Chapter 1
A Bold Debut
AN 1214 (AZ 1451) - Early Summer
Hebertos, Notos
Carpos and his men spent two full months in Kordai recovering from the rebels' trial by fire. He pretended to take an interest in the arts of the so-called Pearl of Notos and mingled with the social climbers eager to enlist the Prince as a patron. It was all brutally dull and the pain of the brands only served to make him more irritable, but he made a fine performance of it and by the time his men were able to march again, they set out to continue their circuit through the country. They spent little more than a single night in the miserable little farming village of Maranthe and about a week in the port of Iakobin until a rebel spy passed along instructions for Carpos to seize Hebertos. It would be the last test before they were recognized as full-fledged members of the Alliance.
Hebertos was a small city of about five thousand souls that grew up out of an intersection of the main road connecting the capital to the two eastern ports. Capturing Hebertos would cut off the cohort occupying Girondin. Without support from the rest of the Legion, the rebels stood a chance of defeating the cohort and retaking Girondin, then capturing Iakobin to give the Alliance a secure grip on the eastern half of the country. From there, Maranthe and Kordai could be taken to encircle the capital and if the capital could be taken, the Protectorate would not be long for this world.
Carpos pledged that he could win victories without even fighting and this would be his first opportunity to prove it. It was morning on the day after he and his men arrived and every last man of the garrison was assembled for inspection.
Truly his father was a fool for reducing the garrisons to an insignificant one hundred men throughout both the homeland and the Protectorate. How could a mere one hundred men hold a city? The idea of a few professional soldiers raising a militia of the common folk to hold the line until reinforcements from the legions arrived was nonsense. They would be crushed and the city would be sacked. Of course, his father never had much sense for war, which made his mad designs on the Darklands all the more galling.
The garrison was already assembled ahead of the arrival of Carpos and his honor guard. Without making it too obvious, the honor guard shed a few centuries to flank the garrison's formation. All eyes were on Carpos, so no one was paying attention to the honor guard's move to surround them.
As the Prince drew closer, the prefect of the garrison saluted, shouting, "Hail Zephyr! Hail His Highness the Prince!"
The rest of the garrison also saluted, echoing, "Hail Zephyr!"
Carpos left them standing there saluting and said to the prefect, "I thought I bid you assemble every man."
"Your Highness, every man is present and accounted for, all one hundred!"
"What of the volunteers?"
"Your Highness, in light of the reports from Girondin, there was a grave threat of rebel infiltration, so the volunteers were disarmed and disbanded," the prefect replied. "Forty-eight suspected rebels were arrested and transferred to the capital to face judgment."
Occasionally the Duke's dogs proved to be clever. Without the militia volunteers, the Alliance barely had a foothold in the city. Capturing the city, to say nothing of holding it once it was taken, would be all the more difficult. Of course, there would be no problem at all if the garrison simply surrendered to him. First he had to test the prefect's resolve.
"Who then will protect this town when you and your men are recalled for the invasion?" he asked.
"Your Highness, I have judged that my primary concern is uprooting the rebel menace and keeping the supply route open between the capital and Lord Hilarion's cohort in Girondin. The watchmen are sufficient to maintain order in our absence."
For a mere garrison prefect, he was terribly presumptive to be making such large decisions on his own. Or was he simply trying to make himself look more competent by acting as if his orders came out of his own head? It did not matter much either way. All that mattered was where he stood.
"Tell me, Sir..."
"Malchos, Your Highness."
"Tell me, Sir Malchos, are you loyal to Zephyr?"
"Your Highness?"
The prefect was either hard of hearing or slow of wits. Carpos repeated the question.
"Are you loyal to Zephyr?"
"Of, of course, Your Highness."
"Are you loyal to my father the King?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Are you loyal to me?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
His answers were all dutiful and predictable, but now the real challenge began.
"Is your loyalty greater to me or to my father?"
"Your Highness?"
Carpos did not appreciate repeating himself, but this was the most vital question and if anything was worth repeating, this was it.
Leveling his gaze at the prefect, the Prince asked, "If you had to choose between your loyalty to me and your loyalty to my father, which would you choose?"
"So long as His Majesty the King sits upon the throne, my loyalty is first to him, just as it will be when Your Highness sits upon the throne."
"Are you prepared to die for your loyalty to my father?"
It was a pointed question, but the prefect replied without a moment's reflection.
"Of course, Your Highness. My life is pledged to His Majesty's service."
Killing one man blindly loyal to his father was one thing, but why sacrifice the other 99 if it was not necessary?
Addressing all the men of the garrison, Carpos said, "All you men, are you too prepared to die for my father?"
The prefect answered for them, raising his fist and shouting, "We live and we die for God, King and Zephyr!"
The men raised their fists as well and echoed, "God, King and Zephyr!"
It was disappointing, but it seemed like no good could be made of them. It would be too much trouble to try to sort the sheep from the goats. Easier to just wipe them out as a message to the other garrisons. Still, he would give them one last chance.
Grinning wickedly, he asked the prefect, "If I told you I was God, I was King and I was Zephyr, would you bend the knee?"
The prefect was at a loss. For a moment he stood gaping before finally replying, "Forgive me, Your Highness, but even in jest, such words are blasphemy and treason."
So that was how it was.
Carpos raised his hand and shouted, "Men! Ready your arms!"
His men did so, causing the prefect to recoil and the troops of the garrison to break out in confused mutterings.
"Your Highness, what is this!?"
"I will ask you one last time," Carpos said. "Will you die for my father or will you live and serve me?"
The prefect found his nerve, squaring off against the Prince.
"Your Highness, you go too far," he said boldly. "Whether testing or jesting, you go too far. His Majesty will hear of this."
Carpos sniffed derisively at the display of defiance.
"Yes, he will. Men! Leave one alive, one alone."
The prefect drew his spatha and shouted, "Your Highness!"
It was all over in mere moments. The hundred men of the garrison were quickly felled in a hail of javelins and arrows. The wounded were then quickly dispatched by spear and lance. As ordered, a single man was left alive, though lightly wounded in the slaughter.
Two men held the wounded legionary, while Prince Carpos told his men, "Bring some blacksmith's tongs."
The honor guard's armorer promptly delivered the tongs. Carpos then removed the signet from his finger and held it in the tongs.
"Master Dinostratos," he said to one of the Royal Mages in his entourage. "Heat this ring so that it is red-hot. This man must undergo his own trial by fire."
"It shall be done, Your Highness," Dinostratos replied.
Dinostratos summoned a small flame that steadily heated the ring and once it was red-hot, Carpos told the men holding the legionary, "Hold him fast. It must be a clear imprint."
The two men were much stronger than the legionary and they held him firmly in place while Carpos branded him on the forehead with his signet. The man's screams gave the Prince some vindictive pleasure. He enjoyed inflicting on someone else the pain he endured at the hands of the rebels. He recalled the ancient stories of the bronze bull, a terrible way to die. That would be a fitting end for the impudent Rowland when the time came.
As the legionary's screams finally died down, Prince Carpos told him, "Now listen well. You will go to the capital and tell the Duke everything that has happened. He will not believe you, but that brand is your proof. Now go."
Carpos' men stripped the legionary of his weapons and armor, gave him a waterskin and sent him on his way. With that taken care of, Carpos looked at the bodies of the dead of the garrison and said, "Salvage what you can and see that these men are buried. Send men into the city to hunt down the watchmen, take them alive if they do not resist. Perhaps we can use them. Patrol the streets. See that no one enters and no leaves except by my command."
"It shall be done, Your Highness," the men said as one.
The centurions and the decurions promptly began shouting orders as the men dispersed to go about their tasks. The Royal Bodyguards and some others remained behind, among them the prefect of guard, Carpos' childhood friend Patrocles.
"They will not all be this easy, Your Highness," Patrocles said.
"I would think not," Carpos replied. "When word of the deeds of Carpos' Band spreads, my victories will come all the easier. Men will choose to bend the knee rather than die like dogs."
"Now that you have made your intentions known, there will be those who fight."
"Then they will die. It is all too simple, my friend."
Patrocles bowed his head.
"We live to serve, Your Highness."
And Carpos would make the most of those lives of service.
"Find me the finest house in this city," he said. "I will celebrate my first conquest."