Chapter 1336: Levelling the ground(3)

Rodry’s grip on his dinner knife tightened until his knuckles turned as white as his stained cloak. The bodies of some of their men were scarcely cold out in the mud, and already the man who had spent the entire skirmish in the safest position imaginable was the one most vehemently arguing to tuck tail and run.

Perhaps I should just drive this blade straight into his bony neck, Rodry thought, his eyes tracking the pulse jumping in the architect’s throat. Then I can march back to the capital and hand my sincerest apologies to the King.

He considered it for a long, genuinely tempting moment. Pontus offered up a weak, embarrassed little smile, looking for all the world as if he had merely asked for a second helping of roasted potatoes rather than trying to sabotage a royal decree to save his own hide. It would take just one small flick of Rodry’s wrist. He had two cracked ribs, sure, but he was still more than capable of executing a clean throat-slitting. If he did it, he would never be cursed to suffer the man’s cowardice or his perfume ever again.

But then reality filtered back through his hangover and his heartache. No matter how insufferable the master maker was, the bastard was damn good at his job. He was the man who had engineered the siege mines that brought the high walls of the Fingers crashing down. He was the very same genius who built the capital’s grand bastion and the great aqueduct of the capital. Rodry might loathe the man’s petty antics, but he loathed the stench of the capital even more, and keeping Pontus alive really was his task.

He let out a heavy sigh. A sad, bitter sound. Forcing the King to lose one of his most brilliant minds just to satisfy a fleeting urge of bloody pleasure wasn’t a fair exchange.

Rodry raised his eyes from the steak and locked his mismatched gaze onto Pontus. The architect’s smile immediately faltered, his posture stiffening as the raw nerve of the knight’s presence washed over him.

"Negative," Rodry spat, cutting into the beef with sudden, vicious force, entirely imagining Pontus’s face beneath the edge of his blade.

"What?" Pontus blinked, clearly unaccustomed to hearing the word no.

"I said no. Would you prefer I deny you in Azanian? Unlucky for you, I don’t speak the tongue."

For a good few seconds, the architect simply stared at him like a gaping fool. It wasn’t until Rodry purposely screeched the iron edge of his knife across the silver plate that the fat man jolted back to life.

"Ser, please, I beg you to reconsider!" Pontus pleaded, his hands fluttering in front of his chest. "This valley is clearly not secure. We could be massacred in our sleep—"

"The bastards have attempted to break our lines twice now," Rodry cut him off, his voice dropping into a harsh, granular growl. "And we spat them back into the brush both times. Their corpses are currently rotting in the ditches for the vermin and the crows to pick clean. Perhaps they’ll have the stupidity to attempt it a third time, and we will push them back anew.We sleep in a wooden-walled camp, with patrols going across the road. There are dead men on our side who traded their breath for this ground, Master Maker. Think about them for a change."

"And what would be the practical use of that?" Pontus snapped, a brief flash of arrogance breaking through his fear. "They are dead. They don’t feel anything anymore. We should be worrying about the livings!"

"Living," Rodry growled back, leaning forward just enough to make his ribs flash with agony. "Not the livings. You only care about one."

"That is... that is slanderous—"

Rodry threw him a look so laced with pure, unadulterated violence that the sentence died in the architect’s throat.

"The King gave us a mission," Rodry said, tapping his knife against the table with a slow, rhythmic thud. "He gave you a mission. Did you finish it?"

"We are making excellent—"

"DID. YOU. FINISH. IT?"

Pontus swallowed hard, his chin wobbled. "Not... yet."

"There you have your grand answer. The King gave us a task. The task is not over. Therefore, the task gets done."

"Ser, I assure you," Pontus winced, shifting uncomfortably in his plush chair. "The grand design requires an immense amount of time. There is absolutely no risk to the crown if we delay the foundations by a few weeks, at least until the local principalities manage to make the roads more peaceful."

A snake will always try to slither, Rodry thought, watching the man twist his words. If the King wanted them to be comfortable, he would have delayed the march himself. He hadn’t. Besides, Rodry was a realist; it would take a hell of a lot longer than a few weeks for this blood-soaked shithole to change its nature.

Oblivious to the executioner’s thoughts running through the knight’s head, the bald man pressed on. "I merely need to take a few more advanced calculations of the soil depth and begin laying the stone found—"

"Foundations for what, exactly?" Rodry interrupted, slamming his cup down. "What the hell are you actually building in this muck? I’ve always wondered what the devil the King sent us down here to achieve. Both you and His Majesty have been more secretive about this project than a grand lord hiding his favorite bastard brood.

That did the trick. Pontus instantly went pale, his fingers fidgeting nervously with the fabric of his emerald tunic. For a moment Rodry wondered if he truly wanted to know, in the end the answer came out an astounding, yes.

"I... I am unfortunately not at liberty to disclose the nature of the design," Pontus stammered, looking everywhere but at the knight’s face.

"Then I suppose I have absolutely no way to weigh the importance of your work against the danger," Rodry said with a cruel, missing-toothed grin. "Well, too bad. If I knew what we were bleeding for, I might not have begrudged us a small, pleasant detour."

Pontus looked down at his soft hands, then back up at the imposing, blood-crusted veteran sitting across from him. He took a deep breath, trying to summon a shred of leverage. "If... if I were to reveal the true parameters of the mission to you, Ser Rodry... if you understood the grand scale of what the King intends to manifest here... would you then consent to relocate our forces to a safer garrison?"

Rodry chewed his meat slowly, the silence in the tent stretching out until the crackle of the candles sounded like breaking bones.

In his mind, the answer was a beautiful, resounding, unyielding fuck no. He hadn’t broken his ribs and watched good men get disemboweled just to run away because a fat craftsman caught a sudden bout of the vapors. If the King wanted a monument in the mud, they would stay until the final stone was set or the grass grew over their shields.

But looking at the sweating, desperate architect, Rodry realized a cooperative engineer was slightly more useful than a terrified one.

"If it’s as grand as you say," Rodry lied smoothly, his scarred face settling into an expression of perfect, solemn professional interest as he reached for his wine goblet, "then I shall consider the relocation thoroughly. Tell me what we’re building, Pontus, and let me see if it’s worth saving your skin for.Besides I would not begrudge ourselves a few more weeks under a roof and a fire in Oizen, as things stand only the mission is the thing keeping us from that"

Pontus looked around the pavilion as if the crimson and gold drapes themselves had ears. When he resolved they had not, he continued "We were sent here to calculate the proper geographic space delegated to one of His Majesty’s ambitious projects, Ser. A structural undertaking of the highest of the lowest priority.Or so he said"

Rodry didn’t look impressed. He shoved another mushroom into the gap in his teeth and chewed. "What project?"

Pontus glanced at the tent flap, then back at the knight, his throat bobbing as he murmured, "An akademia."

Rodry stopped chewing. He stared at the architect through the haze of the vanilla candles, his brow furrowing into a thick, leathered knot. "A what? What the hell is that?"

"I don’t have the foggiest either ser," Pontus admitted instantly, his hands flying up in a helpless gesture. "Truly, I know next to nothing of the philosophy behind it. All I know as the architect and engeneer is that it is designed to be massive. A sprawling complex of stone and timber meant to host hundreds of applicants each and every year.It will be some place of learning, like a university. But at the same time not a university?"

The architect leaned back, his confidence returning now that the secret was out in the open. "My instructions from the crown were strictly technical. I was sent into this wilderness merely to lay the preliminary foundations, survey the soil whetever or not it is firm enough for such weight, and calculate the exact amount of quarry stone, seasoned lumber, and manual labor needed for a quick build. Or, well, as quick a job as an immense undertaking like that could possibly be."

Rodry sat in a muted, disconcerted silence, his fork hovering an inch above his plate. From the grandiose way Pontus had been whispering and sweating, the knight had expected to hear of a secret fortress, a massive granary, or at the very least a frontier citadel akin to the great Bastion back in the capital. But a place of learning? All this blood, all this frantic haste through the mud, just to lay the stones for some lordly boy?Perhaps all of them?

It made no damn sense to him. But then, unfortunate as it was for Pontus, Rodry was not the king. The man on the throne played a game with pieces the common soldiers never saw.

Pontus leaned forward, a greasy smile breaking across his smooth face. He adjusted his green tunic, practically radiating relief. "So... now that you possess the full strategic parameters of our mission, Ser, we shall begin the packing of the wagons tonight? We will indeed relocate to the garrison in Oizen perhaps?"

Rodry swallowed his wine, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and calmly spat out a single word. "No."

That , clearly, was not what he expected

Pontus blinked rapidly, his chin trembling as he tried to process the denial. "But... but you said... you promised that if I revealed the nature of the project, you would—"

"I lied," Rodry interrupted smoothly. He drove his knife back into the steak with a sharp, metallic screech against the silver plate. He didn’t even bother to look up as he cut another thick piece of meat, leaving Pontus to stare at his bald reflection in the polished cup, thoroughly undone.