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Adrian Calvus

The sides of a coin

Part II

-The King’s Sword-

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His father, second Decanus of the First Century of the First Cohort waved at him from where he was standing. A group of ten legionnaires always followed Sir Barnard’s King’s Guard around, with his father leading it. Adrian grinned and then followed after the King of Regia inside the large Hall where the Conference was held. The High King was already seated and Adrian managed to recognize some of the Issir Lords by their sigils. The three headed Eagle of Eaglesnest, worn by Lord Crull, the five headed Hydra of Midlanor and its Lord Est Ravn, the ‘Standing Crab’ of Tollor and Lord Hoff, with the Wolffish, Lord Van Calcar right next to him. The Spearfish of the Van Durrens worn by the King’s Shield, sitting on the right hand of King Antoon.

King Alistair took his seat, amidst the loud murmurs of the lords present. Even the Lesia delegation appears nervous, Adrian noticed and licked his dry lips. Lord Lennox eyed King Alistair from across the table and then nodded with his head in greeting. The two old noblemen had fought a campaign together twenty years ago.

“Be sharp lad,” Sir Barnard rustled, without looking at him. A mountain of steel and flesh. “I don’t like their faces.”

Adrian made to answer him, but Antoon stood up and the hall turned quiet.

“This is a union, always has been,” the High King started. “One king might stand above the others, but it was never looked as such by my ancestors or myself. Time and time again I’ve made attempts to mend differences, find a solution at great personal cost. Peace,” he stopped to look at the packed tables and the men listening to him. “Was always my priority.”

Adrian stared at the grimacing faces and the loud protests of many of the lords present. The High King’s words weren’t well received. Antoon nodded as if he could understand their frustration.

“Is a man to blame for the actions of another?” He asked the lords present.

“How is sending the army in Raoz not a provocation?” King Davenport asked him directly.

“I had a reason for it.”

“You gave Princess Elsanne to the Khan,” the King of Lesia pointed.

“His son, a Prince last time I checked, had won her hand in a tourney. It is the custom.”

“That’s bloody rehearsed,” King Alistair hissed. “Cheap theater!”

Antoon turned to look at him. “Haven’t I agreed for my son and heir to marry your daughter King Alistair?”

“You were looking for an alliance! I lost my little girl by men working for your High Magister!” Alistair snarled sounding genuinely angry.

“Why would I need an alliance, King Alistair?” Antoon asked. “Your ancestor had taken a knee to Reinut. I stand above you.”

Alistair got up himself. Adrian could now only see the king’s back.

“You’ve lost Raoz,” he told Antoon and the younger man, gold Sea Eagle’s Crown on his head showed him his teeth in a snarl. “This alone annuls the treaties. King Davenport knows it, everyone with half a brain knows it.”

“I shall take it back, King Alistair,” Antoon replied both hands grabbing at the edge of the table seeking support or an outlet for his fury. “Is this how you treat your longtime allies? Abandoning them in the first sign of a crisis?”

“You were never my ally,” Alistair retorted. “We had a treaty. It’s gone, whether I help or not now, is in my discretion and frankly you hadn’t asked. As a matter of fact, you went one step further, by provoking the Khan without consulting with any of us. Unless, you had a reason for that too and we don’t know it?”

Antoon glared at the King of Regia with hatred.

“You insult me… in my bloody hall!” He growled.

“How is stating the facts an insult?” King Alistair spat back and sat down shaking his head.

“You’ve sent your son to attack my subjects in the North,” Antoon hissed. Several lords murmured at his words. “He’s fighting against Kaltha today, may turn against Sovya tomorrow.”

“Sir Lucius was attacked by your lords Antoon,” Alistair snarled and glared at him.

“He killed my son!” Lord Bart Crull barked and got up. “Attacked him like a ruffian from behind!”

“THAT’S A LIE!” Alistair snapped turning to look at the Lord of Eaglesnest. “Retract your statement Lord Bart,” he warned him.

“How is him fighting with the Northmen justified King Alistair?” Antoon intervened, but Alistair stopped him raising his hand under the loud protests of the Issirs.

“Take it back Lord Bart,” he repeated his warning. “Lucius is no murderer.”

“I lost my firstborn!” Lord Bart protested, old face flushed.

“He probably deserved it,” Alistair noted without an ounce of sympathy. “Lucius was escorting the Jarl’s daughter back to Fetya,” he announced to the restless Lords around them. “The girl was taken from him and was slaughtered before the Battle of the Bridges,” he turned to glare at the seething High King. “Of another war you didn’t start, oh ye man of peace, but apparently you’re fighting for years!”

“I never started the war with the North,” Antoon snapped. “And your son is acting like a warlord, a darn brigand! He has legionnaires with him! How is this allowed? Were you asked about it King Davenport?” The latter he addressed to the King of Lesia. The man didn’t want to answer obviously, so Lord Lennox did it for him standing up.

“Lesia’s Legion is in Lesia, but for the men here,” he announced.

“Since when?” Antoon rustled, his voice hoarse.

“We are working on it, for a year now,” the old general announced but stopped, when King Davenport placed a hand on his elbow.

“There’s no Legion up North,” King Alistair said. “And Lucius isn’t a brigand Antoon. Thou should retract this insult at once.”

Antoon narrowed his eyes and sighed.

“I won’t judge his father for whatever it is that drove him to his actions,” he said. “But a lot of people have testified to these facts King Alistair. Is warlord, better than a brigand? Fine, you’re playing with words trying to justify the unjustifiable. I said peace earlier and I meant it. Treaties or not. Isn’t that good enough?”

King Alistair grunted and stared at his own lords. They had kept mostly quiet, as all other lords this day. The kings were doing most of the talking.

“What is it you propose, King Antoon? You have an idea, which is why you called us here. Let us hear it,” Alistair had said.

“I ask for time to remedy the Raoz situation,” Antoon said with a smirk. “Treaties or not, we can be allies and in peace with each other. Who wants war? In fact none of you is risking anything here. Does your ancestors’ words have no value? I intent to honor mine, beat the Khan’s hordes back,” he turned to stare at King Alistair. “But I can’t talk peace and treaties or alliances, when your Lucius is campaigning against my lords king Alistair! Killing my people! Call it how you want to call it for crying out loud, I’m not at fault here!”

“Lucius has his reasons,” King Alistair said, but this time the majority of the Lords seemed unconvinced. Adrian puffed out, his hands shaking and the noise in the hall increasing. He wiped the sweat off of his face with a hand, while the High King offered them a solution of sorts.

“Denounce Lucius,” he said and everyone stopped talking again. “It don’t have to be permanent, just until an explanation is given for his behavior. It might be something simple, he fancies Northern girls, and he’s young still. He took insult perhaps. I can forgive and Lord Bart can as well. You have another son in any case. I hope I will as well, else the next High King might be quiet different,” there was some nervous laughter by a couple of lords at that. “Scaldingport will be happy to learn about it,” the High King finished with a forced smile. “And Kaltha will be satisfied and not look to blame Regia for a young man’s actions.”

“Lucius,” King Alistair announced, his voice reverberating in the walls of the old hall and got up to stare at the Lords looking at him, some with a bit of admiration, like the Lord of Pascor. “Was, is and shall be my Heir,” he said with finality paraphrasing House Alden’s famous motto.

We were, we are, we shall be.

By the sword.

 

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“Find your father Calvus,” King Alistair said turning to him, the moment the meeting was over without a resolution. “Have him arrest Sir Rik De Weer and everyone from his entourage, but they are not to be harmed,” he ordered and Adrian nodded, his heart beating fast not understanding what was happening.

“Go boy,” Sir Barnard rustled and Adrian rushed towards the exit looking for his father.

 

 

The Conference came to a standstill in its second week. What happened after that is difficult to decipher, as several versions of the events exist. Two of them prominent today. Like the sides of a coin, they are completely different.

King Alistair threw the High King’s offer to his face and departed in anger. In the chaos he arrested Sir Rik De Weer, Scaldingport’s representative. The Issir Lords reacted to the insult and tried to prevent the King’s men from leaving the city. King’s Alistair’s men stormed the gates and escaped as they had the First Century conveniently stationed outside. This force of five hundred men marched a couple of kilometers and was stopped again by part of the Second Foot that had relocated during the night to find better quarters near Lesia’s Legion.

King Alistair asked the Issir Captain to get his men out of the way, but the man refused demanding the Lorians hand over Sir Rik first. Centurion Frugus commanding the Century responded that he had orders to bring the King of Regia safely to the Legion’s camp some kilometers away and he intended to do just that. Tempers flared someone threw a spear killed an officer and the Issirs responded firing several bolts. One of them hitting the King.

This is one version of the events.

The other says King Alistair realized this was a trap to force him into a decision and opted to pull out of the Conference with his men. He ordered the arrest of Sir Rik to prevent the young scion from notifying his father who was guarding the King’s flanks and the bridge at Forestfort, of the High King’s cunning offer. Delay the news from reaching the old Crow so he could retreat that way, or head straight for Sabertooth Castle. The High King ordered the gates closed, but the men with King Alistair rushed them and managed to break out.

The First Century was stopped a kilometer from the walls of Riverdor by three regiments of the Second Foot that had relocated sneakily during the night to cut him off from his main force. The Issir Captain asked the King to surrender peacefully so they could resolve this without blood being spilt and King Alistair decided to punch through the blocking force, knowing the Legion would react sooner or later and attempt to break them out. No spear was thrown, but Optio Marcus Ursus a distant cousin to the Lord of Novesium, tried to assassinate the King with a long knife, whilst everyone was staring at the Issir delegation.

King Alistair was wounded at the sides, but no accounts can agree on the severity of his injuries. He managed to kill his would be assassin with his sword, the men reacting to the sudden violence and the confusion. A row broke out amidst the Lorians present, then stopped, when the King stood up bleeding and ordered Centurion Frugus to break through the Issirs force, watching the events unfolding shocked.

Whichever of the two versions is correct, it is generally agreed today that this is where the Conference of Lords ended and the Battle of the Turncoats started.

 

 

Adrian saw the spear coming his way and pushed it away with his sword. The soldier pulled it back with a growl lost in the clamor of battle and cut him on the side of his neck with the blade. He stumbled back, Sir Barnard stepped forward and decapitated the Issir soldier with a savage blow.

“Get to the King!” The Knight blasted him and Adrian blinked, his heart racing and tried to locate the King of Regia in the chaos. A horn sounded, as the legionnaires formed a wedge and started pushing through the Issir lines.

The young squire run towards the center of it, but a Decanus grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him inside. It was his father.

“The King?” Adrian asked shaking, bleeding freely down his neck.

“Stay alive son,” his father told him. “The King has men watching out for him.”

Adrian shook his head right and left not agreeing. With a gasp he burst out of the shields protection.

He almost died to a sword two breaths later. Adrian ducked, tripped on a dead man, stepped on a still breathing one and killed an injured Issir pretending to be dead that tried to knife him in the guts. He used both his hands to do it, long blade stabbing down and fingers slippery on the sword’s handle. The man made a whistling noise dying that is until Adrian realized that was the corpse’s bladder emptying.

The young squire staggered through the battlefield, the lines all messed up, but the Legionnaires managed to bunch up in several groups and were slowly advancing working together as a unit.

Or several.

He followed the banners, as the weather turned above their heads and it started raining hard. The water turning the ground to mud, the clouds darkening the battlefield that was very near the tourney grounds. There were houses at the near and people that were watching stunned at the violence.

The fact Adrian didn’t die more a matter of Luthos watching over him, than his skills or smarts. Perhaps he didn’t appear important enough.

The Issir lines cracked open at some point. The young squire run after the escaping group of legionnaires carrying the King’s banner with them, while hacking away at enemies in the blind, thunders and lightings making the scene nightmarish. The men looking wild and panicked. Angry and utterly confused. Scared all of them.

But for the dead.

The reality of it was that the Legion had arrived and the Issirs had retreated a couple of hundred meters allowing the First Century to break out.

“Where?” He asked Sir Barnard, the hale Knight covered in gore that was slowly washing away and sporting several dents on his plate.

“On his horse,” the Knight replied while cleaning his sword.

Adrian approached the King with his entourage and one of the squire’s brought a horse for him as well.

“Calvus it is good you live boy,” King Alistair said, gaunt face pale under his helm. “They will try to cut us off, so we’ll march hard during the night.”

“Yes, my king!” Adrian replied relieved they had made it out.

“We won’t get away, if they have half a brain,” the King continued ruining his exultant thoughts. “But we will fight where they don’t want to.”

Adrian gulped down and stared at the other lords and knights present and on horseback.

“Stay at the near Calvus,” King Alistair had told him sternly. “Something happens, you get my sword to Regia boy.”

Calvus did and lost his life for it.

 

 

The First Legion and King Alistair broke out of Riverdor and force-marched not on the road leading to Forestfort, but straight south towards the plains and the Alden Desert. This dragged the Second Foot –or parts of it- after them and gave Lord Ruud, who was standing behind the Mudriver Bridge with the Scaldingport forces, the opportunity to block the High King’s army there simply by not moving away. The Issirs didn’t want to fight Issirs and no one trusted Lord Ruud not to stab him in the back, so the men remained in the Granlake’s Marshes and their side of the river for almost a week.

While everyone expected a race to Sabertooth Castle with regiments of the Second Foot following the fast moving Legion and the Lesia forces following the Second Foot, King Alistair marched for a night, stopped to rest for an hour, and when the Issirs appeared force-marching hard after them under heavy rain, he turned the Legion around and fought them right then and there in the middle of nowhere.

King Alistair had won the first battle he’d ever fought following his father King Titus the Second on campaign and true to form he would win his last thirty eight years later.

 

 

Lord Sirio Veturius

Circa 206 NC

 

The Fall of Heroes

Chapter XXIII

Battle of the Turncoats

(King Alistair Alden,

Stalwart Tiger of Regia.

-The Conference’s end and the first day of the Battle-

Early third month of winter 190 NC)