Chapter 96: The Leading Role, Obviously!

A few days earlier, one evening at the Paydragon estate, as Freya was finishing a lesson with the young Paydragon, she didn’t stop there as she usually did.

"Things are about to start moving, Aldric."

Aldric looked up from his notes, quill still in hand.

"So it really is going the way you wanted?"

"Not entirely, if I’m honest. I overestimated Baron Frarken by a wide margin, and I suppose that’s my own fault for expecting too much from one prideful little baron."

"I see..."

"Good that you see, but I need you after all, so I’m going to explain to you, my dear Aldric, what to do depending on which situation comes about, alright?"

He nodded, watching Freya without a word.

She laid out a great many cases for him, every possibility she was considering, and he wrote them down so he’d remember, turning the page once the first was full.

Then she arrived at the last one, the one she thought most likely given the baron’s character and his actions, and given where events had got to.

"If I’m imprisoned, and then taken to the scaffold."

She thought for a moment, one finger resting against her lips, while Aldric, more tired now than he had been at the start of the evening, was already leaning in to write.

"Come, and just be yourself, with your character and whatever happens there, and everything should go smoothly, and you’ll play your part perfectly. Alright?"

He nodded, the quill hovering over the page without him having written anything.

And with that she made to leave, while Aldric felt relieved that the evening was finally ending and that he could rest, but a question kept turning over in his head, and he couldn’t help asking it all the same.

"Actually, madam, what will my role be?"

She turned back with a smile, both hands clasped behind her back.

"The leading role, obviously!"

~~

Aldric, clad in his fine and conspicuous armour, held a sword that was just as conspicuous, the one he had carried when he came to attack the dungeon a month ago.

He looked at the man in front of him on the ground, stunned that he was there at all, then at the woman who had brought him here, that woman from another world, a woman who sent a shiver through him at the mere sight of her. Freya. She was up on that scaffold, writhing in pain.

Then his gaze turned, and his body with it, toward the man behind him, an ordinary man in a workman’s tunic.

He lowered his sword and held out his free hand.

"Are you alright? You weren’t hurt, or anything?"

The man looked at the offered hand, then took it and got to his feet, brushing off his tunic.

"No, I’m fine, thank you."

Aldric watched him a moment longer.

The man stood upright, his breathing even, and he wasn’t shaking, even though a blade had come down on him seconds before.

He wasn’t looking at the soldier on the ground either, nor at the baron up on the platform, nor at anything that should have held the attention of someone who had just escaped death.

He was looking at Aldric.

Then he stepped closer, leaned in slightly, and spoke low enough that nobody else would hear.

"Big Sister expects you to play your part well. Don’t disappoint her."

Aldric didn’t move.

The man stepped back, gave a nod the way you might greet someone in the street, and disappeared into the raging crowd, gone between two backs in moments.

Aldric stayed there for a while, his hand still half extended, then turned back toward the scaffold.

His fingers closed around the grip of his sword, and his expression hardened.

How much of this did she arrange? How much of this scene, as she’d call it, was built from nothing?

Then his gaze fell on the baron, the man who had used him and his naivety, the man who had taken the names of the gods he respected so deeply in order to manipulate him and put his family in danger.

At first he had truly been angry at this man, angry enough that it went beyond even the anger he had felt toward his father after inheriting his worthless name, his debts and his deeds.

That anger was still there. He could feel it in his hands, in his clenched jaw.

But now, for him, for Baron Frarken, for this man who deserved death more than anyone born into this world he knew of, there was something else laid over the top of it, and that something was far larger than the anger.

Pity. Pure pity, the kind felt by a man with a nearly pure heart.

The pity of a hero and a worthy noble.

And you, Baron Frarken, how deeply are you sitting in that woman’s palm?

It was in fact that same man’s words that pulled Aldric out of his contemplation, carried by wind magic.

"Pay— Paydragon!"

The baron had come back to the edge of the platform, a handkerchief pressed to his temple, the cloth already stained red, and he threw it to the ground as he pointed at him.

"Do you understand what you are doing at this very moment?! Are you truly standing against ME, the regent of this city?"

He spread his arms, calling the whole square to witness.

"Do you understand that to stand against me is to stand against the crown of Artenzia itself?"

The crowd quieted somewhat at what was unfolding, everyone waiting for the young Paydragon’s answer, the man they could count on, the man who had been there every time they needed him.

Those at the front stopped pushing against the shields, and the noise dropped away one row at a time, until you could hear the shutters banging in the upper storeys as people leaned out for a better view.

Paydragon came forward and stepped a little clear of the crowd, and wind magic rose from somewhere among the people to carry his voice as well, as he spoke.

"It doesn’t matter who you are, what your rank is, or who stands behind you, Frarken."

He took another step, and the people parted in front of him without him having to ask.

"Don’t forget what it is that makes you all of those things. And no, it isn’t our blood, not yours and not mine, that noble blood you hold so dear. It’s the people."

He let a pause settle while the baron’s grimace deepened, his fingers gripping the edge of the platform.

"Look around you," he said, sweeping his sword across the crowd around him, the blade passing slowly above their heads, "can you not see that they no longer stand behind you, that you have lost their respect and their faith?"

He let the point drop.

"Do you truly believe you are a good sovereign?"

The baron laughed, a short, dry laugh, and came down one step.

"Nonsense, Paydragon! There are no bad sovereigns, only bad peoples!"

He struck his own chest with the flat of his hand, twice.

"My blood places me above all of that. Do you truly believe I am wrong simply because a handful of commoners think so?"

Aaaah... I suppose even I overestimated you, Baron Frarken. Can you not see any further than your own nose?

The crowd stirred at those words, a low rumble building from one end of the square to the other, fists rising above the heads, men shoving against the line of soldiers, which gave two paces before holding again.

A woman spat on the ground in the direction of the platform, an old man made the sign of Gaïra, and somewhere at the back someone started beating a slow rhythm against a wooden shutter, picked up at once by others.

But once again Paydragon’s voice, carried by the wind magic, rose above it all.

"Then if you believe the common people are not enough."

He laid his free hand over his heart.

"I, Aldric Paydragon, noble by birth, apprentice hero chosen by the deity of truth, Apoltheos, who swore a life oath never to lie, say it here and now."

The beating against the shutters stopped.

"You, Baron Frarken, who have rejected the will of the people. You, Baron Frarken, who have rejected the priests of the goddess of life, Gaïra. You, who are about to put this woman to death."

He raised his head.

"You are in no way fit to be the lord of this city and of this barony!"

The baron opened his mouth, closed it again, and his face went from red to something closer to purple.

"Nonsense, once again!"

He threw out an arm in a wide gesture, nearly losing his footing on the step.

"Do you not understand that no matter what you say, my blood and the crown have named me right, have named me above? Drop this performance, Aldric, and leave while there is still time!"

He looked around him, at his men, at the platform, at the crowd, and seemed to weigh something.

Then he straightened and gave the order.

"All soldiers, draw your weapons!"

Some hesitated, others obeyed, and the sound of blades leaving their scabbards ran along the line, uneven, breaking off in places.

So Aldric pressed further.

"Have you no shame, soldiers, knights?"

He walked along the line, looking at them one by one, the ones whose names he knew and the ones he knew nothing about.

"Are you not afraid? Do you not understand that the gods are watching us? That you are about to kill the woman who prayed for you day and night, in spite of the harm you were doing?"

A man behind a shield looked away.

"Have you no fear at all? Do you believe yourselves beyond divine wrath?"

The soldiers hesitated further still, some lowering their blades by a few inches, others glancing at the men beside them, one young soldier at the end of the line sheathing his outright before a knight bellowed at him.

So Aldric went on.

He raised his sword into the air, and the setting sun caught the blade.

"People, soldiers, priests, all of you present here, hear my oath of truth."

Every gaze, every ear fell upon that sword.

The priest in white robes, still covered in dust, got back to his feet and came forward two paces.

"Executioner!" the baron shouted behind him, his voice cracking through the wind carrying it. "Executioner, kill her! Kill her now!"

The masked man didn’t move, both hands still crossed over the pommel of his weapon, his gaze turned toward Aldric like everyone else in the square.

"Do you hear me?! That is an ORDER!"

Nothing.

"NO! Stop right there, Aldric!"

The sword came down and levelled at the frightened, trembling woman on the stage.

"This woman is not a witch."

The silence held for one full second, and then the square erupted.

Then the baron, who had heard it, who could see his own soldiers doing nothing and no longer listening to him, the people more enraged at him than ever, understood that the situation was slipping away from him.

He shoved the executioner aside, tore the sword from his hand and moved toward the woman, that woman who had brought him so much misfortune, so much of everything, who had ruined it all since the moment she arrived.

He raised the sword above the back of her neck and brought it down.

Just as Aldric roared.

"CHARGE OF THE BRAVE!"

Golden light burst from the hero’s body and wrapped his armour whole, and from his back, two wings of light unfurled across the entire width of the square, charging at a mad speed toward the baron.

But the sword came down on the woman’s neck.

And Aldric saw it. It lasted only an instant, a fraction of an instant, but a smile appeared on the woman’s face as the blade touched her neck.

Don’t tell me that even that... even that, she had planned?

And

CLAP—

Time stopped.