Morgan Rice - An Oath of Brothers

Somehow, facing off against these men was even scarier to him than facing off against knights or kings. Godfrey could detect a certain listlessness in their ways, a certain apathy, as if they would kill a man with a smile, and never break a sweat. Men like this spoke softly, he knew, and usually meant every word they said.

“And the hungriest,” Akorth chimed in. “This meat is delicious. Have you any more?”

Their leader nodded, and a servant brought Akorth another platter.

“We are not heroes,” Fulton said. “We are not even warriors.”

“All just commoners,” Akorth said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Except, of course, for Godfrey here,” Fulton said. “He’s royalty.”

The Finian leader turned and examined Godfrey, eyes wide in surprise, and Godfrey felt himself redden; he hated being called that.

“Royalty, are you?” their leader asked.

Godfrey shrugged.

“In truth, my father would rather not have seen me that way, though I am indeed his son—even if the son with the least aspirations, the son never destined for the throne. I suppose none of that matters now, though. My kingdom is far away, across the sea, and it lies in ashes.”

Fitus studied him and smiled wide.

“I like you, Godfrey, son of MacGil. You are an honest man. A self-effacing man. That is a rare thing in Volusia. You are also a daring and reckless man—and, I might add, a foolish man. Did you really think you would arrive in Volusia and achieve your goals? This seems almost naïve coming from a man of your position.”

Godfrey shrugged.

“You’d be amazed at what desperation can do to a man’s judgment,” he replied. “Better to try than to face a certain death, wouldn’t you say?”

Fitus slowly nodded back.

“It is admirable that you chose to fight for the slaves,” he said, “to take up a cause not your own.”

“I wish I could declare myself so selfless,” he replied, “but truth be told my lord, it was a shared cause. We, too, wish to throw off the yoke of the Empire, and if they had slaughtered the slave village, we would have surely been next. I just chose to take preemptive action instead of waiting to fight in a battle I could not win.”

“Not that he’d do much of the fighting,” Akorth added, with a belch.

“Or that he’d win anyway,” Fulton chimed in.

Fitus smiled, looking from them back to Godfrey.

“Nonetheless,” Fitus said, “you were brave, and your cause was a noble one—however selfish it may have been and however clumsily you went about it. Did you really think buying off the right people would protect your people from doom?”

Godfrey shrugged.

“It has worked for me in the past. In my opinion, everyone can be bought.”

Fitus smiled.

“You clearly have not met the Finians,” he said. “We are the richest race in the Empire. Do you think a few sacks of gold would impress us? This balcony you are sitting on is worth a thousand times your sacks of gold.”

Godfrey looked around, saw the solid gold everywhere, reflecting the light brilliantly, and realized that indeed it was. He had a point.

“I suppose I did not realize the extreme wealth of the Finians,” Godfrey said.

“And yet the riches of the Finians are legendary,” he said. “Your problem is that you attack a people, a region, of which you know nothing about. You know nothing of our people, our culture, our history. For example, you probably assumed that all free Volusians were of the Empire race and all other races were enslaved. Yet here we are, Finians, a race of humans, free, independent, and even more powerful than the Queen. You probably did not know that the leader of Volusia is herself human. We are a people of many paradoxes.”

“No, I did not,” Godfrey said, surprised.

“This is the problem that arises from ignorance. You must know your enemies well if you are to risk attacking them.”

Fitus reached down and sipped tea from a dainty golden saucer as a servant handed it to him, and Godfrey studied the man, wondering. He was more intelligent than Godfrey had imagined.

“Well, I apologize for not reading up on my history before entering your city,” Godfrey said. “I wasn’t really in a scholarly mood—just in the mood to save my life. Perhaps even land a sack of wine, or a random woman.”

The Finian leader smiled wide.

“You are an interesting man, Godfrey son of MacGil,” he said slowly, summing him up. “You wish to appear to be humorous, brash, impetuous, even foolish. Yet I can see by observing you that you are anything but. You are a serious man beneath your façade—perhaps even as serious and studied as your father.”

Godfrey looked at him in surprise, raising his eyebrows.

“And how would you know anything about my father?”

Fitus smiled and shook his head.

“King MacGil, the sixth of the MacGil kings. He began his reign twenty-three years ago, and named his second-eldest daughter Gwendolyn as heir, skipping over Luanda and Kendrick and Godfrey and Reece and yourself. A move that surprised them all.”

Godfrey stared back, flabbergasted at this man’s knowledge.

“How do you know so much about my family?”

Fitus smiled wide.

“Unlike yourself, I study my enemies well,” he replied. “Not just locally, but abroad. I know everything about your family—probably more than you do. I know what happened four generations ago, when your great-great-grandfather abdicated the throne. But I won’t bore you with the details. You see, we Finians are thorough. Knowledge is our trade. Knowledge is our weapon. How else do you think we could have survived here, in a hostile Empire, amidst a hostile race, for nine generations? Queens of Volusia have come and gone—yet we Finians have always been. And while we lurk in the shadows, we have always been more powerful than the Queens.”

Godfrey studied them all with a new respect, seeing the wisdom in all of them, seeing how they were all survivors. Like he. They also had a certain cynicism, a certain ruthlessness that he could understand.

“So why bother with me?” Godfrey finally asked. “My gold can’t buy you. And you already know more about me than I can tell. Why didn’t you just leave us to the mercies of the Empire?”

Fitus laughed, a light, sharp, dangerous sound.

“As I have said, I like you, Godfrey son of MacGil. I like your cause. More importantly, I need your cause. We need your cause. And that is why you are here.”

Godfrey stared back, puzzled.

“We have been watching you from the moment you entered our city,” he said. “Of course, no one enters these gates without our knowing about it. We let you enter. I wanted to see where you would go, what you would do. We watched you place your gold. We didn’t take it, because we wanted to see what you did with it. It was quite amusing, indeed, to watch you escape. When we had enough, we brought you here. We could not let you get killed because we need you—as much as you need us.”

Godfrey stared back in surprise.

“How could you possibly need us ?” he asked.

Fitus sighed, turned and looked at his people, and they nodded back silently.

“Let’s just say we have a certain shared purpose,” he continued. “You want the Empire overthrown. You want your slaves free. You want freedom for yourself. You probably even want to return to the Ring. We understand. We want the Empire race dead, too.”

Godfrey gaped, his eyes opened wide, wondering if they were being serious.

“But you live peacefully with them,” he said. “You have control, as you say. You have all the power.”

Fitus sighed.

“Presently, we do. Yet things are changing. I don’t like what I see for the future. The Empire is becoming ever-emboldened; their race is flourishing. There is a new generation of Empire, a generation that does not respect us the way their parents did; they feel more and more that the Finians are a relic of another time, are expendable. More and more their indignities against our people are being enacted. We do not wish to wake up five years from now and discover that our race has been outlawed, imprisoned by this bold new generation of Empire. We like our position of wealth and power very much, and we do not wish to see it disrupted.”