Despite knowing that in re hours he’d be leading the most dangerous assault of the campaign,within reach of every archer and slinger perched atop the city walls, Arnold carried himself surprisingly well.
At least outwardly.
He kept his posture straight and his expression still, letting not a single flicker of fear show before the n who would soon follow him into the jaws of danger.
But inside?
Inside, he was a soup of sweat, nerves, and doubt.
The plan depended on him holding the enemy’s focus long enough to let the cliff-climbing contingent go unnoticed. That ant drawing fire. And with his fine, ornate armor practically shimring in the moonnlight like a signal flare, how long until so keen-eyed bowman decided to test his luck?
It was, in fact, a question he’d rather not dwell on.
So naturally, the gods, or the world, decided to distract him.
"Everything good?" Thalien’s voice cut through the tent flap, breezy and irreverent as ever. "In a few minutes, we’ll be wading through death’s front porch."
Arnold didn’t smile, but his voice carried a tired amusent. "You didn’t have to volunteer."
Thalien shrugged as he wandered inside, letting his armor jingle with every step. He dropped heavily onto a nearby stool as if it were a throne, exhaling in lazy comfort.
"We barely have enough n as is to sell the illusion of a full-force attack. And besides, I think the prince assud I was already on board when you presented the plan."
He leaned back, hands behind his head.
"After he praised my brotherly loyalty, what was I supposed to do? Correct him? Run for the woods? You know how awkward it would get...we are slave of our manners..."
A chuckle almost escaped Arnold’s lips, but he smothered it before it could rise. The mont hung in a quiet lull, filled only by the soft rattle of chainmail and distant sounds of soldiers preparing for battle.
Eventually, Arnold broke the silence.
His voice was slower now, heavier, and quieter.
"You’ve... been kinder to than I deserve. You stood by when I asked His Grace for aid with my wife and daughter, and again when I presented our counsel. You didn’t interrupt or do anything that was not helpful. You just... helped."
Thalien glanced over, saying nothing waiting to see if a point was being made or not.
Arnold continued, his words careful and asured like steps across thin ice.
"I always expected you to carry the sa anger for that you do for our father. After all, I ignored you most of our lives. I pushed you away. I... I thought you’d want to see fail. But instead... I found the opposite."
Silence returned again.
Thalien’s gaze lingered on Arnold, unmoving. He tilted his head back, eyes drifting to the top of the tent, and slowly, without looking away, he closed his eyes.
Then he did sothing completely unexpected.
He humd.
A soft, aimless tune, light as the wind, floated through the canvas walls. Not quite a lody. Not quite a song. Just a drifting, almost careless sound, like a man brushing dust from his shoulders.
"I hate him," Thalien said at last, voice low and steady,like a dam with cracks beginning to show.
He hadn’t looked at Arnold. His gaze remained distant, unfocused. "Whatever word you might reach for to describe it, resentnt, disgust, rage, ,none of it does justice to what I feel. None of it touches it."
He drew a shallow breath. "For five years, I lived like a shadow in a tomb. Not a boy, not a man, just a thing caught in his grip. Every ti I tried to breathe, to exist, it was like slamming into a wall made of his will."
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding as he stared into the tent’s canvas wall. "I wanted to ride. Not in parades or drills, just to feel wind in my hair and hooves under , to see the fields outside the city like a normal fucking being. But I wasn’t allowed. ’’
"I wanted to read sothing that wasn’t scripture. Philosophy, poetry, history... just sothing that wasn’t hymns and prayers and gods-gods-gods all fucking day long. But in that gilded cage he called a library, there was nothing but piety. Dusty verses, rules, commandnts. As if enlightennt ca only from kneeling."
He exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. "And I was locked in for weeks at a ti. No light but the candles, no sound but sermons, and those damn tutors. Eunuchs with bitterness where their pride used to be. n who thought losing their cocks made them wise.
Who wore their suffering like a crown and wielded it like a rod."
He laughed bitterly. "They despised . Every breath I took was an offense to their quiet misery. And they made sure I knew it. Every step I took, they were there, chipping, chipping, chipping away. Like rats gnawing at the edge of my mind. Always correcting, always judging. Always reminding I belonged to him."
His hands had tightened into fists. His voice grew rawer now—rougher. "At so point... I started losing it, my patience.’’
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the dirt floor like it might answer him.
"I started fighting back. Small things, at first. Nails on their chairs. Pissing in their wine. Tainting their linens with my shit. Just to make them feel sothing besides that cold righteousness they wrapped around themselves. Just to let feel sothing besides helplessness. Beside that fucking monotony"
A pause. A silence long enough that Arnold almost spoke.
Then Thalien’s voice dropped lower, as if slipping into so dark, buried chamber of himself.
"So mornings, I’d wake up with a knife beside my bed, I did not know how it got there, but I’d sit there. Staring at it. Wondering if I’d use it on them. Or on myself. I couldn’t tell which thought was louder."
Arnold’s breath caught. Thalien didn’t seem to notice.
"The prayers never stopped. Morning. Afternoon. Night. Always on our knees. Always muttering the sa holy words. Over and over and over and over. Like a song with no end. Kneel. Pray. Rise. Kneel again. Repeat. Repeat.Repeat."
His hands moved, as if reenacting the motions.
"I used to take that knife and press it against my arm. Just enough to cut through all the monotony. To feel sothing that wasn’t goddamned prayer. A mark. A drop of blood. A reminder that I was still there. That sothing inside hadn’t gone completely numb."
"I wasn’t trying to die. I just needed sothing, anything, that wasn’t another sermon. I needed a mont that didn’t sll of incense and rot. I needed to scream, but silence was the only thing permitted.So I bled and cut, cut and bled, bled and cut, cut and bled.
Then they started whispering behind the doors," he spat suddenly, fury flaring in his voice like dry leaves catching fire. "Those bastards. The eunuchs, the servants, the stewards with their rotten teeth and perfud robes. Whispering about like I was deaf. Like I wasn’t right on the other side of the door, listening at their laughing, at their chittering , at their being alive."
They’d mock how I walked, how I stamred when the prayers got too long. They laughed at how I stayed awake at night, staring at the ceiling until my eyes burned. They laughed at how I bled. Laughed at how I cut myself. Said it was a phase. Said it was divine punishnt. Said I should be grateful for the discipline."
He whirled toward Arnold, eyes wild. "My tutors told them there wasn’t any other explanation. I was cursed by them.
Told the servants about my ’failings.’ About the bruises I gave myself. About the nights they caught whispering nonsense . And they all laughed. They laughed in the kitchens, in the halls, behind my back. Behind those four walls."
"Always the sa. The sa bed. The sa chair. The sa holy symbols over the door, watching like a thousand glass eyes. The sa muttered prayers. The sa ritual. The sa silence.The sa monotony.The sa cuts.The sa food.The sa books.’’
He paused, shoulders tense, breath shaking.
"...I miss the gardens."
He didn’t turn around. Just stood there, still but not as a statue chiseled from resentnt, but instead of the stone discarded after the work.
"When I was little. Before all this. When you would take my hand and walk with beneath the olives. When the sun would warm the stone path and the wind slled like lemons. They would talk. Just talk. Not preach. Not command. Just talk."
He lowered his shoulder and let his gaze fall to the ground, voice softer now, thin and almost brittle.
"And all those happy mories..." he breathed, "they made the long days feel worse. So much worse. Because I knew what I’d lost. I rembered what it could have been. What he could have been."
His fingers trembled slightly as he clenched them by his side, as if trying to hold on to sothing long since spilled through them.
"By the end of it, when he realized he couldn’t break , and finally let go... when he left to rot in my own silence... I tried to claw those years back. Tried to make up for every mont stolen."
A weak smile ghosted across his lips, joyless, exhausted, bitter.
"So I ran. Headfirst. Into everything. Pleasure, pain—anything that felt different. I was a fickle being in a world filled with pleasure. Jumping from one vain pleasure to the other.
Anything that didn’t sll like incense and stale sermons. I swam in that sea,drunk deep from his water, trying to make a heaven from the differences of my hell.
Wine, won, food, opium... I tried them all like dicine. But none of it filled . None of it fixed the... the gape.My attention was short lived, I wanted to taste everything and yet none sated .
How fickle and vain my existence was."
He looked up briefly at the canvas roof of the tent, eyes wet with sothing unspoken.
"It only deepened it. Every night, deeper. Every dawn, emptier and emptier."
His voice dipped lower still.
"Then I went for more refined taste.
I thought revenge would heal . That maybe if I took from him everything, his na, his gold, his honor, then sothing would settle. "
He exhaled, sharp and bitter.
"But even that, even that, god that I now served ,was empty. I stepped over him like a corpse. And the satisfaction I thought would co... it vanished before I could even taste it. Like all the rest. Like every forgettable, filthy night I’d spent numbing myself, in pleasure and debauchery.
No. That’s not true," he said, softer now, more honest than before. "It was worse than the rest. Because when I finally stepped outside those walls, the ones I’d bled to escape, I felt sothing I hadn’t expected. When I finally left the storm, the ship of my mind fought against. "
He looked at Arnold, then past him. Eyes distant.
But he didn’t continue, especially when he saw it.
That so much hated pity in the eyes of one of those responsible for it.
He couldn’t bring himself to admit how alone he felt at the peak of his success. How lonely he was in his sadness.
He just could not.
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