The Coward King: Part One - Rebellion

Rebellion: Epilogue

Epilogue

“What shall we do with the prisoners, General?” asked Lord Edraline as they rode over piles of dead, blood-soaked grass squishing under their horses’ hooves. The battle had been over for hours, and the sun was beginning to rise, but the blood still pooled everywhere on the field.

“Kill them all,” the General replied. Leaning down in his saddle, he ended a moaning man’s life with a swift stab to the throat.

Lord Edraline looked surprised, but he continued. “Some of them claim that they were King Allard’s men, his personal guards. What do you propose we do with those men?” His face was frighteningly pale as he looked over the scene of the battle. There were bodies everywhere, some missing limbs, some with gaping holes where lances had pierced them. One man they passed, whose stench was worse than anything most men had ever smelled, had been opened from throat to groin, his vitals spilling out of his body. Edraline looked like to retch as they passed that sight.

“Kill them as well,” the General ordered. He was not a merciful man, and had no wish to deal with traumatized prisoners.

“What if they are telling it true, though?” Edraline asked, fully shocked by this time. “Would you have us kill good, honest men of the King?”

The General hawked and spat onto the mangled face of a dead enemy. “Yes.”

Lord Edraline rode away, disgusted.

The General met with his war council later that evening.  “This is a momentous victory, General,” Lady Gaolin said, smiling widely in her chair. “The rebel force is fully decimated, and with only a few losses to our number.”

“A momentous victory indeed, my lady,” the General said. “There is, however, one downfall to this success.”

“What is that, General?” asked Lady Gaolin, looking confused.

“The King is dead.”

Her eyes went wide, and she said nothing for a long stretch of time. “How…” she began, “how do you know this?” She covered her face with her hands.

“I found his head soaking in a pool of his own royal blood,” the General stated bluntly. “Wasn’t wearing his crown, though, so we can’t be sure.”

“He had no sons…his brothers are dead,” said Lord Edraline, breaking the sudden silence that had fallen over the room. None of them in that room, all lords who had fought bravely in Gallanuul for their king, had the stomach to say what had to be said. Finally, Edraline continued, “There is no heir to the throne.”

“What happens now?” Lady Gaolin asked, sparking heated debate from all the lords around the table, each with their own opinion on who the throne should pass to, and each less reasonable than the last. Lady Gaolin thought that, since she was some sort of cousin to Allard, she was next in line. Lord Edraline believed that the throne should pass to him, as he had been Allard’s closest friend for years, a fact that was contested by many of the other lords around the table. He may have been wrong, but the General thought that at some point in the argument he heard the name of Fish Boy, the court fool, put forth as a potential king.

He let the arguments die down before he said what was on his mind. “Anyone who knew King Allard knew of his fondness for women. Though he never took one to wife, they were no strangers to his royal bed. Throughout his reign, he must have bedded half the girls in Werach. Is it not possible that he sired a child on one of these women, albeit a bastard?”

“If that ever happened,” one of the lords said, though the General could not tell which, “he never acknowledged any baseborn child as his own.”

“There was one,” the General said. “Me.”