Necromancer: Kingdom Building with My Legion of Undead Knights-Chapter 56: Mourning the messenger

Darion didn’t move for a long time.

He stood in the courtyard and looked at the head on the spear and didn’t say anything.

The young knight holding it had gone very still, not sure what to do with himself, his arms starting to feel the weight of what he was holding in a way that had nothing to do with the physical weight of it.

This was the head of a human, thrust into a spear, on his hands, someone he knew, someone he had seen leave the gate to deliver a letter.

Someone he didn’t watch return but only saw his head.

The knight was starting to see how sickening it was, how it was capable of making him vomit or something.

He still held it though, but he didn’t look at it anymore so as to not be more sickened. Even though he was the one that had picked up from the road and brought it to the palace, he was starting to feel uncomfortable looking at it.

Darion thought about the road. The route his knights had taken when they went out with the meat, they had to pass near Gonnb, there wasn’t a reasonable alternative, the road ran where it ran and the village sat where it sat.

He had known that when he sent them. He had known it again when he sent Calder. The risk had been calculated and accepted and now Calder’s head was on a spear in his courtyard and the calculation felt different at this end of it.

He had expected something bad. He had not expected this.

This was a statement, not an accident, not warriors getting carried away in the moment the way they had with the first three knights, this was intentional.

The head planted on the road where it would be found.. the body returned, no letter accompanying it either.

Only the head. Sending something back was a choice. Sending only the head was a louder choice.

He looked at the young knight. "Was there a letter? Any response at all?"

"No, m’lord. Just — just this."

Darion held out his hand.

The knight hesitated for half a second, then passed the spear over.

Darion took it and looked at Calder’s face properly. He had been a steady man. Garren had said so and Garren didn’t describe people generously without reason.

Even when he followed during the first hunt, the one where they ended up killing many Bogarts, where they had discovered he was a Necromancer, Calder had been a good knight. He knew how to fight and played a role, no matter how small, in that Hunt.

And apart from being a knight, he was also a Messenger!

Darion hadn’t known him personally prior to this moment, holding his head in his hands, he hadn’t even known his name apart from when Garren had mentioned that he sent some: "Calder."

He hadn’t deserved this ending. Nobody sent to deliver a letter deserved this ending.

"You will be avenged," Darion said quietly. Not for performance, there was nobody to perform for. Just because it was true and Calder deserved to have it said over him.

He lowered the spear. "They didn’t return the body."

"No, m’lord."

He handed the spear back and turned to the group of knights who had gathered at the courtyard entrance, drawn by whatever signal moved through a barracks when something was wrong.

They were standing in a loose cluster, looking at the head, their faces doing various things.

Dying in battle was one thing. You went out fighting, you fell for something, your brothers carried the memory of it forward and if you won the battle then your death meant something that could be pointed to.

Calder had died delivering a letter. Politely worded and formally addressed, asking calm questions about an incident that hadn’t even involved him personally.

He had ridden out as a messenger and come back as a message.

It didn’t diminish him. It just made it harder to look at.

"Take him to the graveyard," Darion said to the assembled knights. "He gets a proper burial. Stone marker, his name on it and his rank. Don’t put him in the ground like he’s nobody."

The knights nodded.

Two of them came forward and took the spear carefully, and the group moved out through the gate, doing something that needed to be done with dignity.

Darion watched them go.

"This is their answer," he said, more to himself than to Garren. "I send them a calm letter and they kill the man carrying it. After already beating three of my knights and stealing everything they came with." He turned toward the castle door. "That’s what they think of Percvale. That’s how hopeless we are?"

Garren said nothing. His face had settled into something flat and controlled that Darion recognized as the expression of a man keeping anger in a place where it wasn’t going to interfere with his thinking.

Calder had been his recommendation. Garren carried that.

They went inside now.

The great hall was empty when they came through.

The cook appeared from the kitchen doorway almost immediately, reading the energy of the room. She thought they were hungry...

"Something to eat, m’lord? Sir Garren?"

"No," Darion said.

Garren shook his head without looking at her.

She bowed and withdrew.

Through the window Darion could see Wulfric in the back courtyard, working at the grass along the wall. It was certain he hadn’t seen or heard what happened, and so he worked camly, enjoying what he was doing. Trimming the grass in fancy manners, taking his time.

Through the other window, just visible, Maret moving between the stable and the feed store.

The hall was quiet.

Darion sat down and looked at the two halves of the broken table still on the floor from yesterday.

They had been sent at a corner now, definitely by wulfric, seemed like he would fix it after trimming the grasses outside.

Garren sat across from where the table had been, in the chair that remained.

Darion looked at him.

"How large is Gonnb."