by Jon Kiln
Nisero stomped the heel of his boot down on the man’s exposed toes. As the man screamed, Nisero rolled his elbow out and forward into the guardsman’s nose. As blood exploded around the man’s face from the impact, he staggered back.
Berengar shoved the mercenaries away, leaving the swords in their guts. “Let’s go. Turn the table so the exposed side is to the wall. We’ll go out the way we came. Can you manage, my King?”
“I can.”
Berengar, Nisero, and even the King seized the legs of the table and twisted it toward the wall. They pushed sideways toward the corner, past the throne and toward the drapery leading to the kitchen entrance. Mercenaries scattered out of their path. Arrows battered the top turned out toward the hall.
“Keep your head down below the edge!” Nisero shouted.
“Be careful!” Berengar yelled. “We’re getting close to the wall.”
They slammed into the corner with jarring force. The table wedged into the corner over the drapery. Nisero stumbled down to his knees and the King went to his side. Nisero felt the impact in his bones and his head ached.
Berengar took the King by the shoulders and wrestled him to his feet without much grace. The King’s feet shuffled under him, making Nisero think that the boots might not be the right size.
Mercenaries and surviving Elite Guardsmen regained their feet and their weapons, charging the trio’s position.
“We need to go, your majesty,” Berengar advised.
“I can make it,” he replied.
Berengar swept aside the drape and led the King through. Arrows bounced off the stone of the wall to the side of the opening and on the floor in front of the barrier of the table. Nisero surmised that the angle did not serve the archers above, but he was not interested in waiting for them to adjust their aim.
Berengar led them down the narrow stairs into the darkness behind the throne room. “Stay close between us, your majesty.”
Nisero took up the rear, running as quickly as the men in front of him would allow. He glanced over his shoulder repeatedly, watching for the attackers to leap over the table and follow.
As they approached the light, a man stepped into their path bearing a cauldron of soup in his meaty hands. His face went as white as his dirty apron when he saw Berengar barreling down at him out of the darkness.
“Has the feast been delayed, sir?”
Berengar heaved the cauldron over in the air with one hand, washing a wave of boiling broth out. Other servants scattered back into the kitchen ahead of the wash. The large servant let go of the pot and let it bounce with a gong-like ring off the stone. Berengar shoved the man out of the way, tracking through the soup.
“If any of you still hold loyalty for the true King,” Berengar urged, “take up every sharp object and stall the men chasing behind us.”
Berengar charged up the next set of steps without waiting for an answer. The King followed with his fingers clawing at the wall on both sides, struggling to keep his balance and to keep up. Nisero did not hold up much hope that the kitchen servants were prepared to take up arms to defend the King in battle. They stared in wide eyed shock. Nisero left them and ran up the dark stairs in the narrow pass behind the King.
They emerged in a wider passage and Berengar led them toward the stairs that would take them back up to the bedroom and their escape rope. As they reached the torch light, men armed with spears and swords flooded the hall from the direction of the throne room, blocking off the stairs and their intended line of escape.
“Hold there! Drop your arms and surrender!”
Berengar cursed.
The King pulled Berengar to the side. “This way.”
The trio fled down a dark corridor and around the corner onto the perimeter of the palace. They looked out barred and double paned windows overlooking the gardens. Nisero and Berengar had to climb past them on their way in.
The sound of warriors charging into the passage behind echoed off the walls.
“We need to get out of the palace, your majesty,” Berengar prompted. “They probably have the main doors. We have a rope on the top levels.”
“We don’t need to go up.” The King heaved for breath. “We need to go under.”
He opened a door and led the men in before closing it and turning the lock. Nisero saw a library with a broad mouthed hearth and shelves of books and scrolls. A mural showing the kingdom was etched high on the stone of the wall. He thought the kingdom’s borders were bigger than what this map showed, so he was not sure how old the carving might be.
What he did not see was an exit.
Berengar began shoving furniture in front of the door.
“Don’t bother,” the King said. “I could have been out long ago, if I had not been caught unaware before I could get to one of these rooms.”
“Your majesty?” Berengar turned as he slid another sofa into the door.
The King twisted one of the small busts on the shelf until it clicked and then he pushed. “Help me. I’m not myself yet.”
Nisero joined in pushing the shelf and Berengar fell in on the other side as the shelf slid back into the wall. It opened onto another dark passage with stairs leading down, more narrow than the servant entrances from the kitchens.
They entered and the King waved back. “Close it until you hear it lock in place.”
Berengar and Nisero obeyed, sliding the shelf back over the opening from behind. The light vanished, plunging them into darkness. They continued to push the shelf back in flush until they heard the pop. They heard voices shouting from through the wall but could not tell from what room they arose.
Out of the dark, three sparks popped followed by the flare of a lantern. The shallow light filled the narrow space. The King lifted the lantern casting a ghostly glow over his sallow face. His wild beard did not seem fitting of royalty at all. “Let’s be away. Your courage in lifting me from the hands of traitors and the jaws of death will not be wasted.”
The King negotiated down the stairs spiraling into the stone with the captain and the lieutenant close behind. The walls went from block to pebbled stone to carved bedrock. The air cooled noticeably and the lantern flickered like the flame was struggling to find air to burn.
They left the stairs and followed a rounded tunnel that appeared to be carved out of the solid rock below the palace. They passed a few spots where moisture seeped from cracks in the curve of the rock wall and ceiling. The smooth stone under them was slippery when wet.
The King’s voice echoed back with a little more strength than previously. “Captain Berengar, if I bring us up outside the palace, do you have a way to get us out of the city?”
“We dug in under the garden wall on the parade ground side. We can find a way out from there.”
“This tunnel will take us to the cellar of an apothecary. We will be able to slip past him to the streets outside unnoticed. I would not recommend trying to stay hidden among his barrels of herbs. We will be a few avenues away from the palace grounds. Do you have options from there, gentlemen?”
“We have a place where we can hide temporarily,” Berengar said. “I don’t believe they are aware we were there. We’ll figure out how to get out of the city just like we figured out how to get in.”
The King sighed. “I am thankful to still be alive and now free again. I had not expected to be and had not planned to be. Though I have no good idea for staying that way.”
“Yes, your majesty.”
Nisero dared to speak. “We have had some practice operating under those conditions, your majesty. Maybe we shall be able to hold out long enough to see justice returned to the land.”
The King nodded, showing only a hint of his profile. “Such are the conditions for becoming legends. I would have been satisfied to have a quiet reign with a short history in the chronicles of the kings.”
“Yes, sir,” Berengar said.
The King paused and leaned on the curve of the wall. “Could one of you carry the lantern? We are get
ting close, but I am spent from my ordeal, I’m afraid.”
The lantern shook in his grasp and Captain Berengar took it from him. “Sir, do you need one of us to carry you?”
The King shook his head. “I can still walk. Let’s keep going, please.”
Berengar led with the lantern. Nisero followed somberly behind with the King between them.
Chapter 15: A Time of Exile
Arianne dabbed the cloth against the sores on the King’s wrist. King Ramael hissed.
“My apologies, your majesty.”
King Ramael twisted his mouth into a strained smile. “No need to apologize, dear. You are doing me the favor. I will suffer through without complaint. Please, continue.”
“You need to rest more,” she said.
“Probably true, but sleep escapes me at the moment.”
She returned to cleaning the wounds and the King started showing his teeth as the wrinkles deepened around his eyes. With his beard cleaned and combed and his skin sponged clean of the filth of his captivity, he looked more himself. The King still appeared out of place without robes and finery beyond shirt, pants, belt, and borrowed boots. Still, he had the air of the King and he seemed wildly out of place sitting on the hay stuffed mattress in a dank second floor apartment.
He turned and looked toward the crack of light filtering in through the slight opening of the shutters. “Other than the chains, this is very much like the tower where they kept me while they unfolded their diabolical plan.”
“Sorry, your majesty,” Nisero said respectfully. “We will figure the path out soon.”
The King smiled. “If this is where the people of my city live, I suppose it is easy to see how they would be turned hostile once food was taken from them also.”
Arianne set aside the discolored cloth and began wrapping bandages on the King’s wrists. “Having the chains removed is a big difference though.”
Berengar made a vexing sound from where he peered through the opening in the window. “Arianne, please. Respect.”
The King smiled more naturally than before. “It is a big difference. Still, we need to get the kingdom out from under the thumb of Marlex. He uses war and starvation to create disorder and death for his own power grab. He and the nobles that conspire with him must be stopped.”
“I remember Marlex,” Berengar said.
“Not fondly, I assume,” replied the King.
Berengar smirked, twisting up the old scar on one side and the fresh, raw cut on the other. “All I remember is escorting him back to the boats on the Southern Sea. He was returning to his family’s island after his petition was denied. That was a long time ago. It was a hostile journey as I recall. I was still a new lieutenant in the Elite Guard at that point.”
Ramael nodded. “It is an old rivalry and a grudge that is generations in the making.”
“Would the details help us figure out a solution?” Nisero asked the room in general.
The King watched Arianne absent-mindedly as she worked on his minor injuries. “That I don’t know, but I will tell it all the same. It goes back to when my grandfather sat on the throne. Before I was born and when Marlex was still an infant, my uncle, Marlex’s father, was the oldest surviving son of my grandfather and heir apparent to the throne.
“The great grandfather of the current king of the kingdom to the east was nothing more than a barbarian hired into their army within their fractured ranks. They were more tribal at that point than they were a nation – almost as bad as our western border is now… almost.
“He was making a play on the throne and had their capital besieged. He sought aid from my grandfather which was denied. He sought it from my uncle. Due to the poor counsel of some disloyal nobles they sought with my uncle to displace my grandfather while he still lived, to put my uncle on the throne early. They hoped for a bloodless revolution, but the capital in the east fell and the barbarian general became a king without help from my uncle.
“With their support withdrawn, my grandfather rewarded the nobles with the spilling of their blood and gave their land away to other men. He chose exile for his eldest son. That is how they ended up on an island in the Southern Sea instead of ruling upon a throne he was too impatient to wait for.”
The King was silent for few moments, thinking of a past long gone, before finishing his recollection. “In time, my father married, I was born, and he ascended to be king. My uncle died and Marlex sought to petition to be allowed to live within the kingdom again. He did not claim to wish for a title, but said he wanted to buy land at fair price and live as a commoner building a future for his family through honest work.”
Nisero leaned against the wall, resting his lower back. “Your father denied the petition?”
“I denied it,” King Ramael revealed. “It was early in my reign relative to the amount of time I have sat upon that throne up until now, but I did not trust him.”
Arianne finished off the bandages and carried the dirty clothes away from the King and the mattress where he sat.
“Do you think he made this move out of rage for that denial?” she pertly asked.
Berengar took a long tired breath and looked out the window, but said nothing.
King Ramael scratched at his newly wrapped bandages. “If you mean that he would have lived in peace were I to allow him to buy up land and power in the kingdom, I don’t know. I doubt it now as I doubted it then. He has waited many decades for this moment to strike. If I had granted him a foothold within our borders, I think he would have undermined me much sooner, and he would have done so when I was green to the crown and even less equipped to fight back.”
“It seems you are not in much of a position to fight back now,” Arianne noted.
“Arianne...” Berengar held up a hand. “I’m begging you to hold your tongue.”
King Ramael half-smiled as he looked between the father and daughter. “Maybe I just needed to wait until Captain Berengar was seasoned enough to pull off an impossible rescue, and Lieutenant Nisero was old enough to stand between me and an army of mercenaries. At the moment, two loyal men willing to fight their way into and out of an occupied palace with their King was worth all my army.”
Nisero dipped his head politely at the compliment. “And where are your children, your majesty?”
“Each of them lives in their own fiefdoms over lords that may be no more loyal to them than my advisors were to me. I would not be surprised if Marlex has them wherever he is. He came to gloat over me in the tower more than once. I doubt the princes are there or he would have paraded them in front of me. That is assuming that they are still alive. I’m fortunate that you two have experience going up against armies of evil men, to rescue sons and daughters.”
Berengar and Nisero exchanged a look. Arianne turned away.
“If he had killed them,” Nisero said carefully, “he would likely have proven that to you as well. They must still live and maybe they did escape.”
The King agreed. “I like that reasoning.”
“We will do our best, your majesty,” Berengar vowed. “What is the ideal destination outside the city once we are on the move, as best you know?”
“I can better name who not to trust.”
“Add Caffrey and Aedwrath to that list, if you have not already,” Nisero said.
The King scoffed and curled up one side of his lip. “They are already at the top, I assure you. I hope you hurt them badly as you collected your intelligence.”
Berengar glanced at Nisero and then at the King. “As much or more in their spirits as physically.”
King Ramael waved his bandaged hand through the air. “I hereby pardon you for all the crimes committed against the nobility and crown, and all we are about to commit.”
Arianne laughed. She took a bit of animal fat from the jar on the counter and mixed it with the handful of grain they had left. She stirred until it was turned into a paste. “I’m sorry we don’t have more or better food for you to enjoy. I’ll prepare what
we do have as meager as it is for the crown.”
King Ramael shook his head. “Not at all. The feast that was being prepared in my palace kitchen was going to celebrate my death. A common meal to celebrate my life is far preferred. Speaking of the crown, I wish I had been able to grab it on our harrowing exit. I hate to leave it on the floor for those scoundrels to mistreat.”
“We will retrieve it and punish all who had a hand it taking it,” Nisero promised.
Berengar stepped away from the window. “Lieutenant, would you mind standing watch a moment for me, please.”
Nisero stood and took position by the window. The foot traffic on the street was scant and quiet as light rose through the clouds. Captain Berengar began digging through his pack. He pulled out his cloak and unfolded it slowly.
“What are you doing, captain?” the King asked.
“While we were stopped with our battering ram table, I took a moment between eviscerating mercenaries and gathering you to pick up this.”
Berengar opened the end of his clock and held the crown out in both hands. The King reached out and took it. Nisero looked away from the window long enough to see the gold and jewels shimmer through the light as they passed under the sliver from the window. The King did not put it back upon his head, but instead stared down at it in his hands over his lap.
Nisero watched the street outside again.
“How did you find the time to grab it?” King Ramael wondered.
Berengar folded up his cloak and returned it to his pack. “We were already attempting the impossible. I figured why not go for it all?”
“I’m amazed,” the King said proudly, “with all of you. This crown has sat upon the brows of generations of kings. It is nearly as old as the kingdom itself. Finer items have been crafted since, but nothing as important as this piece and what it represents.”
“I’m sorry to tote it around wrapped up inside my cloak like a common, stolen treasure. I was waiting until a more opportune time to return it. It deserves better treatment than this.”
“Being rescued at the hands of heroes is a fine addition to the long story of its history.”