Unmaking Percy

Part IV - I (The Parted Glade)

Percy was plagued all night by an unkind sleep. It either eluded him entirely, or fell on him suddenly in a dense, heavy net of restless nightmares. He thought he was still tangled up in one of them when, near dawn, he felt his shoulder being shoved back and forth, and heard a panicked voice rattling him awake.

"... taken by them! About a dozen, all on horses, and the horses looked just as mean as they did!"

Percy groaned and grumbled to wakefulness as he crawled out of his bedroll, but the harried look on Myrtle's face was sobering enough.

"Wait, go back a bit – what happened?"

"Evans! A dozen riders came and just... just took him! He went outside to relieve me from my watch, and I wandered a bit further down to take a piss, but I heard something snap and I called out to him, and then – and then they just jumped out of some bushes and grabbed him! Valeria was there in a second, I don't know how, she was still up here when I left, but... what could she do? There were so many of them... They rode away as soon as they saw her rushing at them, which, fair, I would have done the same – and there was this thing they said before they rode away..."

Her words barely had time to settle on Percy's mind when, like dust, they were scattered off by the gale that burst inside the tent. Valeria, her hair frizzled up in a mane, stood panting with her sword clasped in a rigid-pale hand.

"Percival, we're moving. Now. I can question you while we ride. You can answer me from your horse, and I can shove you off of it too, if you lie. Let's go."

Percy stumbled into his clothes and tumbled out of the tent, and no less jumbled he took the reins to his mare. Dawn was thinning out the night's shadows. His thoughts tore themselves into tatters.

Valeria slammed him against his horse. The mare gave out a plaintive whinny, and Percy did very much the same.

"Alright, son. Everyone is owed a fair chance. Don't waste this one, it's single use. Did you lead them here?"

"What? First of all, I don't even know what's going on, and second, fuck no!"

"Right. So when they rode away, why were they shouting 'Down with the false chosen one! For Percival the Fair!'"

Percy's mind was breaking piece by piece. Sifting through the shards, he cut himself on a thought that he had long left behind.

"The riders – what were they wearing? Were they all wearing the same colour?"

"Dark yellow cloaks. You know them?"

"I know who they are."

His pause did not please her. She tightened her grip on his arm.

"And?"

"They're from my hometown. They're followers of... well, me, I suppose. I don't have any contact with them, never had" he hurried to add as Valeria's rage nearly boiled over him.

It was true. He had never spoken to them directly. At the time, he thought he knew why: their self-appointed task was to uphold him, to carry him high over every other head, and it would not have become him to look down. But he was beginning at last to apply the sting of honesty to his own deceits, and he now realized that, if he had never spoken to them, it was because they frightened him.

He had never seen them smile; and though he himself did it little at the time, he had never drawn such obvious joy as they did from a display of joylessness. He could not shake the feeling that while what they did was for him, it was not for him; as though there was something looming over his shoulder that he could not quite catch sight of. Their every act to his glory had never failed to unsettle him. He could not smell the flowers they left on his doorstep without thinking of their coming rot; he could not hear their cheers as he passed without hearing too the metallic rasp of a battle cry beneath that fine veneer; he could not see them standing guard where he went without sensing that they were, in truth, guarding something vital to them that was not him.