A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1674 - 1674: A Captured Capital - Part 9

"It wasn't personal until it was made personal," Blackwell said. "Blame the High King you serve."

"It is not him I serve," Pedidarius said. "It is order. It is the realm. It is what the Stormfront was."

"Then by your order, kneel to the strong," Blackwell said. "That is the way the Stormfront was. The weak have been allowed time to stew for far too long. They are the source of the rot that afflicts us all."

"Ha," Pedidarius snorted disdainfully. "Indeed, your order, Blackwell, that is what you would have me – have all of us – kneel to. As long as it comes out with you on top, you would take the histories, and you would make the change."

"You do the same," Blackwell replied.

"I do nothing," Pedidarius hissed. "I do nothing but defend the order in which our ancestors built. I seek no change."

Blackwell pointed his glaive at the other man's chest. "That would be where you are wrong, then, Pedidarius. Change is necessary. Change is what gave birth to the Stormfront in the first place. Else our people would still be roaming the endless plains, ever wandering, with no purpose. When the First King arose – that was change."

"You would compare yourself to him?" Pedidarius spat. "A man whom it was evident the Gods favoured? Who shone with their light?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps it only seems like that when we look back on it. Perhaps, in the moment, he seemed an ordinary man, like you or I," Blackwell replied.

Pedidarius narrowed his eyes. "You think you are such a man?"

Blackwell shrugged. "I know, at the very least, I am your better." He sliced his glaive across Pedidarius' torso, far faster than the man's eyes could follow, as the proof of it. Pedidarius grunted, and his horse buckled ever so slightly beneath the blow.

"I see that there will be no talking to you," Pedidarius said, heaving a sigh. "You are the poison, Blackwell. It is your hatred that will curse the realm."

"I see it differently," Blackwell replied. "Your High King has sought to strangle my House for the longest time now. He bred hatred. He put it in a greenhouse and he saw it cultivated. Not merely in my heart, but in the hearts of our allies. A flame this large, Pedidarius, could you lay it only at my door?"

Pedidarius said nothing.

"Then you are defeated. Both in ideals, and in combat," Blackwell said.

"No," Pedidarius replied. "I simply have no more words for you. My ideals shall remain what they are. I shall die, knowing full well, that I have retained my honour, and that I have upheld the sworn oaths of my House. Will you be able to say the same, Blackwell, when justice comes for you?"

"That too, I know not," Blackwell replied.

"Know this!" Pedidarius said, attempting an attack with a swiftness whilst Blackwell spoke, his mace cleaving through the air, missing Blackwell himself, and then transitioning in an arc towards the head of his mount. Just barely did the blow miss, but the counterattack that followed it, from Blackwell's glaive, did not.

Mercilessly, the weapon tore across Pedidarius' body, adding to the wound that had been weeping earlier, this one even deeper than the last. Blackwell felt the fatal bite, the resistance of bone, and he knew its sharpness had found something fatal, even if he could not see quite what, past the thick steel of Pedidarius' armour.

"Your trap failed," Blackwell said bluntly.

Pedidarius swayed in his saddle, but did not fall, though from the blood that came in a river down his stomach, and onto the neck of his horse, it did not seem like the falling would be too far off in the future. The mount beneath him stirred from the blood, naying mightily, trying to fight to flee – but a firm hand kept it in place.

That same hand, once the beast had regained a degree of calm, when for the strap beneath his helmet. Blackwell's glaive imprisoned him, preventing him from doing much more than that. Blackwell kept it pointed right at the man's chest, ready to run him through, should he try anything more foolish.

He could hear the fighting below. The screams, and the sounds of retreating horses. He knew well enough that his men were delivering a slaughter.

Pedidarius lifted his helmet from his head, freeing his old face, and the short-cropped mess of white hair, drenched in sweat, and just a little blood. He had a smile on his face – a thoroughly bitter smile.

"If Arthur had been alive, you would not have come this far," Pedidarius said.

"If Arthur had been alive, I would not have needed to," Blackwell replied.

"See it done, then," Pedidarius said. "For what honour I can dare to trust that you have left."

Blackwell grunted. He put speed into the strike, out of mercy. Pedidarius did not close his eyes, nor did he even flinch. The removal of his helmet bore the soft flesh of his neck. A man like Blackwell wasn't likely to miss. His glaive tore straight through both meat and bone, cutting off the head a single decisive strike.

It slipped off to the side, bouncing off the horse, before bouncing on the ground as well. As if letting loose a soft sigh of relief, the body quietly tilted forward into the saddle after.

Blackwell tutted. Now that his fury had passed, disdain took its place. "You bastard," he cursed at the High King in his head, a figure that seemed to grow all the more sinister with each passing day. "You make me claim the lives of good men – so deep is your rot."

He could have dwelled there for longer. There was certainly the impulse to. With the coming dark, and the small corps of trees on the mountainside, and the body of a foe that deserved a good deal of respect lying in front of them, there was that compulsion to reflect. The war itself and the intentions he had behind them – even Blackwell couldn't firmly state all the sentiments that had bore him towards action. It was a feeling, a movement, more than it was just a conscious thought.