the ground, and the grainy taste of the world was upon him. It mingled with the residual flesh and blood to leave a horrifying taste, but there was precious little he could do about that. He clawed with his right hand and a nail bent back on itself. That pain barely registered.
“Kantal!”
His prince! Of course. Yes of course. He was returning to his senior officer. As he lifted his head, it was like lifting the world itself. When he finally managed to get the trapped man in his sights, the image swayed from side to side. He couldn’t keep his damned head still. The man was so close now, but the voice still seemed distant. It was like the prince cried out from another time and place. He shook his head, but that was not a good idea. The dizziness was overwhelming, and he conceded. When he next opened his eyes, he could taste the stomach acids mingling with the other horrors in his mouth. Would that ever wash out?
But no! He had come this far. He was still alive, and that was something. A lot really. Legs! He still had lower limbs. How had he forgotten that? With every effort still left to him, he forced himself onto all fours, struggling with his balance. Air breathed over the deep slash to his stomach, and it was like molten steel had been poured over him. Strangely euphoric too. His head left him again, but he retained his knees, and was soon capable of forward movement. It was slow progress.
By the time he reached his prince, it was almost as if the sun had departed. But that was clearly an illusion – a consequence of the cannon wastage. In this veil, the sun may as well never have come up. Time had no meaning in this nightmare. And it was a nightmare.
“Kantal.” The prince broke into a deep cough – one of those that sound like the lung will pop out. Too much smoke perhaps. Then why was he not coughing? Too soon, and when it did come, it was like someone had reached down his throat and was throttling his guts. The back of his acid stained throat tickled, and the vomit threatened again. That was not going to get any nicer any time soon. Best to sleep perhaps? He closed his eyes.
“No, you must not! We must get help.”
What help? He obeyed – of course he did – and managed a laugh. He actually managed a chuckle. It was perverse. The battlefield was empty but for their near corpses. Delfinia must surely have departed, and they would be left to rot in the eternal graveyard that was the Bloody Gash. They were doomed, and no amount of royal optimism would change that.
But this was no bad thing. He would die trying; a purpose to his act. That was more than he could ever have asked for. But he feared that his prince would not share his sense of satisfaction. It would be nice if the prince could escape, but that seemed remote. Perhaps he could give the prince some peace.
“Thank you, sir.” To speak was to drain what little reserves he had. His head crashed back to the dry ground, consciousness fading. His eyelids were heavy. So heavy. It was time to sleep.
“No Kantal. Open your eyes! That is an order.”
It was futile, but he obeyed. He was conditioned. The prince’s face was vibrating, juddering from side to side – it made him feel sick to be honest. And yet he didn’t think he had any sick left in him.
The juddering turned gradually into a shudder.
And the shudder turned into a tremor.
And then it was impossible to ignore. He focussed his eyes to investigate. The prince smiled knowingly, and the reality sank in. He was a fool. Of course they wouldn’t leave the prince. They were being rescued.
The heir actually managed a grunt of a laugh, though it was heavily filtered. This was no place for joy. As the rescuing officers came into view, the prince looked at him with sorrow in his eyes. Sorrow and something else.
“I have never seen you like that before.”
Wasn’t that the truth? It was not a sustainable state. He managed to forge words through his swollen lips.
“I was saving it.” The ‘s’ came out as a whistle where his tooth was missing, and he scowled at himself. How would he afford to get that replaced? Perhaps he wouldn’t need to. He may well still die.
Because you couldn’t beat a mandahoi. There was always a price.
The prince locked him with a gaze. “You can’t beat a mandahoi, Kantal.”
A shot of energy raced through him, shocking him. Was that pride? How would he know? He had forgotten its taste.
“But you, sir, can beat three.”
He managed to turn his head to the haze, to the battlefield behind. There, from where he had hauled his devastated body, lay a pile of Grey. And spearing the tower of corpses was one hell of a blade. His blade. The bastards had near killed him, but he had had the last. He had proven his point, and he had saved his prince.
The sight of the blade caught him, and he smiled. She looked good there, speared through the bodies of her victims. But she would be better by his side.
“You won’t let them leave...”
His voice trailed off and a screaming darkness consumed him. As he slipped into the protective ignorance, the prince nodded through his fading vision. Blessed Mother, he hoped he did.
The Now
Six
“Tell me, General. What makes you think that you have earned the right to gamble with my lord’s property?” He fingered the pommel of his beloved sword. This was not his arena.
Tension filled the space, refusing to leak out of the wide window at the far end of the room. If he spoke wrong, he would be out of here, and Gorfinian hospitality was not to be relied upon either. There was genuine danger in the room. He rose from his seat and looked to the far end of the room. Uncountable fools had been thrown out of that window, and in many cases it would have been for declarations of far more substance than his own. He ground his teeth together and fidgeted his hands. The King of Gorfinia ruled with fear, so when he was irked, the retribution could be steep. He didn’t fancy the price of that backlash.
The aide shifted and balled a fist. “Come, General. Stop wasting our time. Why should we trust you?”
It was time to speak. It was time to believe in his feats. It was time to be his reputation.
“Because I am the man they call Mandestroy.”
There was only silence. It was such a deep silence that it filled the room with suffocating pressure. When the King of Gorfinia raised his hand, he feared it would be dropped in anger. He feared for his life. But the fist didn’t drop. Instead the Hooded King gestured to his aide. His wishes were to be relayed.
“We will hear your plans.”
The pressure evaporated, and he felt momentarily giddy. When the room stopped spinning, he noticed that it was pitch dark outside. A clear night too. Cold. He breathed easily and his breath misted before him, but he had to hold the back of his chair to steady himself sitting down. On his way past, his king squeezed his shoulder. It was a welcome gesture.
He took a mighty gulp of water and considered his speech, pulling his lips over his teeth. He had to be confident with the telling, even if that same assurance wasn’t coursing through him. He had been confident once, but this political cauldron had stripped the assurance right back to its bones. They were fragile bones as it turned out. He had been proud of the well-considered plan when he’d conjured it; but now it was flaking. This environment was germinating doubt, and those trivial weaknesses now seemed like gaping holes. Here he was looking to take the chance, but he still needed to earn it. He sucked down the fluttering sensation in his stomach. He would do this for Delfin.
“We will attack all three gates at once. We will attack in unison, stretching the Mandari resistance thin. And when their line is thinnest, we will strike. We will jump at their soft underbelly with a sharp knife in our hands. They will bleed from within.”
When he put it like that, it fit like a gauntlet. Yes, it would work. Wouldn’t it? The rest of the room seemed ready to question it.
It was the Mikaetan Emperor who drew attention, shuffling in his chair and smacking his lip
s. He didn’t look impressed.
“There is nothing new there, General. That is a plan that has failed a hundred times before.”
Was it? Then why hadn’t he read about it? He had devoured the military journals in the library, so why didn’t he know this? His brow grew warm and his hands went clammy. His king saved him from blustering through a response.
“Forgive us, Imperial Majesty, but you have not heard the full detail.”
The wobbly ruler stood, his chair tipping and crashing to the ground. Before he even got a word out, a servant had whipped out of the shadows and righted the fallen furniture.
“I don’t need the bloody detail! The union at its height could not crack those gates, so what do you expect our current splintered faction to achieve? If anything, the locks are now tighter than ever. What do you think has changed that you can come here and claim elevation above the greatest in history? What?”
His king looked affronted. The Mikaetan Empire may be waning, but it was still the largest of the three neighbours. The Emperor held a weight way beyond that which he carried on his gut. The man would not be won. And it was then that the fifth table-guest twitched – right on cue. It was time. He did not relish introducing his guest, but this was why he was here. He was useful.
“May I introduce to you, the Lord of Chance.”
He swept a hand to the man opposite, and his guest nodded very subtly. He seemed to be