Victory's Price

Mollen (Part Sixty - Two)

Chapter 62

"Do you think she will come back?" Moll asked, peering out between the curtains.

"I think you should stop worrying." Kat drew up behind him. "Look at them, Moll, look at them supporting you, supporting your country."

"I'm letting them down." He said. "They think this is doing something. We're just fooling them."

Behind him, Kat sighed heavily.

"What?" Moll turned his gaze from the mass of people outside, signing up for his army.

"You could be really great, Moll? Do you know that?"

"Where are you taking this?"

Kat shrugged.

"You're always doubting yourself, it's getting a little frustrating."

"But I..."

"Look." Kat stepped forward, drawing alongside him at the windowsill. Her tone was brusque but she belied her gentler self with a delicate hand on his arm. "That man there." She pointed to a scruffy peasant. He stood at the front of the crowd and Moll's guards supervised him as he attempted to sign his name on a sheet of paper. "He is willing to put his life on the line for you Mollen. Sure, the Phoenix has given them hope, your brother has given them pride and Seira has given them a cause. But you're the one they're following, you're the one they will die for."

"But the whole process is pointless. We've got no weapons to give them, no armour. They are signing to be a part of an army they have already joined. And if we should receive Korme's reply in the next few days, this whole process could become moot."

"Mollen." Kat could not keep the frustration from her voice. "What has happened to you? Why are you so negative?"

"I don't want to make a mistake. There is too much pressure, Kat, no man can cope."

She laughed.

"Why do you keep forgetting!? You are no man, Mollen, you are a king."

"What do kings do?"

Kat arms snaked their way around his waist and, when she replied, the frustration had been replaced by a playfulness he was less familiar with.

"Whatever they like." She rested her head on his shoulder. "Think about it, Moll, you've already started. Stop believing you have a duty as a king and start realising it's just the title that hands you the world. Kings aren't born to rule a land, they are born to own it. From today, always remember you can do whatever you like. Always and without exception."

"I want my Phoenix back." He said.

"Then we shall send a man to fetch her."

"Yes. We shall."

Moll smiled as Kat led him from the bedroom.

A king did not rule a world, he owned it.

He owned them all.

As they reached the bar, Kat turned towards the rooms of his councilmen, intending to convey his order. But Moll was struck by the image of the front door. Behind those two inches of measly wood pressed the heaving mass of his men.

"What are you thinking?"

Moll smiled.

"Does it matter? These are my thoughts in my world."

"Don't kill yourself."

"I won't." He promised and left her to the job he had set.

A guard rushed to his shoulder and, after a second's delay, Moll allowed the man to remain there. A king needed a Phoenix, after all, and until his was returned to him, a battered youth in tatty armour was better than nothing.