RE: Monarch - Chapter 188: Whitefall XLII

It had been a long couple of days in the Everwood. The sort of training we’d done, as well as the survivalism that went hand in hand with it, was almost as familiar to me as breathing at this point. But it’d been harder on my sisters, and by the end of the second day they were visibly exhausted, so we’d returned early to allow them the comfort of a night in their own beds before we returned by horseback to Seryndon.

As they trudged up the hill towards me, I could see it was the correct decision. Sera was still fatigued, but the black bags had faded from her eyes. Annette followed alongside her, head turned towards her sister, saying something I was too far away to hear.

Sera shoved her lightly, and Annette stumbled but recovered quickly. Within a minute they were in range.

“Ready?” I asked Sera.

“Ready to get this over with.” Sera rotated her shoulder, glancing at the regiment in the background grimly. She was wearing gaudy, high steel armor, so bright, well-polished and reflective it was almost a mirror. I’d worn the same thing to the letter, only my breastplate bore a golden crown. “Would feel better about it if I thought we stood a chance in hell.” She stared down at the base of the hill, where Cephur had organized the regiment in long lines by banner. Down below, five hundred men stood at attention, their arms clasped behind their backs.

“The strategy is sound,” Annette said, then glared at me. “Though I will not be forgetting that this part was your idea.” Whereas Sera and I were both dressed in battlefield attire—impractical as it was—Annette’s frilly yellow dress was so eye-catching and stereotypically princess that the contrast was comical.

We were going to play on their expectations of us. At least, for the moment.

“It’ll be fine,” I told them, though in truth, I still wasn’t sure. Seryndor wasn’t far from Whitefall. If you climbed a tree, you could probably still see the castle from atop the canopy. Unfortunately, that meant there was an utter absence of monsters to hunt. I’d pressured Sera as much as I could through sparring while Vogrin continued to work with Annette. But because of her responsibilities at the castle, Maya had been unable to join us until today.

Technically, this was still only a training exercise. Not actual combat, but as close to the real thing as we could get. Especially considering how solidly we were about to stoke their fire.

Further down the hill, Alten stared at the regiment. He glanced at me as we approached. “Remind me of this exact moment next time I complain about a lack of action.”

“Cold feet?” I asked.

“Hardly.” He fell in step with me as I passed. “But I think I’ll have my fill for a while.”

“It’s not like it’ll be over. As soon as this business with the regiment’s settled and we give them a night to nurse their wounds, we’re headed to the sewers.”

Alten chuckled. “Never thought I’d be telling someone else they need to learn to kick back. Relax a little.”

“I’m always relaxed.”

“Hope you lie better to them than you do to me.”

We fell silent as we approached the regiment. They were well-disciplined, and no one jeered or spoke out of line as we approached. Still, I could feel the weight of it as a thousand eyes lingered on me, and imagine the picture we must have made. Two nobles, fair of skin and lacking helmets, wearing bulky armor that would serve them well in an organized line but was terribly impractical for anything else. A guardsman clad in honor he didn’t earn. And of course, a small girl hiding behind them all, peeking out shyly.

I grinned at Maya as I approached, and she rolled her eyes. She’d seen this trick more than once, though perhaps, never quite on this scale.

I stood before Cephur and shook his hand.

The commander leaned in to whisper. “I really hope you thought this out.”

“Of course. I always know what I’m doing,” I said, cocky, dismissive, and loud enough that the closest members of the regiment could hear me.

Cephur shook his head in resignation and walked away, standing next to Maya off to the side.

I held my arms out, as if offering a grand embrace, augmenting my voice with wind magic so it carried. “Boys! And ladies.” I grinned wider as numerous male and female soldiers scowled. “Today is a momentous moment. Because each and every one of you has the honor and privilege, the abject delight of greeting your future king.”

There was zero response save the clank of shifting armor; it was silent enough that I could hear wind whistling through the trees nearby. I let my smile slip a little, as if it surprised me. “Yes, I’ve heard in great detail that some of you are less than pleased with this passing of the torch. Others are apparently doubtful enough of my birthright to request trial by combat. And your banner lieutenants,” I shook my head, “apparently would prefer to sit down and talk. Men of action indeed. I looked at all this drivel your commander shoved in front of me, the trials, the interviews, and do you know what I thought?”

I put a hand to my ear and turned my head toward them, as if waiting for a response.

“Fuck this,” a voice said, near the back.

I pointed towards the direction of the voice and grinned. “Exactly. Fuck this. I’m the son of King Valen, after all. Why bother taking you on one at a time when I can do it all at once?”

A dangerous air came over the regiment in the wake of narrowing eyes behind helmets, and for a moment, I thought they might start the trial then and there. But even though I was intentionally aggravating them, they remained disciplined. I hoped they were angry enough not to notice the complexity of the scenario we were about to unveil.

“Banner lieutenants. Step forward.”

Salven, a violet infernal, was the first. He held the sigil of a bat within a moon over his head. He had a fighter’s build, and a heavy spear at his back. His mouth was quirked upward in a small smile.

The rest begrudgingly followed.

Mari, a stout, dour looking human woman with a scarred-out eye, which she mostly directed toward Sera, making no effort to hide her hostility. I’d asked Cephur to let it slip that Sera was aiming for her banner, and from the looks of it, he’d delivered.

Atherya, a light elf with a turned-up nose who looked more annoyed by this ordeal than angry, and lacked any weapons beyond the bow at her side and a well-stuffed quiver, with the banner of an azure gryphon.

And lastly, Zin, a dark elf—still a rarity to see in the human cities even in this new era. His black eyes glittered from beneath his helmet. There was a long thin blade at his back, and he bore the banner of a red wolf.

“Alten, get to work,” I said, taking turns staring each of them down as Alten brought each banner lieutenant a large sack, tied with a rope. After a rote hesitation, they unpacked them and puzzled at the contents. I lifted my voice with the air again, projecting outward. “Inside these bags you will find several tools for our contest. You will begin by selecting approximately half of your banners. Once this is done—” I made a show of looking around for Annette as she attempted to stay hidden behind me, to a few chuckles and snorts from the crowd, then took her by the shoulders and placed her in front of me, pointing the small gilded ring at her waist and the ribbons attached to it. “There are two ribbons, attached to a simple ring. They are to be placed on your front right hip and visible at all times. Once the blue ribbon is gone? Congratulations, you’ve been recruited into my regiment.”

“And when the orange ribbon is gone?” Salven asked. He had a quiet, thoughtful way of speaking, but there was a spark of amusement in his expression that gave me pause. The other three were clearly angry—for good reason. Only Salven seemed to get a kick out of this.

“When the orange ribbon is gone, you can rejoin the supplemental forces here in Valhalla.”

“I see. And what reinforcements will you be bringing, Prince Cairn?” Salven asked, elevating his voice so it carried.

I turned my eyes upward, as if doing the mental math. “Two hundred-plus of you, four of us… I imagine that’s about equal.”

The din grew, and by the time it crescendoed the soldiers were more angry than stoic.

“Lot of pomp and circumstance for something that’s gonna be over in seconds,” Mari growled.

“Seconds?” Aethrya responded, looking me up and down dismissively. “It’ll be over for him the moment it starts.”

From what I’d heard from Cephur, it wasn’t an idle threat. Aethrya’s banner was range focused, and Aethrya herself was a better shot with a longbow than Tamara. That they’d be using padded arrows would do little to hamper the debilitating force of a well-placed shot other than curbing the lethality.

Beyond the archers, the rest would be using blunted steel–which, while less lethal than the sharpened alternative, was still a far cry from wooden training blades. The mages would be expected to pull their punches as well, but I didn’t doubt that this could turn nasty with the tone I was setting. I needed to place special emphasis on safeguards.

I ignored them and moved on. “Now. What we are enacting is a grand melee, not unlike a tournament. Your goal should be to disarm or incapacitate your opponent, take their ribbon and move on. But as anyone who’s ever attended a tournament can tell you, accidents happen.” I held up a smooth bronze-colored cylinder like a torch and twisted the base. A bright golden ball of light ejected straight up, flying up high into the sky and slowly arced, leaving a lingering trail of smoke. “Send up a signal if you, or anyone around you, has been badly injured. The supplemental forces will come to your aid, and our honorable emissary will come to you via horseback.”

There were slow nods of acceptance, though Mari seemed to accept the idea of not letting us all bleed out on the ground more slowly than I would have liked.

Well, I’d insulted them, flipped the raven in their faces, and acted the fool. I wasn’t too worried about the lieutenants. Now it was time to ensure a random soldier with a grudge didn’t slit my throat in the chaos.

“Win or lose, regiment or no regiment, drinks in Topside are on me tonight!” I held my fist skyward.

For the first time, they cheered. And why wouldn’t they? I’d just given them full license to stomp not one, but two nobles’ asses into the ground and then offered to pick up the tab. Three of the four lieutenants returned to their banners with the bags, immediately selecting members for their smaller groups and organizing them by officer.

Only Salven lingered, looking back at the chaos in amusement. “You know, my grandfather recently returned to this plane on account of a recent development.”

“Congratulations,” I said, doing my best to keep a straight face.

“Apparently there was a heartfelt speech. Not only by a human, but a human mourning his fallen infernal master. From the sound of it, he was—how should I say it—not that much of a dickbag. Rather genuine, by all accounts.”

The memory of Veldani swept over me and I felt myself frown.

“Anyway,” Salven said, smirking again. “I look forward to seeing your reputation in action.”

I watched him go, beginning his selection and passing out ribbons to his men. Despite the familiarity, and the kindness in his words, I got the sense that he wasn’t going to go easy on me. In fact, I suspected Salven was the lieutenant I needed to be most wary of. If he knew of me, he also knew this wouldn’t be nearly as straightforward as the rest were expecting it to be.

I turned and signaled the others.