a king's game

chapter three

The heavy armour pushes him down, the linen robe underneath is clinging to him from the thin film of sweat covering his skin. He feels dizzy, the landscape behind the visor of his helmet blurring before his eyes. Each of his clumsy movements is accompanied by the rattling of his armour. The rattling, in turn, startles the horse beneath him, so that it prances restlessly in place.
"Calm down, boy", Payton mutters more to himself than the stallion. He holds on to the saddle convulsively as his vision goes black again. For a brief moment he finds himself in well-known cold marble halls. He takes a deep breath, and they are gone.
Instead, he feels the animal's rhythmic swaying and hears the sounds of dozens of clattering armours and half a dozen horses' neighing. Payton tunes the sounds out as good as he can, but the soldiers' excited shouting simply builds to a single angry hum like that of an overly loud, agitated beehive.
The boy thinks about how simple-minded, how despicable they are for looking forward to a fight many of them won't survive, before he collapses sweating and trembling on the back of his horse. He hears astonished shouts, then a strange calm settles over his restless mind, and he embraces it willingly.
His senses numbed, he floats in nothingness, let's himself be tugged in unknown directions like a doll made of straw with which farmer's children played while their parents harvested ripe earns of corn in autumn.

Payton opens his eyes when footsteps echo through the walls as someone runs across the marble floor. A chill runs down Payton's spine as the figure slices through where his body should be, were he really there. But he is merely a ghost here, summoned to witness, to watch, rather than to be.

He watches bouncing auburn curls as they disappear behind a wall. His gaze follows the young woman, and the massive walls fizzle out before his eyes if they get in the way. He is not quite corporeal here, rather a breeze brushing fleetingly, not noticeable, yet not entirely hidden. If she wasn't in a hurry, she would have felt Payton's presence for sure, as she always did.

In a dimly lit room, several heads turn to her as the newcomer enters and the muffled chatter dies away. Six or seven people stand in a loose circle bent over a table laden with scrolls of parchment, one of them approaches the young woman with prettily curled hair.

He is a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in an embroided gambeson. There is a shadow on his familiar facial features, and the otherwise elegantly pinned back blonde hair hangs tangled over the man's forehead. Reimund appears more grim and unnerved than Payton has ever seen him. The recent incidents took a toll on him, he looks older than he should.
Without a greeting, the auburn haired girl leans in to him and whispers: "I've received a message from a northern outpost. The Tower is under siege, our armies up there are forced to act. I believe the rook leads them into battle."

Reimund's pale blue eyes widen with horror as he looks into her golden ones, searching for a lie in them but finding only sincerity.
"It is more sinister than we thought", he states dully, drained of every hope.

Hesitantly, the woman reaches for his chin, caressing his clenched jaw lightly with her fingertips, her dark, smooth skin contrasting beautifully with the man's slightly tanned. Although she barely touched Reimund, her touch held an intimacy heated kisses could not compare to. Payton watches as the wrinkles on the man's forehead smooth out, as if her sheer presence wiped years of worry from his face.
"He will live, dear", she says quietly, her hazel eyes glinting softly with fondness and bitter-sweet wistfulness arises in Payton.
Once upon a time, she used to look at him that way.
Once upon a time, in another life, Payton was hers as much as Genviéve was his.

Now, he has to see her figure being whirled away from him, until Payton can't make out her auburn hair shining in a hundred hues of brown and gold any more, and he can't remember if her eyes were more green or amber.

If he was ever granted the chance to see her again, he would look into her eyes until he had memorised every single golden speck in them, he thinks, before a familiar darkness settles over his mind like a warm blanket, lulling him into unconsciousness.


"Someone give me water!", a blurred figure leaning over him yells. Payton's surrounding is unbearably loud again.
"Now is the worst time ever to faint, lad", the same man speaks with urgency in his voice.
The world around him is slowly taking shape again. Payton feels the wet leather of his armour against his skin and the dry, hot wind on his sweaty face. Someone has removed his helmet.
Then, a bottle is pressed on his parched and chapped lips. As the liquid threatens to choke him, he immediately starts swallowing. Cold water runs down his throat, breathing vitality into his limp body.

"Now, that's better, eh?", the deep voice rumbles cheerfully. This time, the boy carefully glimpses upwards, noticing the tall, bearded man looking down at him with a big, toothy smile. Over the last few weeks, Payton grew fond of the sly thug that was his new pawn. The boy groans softly as he straightens up.

"Give me some space, Lowell. Your foul breath is probably the reason I fainted", he manages to say with a raspy, hoarse voice that sounds nothing like his usual self.
Obviously, that is an exaggeration, but after four weeks of siege without fresh, flowing water, they all probably smell like death itself. Payton's only salvation is his already adapted sense of smell.

"Look who's a smartass after falling off his high horse", Lowell snickers, but beneath all that mischievous teasing, his voice is strained with concern and drawn together brows accompany a wrinkled in worry forehead.
"A vision again?", the pawn asks muffled, casting wary glances at the soldiers surrounding them. The ways of the Burdened are not for mundane ears to hear.

Payton nods while ruffling the sweaty hair on his head. „The king is informed", he says quietly, his lips pressed together into a thin line while thinking of Reimund. He had looked so defeated, a poor imitation of the proud man he used to be.
And although Reimund had everything Payton had dreamed of as a child- a palace, a crown, a queen- he feels nothing but pity for the man who has to watch idly as his kingdom crumbles to ashes in his own helpless hands.

Determined not to dwell any longer in such futile ruminations, Payton mounts his stallion.
The horse prances anxiously, but the boy restrains it with an iron grip on the reins.
Immediately he straightens, his nausea retreating. Here, on a horse's back, looking down on his excited soldiers, he feels in control.
Lowell follows him on his warhorse, staying behind Payton like the persistent shadow he is.


"What are you waiting for? The enemy's army to surrender from boredom?", the boy yells, and the cheerful chatter deadens.