As he approached the gates many days later, Nikomedes saw banners of mourning hanging from the ramparts. They were long, black strips with House Zosime’s traditional blue color forming an uninterrupted border as they streamed down the walls of the citadel, and Nikomedes felt his pulse quicken as he wondered what it could mean.
That the banners were solid black, rather than alternating patterns of white and black, meant that the mourning had only just officially begun. But they also meant that one of House Zosime’s own daughters had been lost, and the burning of incense could even be smelled through the driving rain which had turned the area around the citadel’s walls into gritty mud.
“Nikomedes!” he heard one of the gate guards cry, his eyes quickly fixing on the Minos Sword which Nikomedes had carried over his shoulder for several weeks, as a lumberjack might carry an axe. “You mean…it’s true?!”
“Who does the Hold mourn?” Nikomedes asked tightly, ignoring the man’s fascination with the Minos Sword and noting that even the guardsman was wearing the black cloth of mourning over his armor.
The guard, whose name was Atrius, tore his eyes from the mighty weapon and shook his head worriedly, “Lady Adonia has disappeared from the citadel; neither she, nor her bodyguard Persus or handmaiden Leonora, could be found until…until…” the man gulped before finishing, “until we received word that she has been killed by Sky Demons.”
Nikomedes was shocked by this particular turn of events. It had been hundreds of years since the last confirmed Sky Demon sighting, and upon hearing this ludicrously unlikely happening he set his jaw and cast a look skyward in frustration. “Where is Kephus?” he demanded after composing his thoughts.
“Kastor Kephus stands vigil at the Inner Keep, keeping watch over the Great Hall after every person of note assembled there to join Hold Mistress Zosime in her grieving,” Atrius replied solemnly before his face twisted into a sour expression and he added, “Nykator and the Tegeans seem less than dismayed at the First Daughter’s disappearance, though.”
“Then she has only disappeared?” Nikomedes asked, feeling a small measure of hope at the revelation.
Atrius shook his head, “She is gone, Nikomedes. The Sky Demons dragon took her into its belly before rising through the clouds and disappearing into the River of Stars.”
“A dragon?!” Nikomedes repeated incredulously, his previous hope dashed against the savage rock of truth formed by the man’s declaration. “What madness is this—has grief muddled your mind?” he demanded, taking a menacing step forward and causing the other man to back away quickly while holding his hands up in the universal gesture of self-defense.
“Dozens of witnesses have come from the scene in the westerlands,” Atrius said hurriedly, “they say she fought bravely against the Sky Demons—even leading a militia to rout the beasts and defeat of one of their gods by her own hand, and those of her Ice Raider allies—before the dragon came to claim her.”
“Ice Raiders?” Nikomedes froze in his tracks, narrowing his eyes as his mind raced with the possible implications of Kratos’ people having moved this far south. “What Ice Raiders?”
“Kephus will know more,” Atrius said guardedly, “word from the Keep is sparse and only travels in whispers. Surely you can find more by speaking with Kephus.”
Nikomedes eyed him skeptically for a moment before pushing past him and making his way into the citadel. As he strode past the unusually thick crowds of people, he heard the hushed voices of people directing the attention of their neighbors to the sword he now bore as his own.
He paid them no mind as he made his way to the Inner Keep, where Kephus stood with his handful of top men. Kephus wore his suit of Stone Rhino armor, and Nikomedes knew it was the prudent choice given the obvious tension permeating the populace within the citadel’s walls. When Nikomedes arrived, Kephus’ eyes fixed on him for several long moments before he spared a look at the Minos Sword.
“All in the citadel know of your quest, Nikomedes,” Kephus growled, clearly displeased by his own words. “But it would seem your Quest of Acclaim has come too late; Lady Adonia Zosime has been taken.”
“Atrius informed me as much,” Nikomedes said heavily, matching the other man’s glare with an unyielding one of his own. He knew they dared not risk revealing their alliance until the moment Kephus made his own move, but Nikomedes would not let his ally scold him for accepting Nazoraios’ help. He had done the impossible by journeying to the chasm, retrieving the blade, and returning alive to tell of the tale—and, more importantly, to use the Minos Sword to advance his own agenda.
Kephus took the meaning in his visage plainly enough, scowling as he said, “You’ll need to be dressed more completely than you are when you’re presented to the Hold Mistress; head to the barracks and tell Vasikus to get you a new set of armor.”
Nikomedes nodded. “I will return,” he said before setting off to do as Kephus had suggested.
“That’s the largest one we have,” Vasikus said gruffly, “and it’s still too short at the base. You’ll have three inches of exposed midsection if you wear it as it is, even in a crouch.”
“What do you suggest?” Nikomedes asked, agreeing with the older man’s assessment.
Vasikus considered the matter for several moments before replying, “There’s no easy way to add metal onto a breastplate…we might need to go to the citadel’s Master Armorer and see if he has something bigger to start with.”
“I cannot wait for a new suit to be fashioned,” Nikomedes growled.
“Of course not,” Vasikus agreed, “but we have weeks before the mourning period is over—assuming the First Daughter doesn’t return,” he added as an afterthought, “during which time no challenges of any kind may be held. Even the neighbor states will observe the traditional interval and avoid the instigation of conflict until it has passed.”
“A suit of plate armor takes months to fashion,” Nikomedes said shortly. “I can wear a ring mail shirt over a supple leather jerkin for now—“
“No,” Vasikus said sternly, and Nikomedes began to suspect that Vasikus was hiding something, “the bearer of such a fine blade can’t be seen in such a ragtag set of gear. We’re going to the armory,” he declared, gesturing for Nikomedes to lead the way.
Unconvinced of the plan’s truthfulness or wisdom, but generally agreeing that he would need better protection than was available in the barracks if he was to dispose of his rivals, Nikomedes followed Vasikus from the barracks to the armory forge. The plume of black smoke rising from its massive, centralized chimney never ceased—except when the wind shifted to blow it in the direction of the Inner Keep, at which point a series of cleverly engineered stone passageways were employed to divert the smoke around the Keep itself—and it was billowing upward as the metalworkers below worked tirelessly to outfit the soldiers of Argos with the finest panoply in the land.
The air was sharp and acrid, causing Nikomedes to cough several times at the unaccustomed sensation which the armorers seemed not to notice. As he followed Vasikus into one of the smaller forges, they came to a man who was pounding on a piece of metal with a large, well-crafted hammer in his hand.
The other hand, however, ended in a contraption which Nikomedes had only ever seen a handful of times. The armorer had clearly suffered dismemberment at some point which had cost him half of his arm below the elbow, but the leather straps of the clamp affixed to the end of his stump held the vice-like contraption in place almost as though it was a mechanical hand of sorts. That artificial hand held the glowing metal which the armorer shaped over the curved portion of the anvil against which his hammer struck with perfect rhythm between shaping blows made to the metal itself.
“Armorer Haldis,” Vasikus called out above the din of at least a dozen metalworkers pounding on their own projects, and the middle-aged man—which veritably made him an elder among Nikomedes’ people—looked up from his work to see Nikomedes and Vasikus.
Haldis picked up the metal—which a
ppeared to be an axe head in an early stage of formation, though Nikomedes was far from expert in metalworking—and doused it in a nearby barrel of water for a moment before placing it on the stone bench beside the anvil and loosening the straps which held his mechanical limb in place.
Nikomedes watched with curious fascination as the man removed the prosthetic, rather than simply unfixing it from the metal he had been working, and caught the other man’s eye. “It takes longer to set the clamp to the metal,” he gestured with his stump toward the axe head and attached prosthetic ‘arm,’ “than it does to take the thing off my own arm.” He gave Nikomedes an appraising look before literally walking a circle around him and grunting, “Thinner in the middle than in my memory…but we can work with that.”
Nikomedes arched an eyebrow. “What do you mean? Have we met?”
“Nay,” Haldis replied with a snort, “though I saw you fight in your first tournament last year. That was a fine choke hold you finished Kallistos with,” he added approvingly as he waved his stump half-jokingly, “would that I had the limbs to employ it myself, at times. Wait here,” Haldis instructed before setting off to the far end of the workspace and disappearing into the room beyond the far door.
Nikomedes waited for several minutes with Vasikus, listening to the pounding of hammers against metal and the pumping of the billows in the smaller sub-forges. Eventually Haldis returned, bearing a rack from which hung what looked to be a completely new suit of armor.
“Let’s see how these old eyes did,” Haldis said gruffly, gesturing for Nikomedes to strip out of his armor and try this other suit on.
Nikomedes eye Vasikus warily, who shrugged. “Kephus said not to tell you,” he explained. “Haldis approached him after the tournament about fashioning a suit for you, and he thought it would be a fine idea but only after you returned from your quest for that sword…speaking of which,” he said, gesturing an unspoken request to hold the blade.
Nikomedes knew that even if the older guardsman decided to try keeping the weapon for himself, he could kill him a dozen ways before he left the room, so he grudgingly nodded and handed it to the old man before stripping out of the suit.
“By Men…” Vasikus said with undisguised surprise, “a heavy thing isn’t it?”
That had been Nikomedes’ initial impression as well, but after over a month of practicing with it he had found the blade to be far quicker and more responsive than its dimensions suggested. Of course, proper footwork was essential—as was being significantly larger than average, which Vasikus was not—to maximizing the blade’s maneuverability, but he was not about to let slip his real feelings about the Minos Sword.
“It is,” he agreed after stripping out of his pauldrons and beginning to unclasp his greaves. “Perhaps King Lykurgos was a giant,” he added offhandedly.
Vasikus chuckled, as did Haldis, who eyed the blade with the reverent respect that only a man whose life had been spent shaping metal into such implements could possibly know.
“You won’t have much time to practice with it,” Vasikus said absently. “When the mourning is over, the fighting will undoubtedly commence—and you just made yourself enemy number one of every hot-blooded stag looking to make a name for himself as Nykator’s eldest daughter, Hesper, assumes the First Daughter’s place.”
Nikomedes nodded grimly, having come to the same conclusion after hearing of Lady Adonia’s disappearance. Without Adonia there as the Land Bride of Messene, Nykator would doubtless move to have his own daughters advanced in the line of succession as was customary after the death of the eldest.
Though this particular development would complicate matters later on—assuming Nikomedes did not find his opportunity to engage Nykator, as Men had instructed him to do should such an opportunity arise—it made very little difference in the here and now. Nikomedes would still need to prove his dominance over the other competitors for Lady Hesper, who was the eldest of Nykator’s daughters but even with the most aggressive promotion of her own career she would remain under her father’s protection for several years before she could take on a Protector of her own.
In that moment, and that moment alone in his entire life, Nikomedes actually regretted not taking up Kratos on his offer to become Valeria’s Protector. Doing so had delayed him from taking a place of prominence from which he could achieve his goals by several years now that Lady Adonia had been taken by the Sky Demons.
But the moment passed when he reminded himself that, if he had accepted Kratos’ offer, it would have meant the perpetuation of a dishonorable way of life which ran directly against the mandates of Men.
Haldis helped him into the new suit of armor—which was every bit the equal of any suit not made of Stone Rhino hide—and was unabashedly amazed at how well the casement fit.
“It feels like a second skin, Master Haldis,” Nikomedes said appreciatively as he twisted this way and that.
“I’m not pleased with the breastplate’s lower flare,” Haldis scowled. “My memory suggested you had a greater girth, but the extra inch or so outside your greaves and armored kilt will restrict your movements unnecessarily and might make a turn of the torso a fatal lock-up. I can make the necessary adjustments tomorrow,” he assured Nikomedes, who genuinely saw nothing wrong with the design as it was, “just return at dawn with the armor and it will be done by dusk.”
“You have my thanks, Haldis,” Nikomedes nodded graciously before turning to Vasikus and adding, “inform Kastor Kephus of my gratitude as well.”
Vasikus grunted. “Kephus has likely already announced your return official,” he explained, “to keep the vultures from moving in until the mourning period is done in two weeks. I suspect tonight’s among the last where you can sleep well.”
“Let the challengers come,” Nikomedes scoffed. “I am prepared.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Vasikus said grimly, handing the Minos Sword hilt-first to Nikomedes. “I never thought I would hold one of the Swords of Power during my life,” he added with a gracious nod of his head, “you have my thanks.”
Nikomedes accepted the weapon before realizing it would not do to carry it over his shoulder perpetually as he had done during the trip back from the chasm. “Master Haldis—“ he began, only to have the older man nod knowingly and interrupt.
“It will be ready in the morning,” he assured him, “do you have any heraldry you would choose for it? Some of the ore-pounders have reasonable talent engraving leather, and I’ve a pile of Stone Rhino scraps leftover from the last set we made for Kallistos after his kill.”
Nikomedes knew exactly what he wanted to have engraved on the weapon’s hook-and-scabbard, which would bear the weapon across his back, and he took a piece of charcoal to draw the basic design on the nearby bench’s work surface. “I leave the details to your engravers,” he said, having little artistic ability but fairly certain he had gotten the idea across with his crude sketch. Nikomedes then realized what the smith had said and his brow furrowed in confusion, “Kallistos killed a Stone Rhino out of season?”
Haldis and Vasikus scowled in near perfect unison as the old guardsman explained, “Zenobios slew the beast, but Kallistos fell upon him shortly thereafter. The brat dares not wear the armor in the Great Hall since he did not kill the beast himself, but I imagine it will see plenty of use in the days to come—especially after he learns of your successful retrieval of this grand weapon.”
“Is Zenobios dead?” Nikomedes asked, more to confirm the suspicion than out of confusion.
“Would have made no sense for Kallistos to take him the way he did without finishing the deed,” Vasikus said sourly. “But I saw the fight with my own two eyes; it was fairly done and Zenobios refused to yield after Kallistos put him to the ground.”
Nikomedes chuckled as he realized that he was no longer one among many, but first among few in the line for the First Daughter’s hand. “He saved me from doing it myself, then,” he explained when the other men gave him quizzical looks. “Though th
e Stone Rhino would have made a fine suit of armor,” he added before looking down at the armor he now wore, “I doubt it would provide equal range of motion to this casement. Again, you have my compliments, Master Haldis.”
Haldis grunted agreeably and made to strap the prosthetic onto his stump—which took less time than removing it had done—and he returned to his work without another word, prompting Nikomedes and Vasikus to leave the forge and return to the barracks where Nikomedes made his way to his bunk and closed his eyes to gather his energy for the day to come.
Chapter XXIII: A Hero’s Welcome?
“Guardsman Nikomedes,” Hypatios Nykator greeted in his deep, booming voice as soon as Nikomedes had set foot inside the Great Hall. Across his back was the Minos Sword, which had a new hook-and-scabbard that bore the chosen heraldry which Haldis’ men had engraved in the hard, grey leather: a crown with the front-most spire shaped in the image of the Minos Sword’s hilt and crosspiece. “Welcome back to the citadel,” Nykator continued as Nikomedes made his way through the parted crowd until standing before the Hold Mistress’ dais.
Hold Mistress Polymnia Zosime’s previously unscathed regal bearing was showing metaphorical cracks, as dark semicircles had taken up residence beneath her eyes and her lips were pale pink instead of the full, nearly red color than he been when last he’d seen her. It was clear that her daughter’s fate weighed heavily on her, but the First Daughter’s stool to her right was pointedly devoid of an occupant.
Wasting no time in doing so, Nikomedes took to the first step and immediately kneeled before the Hold Mistress. “The Hold has lost more than just its First Daughter to the accursed Sky Demons,” he said somberly, his eyes fixed to the floor where her feet rested as he spoke. “I stand ready to serve however I am best able, Hold Mistress.”
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