Avengard: The Fall of Senvia

Chapter 10 - Meditation, Part 1

It took me half an hour to clean up after the ambush. The wagon was mostly undamaged, barring a half dozen arrows that had found their way between the shallow grain of the oak. It was, however, drenched in red. I didn't bother wasting our supply of water to scrub. It would have been too much work. Instead, I borrowed Eskir's dagger — the one I had given him, that he'd failed to use in the attack — and shaved off the surface layer of the wood.

The wagon was old anyway, I reasoned, and had sat in the wagon shed outside the inn for a full winter. Lucian had oiled it well with boiled linseed oil, and applied several coats. I was attempting to shave off only the thinnest layer of wood. I could re-apply the oil, but it would take days of drying time to properly apply enough layers, and mineral oil wouldn't be sufficient.

My fingers were precise, and I braced my palm against the side of the wagon to maintain consistency. It was like shaving a man's beard. I'd only done it once, just before Alaric's coronation.

I told him then, I wasn't a barber, nor his valet. I was Emperor's Guard.

He said he wanted to look groomed, and he didn't trust his other servants. They were bound to die for him, but I was bound to kill for him, and as he put it, I was an expert with any blade on the battlefield. If the blade was so much smaller, it would be that much easier to wield with precision.

I had to hold back a laugh at his likening of a greatsword to a shaving razor, but I didn't. I would never be as good as someone with any manner of experience, but I had been given a command by the man about to become the Emperor of Senvia.

So I shut my mouth, gritted my teeth, and set the blade to his skin as steadily as I could muster. My senses sharpened, and I could hear and feel each nick of the sharpened edge slicing through his coarse, greying black hairs.

I didn't have to like it, I just had to do it.

A small cracking sound came from the grain of the wood in front of me — a small splinter. I frowned, readjusted my blade, and shaved the peeling splinter away.

"Who were they?" I asked Eskir as I worked.

There was a chance he'd know, as he was the one they had been trying to kill.

He didn't answer.

"Oh right," I said, "the voice thing."

"They deserve a proper burial," he said, staring down at one of the attackers. I hadn't cleaned up the bodies at all, only the damage to our wagon and the scattered arrows along the roadway. Bodies were common in Avengard, anywhere the Senvian Empire had tread. Nature had adapted to the excess volume of available carrion. All I had to do was pull them to the side of the road, and animals would take care of the rest.

He had taken a knee beside the corpse, his hand pressed into the dead man's armour.

"They tried to kill you," I remarked.

"Yes, they did. And they were my friends."

I coughed. "Excuse me?"

He nodded down at the corpse. "I spent ten years of my life growing up alongside this man. We were so young, so eager to see the world." He leaned in, as if the ambusher could hear him. "We shared our first drink when we were kids, brother," he whispered, barely audible. "I'm sure we'll we share our last in the days to come."

"They tried to kill you," I repeated.

He gave a half-hearted laugh. "I don't blame them for it. We are... ideologically opposed."

I wondered what their ideology was. Or what Eskir's was. The one he couldn't talk about. He wasn't satisfied with Senvia, that much was clear, but to what degree? "Ideology or not," I said, changing the subject, "you were useless today. I need you to take care of yourself."