Chapter 1196: A new dawn(2)
Alpheo leaned back against the goose-feather pillows, facing the first true interrogation since he woke.
Jarza wanted to know the deal with the Kakunian. It was a fair question; Alpheo only wished he had a fair answer.
"Truth be stated, Jarza, I haven’t got the slightest idea," he admitted, his voice cracking with the briefest of cough"The man is as much a mystery as he is a miracle of violence. Before the horns blew, he whispered in my ear that I was a disappointment. Then, in the thick of that red soup, he embraced me like a long-lost brother returned from the grave. Is he a friend? Is he a foe? I don’t have the damnedest hint.All we know is that we both danced in that field.
Perhaps it was just a passing madness, a fever of the blood that will break by morning. Whatever the case, it serves us to keep him close. For now, he is a sword I’d rather have sheathed at my side than searching for the inner of my ribs."
Jarza’s hard eyes settled on Alpheo, lingering for a moment on the thick white bandages wrapped around the Prince’s forehead. Alpheo had almost forgotten the wound was there, but the way Jarza looked at it made his skin crawl with a ghost of the pain he’d soon have to face.
"I don’t trust him," the Legate muttered, his hand twitching as if the Bull might manifest from the shadows at any moment.
"Neither do I. The man is as fickle as a summer gale. Who’s to say how long his interest will last? Reason dictates we should be allies, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about him , it’s that is a language he barely speaks." Alpheo let out a long, heavy sigh, feeling the weight of a thousand future worries piling onto his chest before he had even washed the old blood from his fingernails.
"But that is a problem for a man who can stand on his own two feet. Perhaps our worries are unfounded and—" Alpheo broke off, his eyes tracking a slight flutter of the tent flap. A small, familiar shadow was silhouetted there, ears perched and motionless. "I think I’d sooner see which bad-mannered spy is eavesdropping on my recovery."
The figure outside jolted, then tentatively stepped into the light.
Alpheo had expected his first meeting with his son after the slaughter to be a bit more composed. Instead, the boy broke into a desperate run, throwing himself onto his father’s chest with a force that made Alpheo’s bruised ribs scream in protest.
"Now, that’s more like it," Alpheo muttered, his hand instinctively patting the back of Basil’s head. He looked up to see Asag standing in the entrance, the barest hint of a smile touching the man’s lips as he watched the reunion.
Then, a second head poked through the flap, wearing an expression that was far from somber.
"I was told a certain Prince had found the gall to play soldier," a voice chirped. "Happy to see you awake, Alph. I certainly didn’t expect you to go charging into the fray like a common brawler tricked of his ale."
"Neither did the enemy, I think," Alpheo retorted ’’Bit of a surprise for all.’’
The Legate of the Fourth, strode inside with his characteristic devilish smile and short-cropped brown hair, which he had just gave it a cut apparently.Pity, the longer hair suited him more.
Edric had always been the one with a tremor in his hand for the front lines, a point of constant, heated argument between them. Now, seeing the Prince in the very state Alpheo had spent years warning him about, he looked like a man who had won a very private bet.
How unjust life was. The prince had spent his career playing the cautious chessmaster, only to end up broken in a bed after his first proper taste of the mud, while the man who lived for the chaos stood over him without a scratch.
"Look at you," Edric chuckled, gesturing to Alpheo’s battered form. "I spent years listening to your lectures on ’princely restraint,’ and then you go and get yourself rearranged in a ditch. It’s almost poetic, isn’t it?"
’’Guzzle your own piss’’
It wasn’t long before the rhythmic drag of a foot announced a new arrival. Rykio appeared in the tent opening, leaning heavily on a stout wooden stick. He looked much the same as Asag had when they first reunited after the Bastion
"How’s the leg?" the Prince asked, his voice a raspy tether to the world of the living.
"Fine," Rykio shot back without missing a beat. "How’s the head?"
"Mostly good, except for a few pieces currently missing." Alpheo turned his gaze to Jarza, a spark of morbid curiosity flickering in his eyes. "The doctors saved the rest of the ear, didn’t they?"
He raised a tentative finger to probe the thick bandages, but Jarza swatted his hand away with the reflexive speed of a protective mother, his expression the meanest ’don’t touch it’ Alpheo had ever seen.
"Well, I think most of it is still there," Alpheo muttered, bringing his hand back down to rest on his son’s head. He gave the boy a few gentle pats, feeling Basil’s arms wrap around his waist firmly. "The mind seems to be working well enough, at least."
"Can’t wait to see what you’ve got hiding under those linens," Edric remarked, pulling up a stool and making himself at home. "I always thought a few scars would suit your complexion, add a bit of gravity to that still fucking youthful face. Though, I’ll admit, I expected a dashing cut on the cheek, not a missing half-moon of an ear."
"Scars are overrated," Asag said meekly. He settled himself comfortably on the base of the bed, giving Basil’s leg a light, playful kick. "Don’t go silent now, boy. You pestered me with questions every step of the way here."
In response, Basil let out a muffled moan against the blankets, his voice finally rising, thick with suppressed emotion. "I thought we lost you."
As the boy spoke, Alpheo’s eyes softened. He looked at the crown of his son’s head and wondered what the last seventeen hours had been like for him. What was it like to stand by, powerless, while your father threw the final dice on his own life? How many sons across this red valley were praying at this very moment to see their fathers walk through the door, only to realize that even if they returned, the war had kept a piece of them that would never be surrendered?And how many would never come back?
Alpheo knew he was lucky. Cruelly, impossibly lucky.
"The boy almost started his grieving before we even knew you were dead," Asag muttered. "Puts too much stock in his feelings, this one. He’s the opposite of you; his heart runs miles ahead of his mind." Asag’s tone was gruff, but Alpheo saw the way his eyes lingered on the child with a profound, aching tenderness.
It had been close, awfully, terrifyingly close. He found himself mentally reciting old oaths, swearing that he would never let things reach such a precipice again. But even as the thought formed, he knew it for a lie.
He had sworn the same after the Bleeding Plains, when only Egil’s timely charge had saved his flank. He had sworn it again in Romelia, only to be pulled from the fire by that same man once more. It seemed every promise he made to himself was destined to be broken in the mud. He had sworn to see Sorza’s head on a pike, yet the Golden Sun still flew somewhere to the east.
One more for the tally,that’s all it was.
But he was alive. And he had won. In a world of uncaring or caring gods, perhaps that was the only currency that mattered.
Basil’s head finally rose from the blanket. His eyes were glassy, held in a delicate balance of shyness and timidity, but there was no fear left in them, not like the gaze that had haunted Alpheo during the battle’s darkest hour.
"Don’t ever do this again," Basil said, sniffing hard.
"Your da’s a warrior, Basil," Edric cut in, letting a hand rest on the boy’s shoulder. ’’Can’t ask him to stop what he should do, no more you could command the wave to stop’’ He let out a sharp yelp of surprise when Basil’s teeth sank into his finger.
"I wasn’t speaking to you," the boy snapped, turning back to his father with iron in his gaze. "Don’t ever do this again. I thought I lost you.What would mother and Rosalind do without you?"
Alpheo reached out, his thumb catching a half-formed tear at the corner of his son’s eye and wiping it away.
He didn’t know how much that question haunted him in that terrible slaughter.
"You know,’’ he began ’’Long ago, I expected the world to deliver salvation and happiness if we simply played the right cards," he sighed, the weight of his years suddenly visible in the lines of his face. He still recalled the shining of those three silverii that were put onto his father’s hand for his liberty.Looking back he ought to be worth much more.
He felt like an old man faced with the beautiful, foolish ghost of his own youth.
"I know better now with the gravity of age behind me. The world doesn’t care about our wishes or our hopes. If we want something in this life, we have to grasp it ourselves, regardless of the cost."
Basil gripped the meaning well enough. It wasn’t the soft, comforting answer he had wanted, there were no promises of safety, no lies about a peaceful future. But it was the truth. Tough luck or not, it was the only inheritance Alpheo had left to give.
And wasn’t that what he had long asked of his father?The honest truth?
