The Road After

28 - Epilogue

28 - Epilogue

i. Captain Myrion Krellis.

The wind and rain howled around him as he stood, performing his duty, watching his orders carried out. First the sound of the lever, pulled by the man in the black hood, followed by the slam of the trapdoors falling and then, finally the noise of the ropes becoming taught. One of the necks snapped but the other two dangled in their nooses, legs twitching and thrashing. He would have to speak to the executioner. Krellis did what his orders compelled him to do, but he abhorred cruelty. All the necks should have snapped. Quick deaths.

The weather and the frequency of the executions had reduced the number of spectators that executions would have gathered under normal circumstances. Still, the few in the crowd that had braved the storm, the blood-thirsty ones, the angry ones, cheered and clapped at the deaths they had witnessed.

Krellis despised them. Parasitical worms feeding off the suffering of others. He, himself, felt no eagerness towards these executions, but they were necessary. Necessary for the good of the Three Kingdoms. Yet these executions brought him no pleasure, no sense of accomplishment.

He stared at the young woman, dangling in the wind, her eyes staring forward, bulging, accusing. He had known her. An apothecary who had helped him more than once with the crippling headaches he often suffered. Gienna. He masked the feelings. It simply would not do for the peasants to see him show sympathy, let alone his own soldiers.

Satisfied that the execution was successful. He turned, without speaking, and headed back towards the barracks. The dead would remain hanging there for at least a week, or until more people became accused, found and tried. And that was happening more and more often.

When the orders had first arrived, he fell to the task with gusto. Rooting out those mages with multiple disciplines seemed to be the correct path. After the horrors that Rürazar unleashed, Patrons damn his soul, then the events in Dendri and the tale told to him by that Kannai beggar, the old soldier. Raafo? Raado? Raavno! That was it! A terrible tale of the hideous nature of some of these mages. It all seemed to be for the best. The wisdom of the Kings in action.

However, as the arrests continued, as the trials became shorter, as the sentences moved from imprisonment to execution, as the definition of a multi-disciplined mage became stretched, twisted and broken, he began to doubt. He had never doubted his orders before. Never doubted the wisdom of the Kings. He was a model soldier of the righteous Kings' Companions. Doubt never entered his mind. Until now.

He had no love for mages, especially not after the War of the Shadowed, but his sense of duty now butted hard against his morality. Gienna, the apothecary, was not even a mage, but she found herself accused, found guilty and sentenced to death. Where was the morality in that? How could the Kings, the people that had saved the world, heroes, unassailable in their purity and strength, order this against their own people?

He reached the barracks, walking tall and straight. His chin raised as an arrogant Captain should. Once through the doors, he detached his brilliant white cloak, tossing it into the arms of one of the many scullions. Children dreaming of becoming Kings' Companions, forced to perform the worst duties of the garrison. Building their character.

"I want that washed and dried." The scullion bobbed his head in terrified acknowledgment and began to run, almost tripping over one end of the cloak. "By morning!"

Krellis passed by several of his soldiers. Men and women that he knew would give their lives for him and, especially, the Kings. He wondered how many of them shared his doubts about the culling of the mages. Did they lay on their cots at night, recounting the faces of the people hung that day? Or was it only him, growing soft and traitorous?