Ramire’s men who had stood before the wall were gone, and the gate stood open.
Sean would have preferred to teleport directly to the infirmary, but the general was already uncomfortable enough with all the magic he had been using, so he popped a cough drop into his mouth, and then lifted Gérard in Prince’s saddle and mounted up behind him.
They walked back to the compound. Ramire’s men preceded them, Elias and Ramire walked on either side of Sean and his oblivious cargo. His own men followed close behind; Manuel retrieved the flag and held it high as they marched into the front courtyard of the castle.
Blood Bridges
Sean’s horses were left near the whipping post under the watchful eye of Carris, then Ramire led the way to the closest infirmary. Coincidentally, it wasn’t the one that had the badly wounded soldier Sean had healed earlier. I wonder how the man is doing; perhaps I’ll find out later.
In the nearest empty bed, Sean and the doctor began to cut away the leather that could now be seen to have been stitched onto him. Sean hadn’t noticed that about Laon; he had had a full helmet on, but then he had had nothing to do with disrobing him. Manuel had had a black scarf around his face, not this stitched leather mask. Different districts, different styles of god-awful punishment.
As the leather came away, the aftermath of the torture was plain to see, though the scars were fading quickly, leaving behind a wealth of accumulated dead skin and old scabs. After the leather was all removed, the doctor examined him closely, then turned to those who had brought him in for an explanation.
“I expect him to sleep for ten to twelve hours before beginning to wake,” said Sean. Where is a chair when you need one?
“What’s wrong with him? What happened to him?” asked the doctor.
“He was a demon,” stated Sean. “Elias, why don’t you get reacquainted with your father. I’ll be staying here. Doctor, if you could get me some soap and water, I think I’ll give him a bath.” Now that the leather was gone, the stink was horrible.
“Seanad, you don’t think…” said Elias.
“No, I don’t, but I’d rather be here just in case,” replied Sean as he pulled his gloves off.
The two of them hung around for a while hoping that the inert man would stir, but though he breathed, he didn’t move.
When the requested water didn’t arrive, Sean created some and he and Laon rolled the limp man around while washing him as best they could, thankful the man had no hair to try to figure out how to wash. I wonder if the sores caused by the leather had been part of his torture. Did they hose them off once in a while when the stink got too bad?
They were just finishing when a young man came in toting two buckets of steaming water. He shook his head at himself. They had heated the water on the stove; of course, that would have taken some time. “Job’s done,” he said. “Let’s move him to another bed and you can take these linens.” He glanced at the inert body again. “He’ll probably want a real bath when he wakes up.”
Now there was little to do but wait. Hours ticked away. Sean dozed on the neighboring bed while Laon and Manuel stood guard, occasionally talking in whispers. Elias and his father drifted in and out, both of them anxious to know the outcome.
Sean could hear men training both near and far, and he could occasionally hear men marching or jogging in the hall. He could also think, and a dozen questions floated around in his head. Why was this man in this place? Why did he have such a large force? Have I been through this place or did I only go to the city? I wish I could remember that ride. And Ramire, he was a Ludwyn commander, but where did his loyalties really lie? What had been the order of events that made Gérard a demon and his father a general? Did Ludwyn know of Ramire’s connection to Elias, or was that just a coincidence? The questions churned and looped until near sundown when Elias and his father came back yet again, this time with a thin stew.
“I’ve watered the horses,” commented Elias as they sat down around the bed to eat their meager supper. Sean nodded and allowed himself to study briefly the faces of the only father he had ever known and the man who was his father in turn, then he turned back to his bowl.
“You have more questions, don’t you?” asked Ramire, as he set his empty bowl aside. “You have no idea the pandemonium you caused when you blew through here. Your entrance was enough alarm all by itself; no one just walks into a place like this, well, not many anyway. Then that emblem of yours showed up; both infirmaries and half the barracks were full of wounded by the time the sun rose again.”
“Why?” Sean was appalled at the high casualty rate Ramire was hinting at. “I didn’t do that, did I?”
Ramire shook his head bitterly. “Because of…your uncle. I can only assume that you had already made other stops. He contacted me and told me that if even so much as one man attempted to desert, my son would pay the consequences.”
“Your son… So, you knew Gérard was…” Sean began, but Ramire waved him to silence and shook his head.
“I had no idea where or…” He looked over at the sleeping form on the bed, “…or what he was. All I knew was that Ludwyn had him. If I had known…this, many things would have been different.”
Sean could imagine what a commander of a force like this might do if he thought he could get away with it. “Ludwyn would have killed all of them.”
“I know that,” said Ramire, bitterly. “But maybe, just maybe my son and I would be among them and the agony would be over. I saw him snatched; he and my daughter were both taken at the same time. My wife collapsed and died then. We both knew what had happened; my wife had never been very strong, though she gave me three fine children. With her gone, and Elias god knows where, I had nothing left. I went after them. It took me nearly a month to reach the capital, and I don’t know how many horses I killed under me to do it. When I got there, Ludwyn was waiting for me. He knew I would come. He paraded them out like trophies. He gave me my daughter, kept my son, then he sent me here. Janine was able to deliver his message before she died. She had been… My son…” He couldn’t continue. Sean could see the pain on his face; the lines were already well etched.
“Why here, why this post? What happened to the previous commander?” asked Sean, trying to be gentle in the face of the man’s renewed grief, but he needed to know more.
Ramire stiffened and set aside his grief. “I don’t know what happened to the previous commander here. He was…eliminated. I didn’t ask questions. I suppose he needed a replacement; I had been a captain general of the border patrol under your grandfather until I retired shortly before he and your father were killed. I can’t even begin to understand his logic.”
“Did Ludwyn know that Elias was your son, too?” asked Sean, searching for some connection there as well.
“I don’t know; he never asked about him, never mentioned his name,” said Ramire.
He looks deflated.
“He knew,” said a quiet voice from the bed. Gérard was awake.
Sean, Elias and Ramire went quickly to the bed. “He kept asking me where my brother had gone. He wanted to know where he might be hiding. I’m glad that I didn’t know. I ended up telling him about every little nook I knew of and anything else I could think of. I’m sure that, because of me, he had men combing the entire country looking for you. I’m glad he didn’t find you.” Gérard closed his eyes weakly.
Elias took his brother’s hand. “Neither I, nor Ferris, had a say in where we went; Clayton chose our hiding place.”
“Good,” said Gérard, and with a sigh, he pushed himself to sit up. He looked around. “Where am I? What is this place?” Then he saw his father. “What happened to your hair, Dad? Elias?”
“It’s been seventeen years, Son,” said Ramire.
“Seventeen… I don’t remember that much time,” said Gérard.
“Don’t try,” said Sean. “It’s not worth it. It’s over now.” He turned back to Ramire. “One last question, sir: Where do your loyalties lie?”
; “Humbly at your feet, my lord,” replied Ramire. He would have bowed low, but the bed was in his way. “I would be honored to command under the White Star. What are your orders?”
Gérard watched this exchange with ill-concealed amazement. His father was bowing down to a boy that had scarcely grown into his armor. “Who are you?” he asked.
“He’s your king,” said Elias, grinning. “He’s why I had to leave. Someday I’ll tell you about it.”
Gérard scrutinized his brother; his brain was still flitting through old and fragmented memories and current, incomplete events all jumbled together. “You still setting things on fire?” he asked.
Elias chuckled; Ramire looked pained, but he too grinned, while Sean laughed aloud. “Especially when he’s high,” he said, which won a guilty look from Elias and an utterly confused look from Gérard and Ramire.
Sean sighed. “I need to get back to camp before Mattie comes unglued. Dad, do you want to stay here or…what?”
Ramire spoke up, stricken. “I was hoping you would stay, my lord. I would like to present your army to you in the morning.”
“I’ll return, then. See you in the morning. Dad?”
“I’ll stay tonight. You can send me back to the palace in the morning.”
“Right,” said Sean. He strode out of the room, followed by Laon and Manuel. Outside the door, Sean turned to Manuel. “You stay with Elias,” he said, and Manuel merely nodded and resumed his position at the door.
Curious, Sean walked across the vast entry to the other infirmary. He wanted to see how his patient there had fared. An entire day had passed since the excitement of the morning, and by now everyone knew of the strange young man who had come in with the general, and the entire command staff knew of the happenings in the infirmary, even if they didn’t understand all of the particulars. It was, therefore, not surprising that the doctor in charge of the second infirmary knew who he was, too.
With a bow, the man eagerly showed Sean through his infirmary as if he had come there for an inspection. Sean didn’t know anything about medicine or hospitals, but the place looked clean and neat, and he knew that, at least, was important.
There were nine men here, all sleeping now. “Training accidents, my lord,” explained the doctor, speaking quietly so as not to wake them. “The instructors are careful, but accidents will happen.”
“They were fighting each other?” asked Sean.
“Yes, they were, but they’ll be back among the ranks by next week.”
Sean moved over by the man he had healed. He still looked pale, but it was an improvement over what he had seen before.
“He’s recovering nicely,” said the doctor. “I had almost given him up for dead.” Sean glowered at the man. “I couldn’t repair the artery in his leg; I couldn’t stop the bleeding enough. It’s a miracle he survived.”
“Try harder next time,” said Sean, and he left the man amidst his promises. “It would be better for a soldier to bleed to death on the operating table than to die a much slower death from infection caused by loss of circulation,” he said over his shoulder.
Sean returned to the front courtyard before the sun had even begun to rise. His lazy day had made for a restless night; he had even tried thinking of Armelle, but that only made things worse and he didn’t want to wake her. After rousing Laon, he had informed the watch commander of his intentions, and left.
At first Laon had stood aside to be his bodyguard, but as Sean toyed with the idea of using the whipping post as a target, he remembered what he had seen Laon try to do the day he had taken the boy, Kendal, flying over the camp. Now was as good a time as any; he pulled Laon over and pared him off with the heavy post.
“You’re not here to chop the post down, so don’t. What I want you to do is use all your strength and speed, see how close you can get, but without touching it. Now, follow what I do.” Sean took him through the simplest set he knew, reminding him from time to time that the post was not there to stop his sword. After he felt that Laon had a handle on the kind of control he wanted, he moved him away from the post with the admonishment that the post was still there, but only in his head this time.
The distraction was welcome for Sean, but it was definitely not a distraction for Laon, who was grimly determined to learn this form of practice.
Watching him, Sean remembered his own first days like this. It had seemed pointless and frustrating to pull his strike at the last second, and only at the very last second. It wasn’t until much later that he learned the value of such control, then later still that he could enjoy the solitary workouts he currently used whenever he had the chance.
By the time the sun started to light the sky, Laon was wrung of everything he could manage for his first lesson. Sean then drew his second sword and went ahead with his own workout. He was well into it when men began to show up for their formation.
Sean purposefully continued, switching to the most complicated set he knew. The teacher he had learned it from had been a wide-shouldered man with straight, black hair that hung lank and stringy, but he knew how to use two swords and seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, especially when his hair obscured the two he did have in the front of his head. In an effort to outdo this long-dead teacher from another life, Sean made additions, and while the men gathered, he pitted himself against the impossible. In his mind, the old master became a hundred. In his mind, his battle raged while soldiers, hushed by the spectacle, assembled.
Sean’s display made them see the death at the end of his swords. They saw the destruction within his reach. They all knew that even the very best among them wouldn’t last but moments against that onslaught. Men of the sword would follow a leader who understood the sword, even if he was not the man who would be leading their charge into battle. They would follow him because they knew that he was fully aware of what he sent them into. They would follow him because they knew that if they didn’t, he would go alone, and if he did that, they would be lost and leaderless. They would go where he said because they knew they could not afford to lose such a king.
When his battle was won, he froze for a moment over his last kill, then he straightened slowly, sheathed his swords and brushed the sweat from his eyes with his palm. Just then a man appeared with a small cloth and a flask of water. After only a moment’s hesitation, he used the cloth to mop the rest of his sweat, then downed the water with a quiet “thanks.” The residue of the battle still gripped him and he used the incongruous chain of events to further remove himself from it.
Elias, Gérard and Ramire stepped up beside him, and Sean noticed everyone’s pink noses and foggy breaths as the rest of the men shuffled into order; here he was sweating and still a little jumpy, and everyone else was feeling the chill morning.
“That was impressive,” said Elias. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one before.”
“It’s complicated,” said Sean. “I seldom have the time for it.” He took a deep breath, trying to clear some of the adrenaline from his blood.
Ramire had no comment. He couldn’t find the words to describe what he had just witnessed; ‘impressive’ didn’t seem to cover it. Gérard just watched him, his reaction hidden behind a face that had been forced to hide so much for so many years.
When each of the company commanders had called their units to attention and stood-to themselves, Ramire announced the new standing in the realm. “Here before you is your rightful king, Seanad Éireann Barleduc-Ruhin, the White Star. He is the grandson of our beloved King Lardeain, son of Crown Prince Deain.” He took a knee and drew his sword by ejecting it forward a few inches with his thumb and then drawing it the rest of the way by its blade. He then offered it to Sean, saying, “My sword is yours to command.”
Sean took the sword and lifted the man’s head with its tip. As soon as Ramire’s eyes rose from the ground, Sean nodded for him to stand. When Ramire was once again facing him, he slid the sword home in its sheath, then placed a hand on the man’s breast above his heart.
“Then I will command the heart behind it.” When he removed his hand, he left behind his emblem for everyone to see.
Ramire then led them through the ranks, where each man followed the example of the general and knelt, giving some personal vow of loyalty.
Nearly three thousand men, officers, servants, and staff turned out for the ceremony and they all vowed their loyalty. It was a very long day.
Over a late supper of more thin stew, Sean authorized Ramire to resume business as usual. He needed peacekeepers in the land as much as he needed the old royalty in command of each district. He also charged the old man with finding said family if any of it remained; the purge had been especially thorough here since he’d had the manpower to conduct an extensive search, much to his regret, but now that they all displayed the White Star, they might run up against less resistance.
Sean also left him with enough gold and silver to buy supplies from the outlying villages and farms. Then he suggested that he encourage people, possibly family members, to come and farm the land here as well as run a herd of horses for breeding and a herd of cattle for eating, among other things. Just as a person might be less inclined to throw trash on the ground if he was the one to be picking it up every day, an army that at least tried to support itself wasn’t nearly so inclined toward wastefulness.
Dungeon Justice
Sean spent the day after his departure from Ramire’s fortress searching for the capital city of Lorraine. He didn’t have much trouble finding that, but the Barleduc estate was much closer, or at least it was supposed to be, and for the life of him, he couldn’t find it.
“Dad,” he said, coming out of his tent for lunch. “Do you know where the Barleduc holding is, or where it was? Isn’t that where my mother was from?”
“Yes, the Barleduc family has been prominent in the Lorraine province for several generations. They are among the oldest families in the country, but if Ludwyn’s purge was at all successful, they would have gone into hiding like many others, and their hiding place could be warded like Marinda’s farm was. If I knew where we were here, I could probably point you directly to them; the family holdings weren’t too far from the western border of the district, but I’m lost here and it’s been so long, I don’t recognize any of the landmarks.”
The Making of a Mage King: White Star Page 18