The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter One Hundred and Eighty Two

[A/N] Alright so I've written two chapters, chapter 186 and 187 will be posted together. So if I don't post them together let me know. (•᷄ ࡇ •᷅ )

I jumped out of bed a moment before dusk when I heard a familiar set of nearly completely noiseless steps turning slowly around the corner of the tent. Through my journey to the military encampment I had waited guard over many of the nights we had to stop to rest and sleep and the moment we arrived my attention was on full alert. My ears trained to the slightest sound.

We had spent the day securing the border of the encampment and receiving further drill training from and with the other soldiers. The food at this point was mostly gruel but no one had the energy or interest in complaining when we finally had an abundance of water, which was an insecure supply on the path over.

Since there was not quite enough beds, made of thin mats of pressed hay, for the entire group of us, us being three of four groups of men converging over the next few days from different military training points, I was one of the unlucky few pushed to sleep on the floor.

So I took my sheets and folded them below me and slept without cover and like a cloud from the muddy soil below the fabric covered floor mosquitos rose in the night and whined loudly in ones ear as they pecked away at the soldiers.

I smacked my ear as the noise of one grew close and wiped the dead mosquito on my sheets as I got up, crouching, and moved to the back curtain.

Through the dense collection of men there were still one or two awake, and not dead to the world like the others. In the low dull light, nothing but a slice of the moon gleaming through, and torchlights visible in the distance from the guard posts through the thin fabric walls, I was startled to see some of the light reflecting off of the open eyes of someone watching me suspiciously crouch walk to the back.

But not a word was spoken between us, just the empty, calm gaze passing over me, almost disinterested as I slipped under the wall and stayed within the two layers of fabric, hiding, as Ophelos stepped into the room.

I could still see him barely through the slit in the fabric as he moved inside with a torch in hand, two younger men behind him dressed in black, impassively making their way through the crowded bedspace.

He looked a little flushed, desperately leaning over and searching each individual, raising the torch over them, checking and moving on, dismissing them with a sort of irritable look.

A few more men woke up and looked around, disorientated and confused, some to the torchlight in their face, and blinked around at each other as the upright, well dressed servant master turned them over and disappointedly moved on to the next.

I watched quietly and slouched onto the floor when he was gone, exhaled and covered my eyes for a moment.

How angry was Demosthenes? Very? Or did he understand, given he wasn't searching for me himself, that I was entitled to my chance to serve in the war. 

Or perhaps searching himself was improper, and I'd grown too close to him to realise that.

I'd come too far to give in out of sympathy to an exasperated look that would turn positively furious if I were stupid enough to present myself before him.

Nevertheless I felt some guilt as I untied my under trousers and did them back up as I re-entered to give the impression of a man only briefly leaving to relieve himself.

No one seemed very interested either way. If there were spies in this settlement none of the men here would notice, I thought to myself as I laid myself back down on my pillow and fell helplessly into a deep sleep.