The Coward King: Part One - Rebellion

Rebellion: Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Dorad slapped a hand onto King Allard’s mouth before he could scream, gripping the man’s good arm with his free hand. He nudged through the door into the King’s bedchambers, dragging Allard along struggling and biting at his hands. He pushed the regal man onto his featherbed, ripping a gag from his silken sheets and shoving it into his mouth.

Sir Byned and Sir Errin watched the doors from the hallway outside, as Sir Fallan and Sir Rhiliar searched the rooms for anyone who might be in there. They were large and elegant chambers, full of fancy furniture, and places to hide. Searching the privy, they found young lady in her smallclothes, who claimed to not remember why she was there. So they gagged her and put her on the bed with the king.

The point of his jewelled longsword at King Allard’s throat, Dorad noticed that the man had changed since he’d last seen him. The man he met in Werach weeks prior had been strong and healthy, with a thick brown beard and heavily muscled arms. A true warrior-king, if ever there was one.

The man he was looking at now was entirely different from that. His eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by tired bags. His face was a mess of wrinkles, and his brown beard was now grey with brown flecks. Worry had been doing a fine job of killing this man, and now Dorad had to finish the job.

They stayed the rest of the night in that room, the king and the woman gagged and squirming against the torn blankets that bound them, Dorad and his four knights trying to keep quiet and avoid notice. When the sun finally rose, Dorad removed the gag from the king’s mouth, but kept his arms tied together. With his sword across the Allard’s throat in a threatening position, Dorad exited the bedchambers surrounded by his knights and leaving the girl where she was.

The castle was waking, and people gasped as Dorad led King Allard through the many hallways. Some even tried to help their endangered King, but Dorad’s circle of swords cut those down, discouraging the others from trying anything. By the time they had exited the castle’s main building and into the central courtyard a crowd had gathered around them to see what would happen.

Finding a defensible spot along beside the castle’s wall, Dorad watched as the king’s guards readied their weapons and demanded that he release the king. “Make no move, or I will kill him,” Dorad warned, his arm yearning to draw the sword slowly across the king’s throat and end him finally.

When a sufficient crowd had gathered in the courtyard to watch, Dorad shouted to them. “Throw down your weapons and surrender the city, or I will cut down your king like the pig that he is!” He looked to the soldiers, who stood stunned. “Drop your weapons!” he commanded again.

One by one they began to bend down and lay their weapons on the cobblestones. In a few moments time, there were weapons lying strewn all across the courtyard. “Go to the main gates,” Dorad commanded, “and tell them to throw down their arms and open the gates for my men. If any one of you makes a move against them, your king will die.”

The soldiers, weaponless and clad in their full armor, began the slow procession to the gates. Dorad and his knights followed, forcing King Allard along with them. When they arrived there, the rest of Allard’s small garrison lay down their arms and opened the gates.

Dorad herded the king’s soldiers through the gates and out into the open field between his camp and the city. There his men surrounded the king’s soldiers. Dorad released his grip on King Allard, sending him sprawling to the ground.

“Men of Werach,” Dorad shouted to the soldiers he now held as prisoners, “look at your king!” He spat at the ground, onto Allard’s back. “Yesterday, this man was one of the mightiest kings in all Acarii, ruler of the third largest nation on the continent. Today, he is nothing. He does not even deserve to live.”

Allard had struggled into a kneeling position by that time, so Dorad struck him on the back of the neck with the pommel of his longsword ferociously. The blow forced him forward, so that only his outstretched arms suspended him from the dirt.

In the moments following, all the rage that Dorad held against the man flooded into him. His mind was filled with images of beggars on the streets of Acaynn, of ruined and abandoned houses, of the pile of rotted flesh he’d found in the street. Images of the day he’d met him in his court, his eyes burning with madness and his words betraying insanity. He stood for a moment, hefting his longsword in the air, his whole being burning with a white-hot fury.

It took only one swing, and Allard’s worn and worried head went rolling.

Prisoners struggled against Dorad’s men as they watched the royal blood of King Allard Navri staining the green grass crimson. Dorad might have laughed at the show they made, armoured soldiers fighting to be free from their captors, but only managing to get a beating from them. Dorad did not laugh, however. For a moment, he thought he heard thunder.

And then there was chaos.

Everyone was shouting, struggling, fighting, and dying. Horses charged amongst his army, their riders cutting his men to pieces as they went. Blood sprayed everywhere, and men fell to the ground all around him. “By the Gods, what is—?” came Sir Byned’s gravely old voice before he was felled by an enemy lance, crunching through his heavy mail shirt.

He did not remember mounting, but Dorad suddenly found himself riding his shaggy white palfrey amidst and away from the carnage that was destroying his army, the army he had fought to raise. His men were fighting back by that time, but hundreds had already been slain. A battalion of spearmen was trying to fight off the thousands of cavalrymen that rode rampant among them, but the sheer numbers of the enemy force bested them. Men who tried to run were caught by enemy arrows in their backs, those who tried to fight were felled ridden down and butchered by the enemy riders.

A horse went down beside him, and he heard Sir Fallan cry out in pain as an arrow hit him square between the shoulders, sending him flipping through the air. Dorad cursed and kicked his heels furiously into his mounts side. He rode far and fast, trying to escape the sounds of slaughter behind him.

Blood stained his face: Allard’s blood, Byned’s blood, Fallan’s blood, the blood of friends and of enemies. More blood stained his hands now, however. The blood of innocents, who would undoubtedly be slain in Werach.

He rode his horse to death, his white palfrey that had been so loyal to him. Thirty men escaped the fight with him, and thirty men did not sleep that night, but lay deep in the woods, haunted by visions of Dialantar’s blessing on their fellow soldiers, the blessing of the Goddess of Death.