Chapter 1427: Kingship(3)

As the iron portcullis slammed home behind them, the common rabble was cut off, and the chanting priests began to peel away into the courtyards like white mist burning off the grass. The droning prayers ceased all at once as Alpheo passed beneath the vaulted archway of the inner keep.

A double column of the First Legion stood at attention in polished breastplates and cheek-guarded helms, their javelins held rigid as iron bars. At the head of the ranks stood his legates, who broke formation the moment the churchmen were out of earshot.

"You whole, Alph?" Asag asked, stepping forward while Jarza unclasped a heavy, fur-lined cloak and threw it over the King’s shivering, bare shoulders.

"It’s bloody freezing, and twenty thousand pairs of eyes just treated me like a dockside whore hawking her wares on the quay," Alpheo growled, pulling the wool tight around his collar. "All in all, far better than I feared."

"How are the feet? Catch any stray nails?" Jarza was already stooping, looking half ready to hoist the King’s thigh like a farrier checking a warhorse.

They had swept the avenue three times since dawn, but all it took was one missed cooper’s tack to turn the grandest coronation in the south into a howling farce.

Alpheo waved the legate’s hands away with an irritated flick. "Same as the nipples, aching like fury, but not yet bleeding."

A chorus of rough laughter rumbled through.

Rykio gestured behind him, snapping his fingers. A guardsman stepped forward bearing not the standard kite shield of the line cohorts, but an immense, curved buckler of heavy bronze. Gold and silver inlays rippled across its face, catching the winter sun in intricate sea-wave motifs.

"My King," Rykio murmured with a sharp, formal incline of his chin. "Your chariot awaits."

Jarza took the heavy rim, testing the balance in his gauntleted hands. "Ready, Alph?"

"One moment," Alpheo muttered, tossing the cloak back to Asag. "No bloody chance my boy ever walks that gauntlet when his turn comes. And over my dead corpse does my wife ever hear of it."

"The old fuck would need the Weaver herself to knit him a new arse if he dared suggest it," Edric said, shaking his head. "The entire procession was madness from the start. One competent bowman on a roof, and we’d be burying your carcass instead of crowning your skull."

"Amen to that," Alpheo grunted. He finally stepped carefully onto the gleaming bronze, his dirty, blackened soles shocking against the cold metal.

Yet despite the ice of the brass, a dark, sweet warmth bloomed in his chest. Knowing what lay behind the bronze doors, and realizing that the very crown Nibadur had spent twenty winters scheming for was about to be dropped upon a sellsword’s head, made every stone he had trodden feel worth the blood.

’’I owe a thanks to Nibadur it seemed’’ The king muttered

’’Why the hell would you thank that swine?’’ Asked Edric

’’Never said I would, just that I should. Now come, up!’’

With that Jarza, Asag, and Edric braced their legs, gripped the rim, and heaved the shield up to their shoulders in one smooth, iron-locked surge.

"You’re heavy as a dead ox, Sire," Edric wheezed through a grin. "And this is base thrall’s work besides."

"Hold your insolent tongue, lad," Jarza snapped. "We have no use for tavern jests on the threshold of the throne!"

"Fine, fine. Do we march?"

"Hold on," Alpheo called down from above.

All four legates craned their necks upward, their brows furrowing.

"Shouldn’t we give the Archon at least three minutes to reach the altar?" the King asked. "Vesparian scurried inside with his escort while we were talking, but the man is seventy winters old and made of dry twigs. He’s probably still wheezing his way down the nave."

Rykio blinked. "He has a point."

"Lower him, then" Jarza grunted.

With a collective sigh, the legates dropped their shoulders, setting the bronze buckler, and their barefoot sovereign, back down onto the flagstones with a dull clatter.

"A masterpiece of royal planning, this," Edric muttered dryly.

"We’ll make better notes for Basil’s coronation," Asag replied.

"Preferably without the naked stroll," Alpheo muttered, shifting his bruised weight. "That part stays buried."

"On that we are agreed, it dies with you" Jarza said.

Alpheo turned his chin toward the towering bronze doors of the great hall. "You peeked inside? How does the floor look?"

"Packed to the rafters," Jarza replied, his voice dropping into business. "The Herculians are wedged on the left aisle, the Kakunians fenced in on the right, with a solid rank of the Second Cohort standing between them. Unsurprisingly the Oizenian part is put and behaving like a dog on a leash. We have got the two bad dogs and the silent over there."

"Good," Alpheo said. "The last thing I need is slipping in a puddle of fresh entrails while the Archon pours the holy oil."

"Well, it was blood that bought the damn chair," Edric smirked.

Alpheo gave him a flat stare before looking back at Asag ignoring the point the legate was making. "Are the Kakunians keeping their hands to themselves?"

"Mostly. Their darling Bull spent the first half of the hour strutting like a rooster and the second half yawning as if the whole matter bored him to tears," Asag answered. "If any man starts a brawl before the blessing, it’ll be Merelao. So long as he stay put..."

Alpheo let out a dry, knowing huff. He could believe it without a second thought. Merelao was the embodiment of every Kakunian virtue and vice: extravagant in his tastes, entirely unmanageable in his appetites, but possessed of cold steel and the sort of ferocious courage that made him as terrifying an ally as he was an enemy.

At least the man was trying to beheave. If he misbehaved , he would be too hot of a potato to deal with.

Important talks were waiting with the man, perhaps that was the reason for the calm.

They had not yet had the time to dialogue about the Kakunian situation,which of course demanded Alpheo’s interest in primis, but the king held no doubt the matter would soon arose.

It was one of the many things he had to deal with after the coronation, the second one being of course their newest wares.

"Let him yawn," Alpheo muttered, stepping back onto the center of the bronze shield. "Enough time has passed, more and people will start sleeping. Heave me up, boys. Let’s go see what twenty pounds of gold feels like on the neck."

The legates locked their grips onto the rim, muscles straining against silk, and heaved the bronze shield back to shoulder height. In slow, measured cadences, they mounted the wide limestone steps toward the grand entrance of the royal hall.

With a deep, groaning rumble that vibrated through the stone balustrades, the valves parted inward.

A blast of warm air rolled out, heavy with the perfume of burning sandalwood, beeswax tapers, and the crisp, clean scent of crushed juniper strewn over marble.

Uh, the king thought gazing briefly at his sorroundings, Jasmine really went all down on the preparations...

The High clerestory windows cast long, pale beams of morning sun across the sea of velvet, silk, and polished iron assembled below, when the king was finally brought inside.

The nobility of the south packed the gallery in breathless ranks.

On the left stood the sullen, proud lords of Herculia, cloaked in their silken cloth emblazaned with their sigil. On the right, dazzling in cloth-of-gold, saffron silks, and.....there was a certain someone with pink peacock feathers, stood the Kakunian delegation. Of course the one with the feathers was the lord of Epietoli himself.

He looked ridiculous, though Alpheo perhaps that in court’s etiquette was considered elegant...brinking to the extravagant?In the good way perhaps?

On the immediate right to the gate, were then the Oizenian lords, who of course had no choice but to present themselves unless they wished to give offense, and finally on the left closer to the throne stood the Yarzat’s disposition of the lordships sworn to the crown.

Even the seating had a meaning, or at least so the king thought, in truth that part had been taken care by Jasmine and whoever she felt wise to use in assistance, Alpheo had never been a master of the details, he was jack of wide brushes perhaps, but his skill never lied close to the ink.

At the far end of the grand nave, atop a raised dais of dark porphyry, stood the High Altar. Vesparian waited in his blinding ivory vestments, flanked by acolytes bearing the holy vessels of oil and the five-pointed star of the gods. Resting upon a velvet cushion beside him sat the Crown of Yarzat.

Jarza, Asag, Edric, and Rykio brought the bronze buckler to a halt at the threshold. In smooth unison, the four veteran commanders sank to one knee, tilting the rim forward.

Alpheo stepped down.

His bare, soot-stained feet pressed into the plush, crimson carpet that stretched the length of the hall like a river of dried blood. Stripped to the waist, his chest and criss-crossed back laid bare beneath the golden chandeliers, the King stood tall among the lords.

Without a glance to the left or right, Alpheo began his march toward the altar, his stride slow and heave.

Today was his day.

It was Yarzat’s day.