Aric: Aftermath

My Dear Friend Egderus:

As you know, Little Brother, I do not write well, but I have become powerful enough to command my own scriptor, after the fashion of the Good Doctor, whom you and I helped to his reward. He's not as pretty as you — my scriptor, I mean — but he writes a clean hand, which I can make out enough to keep him from tricking me, and he knows I am forced to put my trust in him. For such people — you are one — the temptation to be good is irresistible.

I am glad to be able to steal some moments each night from the business of my master the Golias to tell a few tales, as in the good old days at Mountain House. I'm not sure the Golias would be pleased with this story, or with parts of it, and that is why this message will not be sent to you until after I am dead. That will be the task of my little scriptor here, and may he be roasted on a spit over a slow fire if he fails his assignment.

To begin with the last moments of our friendship, the night of the Historian's escape.

While you and your sweetie were sneaking off to the woods, my master Robenc confronted the Good Doctor at his lodging. You may guess who was charged with guarding the door. Naturally, it became noisy — I told Robenc it would have been better to lure him to a more secret spot, but my master was convinced his cause was just, and this would somehow protect him from interference. I took what precautions I could ahead of time, but I knew it was likely I'd have to do something drastic if we were discovered.

This is exactly what happened. The Good Doctor triggered some kind of alarm, and within a few minutes I could hear a squad of stratioti pounding down the street. I'd foreseen something like this, and so I waited around the corner until they were nearly upon me, then leaped out in front of the centurion and jammed my short sword into the notch of his throat, with enough force that his head fairly came off when he slammed onto his back in front of the rest. My attack was so swift and sudden they were frozen in mid-canter.

There were half a dozen of them. Young 'uns, of course, with long legs and healthy lungs — I'd never get away from them. Little Brother, it was the moment of my life: every person must face it, no one knows when it will come, no one knows what they will do when it jumps up in front of their face like that. As it happened, I did the only thing that could have saved my sagging hide.

I started yelling at them, like my old sergeant in boot camp. I chewed them up the front, and raked them down the back. Some of them I knew, and picked on them the worst. I laid into them so hard, so loud, and so vicious, that in a minute's time they were pleading with me not to turn them in. Not a one of them but thought I'd heard the noise and come running too, and killed that damned green centurion by accident and their negligence.

Fortunately, the uproar inside was still going on, so I bullied them back into formation, and made them charge the door and bash it in.

They were right there, in the front hall. Robenc had the Good Doctor by the throat, but the Good Doctor had a knife, and he'd already slashed Robenc's arms and face pretty bad with it. If we hadn't busted in and pried them apart, Robenc would have had the Good Doctor strangled, but then he'd have bled to death himself. I don't think he cared. When he finally looked at me, his eyes were shining. He'd done what he went there to do. He'd brought his great enemy under his hand, and taught him terror.

Lucky for me, he spoke not a word. Not then, nor ever again that I know of.

Believe it or not, this was the first time I'd ever seen the Good Doctor up close, and in that moment he wasn't exactly an imposing person. In the first place, his bowels had betrayed him, and he stank something awful. He was in his night-dress, all torn and stained, and I'd thought he had more hair on his head. I almost laughed, he looked so bedraggled and pathetic, but the boys' nostrils were flaring from the stench of battle, and I was hardly safe yet.

Before the Good Doctor could get his breath, I had them both arrested until this breach of the peace could be explained. I made sure the boys understood they were not to permit either man to speak. The Good Doctor kept trying to protest, but he soon figured out it was pointless to struggle against our kind of stupidity. I could see him casting about in his mind for a way out, but I was determined to hem him in completely before he could find it.

I had the two strongest and stupidest boys make him their especial care, and sent them into another room to wait for me to question him. The rest I gave charge over Robenc, who was smiling to himself now, and would not even look at me when I addressed him. I told them to take the Praetor back to his quarters, where I would speak to him later. I was hoping that once there my master Robenc would come to his senses and make up some plausible story to get them to release him.

The Good Doctor was my concern now. Once he began to talk in the hearing of people who knew who he was, he would be able to slither through my fingers, so I simply had the gorillas haul him off to the Keep until I could report to the Golias and get further instructions.

And that I did. At the time I didn't know if you'd been able to get your boyfriend fairly away, but there was no way for me to help you if you hadn't. All I could do was make the ruckus as confusing as I possibly could. First I ran to the palace and charged right in, shouting that the Golias was about to be assassinated. This got me into his presence pretty quick. Once he realized who I was — that is, who I was coming from — he dismissed his personal guard and made me tell him the whole story.

'Did this Historian actually escape?'

'That I don't know, sir. Praetor Robenc did not tell me how that part of the plan was to work.' This of course was a lie, but if there was any chance of keeping you out of it, Little Brother, I wanted to do just that.

I found it interesting that the Golias asked me nothing more about Robenc, but only about the Good Doctor: where had I taken him, had anybody seen us, did any of the stratioti guarding him know who he was, and the like. I gathered from these questions that the Golias was not exactly displeased that the Good Doctor was in this position. Did he know that hateful man, and wish him ill the same as you and Robenc did?

That was not my impression. My impression was that the Golias saw this situation as some kind of opportunity, and he was making sure he understood everything about it in order to secure his next move, whatever that might be.

And in that moment terror finally touched me, and I saw what real danger my master Robenc had led me into. I perceived that if the Golias ever did come to understand everything about this situation, I was a piece of meat. He appreciated me now, for bringing him this news, but that's all I was to him — a messenger.

I had to make him need me.

I told him that the Good Doctor had hinted at a conspiracy that even his own removal would not hinder, had even uttered threats against the person of the Golias himself. I could not play stupid with the Golias, but I could play ignorant. However, from the Golias' standpoint, not knowing what I didn't know of his designs was enough to keep him from getting rid of me.

And so he accepted my suggestion that the Good Doctor be kept under arrest for the time being, in order to find out more about this suspected treason against him.

You will be pleased to know, Little Brother, that the Good Doctor's last days with us were extremely uncomfortable, and, insofar as I could manage it, humiliating. He was never tortured, but I would not permit him to change his clothes nor to bathe, so that he might dwell at length in the odor of his own fear. Had it been earlier in the year, he certainly would have frozen to death in the unheated Keep, but as you may remember it was spring, and he only took a chill for a week or so. I had him moved from cell to cell so that he would have no chance to become familiar with his surroundings, and I questioned him every day, though never at the same time, and since we were below ground it was always dark, so he soon lost his sense of time.

I am sure you would have known well how to interrogate such a man, but all I wanted to do was to buy you time, and so I simply asked him every question I could think of about this imaginary plot against the Golias, until we both began to believe it was real, in a way.

But after many days of this, his spirit gave out, and he became almost peaceful. His countenance took on an expression that looked not that different from the one on Robenc's face that night when I pried his fingers off the Good Doctor's throat. The Good Doctor had been thin to begin with, as you know, but now his skin took on a kind of glow, his hair and beard turned white, and his voice became so soft that I'd have to put my ear to his lips in order to hear what he was saying.

And of course what he was saying was nonsense, because everything we had ever said to each other was nonsense. It was a very disturbing experience.

I never saw Robenc after that night at the Good Doctor's lodging. I discovered that after my boys had returned him to his quarters, a detail from the Golias himself appeared and summoned him to the palace. He never returned. I myself was named his successor, and as Praetor I not only had entirely too much to do in those early months, I felt strongly that it would be unwise to poke into the fate of the man I was fortunate enough to replace.

By the time I had more or less stabilized my position, Robenc had disappeared. I still do not know what happened to him.

At last we come to you, Little Brother. Surely you understand that they'd have never let you go, if for one second they saw how smart, how brave, how good you really are? seen you like I do, or did then? I had to ridicule you, humiliate you, disgrace you before them like that: the little scriptor who fell in love with his master's prisoner. It was the only way to divide the two events — there were too many coincidences otherwise.

And I must say you played your part brilliantly. How you wept! At least I hope you were playing a part. It's the only way I can live with the shame that I brought upon myself, not you, by treating you that way.

If my own little scriptor is as faithful to me as you were to your Historian, this letter will be the announcement of my death. Please know that, to my last breath, I have admired you, loved you, wished you well. Goodbye, Little Brother.

Aric