Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 2 - A King's Boldness [VERE]

A PRINCE'S WAR - TASK TWO: A KING'S BOLDNESS

Vere Lebriole was quite certain that he'd been the only one to kneel and pray at his bedside before sleeping.

There he was, knees scuffing the rough stone floors of the barracks, head bowed to his fingertips, fingertips bowed to the stiff (and frankly, quite smelly) mattress that made up his sleeping arrangements. The room itself was nothing private, but its populace was thinner than it'd been in hours now that some of the men and women were out at the nearby tavern to survey their drinks and an evening intercourse partner. The thinness was why he'd knelt. And while Vere had no doubts that he himself could manage finding a bedmate for the night, he simply didn't want to. He preferred the quiet to the noise, and that was strange to him, because many years ago, he'd preferred the noise to the quiet, and was often the sort to initiate the noise himself.

"Amen," he rasped. Then he rose on two fine legs and crawled into bed. There wasn't anything else to do but sleep and wait.

His body sighed as it stretched out along the cot, head relaxing as it lay on the thin pillow. He became mindful of a small bump underneath it, prodding his head, and he swept his arm under the material to push the little medicine vial aside. My life in a bottle. Wonderful. With his other hand, he ran old fingers across the edge of the mattress until they came upon a slit; thus, he fingered it, and something cold and sharp touched him. And the end of someone else's life by a knife. Just in case. Lovely. He retracted his hand and curled up into a ball he knew he'd regret curling into in the morning. Everything - meaning few things - was in place, and he could sleep.

He tried. He really did. But some young part of Vere seemed to still be stuck in him, and in that moment, with the silence ringing obnoxiously in his ears and his eyes to a ceiling illuminated only by dim torchlight, he thought he'd've preferred noise to the quiet.

The quiet gave him little distraction and more room to think of things he'd rather keep buried. As he saw the flicker of firelight on the wooden beams above, he thought of what it must've been like to see the flames chow through his first home. He thought of what the heat must've felt like when he was a boy, sitting by the hearth - because things are always different in the way-back. He thought of what his wife must've thought when the same heat came for her, and how different that heat must've been to the heat he'd felt with her after they'd knelt at the same bedside and crawled in together. He thought of the olive tone of her skin cradled against a much smaller, shrunken, shrivelled version of her, and the dark mud color of her hair brushing over the bundle.

He thought of a great many things in the span of half an hour, none of which would bring him anything but inconvenience. Fingers pinched palms and palms tightened around fabric and fabric suffocated; he sat up, rubbed the creases in his forehead, and grunted as if to say to himself, "It's no good thinking about the dead and the gone, Lebriole. Think about them too much and you'll think about them constantly. Now, what good'll it do you if you think of them out on the battlefield? You will drain all the fight from your body with those thoughts. Now shut your mind up and think of better days."

And so he did. Then came the days of pressing a finger to his own lips to signal to the others not to talk of his ventures. Then came the days of muscled legs and features as young and sharp as his sword; he would turn and the armor upon him would glisten, both with light and sweat, as he ran, swinging, huffing for victory and huffing for life for the two were synonymous at some point. These remembrances gave him adrenaline, and he couldn't possibly sit any longer than he already was, so he stood and began to walk down the middle of all the rows of beds, mostly empty, sometimes full.

I was brilliance, he thought, straightening his back.

I was successful, he thought, lifting his chin.