Victory's Price

Mollen (Part Thirty-Four)

Chapter 33

Why did everything always have to hurt so much?

Moll groaned as he woke and, as he rolled over on the rickety little bed, the mattress echoed him. There was not a single aspect of his person that pain had left untouched. If it wasn't the ache in his legs and lungs from running, it was the agonising hangover. He wished that, just for a minute, he'd been able to wake up in blissful ignorance, not knowing where he was or what he'd done but the hurt was too suitable a reminder for the memories to slip his head.

He was a traitor, he was doomed. Every second that rushed past was one of his last.

"Good morning, my Lord."

"Go away, Kat."

The springs creaked as she sat on the end of his bed.

"Moll." She said, gently. "There are people waiting downstairs for us and we must go and meet expectations. You cannot mope in bed all day."

The number of his days was rapidly approaching zero. His life expectancy had reached its last week. If there was any time when he should have been allowed to mope, to spend the day doing what he wanted not what was expected, it was today.

"Does meeting expectations mean you and everyone else must grovel around my fake nobility despite the fact that, by now, the whole world will know the scum that I am. Justice has caught me up and I've got what I deserve. The least you can do is leave me alone."

"Yes, Mollen." She glared and for a minute he thought she may slap him. "You are getting exactly what you deserve. You are getting the opportunity to go down in history. Now get up."

Moll pulled the blankets up to his chin and set his jaw.

"No." He took a kind of savage pleasure in defying her. "The only good thing about this whole sorry situation is that I no longer have to be responsible for anything."

She did slap him then.

"Now, more than ever, you are responsible for everything!"

But he wasn't listening.

"How dare you...!"

"What, Mollen? I thought you were scum, just gutter trash. There's no sin in laying a hand on a traitor."

She went to strike him again but Moll caught her wrist.

"What do you want of me?" He sighed, unable to prevent himself from leaning his head against her shoulder.

"I want you to just stop and look at your situation properly. Stop seeing yourself the way you think society does. Society's sitting downstairs and it loves you."

"I don't know anything about those people."

"I know." She said. "But I do."

"But what am I supposed to do!? What do they want?"

"Well there are three types, mainly. Most are scared. It may have been hundreds of years but memory amongst us dies slower than in court. We know what war does. Some are clever, they look at you and see a way to improve their own standing. And then there are a fair few that, at this moment, just want to see you. Lord Mollen Sante, the lord that gave." Kat pursed her lips. "Plus there's some old fool going around saying you're an Old King."

Moll remembered a fuzzy memory from the night before.

"Duke." He said.

"Yes!? How do you know?"

"Met him last night, met him before."

"The problem we have in this society is the way stories take flight. And people respect him."