3 bar menu

Vol.3, Ch.1, P.2

 

Unfolding my arms, I started forth, the wooden floor squeaking under my slow steps. Then, reaching Morten, I sat down across from him and stared deep into his eyes.

“Morten. Of all my men have you—and you alone—regarded me with any respect. Me: an ungraced. Yoná Herself ought shudder with shame, knowing you take for an equal whom She curses a coistril.”

“Uh er, th-that…” muttered Morten, uneasy.

“Yours… be a heart of gold, Morten. A far cry from the coals blackening the other blokes’ bosoms,” I continued with constructed pain, as though to squeeze blood out of a stone. “You know, don’t you? Of how I’ve long suffered their snideness, their scorn.”

I felt then my farce having gone a mite too far, a too-passionate thespian catching himself in his craze. But from the look of him, Morten seemed quite convinced of the act.

“Well… I’ve had my fill of their filth,” the play persisted. “Keen am I to leave Londosius. But not before lining my coffers full of coin.”

“C-coin?” Morten cocked his head. “Wot means ye, Commandant?”

“From the Fiefguard, my friend. I reckon they’ll soon return from Hensen, swaggering with heads held high and waggons wiggling with loot. But those sots’ll be too sotted from victory to see the snare abiding them at Balasthea. Should prove easy enough: parade the prey into their cage, and then… drop the doors shut.”

To this, the soldier stayed silent.

“Serves them right, I say,” I went on. “Stings my stomach every time I see those flaunting fools. You feel as I do, don’t you Morten?”

Slowly did he start nodding. “Y… y-yea, I-I feels it, yea.”

Soldiers oft find guard duty dull and damnable drudgery. Many would rather follow along on forays, to plunder riches and enlarge their names. And so is conceived a hierarchy amongst the soldiery, of attackers being at the top and the defending rest doomed to the bottom.

The Fiefguard followed this to a tittle, always sporting their supposed superiority over the fort-men. Such flagrancy, of course, earned the latter’s grating disgust, birthing between them friction of no small heat.

My thought, then, was to stoke that fire, as it were, hence my tempting Morten with a pretend ploy to pilfer the Fiefguard.

“But there’s the rub, my friend,” I sighed. “Coin alone ill-makes a flight less fraught. I need company. I need women.”

Another slow set of nods. “…Er… y-yea, I sees why, sir.”

Good. Very good.

Morten was beginning to pick his words, that he might pander to my increasing desperation. Where he once fidgeted frailly, he now stood at last upon the arena of negotiation. What remained was to lure him into outwitting me—with him none the wiser.

“But can you help, Morten? For help is all I beg of you,” I said pleadingly. “Pray seek a sound selection of Arbel’s women and whisk them to me. Please—you’re the only man I trust enough with this trouble.”

“But sir, er… I reckons only a fat an’ full coffer’s got coin ‘nough, if ye be wantin’ brothel-bints fer a whole journey, yea?”

I shook my head. “No matter. I’ll strip the Fiefguard of all their troves. That should fill coffers enough for a great many journeys, no doubt.”

“N-no doubt, indeed.”

“Of course, you’ll not go unrequited, Morten.”

“H… haha,” he half-smiled. “Oh, ye be too kind, Commandant.”

And Morten be a man too contemptuous to play along with the ungraced he so scorned. No, he himself was pretending, showing me his false spark of treachery.

This fidgeting fellow—over the past moment were his eyes stuck down-left. We Men are like to look up when tending to a truer answer, and down when a lie is upon our lips. And when guilt sits heavy on our hearts, we hook our eyes towards our indextrous hand.

Thus was Morten’s a mind for the lie. Of course, it’s all just a generality, this matter of trends of truth and untruth. But here it held water, for unwicked was the sweat upon Morten’s meandering mien.

“So what’s your mind, Morten? I ask not that you come with me. Two, three gainly gamesters be all I beg you bring,” I pressed him. “Please, Morten. For me. We are friends, are we not?”

“Uh, ermm,” he sighed, folding his arms. “W-wot ever shall I do…”

I had thought my theatrics thin of all credibility, but Morten’s was no less crude. Two hams, hammering out deceitful diplomacy with all gravity—a masterclass in comedy, to be sure.

“Mm…” Morten moaned in thought. “…Yea. Yea, why not? Fer me friend!”

“Good man, Morten! You have my debt!”

There I beamed most awkwardly, whilst the man himself simpered amidst his sweat. Why, I could almost hear the standing ovation.

 

∵

 

After watching Morten gallop off to Arbel, Volker, Lise, and I retreated to a chamber within the fort keep. There in the dim, we faced one another to discuss what course our cause should take… and what hand the fates might deal us.

“Rolf,” Lise began, “the talk went well? Or…?”

“Well enough, I’d wager,” answered I.

Doubtless Morten would immediately divulge my defection to the margrave. And as well: my plans to pinch and pilfer the Fiefguard as they file through the fort on their glorious return. Only one of these strings strummed true, of course, but the margrave should be none the wiser. Thus I foresaw his answer being but one: the immediate mobilisation of his remnant men to recapture and secure Balasthea.

Ours, on the other hand, would be that of open war, to strike back the brutes directly as they come. Such was unavoidable. To ensure victory in the coming all-out assault on Arbel, its men must be whittled down as much as our knife-edges could suffer.

Two thousand—the number of the Fiefguard’s fallen at Hensen. A number of which veracity the margrave must mull over, but a number we ourselves knew to be true. Given that, were we to succeed in drawing out the remnant Fiefguard from their fastness at Arbel, and there in the open cull their ranks by ambush, then we carve out for ourselves a preemptive advantage in our later attack on the fief-burgh.

And there would be witnessed a reverse of the battle of Hensen, a flipping of the gameboard—this was the result we sought, the battlefield we aimed to artifice. The Nafílim had defended their home at a disadvantage. Now it was the margrave’s turn to quaff that cruel medicine, a brew of our own making, unbeknownst to him.

“We braves once savour’d much advantage. But the taste was taken from our tongues the day you don’d the commandant’s coat,” Volker reflected, looking at me. “How affrighting the fair winds be, that once again should we find ourselves in a vie for advantage—on what day but the very day you damn’d your kingdom and offer’d us your sword.” He scoffed at the irony. “You be a wolf that moves the moon, Rolf.”

“Affrighting, for true,” echoed Lise.

“Nay, my part is small. The mightier merit invests you, Volker. Hensen stands now by the buttress of your bravery,” I said. “Besides, not all the cards be laid yet: the deck is dire with two jokers, and both must move to our mind, lest a poor jest be made of our plans.”

Jokers by the names of Morten and the Margrave Aaron Ström.

The latter likely already caught wind of the Fiefguard’s defeat at Hensen. But at his other ear would soon be Morten, unknowingly feeding the margrave my worm of a lie: to wit, news of the Men’s victory at the fólkheimr. A tiding with a sweeter tune, no doubt, but numbering only one of two, all told. Which shall earn the lord’s heedance? Our scheme saw heavy need of his trusting to his pride than his prudence, and so it was that our fortunes were borne upon Morten’s shoulders, whether he knew it or no.

Given the margrave’s mind and circumstance, more likely than not should he be inclined to Morten’s mouth. But likeliness was smaller solace than certainty.

“Our hand finds frail challenge, I think. The winds do seem warmer to your bending, Rolf,” Volker conjectured. “At the very least, that dolt of a Man earlier ought amount to little more than a pawn, one whose simple play we need not guess. For no doubt the defeat has wounded the pride of these Men, and this scheme offers them the too-sought salve of self-deception.”

Self-deception, denial—powerful salves, indeed. Morten is a simple man of simple pleasures; to him, there is comfort in contemning an addle-pated ungraced. He thinks himself the eagle-eyed angler to have scried my naked scheme when he is sooner the fish, flailing with not fear, but euphoria for his biting the bait.

So it is, then, that the temptation to unmake my skein, to strop and stroke his pride, should prove a current too fierce for his fins to defy.

Though frankly, I did feel our feint overzealously zested.

“Speaking of deception,” I said, turning to the war-chief, “…’women’, Volker?”

The ploy was put together by myself, but it was Volker who added the finishing touches. Indeed, the inspiration to task Morten in finding for me the bawdy-women that I so “needed” came from no one else’s mind but Volker’s calculating own.

“A necessity. Details decide the day,” he asserted with not a flinch. I suppose “meticulousness” should be added to my measure of him. Thankfully it looked to have served us well, for it has given Morten exactly what he wanted: a sight of Rolf the reproachable gadabout.

“I say, ‘twas a part played perfect!” giggled Lise with a sidelong smirk. “A coxcomb of a character, a Man with more mind paid to women and mammon than the prizes of prudence—you reeked of the role, Rolf!”

I groaned. “Your compliment cuts deep…”

 

 

Thinking on it, she was quite livid upon our reunion, Lise. Could this be revenge, then? For my hailing her a “raging beast”?

“A warm wound, from Lise with love!” she prodded on. “You ought savour the sweet sting!”

“Edelfräulein,” Volker said after a slight sigh at the exchange, “our forces stand ready. We move now, or?”

His tone echoed with uncharacteristic tiredness, as though worn from many a winter of humouring the jarl’s daughter. Though it seemed her esteemed title of Edelfräulein had yet to unstick itself from Volker’s tongue.

“Right,” nodded Lise. “Rolf, you’ll not mind if everyone files into the fort?”

“Not at all.”

Suffice it to say, we had indeed marched along with the Nafílim “horde”. And “horde” be accurate enough: it comprised quite nearly the whole of Hensen’s hosts. The torches being twice-fold lit—that was the lie.

The next step was to welcome this bristling number into Balasthea and begin preparing at once for the coming clash.

“Best we temper ourselves for aught untoward,” I said. “Even should the margrave and his men move to our liking, it means little if we do not break them in battle.”

To this, the two nodded.

The capture and occupation of Arbel—such was our grand objective, and the next battle would serve as its opening blow.

Only, at this point, a certain soul was come to the fief-burgh. A soul I knew all too well, but one I never dared imagine would make an appearance—now, of all times.

 
 

─────────────────────

Chapter 1 ─ End

∵