Of Warriors and Victims

„Break through!“

Morgain shouted, as he lit the fires in his soldiers, slapping one of them on the back as he ran past to ram his body at the enormous gate of Wheldrake’s keep, where many others had already gathered, to form a formless gathering of men, “Make this day a glorious one! Kill all that oppose us!”

He stood at the helm of this battle, which was uncommon for one such as him, a General. He would be among the first to break through no doubt.

“Don’t give them a chance to push back!”

His shouts were carried through the ranks, drowning out the mindless screams of lesser men.
Everyone seemed to take a step back, as if in unison, only to again ram into the gate with their combined weight, which flew out of its hinges, burying those who had been trying to hold it upright beneath it. The attackers streamed into the halls of castle Wheldrake like a flood of deadly water, killing every man they could still spot beneath the broken gate. Some of them were impaled on the enemies’ weapons, which seemed to sit in wait for the flood, but this was of little matter, as the second stream of attackers cut the wall of blades down with ease. There was no time to delay.

“Kill all stragglers! Slay the loyalists! Leave none alive!”

His shouts again were mixed in with his men’s, who killed the remaining loyalists, men who had already given up due to the seemingly endless amounts of warriors streaming through the broken gate, accompanied by the man violently encouraging them to put an end to their lives. It would be enough to scare any man, truly. Morgain would have been scared, were he on the other side of this conflict.

But, unlike these men, he would not have fled. The worth of a true warrior manifested when he was riddled with fear.

The sickening sounds of blades tearing into and through flesh, the splashes of the bloody puddles as boots trampled through them and the sound of terrified screaming mixed into a grotesque symphony of terror filling the usually peaceful halls of castle Wheldrake, transforming it into a brutal, twisted nightmare.

But there was no stopping now. No going back. No surrender, only victory.

“Sir, they’re retreating!”, one of his officers, a commoner with a full face of hair and sunken in eyes, shouted at Morgain.

Sometimes he wondered what these men were better at. Murder or stating the obvious, because they tended to do both in spades.

“Don’t let them! Kill every single one of the king’s dogs! Decorate the walls with their skulls!”

Many of these men had at one point been his comrades, before he started to lead this rebellion against the king. Many good nights he’d spent with them, boozing, playing, whoring.

“Get the fookin’ king!”, one of the other officers, a slim man, whose voice sounded nothing like his appearance would let on, deep and throbbing on a thin and diseased boy, shouted.
“Alive!”, Morgain added loudly, “We need him alive! Whoever kills the fucking king will be executed! And their whole family before them!”

That got a noticeable reaction out of the mob of rebels, their unhinged will to murder everything and anything replaced by a more reserved desire to let others do the advancing, while each man looted what they could from the wealthy hall, as they ripped statues and paintings of kings and heroes long past from their pedestals. Killing was all they were good for. If it wasn’t killing, then they wanted nothing to do with it.

Morgain slowly advanced towards the corridor leading to the right wing of castle Wheldrake, generally reserved for the peasants and servants among the king’s entourage, while he was still turned towards his men, who were busy cleaning the hall of any trinket they could find.

“Don’t loiter! Search for the king! Jafrey! Take your men, advance towards the king’s quarters. Orrell, Nelsidan! Secure the throne room. I will search the secret passages for the pig!”
All of the men sounded their agreement and rallied their men to advance deeper into King Turgynn’s territory, which would soon be their own.

“Keep the damage to a minimum, I don’t want to spend a fortune on repairs!”, he shouted after them, then turning to move, his men following closely.

They met some opposition here and there, but it was a limp and weak one, like a sore cock after a wild night with a good whore, easily snuffed out and dealt with, leaving only the corpses of the loyalists behind.

“You two!”, Morgain pointed at two soldiers, whose shoulders slumped as the order was spoken, “You’ll come with me, we’ll search there!”, he pointed at an unremarkable little door, that couldn’t have led to anything of note. But Morgain knew of the secret paths out of the castle.
“The rest, search the entire fucking wing!”

Each man did as they were told and through the shouting of orders Morgain moved towards the door, through which he heard muffled voices.

“My king, you have to escape, I plead with you.”
“Nonsense, I will just wait for this to blow over.”
“It is not going to blow over, my lord.”
“What could a group of commoners possibly do to me? I trust you and the rest of the Royal Shield.”

The voice of King Turgynn, Morgain recognized. And how wrong he was on his assessment.
The other man was a member of the Royal Shield, the elite warriors and personal bodyguards of the King, no doubt about that, though Morgain couldn’t find out whom the voice belonged to. Maybe a man he had never met before.

Just behind this door they were waiting. Instead of fleeing.

He could have kicked in the door now; a man of lesser tact might have done so. Instead, Morgain pushed it open, more violently than he would normally open a door, but softly enough so that it might stay within its hinges.
He let the two men rush past him, as he swung around the door, closing it softly behind him and the peon’s following him.
The man of the Royal Shield turned, swinging his enormous blade, as he shouted in the voice of a heroic man, his massive armour like an enormous shield, shining in the light of the flickering candle on the wall.

“Get behind me, my lord!”

The king did step back, yet not in the sudden jolt expected of a man seeing his life flashing before his eyes, but with the confidence of a man who didn’t worry about the outcome.

“Kill that fucking asshole!”, Morgain shouted and the two peons shot at the mountain of steel. They were quickly dealt with, cut into two pieces each with little more than a blow of the blade. Left were only their flailing bodies, stepping around, as if they did not yet realize that they were dead, before collapsing onto the floor.

Predictably.

The hulking mass of armour cleaned the guts off his blade by wiping it against a nearby cloth, as he turned towards Morgain.

“General, I did not expect one such as you to go against our lord. You, a man that has served the Royal Father and practically raised our King.”

The hulking mass of armour wiped a few spots of blood from his face, doing little to act against the fact that the entirety of his armour was running with blood.

“If there was one man all of us thought loyal, it was you.”
“I had little choice.”
The man huffed sarcastically.
“There is always a choice, General! What swayed you? Money? Women? The promise of power? Tell me who the puppet master of this rebellion is and I will let you live, for the king’s sake. And I will cut down the man that started this.”

Morgain shook his head. Nobody could manage that, least of all a man of the Royal Shield.

“You cannot, you will not and you shall not.”
“We will see”, the hulking bastard said. It wasn’t that he was all that big, he was smaller than one of the men Morgain had led to his death, it was just that the armour made one seem, and feel, Morgain had to admit, like a giant.

But it had its weaknesses, that much Morgain knew, and he would soon find out.

As he raised his blade he gave a pained gasp and dropped it again, involuntarily, as he must have felt a blade ram into his neck, through an opening on the back side of the otherwise nigh impenetrable armour. That opening was mostly symbolic, to symbolize that they are open to their masters, that they put their trust in them, yet it was also put into place so they could be stabbed from behind, if the king did not trust them. Of course, that bit of knowledge was kept out of most texts.

As the knight turned around he stared at his king, the man the Royal Shield was sworn to protect with their lives. It was him that had rammed the blade into his neck.

“I am sorry”, the king muttered, as he pulled the from the man’s neck, his hands twitching in fear and disgust, in a struggle to keep his arms clean of blood, which he failed at horribly. Even so, he did it well. Just as Morgain had taught him.

The General sheathed his sword and got onto one knee.

“My lord.”

The king threw the knife into a corner and let the body of his guard drop onto the floor. He seemed a lot smaller, now that he was dead.

“I hoped I would not have to do this!”, King Turgynn muttered, his body still shaking. He wiped the blood that had streamed over his hands on the shirt which was comparatively without pomp.

“I’m sorry, my Lord, but I would not have been able to kill a man of the Royal Shield all on my own.”

“It’s a lot harder actually doing it than just watching someone do it. I felt him die in my grasp!”

He shuddered and spat onto the ground, as if he was hoping to get rid of the feeling of his first murder.

“My Lord, I urge you to calm down.”
“You say it as if it were a simple matter.”

Morgain didn’t even wait for the sentence to finish fully before he made his point.

“He was right, my Lord, you should flee. You are still able to. I will hold them back, make them lose your trail.”

“No, Morgain, I’m not able to. My people are suffering.”
“By no fault of your own! And you had no way of helping them.”
“Which, in itself, is a fault of mine. No, I will stand and die.”
“What will that solve, my Lord?”
“The people think that I am the cause of all this. They will never understand the truth. They don’t want to know the truth. So, I must be a victim of their wrath. Make them believe I am at fault. Let them curse my name!”

He went silent for a moment, ceremoniously, to let his words seep into every pore of the room.

“I trust you to lead my people.”

Morgain shook his head, not sure whether he should laugh at the request.

“My Lord, I’m neither suited nor worthy of taking your crown.”
“Well, I have chosen you and by taking me prisoner you will be legitimized to the people. They will call you Murderer of Kings, Hero of the People.”

Morgain almost gasped at the thought of having these names thrown at him. Insults, more like.

“This is my last order to you as a king, my last appeal as your protégée and my final request as a friend.”
“I will not be able to uphold peace as you did, my Lord.”
“There is never peace, Morgain. We can only make the peasants think there is. We can only rule with their support. I have lost their support. I could have the rebellion snuffed out, but the peasantry would forever hate my line. Better to die for something good than to be forever remembered as a villain.”

Debatable, Morgain thought. On the one hand, he would die for his king, on the other he didn’t care a shit if he would be remembered as good or bad. But the king had these beliefs, no doubt beaten into his head by that old kook. What had been his name?
Morgain had told Turgynn’s father, the late King Xernaz, that he should have executed the man before he could do any damage, but he had never listened. Even after the kook was exiled, Lord Turgynn had held onto his idiotic way of thinking. It had made him weak and complaisant. It was plain to see where it had led the young master.
It was a shame.

“My king, you will not be remembered for your selfless sacrifice. Only for that which you supposedly committed.”

Turgynn’s reaction was one of stunned silence. He gnashed his teeth, staring at the ground. Morgain might have hit a nerve, snapped the king out of his delusions of sacrifice so he could finally escape like he should have long ago.

“No”, the king finally muttered, but a lot weaker than before, “I am doing, what is right. Not to be remembered as a hero, but because it is right. If I gain nothing, so be it, I never meant to gain anything from this to begin with. If my death leads to a golden age for my people, then I will gladly suffer torture and death.”

Morgain bowed his head. Partly out of respect. He was impressed by the speech, if anything, even if he didn’t agree with it. But moreso it was sadness, because he knew then and there, that there would be no way to sway his Lord.

“What if a Golden Age does not follow?”

“I am only laying a foundation; my death won’t create it. It’s what follows my death that’s important. It’s for you to shape the future Morgain.”

A pious silence followed to that exchange, tainted only by the sounds of rebels screaming and the crashing sound of breaking furniture.

“They’ll find us soon, Morgain.”
The king took a step towards Morgain.
“Beat me. You have to look heroic, Morgain. The man who vanquished the wicked king. New Lord Sovereign of the Holten. Defender of the Downtrodden. Saviour of the-“

Morgain buried his fist in his Lord’s stomach to stop him from talking. There was no use trying to convince him. Trying to right this wrong. Not with words.

Turgynn exhaled slowly, sinking onto his knees. Morgain’s fist shot forth again, cracking the king in the temple, leaving bits of blood upon his knuckles and a great bit of it rushing down his Lord’s cheek. He now lay on the ground, his face on the floor, his chest inflating and deflating with every sharp breath.

Maybe pain would change his mind. Maybe it would make him snap out of these delusions. Morgain kicked, once, twice, three times at the pathetic sight in front of his eyes. Then he breathed a long, thoughtful breath.

The sounds outside grew louder, closer. Morgain could now hear his own name being shouted repeatedly. Getting ever closer.

“My Lord, your pain will no doubt be greater than this. I implore you to flee before they come here. I will defend the passage until my last breath.”

No answer. Had Morgain knocked his Lord senseless? He could take him and flee by throwing the monarch over his shoulder like a lifeless doll.

But after a short bit of silence he moved. Blood dripped off his face, but it seemed to flow much faster than blood tended to flow.

“It’s too late Morgain, I’ve made my choice. I’m standing by it.”

Morgain wanted to protest, but before he could answer the door slammed onto the floor with a thunderous crash, the hinges bouncing off the stone ground with a loud metallic clang.
“Fucker’s in there! Lord Morgain’s got him cornered!”

Morgain turned his back to the king, meaning to shield him with his body, staring at the men flooding into the room. It was half a dozen men, well equipped too, not the sort of riffraff he’d taken into the room with him. Morgain couldn’t take them without his death following swiftly. Maybe he’d be able to take two of them to the grave, maybe three if he’d strike before they realized what he was about. He would not have cared, if it had meant the king would be safe, but he still lay, his face demonstrably showing that he was not afraid, even though he was shaking with complete and utter fear. If there was any point to break under the pressure of what was to follow, it would be now. Yet he didn’t break.

Morgain decided, that he would not break either. As much as it pained him, the only thing he could do was follow his Lord’s final order.

“Take the pig. Throw him into his own dungeons. Beat him for all I care. But whomever kills him will take his place. He’ll die on the gallows.”

Two of the men rushed forward, violently pulling the king to his feet and restraining him under heavy protests.

“Let go of me, you peasant brood. I am your Lord! Your King! Get your disgusting paws off me!”, King Turgynn shouted. What a performance it was. Straight out of a tragedy.

One of them, a scrawny half-wit, one that Morgain would have not given a blade in fear of making him collapse under the weight, cut him off with a sharp blow to the stomach.

“Shut your fucking mouth, you’re done giving orders.”

Morgain clenched his fists, powerless to do anything. He had said he cared not if they beat him, which was, of course, a complete and utter lie. But there was fuck all he could do now. It was out of his hands.

“Look at the blood running down his fucking face. About time the fucker got a taste of his own blood.”
The officer that had creeped up on Morgain was one of the older ones, one of the peasants, who had served in the king’s army for the longest time before he jumped ship immediately when he realized he could secure a spot that would leave him quite fortunate with the rebels. A traitor, as far as Morgain was concerned. A fat, lazy traitor who wants to become a noble with the littlest work he’d have to muster.

“You’ll mention that I came to your rescue, aye, Lord Morgain?”

Morgain would’ve liked nothing better than to cut the shithole to pieces right there. If he hadn’t arrived, Morgain and the King could’ve still fled.

But it was too late now, all too late. Morgain lifted his hand up to his face to cover his eyes, as he felt tears streaming out of his eyes. He bit his lip, as his chest shook pathetically, as if he were a child crying at the loss of a favourite toy. When had he last cried about anything? Morgain’d thought his tears had dried up long ago.

He felt the hand of the useless sack of shit smack his shoulder, in a comforting way. He had no doubt found him out.

“There is no need to cry, General”, he said, smacking his back in a way that could not have felt more condescending if he'd tried.
“None of us will ever forget what that bastard has done.”

Morgain stayed silent, biting his lips, as to force the pain to keep him from crying. It did little to stop the tears from running down his face.
Then he strode out of the room, trying to seem calm and collected, without uttering as much as an order.