Chương 24: The Plot Thickens

Asgar groaned and pushed himself to his feet. Something sticky dripped from his hair to spatter onto the ground, and when the wave of dizziness hit him, he could guess at what it was. Wouldn't be the first time he'd woken in a puddle of his own blood. The world swam in and out of focus, a throbbing ache spreading from his shoulder. Birds twittered and sun reflected from gleaming armour into his eyes. Shielding them, he caught a glimpse of what looked to be an ornate chest plate, though horribly dented.

Gleaming golden filigree was visible in places, and those spots were what had caught his notice, but the rest was dark with blood. He stumbled back, the events of the evening rushing back to him. His summons to the command tent, his foolish words and even more foolish challenge to the Lance. But what had followed? His memories were jagged and jumbled, but he was given no time to order them. His steps were fouled by tangled tent lines and he fell.

The world tipped, then he was on his hands and knees, retching nothing but a string of bile into the mud. He coughed and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, smearing something coppery across his lips. His arms were stained. Covered. Coated with blood. Like he'd dipped his hands into someone's chest cavity and had a grand old time fishing around in there. He nearly retched again, but crawled forward anyway. He had to know. A body lay before him, half-wrapped in the ripped and broken remains of the tent.

Flashes of gleaming gold, a broken breastplate… could it be? Wouldn't be the first time he'd lost track of himself in the thick of the blood rage. Had Avarron somehow empowered him to new heights? Had he actually fucking done it? He scrambled to untangle the body from the tent, gasping when the head came into view. The chest plate was indeed dented beyond repair but even without that, it was clear the man was dead.

Half his head was stoven inwards, one eye missing from its mangled socket, and his nose was more a flat piece of rubbery skin within the mush of his shattered cheek that anything remotely resembling the aristocratic beak it had once been. Because Asgar nevertheless recognised the face. Not Sir Rupert Lancer, the Golden darling of the commoners. No, this here was Lord Hendry. Asgar didn't know his first name, but scant relief, he'd surely find out when he was sentenced to the queen's dungeons.

Because here he was, surrounded by bloodstained canvas, with blood dripping from his hands and smeared across his throbbing, swollen forehead, with the corpse of the Lord Commander of the Golden Lance's 2nd infantry regiment lying face up right fucking next to him, looking like he'd been headbutted into oblivion. He cast about desperately. Where the fuck was he? Tents were pitched in neat little rows all around, and he was smack in the middle of them.

Rustling from bodies to either side as soldiers shifted inside their tents, quiet sighs as the pre-dawn light warmed them in preparation for the day. A woman was heading his way, steps light as a feather but moving fast. She'd be on him soon, and then he'd be discovered… Oh God, what the fuck is going on? She arrived before he could even get to his feet, but the look she gave him was surprisingly disinterested.

She moved straight past him, glanced at the body, checked to see who was around, then stepped forwards and began to scream. Asgar flinched and stumbled away, falling again.

"No!" she cried, voice high and shrill and filled with terror.

"Help! Get off, get off, get off!" Asgar's eyes grew wide and he fumbled to push himself away from her. Mind already sluggish from the pain and the head trauma, and now being confronted by something that made so little sense, he couldn't piece it together. She grabbed the hem of her stained kirtle and Asgar realised she was dressed like one of the cooks that helped care for the soldiers.

'Dressed like' rather than 'was', because there was something off about her. She seemed a hair too clinical despite her panicked wailing. She ripped one shoulder of her dress and screamed again, then pulled her own hair so hard Asgar could swear he heard it rip. She fell onto the body, though to Asgar it seemed more of a calculated dive, and rolled around in the tent.

Her cries continued, rising in pitch and panic, and Asgar heard the tents all around moving as men and women tried in vain to see what the disturbance was.

"What's happening?" he asked, desperately, but his voice was a near-silent croak.

"What—" She turned to him again, and with an expression as flat and calm as the pond at the back Old Jenson's farm, she punched herself in the face. Asgar gaped.

"What the fuck is this?" a soldier shouted, voice rich with command. A sergeant then, and one expecting answers. The woman rose to her feet, grabbing Asgar as she did so in a shockingly tight grasp, and turned towards the figure running their way. She pushed off Asgar and fell to the ground, then scrabbled back and ran to the sergeant, sobbing. Every bone in Asgar's body was screaming at him that something was horribly, horribly wrong, but he was too thick.

His thoughts were mired in honey, his limbs unresponsive and his tongue even slower to form his sluggish thoughts into words that could help, that could possibly explain what the fuck he was doing in a broken tent covered in blood next to a screaming woman—"What is the meaning of this?" the Sergeant barked again, now only yards away. The terrified girl was hanging onto his arm sobbing, saying something about assault and how she couldn't get away and all manner of lurid accusations. Asgar felt the net descending.

This was a setup. She raised a hand to point at him, the sergeant following her finger and his gaze darkening as he took in Asgar's hulking, blood spattered frame. But before he could take more than a single step forward with a hand on his weapon, her arm moved slightly. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. To point at the corpse in the tent. To point at Lord Hendry.

"Please, sir," she sobbed, a snotty hiccup thrown in to really sweeten the lie.

"I was tending to Lord Hendry's tent as I do. He wanted to stay with the company tonight, so I prepared his tent here and came back this morning to find… to find…" Asgar's heart sunk further. This was it, the accusation that would ruin him. Murderer. Noble killer. A long stint in the dungeons to follow before a nasty execution. But how had he even got here to begin with? Where was the Lance? Not that it mattered, as the Sergeant fully drew his short sword and took another threatening step forward.

"Stand down, soldier," the man growled.

"No!" the woman shouted, tugging on the sergeant's arm.

"It's not like that. The lord was in a foul mood, and when I got here, he grabbed me. Wouldn't let go and…" she trailed off, hugging herself tight. God, she was an actress from the Pits alright. Even had Asgar believing the lie, and he was watching her spin it from the ground up!

"I told him to let go, but he said he was sick of listening to 'upstart peasants', and then ripped my dress. I fought back and he hit me. I screamed and screamed, and then this soldier was walking past and burst into the tent and the Lord ordered him out, but I begged him to stay and then there was a scuffle and…" She kept going, bless her soul, but Asgar's thoughts whited out when he realised he wasn't the target of her accusations. She was casting him as a saviour.

Still didn't make a fucking lick of sense though. What happened last night? His thoughts weren't answered anytime soon. Witness testimony or no, Asgar was standing over the savaged body of the company commander—the heir of a high house at that—and no matter what exculpatory details the camp helper was spilling on his behalf, he still found himself in irons and escorted to the command tent. Sun winked off the silvered tip of the central pole, and Asgar marvelled at his stubborn fortune.

Only last night he'd entered this very tent, battered and bruised from the battle, not knowing what to expect. Now here he was less than twelve hours later, still not knowing what to expect and still battered to the fucking Pits and back. The more things change… An hour or two passed—nobody bothered to tell him exactly how long—and then Lady Valentia swept into the tent, an adjunct by her side and a handful of expectant officers swarming around her like sparrows at sowing season.

Settling herself behind the large desk, she took a deep breath, looked at the assembled men and women, and shifted. The air abruptly became charged, her visage sharpening, like the world was trying to bend around her in some way. Her words, when they emerged, were frosty and brooked no dissent.

"Everyone but Captain Strand—leave. Now." The sparrows shuffled out awkwardly, though the amethyst lady did not relax once they did. Captain Strand looked perplexed.

"What's happening, my lady? I heard a dozen different rumours on the way here, and the camp is in uproar. Is it true about Lord Hendry? He is injured?"

"Take a seat, captain," she gestured. He remained standing.

"Lord Hendry is dead." Strand sucked in a breath, gripping the table so hard it creaked. Not without magik himself then, Asgar noted.

"How?"

"He assaulted a girl tending his tent and the soldier there happened upon them while doing his rounds. Her screams alerted him, and Lord Hendry pulled a knife. The rest is obvious, I trust?" Captain Strand turned to stare. As he took in Asgar's blood drenched figure, his swollen head, the half-dazed look he still wore and the iron manacles around his hands, his eyes narrowed.

"Don't take me for a fool, my lady. Hendry was a bastard, sure as sure, but he wasn't the type to force himself on a serving girl out in the open. We both know the type of power he craved, and the path there didn't involve trysts with a low-born and a bevy of illegitimate children." Lady Valentia narrowed her eyes.

"I'm also not bloody blind," the captain continued irritably.

"I can recognise him even through that mess. Asgar, wasn't it? What did I tell you about keeping your mouth shut, lad?" Turning back to the lady, he asked, "what's going on? I don't care about whatever political squabbles you're involved in. I just want to keep my men safe and the regiment moving." She sighed and leaned back, shooting Asgar a measuring glance, before replying.

"You're aware of the tension between the high houses and the queen, I take it?"

"I'm going to stop you there," Strand said.

"Give me the official story. Told you I wasn't interested in all the rest."

"I've just given you the official story."

"No, you gave me the yarn you're trying to spin. I want to know what I need to say happened when inquisitors and house spies come sniffing around, and then I want to know what you hope to gain from this, only as it pertains to this Goddamn regiment. Is that clear?" A faint smile from Valentia at that.

"The official story is that the Golden Lance left in the evening back to the Pits, and discussions continued here into the night. Both I and Lord Hendry retired to our respective quarters and Asgar returned to his company. He was assigned to guard duty by Lord Finley, and came across Lord Hendry in the midst of his crime while making the rounds. They fought, the lord went for a weapon, Asgar killed him."

"You have evidence?"

"The girl in question has testified, witnessed by myself and a dozen minor officers. Lord Finley has approved of our version of events, recalling in great detail the conversation he shared with Asgar before reassigning him to sentry duty, there are multiple accounts of soldiers seeing the aftermath of the struggle, and the physical evidence supports the claims. That will be enough."

"Not for the capital," Strand muttered darkly, but then straightened.

"What of the future then?"

"To the Pits, as before," Lady Valentia confirmed.

"Nothing changes."

"You're a fool if you believe that. Not my problem though. I have mine and you have yours, and I trust we can leave each other's' to the other? If there's nothing else, I've got a clusterfuck to clean up. Good morning my lady, lad." He gave Asgar a grimace as he strode from the tent, looking for all the world like he couldn't get out fast enough. For the third time, silence ruled the tent, though at least it wasn't his pronouncement that had brought it about this time.

He didn't have a great track record of success with those.

"So," Asgar said eventually.

"So," Lady Valentia echoed, raising a single eyebrow.

"What now?"

"That depends on you." He raised manacled hands.

"Doesn't much feel like it, if I'm honest." She put away the quill she'd pulled from a trunk behind her, settled the sheafs of paper in one corner of the desk, and turned the fullness of her attention on him.

"Believe it or not, I am willing to help you. I am willing to train you, in as much as my position permits, and teach you a sliver of the things you will need to know about this new world you're about to find yourself in. Because, mark my words, Asgar: your life has now changed." Her stare was fierce, that same hunting-bird attention riveting him to the mud where he still knelt.

"But I'll not waste my time on an angry child. If you accept my help, you'll also have to accept that this world hides depths you've never before seen, secrets you can't yet fathom. Are you ready for that?"

"My life changed the day my village burned and I swore my oath to God," he said.

"I'm looking for vengeance now. I'm not interested in being a pawn in the games of the powerful."

"Ah, but you already are. Whether you want to be is irrelevant. The sooner you accept that, the better. But yes, I'll help you with your vengeance." Her eyes gleamed as she leaned forwards across the desk.

"There are those we both want dead. Work with me, Asgar, and I'll point you in their direction."

"Even the Lance?" he asked, and for a single second he thought he might have caught a flicker of hesitation on her face. Then it was smothered by a lethal smirk.

"Even the Lance," she confirmed.