Kings and Their Knights

Moonlight Sonata

Thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes in the field. Unbearable heat from the sun vaporizing every sweat drop on my body, drying my blood of water and increasing my thirst in an inhumane manner. Every single plate in my iron armour had heated up like stones in a stove. My fingers trembled from exhaustion after defending myself, attacking back, and carrying the weight of a premium-grade sword. The cheers from the audience became painfully unbearable. The sound of the two crashing swords became almost deafening. One wrong move, and you are choosing between glory and humiliation. It's the devil's game. A test of bravery and endurance. If you are not brave, you lose. If you can't endure, you lose again.

A sharp pain from my left ribs blinded my vision. The sound of my heartbeat echoed through my ears. This had become very familiar now. I tried to keep my head bent slightly forward so I wouldn't hit it when my body met the ground. My armour made a miserable sound whenever I fell like this.

For a split second, as I lay flat on the dusty arena floor, I wished death would take me. To be free. To never have to fight again.

But I couldn't lose.

I couldn't choose humiliation.

At least, not today.

As I tried to get back to my feet, I saw my opponent extending a helping hand.

"Get up, Adrian! That was only a small poke! You can take more than that..." he said mockingly.

"Yes, Father. I am getting up!" I replied, taking a few steps away from him and raising my sword back into a fighting stance.

"Are you getting too old, son? Maybe your bones are withering day by day! Your mother had weak bones too, you know. Poor woman only managed to bear you before going to heaven." He circled around me as we moved back into position. "If you were a woman, Adrian, you'd be just like her. Weak. Though, by the way you're taking hits today, I'm beginning to question it."

I rolled my eyes at him, though I wasn't sure whether he could see it through my metal helmet.

"One day, Father, you won't be able to talk like this on the field because soon your bones will be more like ashes in a jar."

With that, I charged forward.

My father-Sir Henry Ashford, commanding general of the Northern Kingdom's army, right hand of the King, and the oldest surviving knight on the King's Council-wasn't normally very talkative. But through nearly seventeen years of training me, he had come to realize that I performed best when my underlying emotion was anger.

Safe to say, it worked for ten years.

Then I think he simply ran out of things to say to make me angry.

Or perhaps I had just grown older and learned to control my emotions.

Either way, now he was only capable of annoying me.

My mother was not a weak woman. As the King himself once said, she was a dazzling mirror of glorious feminine beauty. Despite everything my father said now, he had loved her very deeply. She had only died because I grew too large within her. According to Prince Calean, my head had been far too big.

Speaking of Calean, he wasn't in the royal podium when the final selection match began.

I took a quick risk and glanced around the audience to see whether he had arrived.

My father, knowing exactly what I was looking for, let out a playful laugh.

"Yes, yes, Adrian. He's here. And he's watching. So try not to fail. He and his father might change their minds at the last minute, you know. They don't need a loser as their second-in-command."