Gareth clenched his fists until his fingernails bit into his palms.
Looking back, it had been an omen from the beginning: the man who had never once voiced displeasure at any slight had shown such visceral revulsion toward serving as that bastard girl’s knight.
At the time, Gareth had thought the man was merely sickened by having to attend the daughter of the woman who drove his own mother to her death. But perhaps he had sensed it even then.
That intuition that one day, that girl would shake the very ground beneath his feet…
Unable to master his fury, Gareth brought his fist down hard on the windowsill.
Had it not been for the oath to his mother, that wretch would have abandoned him long ago.
Gareth recalled the moment Bernadette bound him with the blood covenant.
In that moment, he had distinctly felt Varkas’s life being tied to his own and Ayla’s.
He did not know how such a thing could be possible. Perhaps, as the priests insisted without cease, some sinister sorcery truly ran through the blood of the Khan.
From early childhood, he had known his mother possessed a strange power.
At times she showed an intuition that skirted precognition, and she carried herself as if she could see straight through a person’s mind.
Perhaps Mother had foreseen that Varkas would betray them.
Perhaps that was why she had bound him with Khan sorcery. If the Grand Duke of Shearkan ever took the side of that witch Senevier, Gareth’s and Ayla’s standings would be undone…
‘Yet in the end, that bastard tore through the covenant.’
Gareth glared out the window, his eyes bloodshot.
The countless torches covering the mountainside had steadily drawn their cordon tight, pressing in toward the castle gates.
He held his breath instinctively as the army, which he assumed would halt at a prudent distance, advanced straight for the gate. Just then, the echoing blast of a horn sounded the alarm for a raid.
“Hah, it seems the Imperial Union Army has decided to abandon the Crown Prince.”
A Northerner who had come up behind him let out a low chuckle.
Gareth turned on him with a venomous glare, but froze when he caught the raw murderous intent in the man’s eyes.
The man seized Gareth’s collar in a veiny fist, yanking him forward with a growl.
“The higher-ups think you still make a useful hostage, but looking at that out there, I’m not so sure.”
“Insolent dog! Unhand me this instant—!”
“I’ll drag you down to the front of the gate myself. If those bastards don’t back off quietly, I’ll take your head and hang it over the wall.”
The blood in Gareth’s body ran cold.
The man began hauling him roughly toward the door. Just then, a shrill scream erupted outside, followed by the sound of something shattering.
The man dragging him like a dog snapped his head around and bellowed.
“What is it!”
No answer came from the corridor.
The Northerner glared toward the doorway, which had fallen as silent as if the commotion had never happened. He shoved Gareth into a corner and strode heavily toward the door.
“I asked what was going on—!”
The man wrenched the door open, his shout cutting off midway.
Gareth stared blankly at the thing that hit the floor with a wet thud.
It took him several seconds to realize it was a severed forearm.
The Northerner, looking down at his own hand in the same daze, clutched the bleeding stump at his elbow and let out a bloodcurdling shriek. The cry did not last long. A longsword punched through his chest.
Skewered through the heart, the Northerner fought to draw his sword with his remaining arm before crumpling to the floor.
Transfixed by the sight, Gareth slowly raised his eyes. A tall man drenched in blood looked down at him in silence, his blue eyes pale and cold.
Only upon meeting those silver-blue eyes did Gareth recognize who stood before him.
“V-Varkas…”
Varkas offered no reply.
Without a flicker of expression, he flicked the blood from his blade, sheathed it, and gave a curt nod toward the door.
“Come out.”
He turned away without looking back. Gareth scrambled to his feet. As his sense of reason, paralyzed by the sudden violence, came rushing back, a frantic wave of relief washed over him.
He cried out, his voice shaking with excitement.
“Did you come to save me yourself? All the way here?”
· · ·
“Ha! You crazy bastard, I knew it! There’s no way you’d leave me to die!”
Gareth let out a breathless, convulsive laugh and snatched his coat from the wall. He threw it over his shoulders and moved to step over the corpse sprawled across the threshold, but the sight of the hallway beyond stopped him in his tracks.
He barely kept down the bile rising in his throat. Severed heads and rent torsos littered the dim corridor beneath the flickering torchlight.
He had lived through years of war and seen more than his share of dead men, but he had never witnessed carnage this gruesome.
He stammered, horrified.
“Just… how many men did you bring with you?”
· · ·
“And where are the other knights? What are they doing? Why aren’t they securing an escort for me at once—!”
He had deliberately raised his voice to hide how badly the carnage had shaken him, but an icy hand caught his collar and slammed him against the wall.
Gareth drew in a sharp breath, staring up in terror.
The man, his face spattered thick with blood, leaned in until their faces were inches apart and whispered.
“Do my words sound like a joke to you?”
“W-what is this…”
“I gave explicit orders to pull the Imperial Army back and leave the suppression to the Northern Alliance.”
Gareth’s mouth shut tight, cowed by the chilling rasp in the voice.
Varkas’s tone cut like a freshly whetted blade.
“If you intend to ignore every word I speak and do the opposite, why keep me by your side at all?”
A low, growling breath brushed Gareth’s brow.
Bringing his face closer still, Varkas hissed between his teeth.
“If you have no need of me, say so. I have no wish to waste any more effort.”
Gareth looked up into those fiercely glowing eyes, his face drained of color.
The grip around his throat tightened, and the man spat the words out harsher still.
“Say it. Say you don’t need me. Say you no longer want my protection.”
In that instant, Gareth realized the man was trying to sever the covenant that bound him.
He forced his bloodless lips to move.
“I… I need you.”
The piercing blue gaze darkened for a brief second, as if clouded by shadow. Gareth held that gaze and rasped in a broken voice.
“I… was wrong. Brother…”
The moment he uttered the word he had used as a child, the hand crushing his windpipe loosened.
Gareth clutched his throat and broke into a dry cough. Varkas stared down at him with flat, detached eyes, then turned away.
“Follow me.”
Gareth had been leaning against the wall, fighting to catch his breath, but he forced himself upright. He followed with unsteady, stiff legs, only to catch sight of a soldier’s corpse draped over the stair railing.
Nausea hit the back of his throat again. Only the lower half of the soldier was there.
“I assume you know how to use this.”
His eyes had been darting about for the missing torso, and Gareth jumped, his shoulders hunching in surprise. Varkas was back at his side, holding out a blood-soaked sword.
“What is this…”
“The steel isn’t much, but it’s the best we have right now.”
Gareth took it with trembling hands. Likely stripped from the dead soldier, the worn hilt lacked even the simplest metal ornament.
He looked at Varkas, anxiety bleeding through his eyes.
“…Are the others waiting below?”
Varkas, already stepping onto the blood-slick stairs, glanced back over his shoulder.
“I am the only escort Your Highness will have.”
Gareth stood frozen, as though struck by lightning. Facing forward once more, the man spoke casually as he started down the steps.
“I will do what I can to protect Your Highness, but I cannot promise we will make it out alive.”
Gareth stared in sheer disbelief at the dozens of corpses scattered across the stairs and hallway.
Every one of them was clad in heavy plate armor. The moment he grasped what that meant, cold sweat soaked his back.
“It will be a bloodbath outside, so brace yourself.”
Looking up from where he stood below Gareth, who remained frozen halfway down the stairs, Varkas added in a low voice.
“It is going to be a very long night.”
END