TO MURDER A KING
I can’t say for certain what happened after I found Aline in that tavern. I remember some of it – fragments, pieces of eggshell that I put together in my mind. But the shapes they form are never quite right. I know I stood there for a long time. I think I may have buried her out back, though I can’t be sure.
There was a tavern master there and, though I don’t remember him talking to me, oddly, I can remember things he said. He told me he tried to stop them and I had no reason not to believe him, except that he was still alive. He told me his own daughter had been killed too, when she started screaming too loud. But I didn’t see his daughter’s body anywhere around. I’m not sure if I killed the tavern master or not. It’s hard to say. There were so many people to kill, after all. I think I asked him where Castle Aramor was, and he told me it was four days’ ride south. But I didn’t have a horse, so there was no easy way for me to get there. But I wasn’t thinking about horses or travel. I wasn’t thinking about anything except that it was very important to me to go to Castle Aramor and kill the King. I would have to kill the Duke, too, obviously, and all his men, and definitely Fost with the axe. But the King had to come first and, after all, I wasn’t likely to forget the rest of them.
I remember it was night when I left the tavern. Having no horse or money, I just started walking south. I don’t think I was going all that fast, but I did just keep going. I walked and walked, and when I couldn’t walk any more, I would just fall by the side of the road and sleep. Then I would walk again. I must have eaten at some point, because four days’ ride is at least twenty by foot, but I don’t remember that. I think I was attacked once or twice, but I couldn’t afford the delay so I killed them and moved on. It had to have been twenty days, but I only ever remember the nights.
Sometimes Aline would talk to me. She would tell me to stop and rest. She would say that if she just spread her legs for the Duke and his men one more time, they would leave us in peace and we would grow old together and laugh about it. I think history has proved her wrong on that point, but when she said it I laughed anyway, just to see what it would feel like. Sometimes Aline would tell me I had just killed someone and it wasn’t going to bring her back to life, and I would ask her if, now that he was dead, she was going to bed him in the Afterlife. That wasn’t a very nice thing to say, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly and I was just imagining her anyway.
So I kept walking. I must have encountered the Duke somewhere on the road because I was carrying a sack with me and his head was in it. I wondered how I had got past his men, but perhaps I had found him in an inn somewhere and killed him while they slept. I seemed to be pretty cunning then.
At one point there was an old lady who gave me something to eat. I didn’t have anything to give her in return, and when I offered her the Duke’s head, she told me to put it back in the bag, and we went outside together and buried it in her garden. She gave me more to eat then, and we put some food in a bag that I took with me.
Sometimes I wonder if some of the things I remember really happened at all. It seems unlikely that I would have run into the Duke on the South Road, and even less likely that I would have managed to cut off his head without anyone noticing. And the truth is, I don’t kill people very often, even when I’m angry. And Aline – she’s never talked to me since, so either I imagined that part or else I said something very bad and she’s still mad at me.
So I walked on, southwards, to Castle Aramor, where the King lived – at least for a little while longer. Sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn’t. The distinction didn’t feel very important any more. I didn’t really talk to anyone I encountered, except for the old woman, but she did most of the talking anyway. So I suppose that’s why, by the time I reached Castle Aramor and started my long, slow climb up the tunnel that carried away human waste and animal carcases, I hadn’t heard that the King was already dead. It wouldn’t have mattered much if I had: there would always be a new King, and that one would need to be killed too.
*
The first thing I noticed was that he wasn’t as big as I’d remembered. In fact, he was just about the scrawniest individual I’d ever seen. And his hair was all wrong. King Greggor had short grey hair in a military cut. This man had long, stringy brown hair beneath a slight, ill-fitting crown. And he smelled bad, which is saying something since I had spent the better part of a day clawing my way up a narrow stone tunnel that carried refuse and human waste from Castle Aramor down to the gully that might once have been part of an effort to dig a moat.
No, this man was all wrong. But he was kneeling before me and I did have my sword resting on his neck and in a moment his head would go flying across the room and hit the wall with a pleasant thunk. I was looking forward to that thunk. I had dreamed about it through the endless miles and rain that had brought me here, on foot and half dead.
The man was about to say something, but then a small coughing fit overtook him and I felt it polite to wait a moment, since he looked rather undernourished and no doubt had a nasty cold. I also didn’t want any noise when I took his head off.
A moment later, the coughing stopped. ‘Before you kill me, would it be inappropriate to ask a question?’ His voice was thin and wheezy, and to my ears sounded half calm and half crazy, but I was a poor judge, being completely crazy myself at the time.
‘You want to know why I’m going to kill you?’ I asked.
‘No, I already know that,’ he said. ‘I was just wondering why you brought me here in the first place.’
I was confused by the question, and I really didn’t have much time for confusion since soon enough someone would decide to follow the trail of filth I had left behind me to the King’s chamber. So I decided to cut off his head and bring it with me and we could discuss the situation on my way home.
‘What I mean is,’ he said, interrupting my train of thought, ‘if my father had wanted me dead so that Dergot could become King, why go through all the trouble of having me brought here?’
‘You’re stupid,’ I said. ‘I have to kill King Greggor. You’re in his room and you’re wearing a crown. And I have this sword with me and the bag that the old woman gave me with food but the food’s all gone so now I need to put something in the bag and—’
‘You have reason to hate King Greggor?’
‘I do,’ I said. And then, if only because I had rehearsed it in my mind and it felt wrong not to tell someone, I recited the entire speech I had planned for the King, about what he had done to Aline and my life, and how the Duke, though he definitely deserved to die, would probably have let us alone if not for the King, and how I was going to kill him now and no God would embrace him or speak his name, and how I would make sure that his reign wouldn’t be remembered for anything but the fact that one night a filthy peasant had sneaked into his room and murdered him.
I had worked it out on the road, and it was short and not too badly composed, I thought, but then I kept going, and I talked about the walking and the rain and the men who had tried to kill me and the Duke’s head which was now buried in an old woman’s garden. I talked about what it felt like to not be a human being any more, not really, and to finally climb up a river of shit to kill a man who needed killing more than any other man who had ever lived, only to find that he’d been replaced by a scrawny man who said stupid things.
I told him all that and he just sat there on his knees and listened. And when I was done he asked, ‘Are you still going to kill me?’
I thought about it for a moment. ‘It’s really all I can think of doing right now.’
‘Can I tell you who I am first?’ he asked.
‘If I listen will you promise to stop talking so I can hear the thunk when your head hits the wall?’
The scrawny man thought about that for a moment. ‘Marked,’ he said.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Paelis,’ he said. ‘Paelis the Pathetic, twenty-two years of age, son and greatest disappointment of King Greggor and Queen Yesa. Deemed lacking in physical and moral fortitude and therefore removed by royal decree as first heir to the throne in favour of his three-year-old brother Dergot, who, as it turns out, fell out of a window when no one was watching him, some two hours after the King died yesterday.’
The scrawny man started coughing again and I wondered if his head would still cough once it was separated from his body. After a moment, he stopped coughing and went on, ‘Since the day, three years ago, my father finally managed to pull another son out of my step-mother’s womb he has kept me locked in a tower with no warmth, little food and only as much water as leaked through the roof to drink. He waited for me to waste away and die, for no other reasons than that my words displeased him. He didn’t want the Saints’ curse for spilling royal blood.
‘You are not the first man whose life was destroyed by King Greggor. You say your grief is worse than mine, and I accept that. You say you want to see his reign forgotten for all time? I say, I am your man. I have spent every day of my life dreaming – no, more than dreaming, planning – a way to rid this world of my father’s benighted touch. You want his kingdom destroyed? Then I say again: I am your man.’
‘I am your man.’ It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever sought to put themselves beneath me, and it had come from a King. I thought about what he’d said and about what I would do next and I said something, but I don’t remember what it was because that was when the crossbow bolt hit me in the back.