Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1081: Closed doors(1)
Later, much later, when the day came down beating on the horizon, the legate of the third made way to his his new home.
He made step with the lead-filled, unsteady gait of a man who had been wrestling with giants. Each step across the red Azanian carpet felt like a labor, his boots sinking into the plush pile, leaving no sound but the heavy, rhythmic rasp of his own labored breathing and the clinking of his crimsoned armor.
Behind him, his squire hovered like a nervous moth, hands outstretched as if to catch a falling tower. It was a pathetic sight, had Asag turned to look the squire to do , he would have kicked him away.
He was the legate of the Third, no way he would fall in the arm of a green boy, he was the linchpin; he was the "Mountain" of the Bastion, and if he crumbled, the stone walls would surely follow.
No to hell with that, the walls would fall before he would.
With a grunt that was half-growl, half-sob, he clawed at his helm. He wrenched it free, and a shock of sweat-soaked hair clung to a face etched with the grime of the day’s skirmish. He let the steel bucket drop. It hit the carpet with a dull, muffled thud that seemed to vibrate through his very marrow.
"Five be damned," he wheezed, the words tasting of copper and smoke. They had nearly had him today.
He tried to lower his bulk into the high-backed chair by the table, but the rigid plate of his harness bit into his thighs and gut. He let out an irritated snarl. "Get this tin skin off me! Now!"
The squire scrambled forward, his fingers fumbling with the leather straps and iron latches of the breastplate. As the heavy steel was pried away, followed by the sodden weight of the gambeson, the boy let out a sharp, strangled yelp of horror.
Asag followed the boy’s gaze to his own left wrist.
Ah.
It was swollen....to half its size, the skin stretched tight and stained a sickly, mottled shade of bruised purple and angry crimson.
"Today was a pile of horse shit," Asag grunted, wincing as he experimentally flexed his fingers. Still, it was better to be a bruised man than a cold corpse. He’d be damned to the lowest of the all the hell the gods saw fit to make, before he gave those peacocks outside the satisfaction of seeing him fall.
"Get me a drink," he commanded, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "My throat feels like I’ve been swallowing sawdust."
"A physician, my lord! You need a—"
"And you’ll fetch one," Asag barked, cutting the boy off with a glare that could have curdled milk. He should not drink but by damn it all, he needed something.
"But first, I want a cup. Can your tiny brain not handle two tasks at once? Lucky for us we are swarming with fucking servants.....Still here?Go! Out with you! And if the medic sets foot in this room before the drink does, I’ll skin you and make a new rug of you. Go!"
The squire bolted, his footsteps frantic as they faded down the stone corridor.
"Bring ale!" Asag roared after him. "None of that vinegary shitty wine! Ale!"
Silence followed, save for the distant, muffled throb of the siege engines outside. Asag slumped back into the chair wondering if the boy had heard him.
The sudden lack of armor making him feel strangely fragile. He gingerly rested his arm on the table, but even the slight movement sent a white-hot spike of agony shooting up to his shoulder.
"Fucking... pisses of feces," he hissed through clenched teeth.
He closed his eyes, and the images of the day’s butchery rushed back. It had been a near thing.The great wooden tongue of the tower had slammed down, and for a moment, he had looked into the eyes of a hundred men who wanted his head on a pike.
But they had paid the price. The Third had held. They had swarmed the bridge, axes biting into the heavy iron chains until they snapped with a sound like a thunderclap. He could still see the tower listing, the bridge falling away like a broken jaw once it was pushed out of the way.
Then the torches had gone in and made fire of the attacker’s dream.
Half the towers were charcoal now. The assault tomorrow would be lighter if they bared to make any; the League would have to lick their burns and rethink their pride. He had bought the Bastion another day of life.
"Another day," he whispered to no one in particular, perhaps it was just for himself, or something he wanted to get out with. "This is not yours, you bastards."
Two minutes later, the door was heaved aside, the hinges groaning in protest as the physician scrambled in, his breath coming in short, panicked puffs.
"My lord, the wound!" the man stammered, his eyes wide as he beheld the bloated, purple mess that was Asag’s wrist. He reached out with trembling fingers to prod the flesh.
"I am not dying! Quiet your ruckus!" Asag’s voice was a jagged rasp that sent the man reeling back. "It is hard enough to keep my eyes open on four hours of sleep without you ringing my head like a priest’s bell. Do your work and do it silently, or I’ll have your tongue for a lace!"
The physician withered, his mouth snapping shut so tightly his teeth clicked.In recent days the legate’s mood was turning worse.
He set about his task with a frantic, muffled haste, laying out poultices of shit that smelled exactly like that, shit.
"The drink, my lord," his squire who had joined behidn the older man interjected, stepping forward with a silver chalice held in both hands. The boy’s gaze lingered on the blackened bruise with a look of morbid curiosity that made Asag’s gorge rise. He felt like a mummer’s bear being inspected for sores before the show.
He held himself from saying something nasty, they were all on edges, he didn’t need to get angry over everything.
Asag reached for the cup, but as the scent hit his nostrils, his lip curled. He didn’t take it. Instead, he shoved the vessel back toward the boy’s chest, splashing a few dark drops onto the carpet.
"I said I wanted ale, you witless and ball-less pup. This is wine. This is piss," Asag growled. His earlier wish out to the chamberbot. "Go swap it. Drink it yourself if you must, perhaps muddled brains will help those ears of yours hear a command for once."
"Apologies, my lord! At once!" The squire bowed so low he nearly tripped over his own feet, turning to bolt back into the hallway.
He didn’t get three paces before he collided with a wall of solid steel.
The sound was like a hammer hitting an anvil.
The squire let out a yelp as the wine frothed over the rim of the cup, splashing a dark, pomegranate stain across the breastplate, that was also already red. The boy scrambled back, his eyes travelling up... and up.
The boy realized by then that it was really not his day.
He was tall, tall and big. Sturdy in bones and old. His plate was battered, and upon his breast, now dripping with the squire’s wine, was the heraldry of a silver wolf, its jaws agape.
"A-a-apologies, my lord!" the boy stammered, his face turning a ghostly white. "I didn’t see... the wine... I..."
A deep, rolling laugh echoed from behind the visor of the helm. The man reached up, unlatching his headpiece to reveal a face bearing a scar just below his cheek and a beard matted with grey dust.
He seemed jolly enough strangely...
"Fear not, lad," the Lord of Bracum rumbled, his voice like grinding gravel. He looked down at his red, and not for the wine, breastplate and shrugged. "My armor was already crimson enough this day. A little wine won’t hurt the vintage.Though I know something that could take favor from it."
Before the squire could move, the Lord reached out a gauntleted hand, plucked the cup from the boy’s trembling fingers, and drained it in three massive gulps. He let out a satisfied grunt and shoved the empty vessel back into the boy’s chest.
"Now, go find your master whatever piss he wants to drink," he commanded with a wink.
The squire fled heeding the lord’s wish and leaving the Lord of Bracum to step into the room.
He walked with a heavy, clanking stride, the silver wolf on his chest as red as the carpet below his feet. He stopped at the foot of Asag’s table, surveying the physician’s work and the Legate’s battered state.
"Still breathing, I see," Bracum said, a grim smile playing on his lips. "The Princes outside thinks they’ve broken your spirit; they’d have better luck trying to break the wind. What a day it was!"
In the meantime, Asag , which was wincing as if he were a girl who had just broken his maidenhood, wanted nothing more than to throw something at that gleeful face.
He truly was curious to know what was there to smile about.
He had just got his wrist fucked to oblivion and had nearly died.
