Chapter 1360: New begginings(4)

He had never wanted it to happen. He never did.

Alpheo would have liked nothing more than to grow old beside the bastard, to laugh at the same dumb cock jokes until their teeth fell out, to ride into a hundred more victories side-by-side. But wanting a thing had precious little recourse over the brutal realities of the world.

"There are only a few souls I have known for so long," the King murmured, his voice hollow, his eyes staring down at his right palm, the hand that had cradled Egil’s blood-matted hair in those final, desperate minutes. "I truly appreciated him. As a man, as a fighter... I really did. Though I never had the grace to tell him."

He closed his hand into a tight, trembling fist. "We had our dark spots, aye. We brought out a great deal of the rot in each other... but I like to think we brought out the good, too. Perhaps that was because, deep down in the dark, we understood one another completely.

We played grand roles for the rest of the world, didn’t we? But between us... what use was there in keeping masks on behind the curtain? Who were we truly trying to deceive?We did not need to lie to ourselves..."

The bruised crimson of twilight was fading, giving way to the cold, pale grey of dusk creeping into the high solar.

"I thought him a brother," Alpheo whispered, looking up. "And he named me one, too. In front of gods and men. And yet... in the end, it was you he reached for. The lost brother of twenty years."

The King’s dark, bloodshot eyes dragged slowly up and down Enkilae’s frame. He searched the weathered face, searching desperately for a reason, but found nothing extraordinary. Enkilae did not look particularly sharp, nor quick, nor grand. He was merely a broken man with stooped shoulders and hands scarred by decades of imperial labor.

Why? the King raged silently behind his eyes. Was it truly just blood? How much could a mere shadow of kinship mean to him, for your name to be the last sound to pass his lips?

You stubborn bastard, Alpheo though, phantom fury striking at Egil’s ghost. We bled and toiled together in the dirt for ten long years... and on the final step, you turned your back on me.

Enkilae shifted under the oppressive weight of the monarch’s stare. "You... you have my sympathy, Your Majesty," he offered softly, his tone detached, as if he were speaking of a stranger.

And again he returned to that.

Alpheo let out a harsh, humorless breath forgetting about correcting him. "He was your blood brother. It is I who should be offering sympathy to you."

"Just as he was your brother-in-arms," Enkilae replied quietly, his hands resting flat on his knees. "I do not think Egil threw that title around carelessly..."

"And yet it was you he called for when the dark closed in!" Alpheo snapped

"And yet," Enkilae countered, his voice trembling slightly, "from everything you have told me, those were the final moments of a life he willingly laid down for your cause. For your people."

"Then why?" Alpheo demanded, slamming his palm flat onto the oak table until the wood groaned. "Why? You had not laid eyes on one another for twenty years! Why did he cling to your ghost so fiercely that he couldn’t even see the man holding him in the mud? What in the five hells do you have that I do not?"

In that agonizing second, Alpheo wished desperately for a mirror, if only to see what was reflected in his own face that made Enkilae recoil so violently. The ex-slave pressed his back hard against the high wooden frame of his chair, his knuckles turning white as he tried to put as much physical distance between himself and the King as the small solar allowed.

"I... I do not know, Your Grace," Enkilae stammered, his throat working hard as he swallowed a knot of sheer panic. He winced under the monarch’s suffocating glare.

"You do not know?" Alpheo growled, leaning over the table, his shadow swallowing the smaller man whole.

"We... we were not even that close as boys," Enkilae muttered desperately, the words slipping out before he could stop them. "Truth be told... we never were."

Alpheo froze.

The silence that slammed into the solar was absolute, cold, and deafening.

.....What?

"What do you mean you were not?" The King stared at him,"You were brothers..."

"Two brothers can be different men, " Enkilae replied, his voice dropping into a flat, tired monotone. "They can clash against one another until there is nothing left between them but bruised ribs and bitter silence."

"Then why... why in the five hells did he die screaming your name?" Alpheo demanded, pressing his palms into his temples as his head began to swim. He had thought this was the final Chapter. He had believed that bringing Egil’s flesh and blood to his court would finally grant him peace, that the ledger would be balanced and the ghost put to rest. Why was it not done?Why was everything so complicated?

"Would you believe me if I told you I share your doubts?" Enkilae said quietly, leaning his head back against the carved oak. "I can assure you of one thing, Your Grace: I will not be calling out Egil’s name when death finally reaches down for me. There was precious little warmth left between the two of us in the last years we shared under our father’s tent.It is sad to admit, but I do."

The king shifted back in his seat, mouth agap eyes narrowed.

None of this made any bloody sense.

He wanted answers, hard, clean, unyielding truths to put an end to four years of waking nightmares. Instead, every word tumbling from this man’s mouth only dragged him deeper into a swamp of doubt.Back in the shadow he had just swam out.

When would it end? When could he finally lay his burden down?

"Might I ask... what he said, exactly?" Enkilae asked softly, his tone strangely devoid of hope or fear.

Yes... what had Egil said in the mud?

Alpheo closed his eyes, scouring his mind, diving straight back into that horrific, blood-soaked memory he had spent four years trying to burn away.

"He... he cried out your name," the King whispered, his brow furrowing as he relived the agony. "And he said he was sorry. A dozen times over, weeping like a babe... ’I am sorry, Enkilae. I am sorry...’ I was screaming myself hoarse for the apothecaries, choking on my own tears, but... I recall he muttered something else right before the light left his eyes."

Alpheo opened his eyes, staring blankly at the dark timber between them. "...A goat."

"A goat?" Enkilae echoed.

"Aye. He said something about a goat," Alpheo said, searching the air. "Could it be that? Does that mean anything to you?"

From the sudden, sharp shift in Enkilae’s posture, it apparently meant everything. The ex-slave went entirely motionless, his eyes widening for a fraction of a second before he took a long, ragged breath, as if diving deep to pull something up from the cold lake of his soul.

When he surfaced, his expression settled back into its usual unreadable stillness. His eyes remained as flat as always, not a single ripple crossing their clear, pale blue.

Why were Egil’s last moments dedicated to a man that felt nothing for him?

"We did a great deal of ill to one another as boys," Enkilae murmured, his fingers rising slowly to touch the clean hair resting against his neck. "I was the eldest, so I was supposed to look after him, protect him, guide him. He was a glad, bright child once. A sweet little boy. And then... he wasn’t anymore. I don’t know why he changed, and I reckon I never will.I used to brand his hair once"

He twirled a thick strand of hair around his thumb, his gaze drifting out toward the darkened window as if recalling the phantom feeling of long-forgotten fingers in his hair. Proper royal hygiene and scented soaps had done their work over the past week; his hair was no longer the matted, dirt-brown mess of the slave pens. It shone now, a brilliant, spun-gold blonde, looking agonizingly identical to Egil’s.

"I used to braid his hair... once," Enkilae repeated as that acted held half the world’s meaning, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips. "And he used to braid mine too."

Enkilae let out a dry, rustling laugh that died as soon as it came.

"When you told me he died saying he was sorry, I thought he might have meant a thousand and one different atrocities he committed against me," Enkilae muttered, shaking his head. "I thought of a hundred betrayals, a hundred spiteful lies he told .But... a goat. By your gods, the little bastard narrowed it down to one."

"What goat?" Alpheo asked, leaning over the table, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"It happened during the last year of the grand war against the empire," Enkilae explained, his voice taking on the slow, rhythmic cadence of an old storyteller. "I was the eldest, so I was being trained to ride with my father’s vanguard. Egil was left behind to mind the flocks. He was a wretched, lazy shepherd at the best of times."

The ex-slave chuckled softly, though there was no joy in it. "I learned just how poor a shepherd he was when I rode back to camp one evening to find our mother raging red, screaming fit to wake the dead. One of the goats had perished. Not just any beast, mind you, her absolute favorite. The prize nanny goat she had actually named Egil after."

Enkilae looked Alpheo dead in the eye. "The poor creature had fallen down a rocky ravine and broken its neck. And do you know what that little shit told our mother when she demanded to know how her prize animal died?"

Alpheo shook his head, completely spellbound.

"He swore to her, with tears in his eyes , hands on his chest, that I had been reckless," Enkilae said, something shined in his blue eyes.Perhaps a tear "He claimed I had gone galloping past the flock during my equestrian drills, scaring the sheep and goats off the ridge. And of course, our mother believed her sweet, golden little boy.Her sweet ,sweet heart. Arms on the chest, foot on land, the ewe that nuzzled the hand that fed it.Incapable of a lie.Named after her favorite goat.

She gave me five lashes with father’s riding crop, and I wasn’t allowed a scrap of meat for a month."

He leaned back, resting his hands flat on his knees, staring at the King with an expression that was equal parts pity and quiet, absurd realization.

"Thirty years" Enkilae whispered softly into the quiet solar. "Nearly thirty years of war, chains, blood, and empire... and as the light went out, my brother wasn’t weeping over his lost soul, nor the state of the world, nor of all his evil, nor the kingdom he built with you. And neither you, o’ King.."

A crooked smirk.A very sad one. "He was dying of a bloody nick, really trying to clear his conscience with himself because he framed me for killing our mother’s favorite goat, while he scampered off safe. He never spoke to me after that, and I never to him.

That was our last year together. Then the Romelians came and burnt everything to the ground and along with it any bridge we could have had with one another, yet.

To think his last moments went to that damn goat. For once he might even been sorry about that. ’’He bit his cheek and moved his tongue in thought . That was something Egil did too, often....

’’Who know,perhaps men truly can change?Though I grant him it was too late."