," he says breathlessly, chest heaving with a burden clogging his throat. "I was sent to Urium for my education, living here with my guardian in your Dominion."
He wraps his slender fingers around the bars, his head bopping before he hangs it for a moment. His head whips up with wavering determination. "An informer came to my abode to deliver a coded parchment; a cipher."
The King perks up with palpable intrigue. "And why would an infiltrator entrust a child with this?" An epiphany strikes him, lighting up his eyes. "Who are your parents, boy?"
"My father is the adjutant to the warlord, Kodhere."
An expression akin to distraught dashes across his face. He masks it with solemnity.
"I was supposed to take it to my father during the recess. For no one would expect a child returning to his homelands, would be in possession of classified intelligence."
"Where's the cipher now?"
"I burnt it," he blurts. "When I discovered sons of Allahad were being rounded up like cattle; I knew it was because of me. So I did the only thing I could; I destroyed it. Which is why your soldiers found nothing in my dwelling and nothing on my person. If the transfer was successful, I would be in transit, but instead I cast myself at your grace, knowing well you maintain a quality of mercy."
"I do, though my compassion has been greatly afflicted," he says with a dispassionate voice. "You are the seed of a military leader that has only sown dissension amongst our people." He pivots to scan the other prisoners. "Am I to trust your delayed admission that you destroyed the cipher? What if Kodhere installed others as a contingency if you were detained?"
"Warlord Kodhere only trusts my father; and my father only trusts me. He would not risk it."
"Neither would he risk failure."
The boy's knuckles brighten. "I am guilty but do not condemn all the others. They are blameless. The fault is mine to bear alone. I said nothing before because I was afraid—" he breaks into a smattering sob, tears gushing from his eyes in an uncontrollable deluge. "Please, though I am not owed mercy, my brethren do."
The King's face softens like clouds that blotted the sun, have drawn back to reveal its light.
"Kill them all."
A storm of screams lashes the air, splitting my skull. A dissonance met with the shrill of unsheathing swords, the jingling of unclipped keys, and four guards diverging from the rest to open the gates.
"In fact, a public execution serves Urium better." He thanks me with a morbid grin. "The Hera is right, the guillotine should fall—fall before all who threaten my reign, then they shall know what fate lies in wait for them."
He turns to leave.
"Your Eminence!" I wail, "I beg of you—"
He whips around—a bolt of crimson. "Do not beg. Begging is the lowest form of shame that would bring dishonour on your father—a being who has earned my respect. Withhold your tongue, you have displeased me enough this day."
My lips part but only hollow breaths fall when the Duce's grim headshake warns me against my protests. I must accept that I have failed all. The King never wanted my counsel, he wanted to evaluate my resolve, an assessment I have woefully blundered.