I was right.
Graden exploded to his feet in rage, pointing a trembling sausage finger at Prince Oskar. “You disobedient little rat!” He seethed. “After everything your brother and I have done for you, you repay us with this?!”
“It is partly because of everything you, my brother, and your cabal have done that I have decided on this course of action,” Prince Oskar said defiantly as Grey stood up from his chair. “Let us dispense with the falsehoods. My Father is dead. Before he sent me away, Alaric showed me his decaying corpse, still lying in his chambers. Likely as a warning as to what would happen if I defied him.”
“I see that it did not work, Your Highness,” Grey said wryly, as the rest of the table got to their feet. Looks like negotiations were starting to fall through.
To our benefit.
“It did not, no,” Oskar said stoically, disregarding Graden for a moment. He met Grey’s eyes. “All his little display did is convince me that he had fallen far from the man I thought he was.” He shook his head sadly. “Once upon a time, Alaric was a perfect knight and a man I was proud to not only call my brother, but my future King as well. Sadly, he changed when he fell into the company of Lord Graden and his cabal.”
“Shut your mouth, you little shit!” Graden barked, slamming a fist on the table between us. Despite his appearance, the solid wooden table cracked in half at his blow. The broken pieces of the table fell to the dirt below. I guess just because he was a fat bastard, it didn’t mean he was weak. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Perhaps,” Oskar inclined his head ever so slightly. “Perhaps not. But what I do know is that I have no intention of allowing Herztal to fall under the control of Alaric’s depravity. Much less your own. Let me be clear. Not once in my life have I ever seriously considered making a play for the throne. But here and now, I am. I will not allow Alaric to become King. The throne shall fall to me, as the last sane son of the Eisenherz line. Headmaster Greycton,” He turned back to Grey, making sure to keep Leopold and Woodrick in his view. “Marshall Leopold, and Commander Woodrick. Will you support my bid for the throne, in exchange for my support of the Uprising?”
The three leaders of the Uprising exchanged glances, but it didn’t seem like they needed much convincing. Grey cleared his throat. “To be perfectly honest, it was always our intention to support you, Your Highness. In truth, we were reluctant to forcibly end the Eisenherz dynasty and thus throw the Kingdom into further chaos. We were quite alarmed about your presence at Helstein, in case those plans were ruined. Yes, Your Highness. You can count on our support.”
Prince Oskar nodded regally at Grey’s words, while Leopold nodded along stoically and Woodrick smiled winningly. Any further celebration was ruined by Graden audibly growling, like he was a rabid beast. The man was completely red in the face, with a prominent vein bulging in his forehead as he grit his teeth.
“Do you think I’ll LET YOU, BOY?!” He shouted. He jabbed one fat finger behind him, in the direction of the Loyalist forces beyond the tent. “Your forces are RIGHT THERE in the midst of mine! You can’t possibly think I’ll just let you happily march them over the field to the traitors?! This isn’t a storybook, you little fool! At a word from me, I’ll have them slaughtered to the last man!”
Prince Oskar gazed at him disdainfully. “Of course this isn’t a storybook. Do you think I made this decision lightly? My commanders were informed of my intentions weeks ago. This entire confrontation was meticulously planned in advance. At a signal from me, they were instructed to advance to a position away from the main host with our supplies.” I hadn’t noticed, but the Prince had kept a hand in his pocket for some time now. He withdrew it, revealing a small medallion. There was a simple glass jewel set into its face.
It was glowing blue.
In fact, I’d say it was glowing the blue of the Uprising.
Prince Oskar crossed his arms over his chest, visibly satisfied at the apparent success of his plan. “I would say you might hear them just about…now.”
The tent went quiet for a moment. Sure enough, I thought that I could just barely hear the marching of armor-clad feet out of sight. I guess when the Prince said his forces were going to march away from the main host, he meant towards us.
Two things happened then.
First, Leopold cursed and dashed back towards the tent entrance we had come through. He ripped it backward and started frantically signaling a no with his arms. He gave it up after a moment and ran out of the tent altogether, to my confusion.
The second thing was that Lord Graden finally had enough. With a veritable roar, he leapt at the Prince across the shattered remains of the table he had broken with his hands outstretched, as if to grab him by the neck.
Most of us reached for our weapons, seeing that the ‘negotiations’ were breaking down into violence. In particular, I saw that the armored knight quickly stepped in front of Prince Oskar with his sword and shield drawn.
We needn’t have bothered.
With a negligent wave of one glowing silver and black hand, Grey grabbed the fat noble straight out of the air with a telekinetic spell or skill of some kind. Graden struggled uselessly in midair, still trying to grasp at Prince Oskar impotently.
“Why, Rickard Graden,” Grey said with a vicious smile. “Did you just attempt regicide against the future High King of Herztal?”
Prince Oskar stepped up from beyond his bodyguard, as the sound of marching feet grew closer to our position. He stopped next to Grey with a small smile on his youthful features. “I believe he did, Headmaster. I’m afraid that in this case, I’m going to have to see that the Duchy of Helstein is stripped from House Graden.”
Grey started chuckling to himself, as the rest of the tent realized what had just happened. I saw Graden’s two flunkies try and make a break for the outside of the tent before they could be captured and held hostage. They were stopped before they even reached the flap by Woodrick, who plunged a hand into the dirt. The two nobles were almost immediately bound in roots.
I felt a little foolish.
I could have done that.
Meanwhile, Grey floated the furious former Duke closer to his position so they were nearly eye to eye. “You might not have been involved in the conspiracy that saw me branded by the Savoy, Rickard,” Grey said menacingly. “But I’ll have you squealing everything you know about the others that were before long.”
As the entrance to the tent across from us opened letting a Herztalian soldier wearing officer’s livery inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. A second later, I laughed slightly, shaking my head at the absurdity of it all.
Had we just won the Battle of Helstein without even trying?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………
“Yer shittin me,” Azarus said to me in disbelief, after the meeting had broken up. It was hours later at this point, and I was back with Azarus, Sylvia, and Renauld. Well, and the still comatose Venix. The four of us were sitting around the makeshift campfire that we had built, after the news had broke to the army that there wasn’t going to be a battle. Fade was sitting with us as well, looking like he was actively paying attention to what I had to say.
It was just us, for now. Grey and Honoka were still with the rest of the Uprising leadership, which now included Prince Oskar. Despite having essentially won a major battle bloodlessly, there was still plenty of work to be done to settle things.
“I swear I’m not,” I said with wide eyes, accepting a stick of grilled meat from Renauld. I nodded my thanks to the Gnoll and took a bite before I continued. “After that, Grey and the Prince went to break it to the Loyalist forces that they had a few choices open. They could either lay down their arms, surrender, and be taken prisoner. They could swear fealty to Prince Oskar, and join the combined forces of the Uprising. Or…they could insist on battle against a much larger force, and against one of the Prince. And probably get demolished.”
“And how did they take it?” Sylvia asked from her place on the log next to me, intrigued.
I smiled at her and laughed. “Most of them just immediately joined the Prince! Hell, we had the most defections from the Helstein forces. I’m thinking Duke Graden wasn’t exactly a popular leader.”
“Oh, he isn’t. Or, well, wasn’t,” Renauld broke in, flopping down onto a chair not far from me. “He was notorious for being a greedy, wasteful, tasteless bastard. You know the city of Helstein wasn’t always…that?” He waved dismissively at said blocky city, which we were camped outside the walls of. “When Rickard Graden came to power, he spent enormous amounts of gold rebuilding the city to fit his worthless sense of taste. He was probably the least popular major Lord in the Kingdom, despite being one of the wealthiest.”
“Who’s the city going to go to now? The Prince say anything?” Azarus asked me, leaning forward.
“I don’t know who’s going to keep it. But I do know that the Uprising is going to hang onto it for now. They’re essentially moving their Headquarters from Hollow Hill to Helstein.” I said to my dwarven friend. “Which makes sense.”
Sylvia nodded slowly. “It does. It’s a much more defensible location. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult to siege cities in the Kingdom. There was a great deal of apprehension among the soldiers about trying to take the city again, after the last assault failed.”
“None of that now,” I said with a smile, gazing out at the numerous other fires I could see just like ours. When the news had broken to the rank and file of the Uprising, the cheers had echoed up and down the mountain valley. I had no doubt that the people in the city had been able to hear it, they’d been so loud.
There were impromptu parties springing up all over the place among the army. People were so relieved that they didn’t need to risk their life in open battle that command had given them leave to let their hair down. I didn’t blame them for it. The main host of the Uprising had been marching for weeks longer than we had, all the way from Hollow Hill.
They deserved this win, even if I thought it wouldn’t last.
That dampened my smile slightly, which didn’t escape the notice of my friends.
“Nathan?” Sylvia asked me, concerned. She lay a hand on my right forearm. “Is there something wrong?”
“Ah, well,” I said, embarrassed that she had noticed. “I was just thinking about something the Prince said before I left. He said…that Alaric wasn’t going to take his defection lying down. Helstein is important, after all.”
Renauld sighed, but nodded. “You’re right. People were calling it the gateway to the south, but it can go both ways. It can also be the gateway to the north. You can bet your ass that Alaric is going to try and hit us. Which…reminds me of something. What happened to those guys from the other Order?”
“Oh, the Solstice’s Flame guys?” I snorted, reaching for the mug of ale I’d gotten from a nearby party. After taking a swig and setting it down, I sighed. “Well, they were long gone by the time the Loyalists had surrendered. Apparently, they noticed the way the wind was shifting and immediately abandoned the field. They hauled ass out of here further south, and nobody was able to keep up with their pace. This was around the time the Prince’s forces were marching on the negotiation tent. Good news is they weren’t able to take their supplies with them, so we have a bunch of Classer-level materials and equipment to play around and outfit some troops with.”
“Eh, good enough I suppose,” Azarus said a little doubtfully. “But ya can be sure that those pricks are runnin’ straight into Alaric’s arms. We ain’t seen the last o’ them.”
I nodded, but tried not to let it bother me. After all, we had scored a major win today. Not only had we won the battle without a fight, but the Uprising now had royal support behind it. That was going to sway more than a few fence sitters to our side.
I just hoped it would be worth it, in the end.
