Chapter 18.2

Author's Notes: 1,072 words.

None of the soldiers dared to go near Karikoff's tent, particularly as the last one had been knocked over by a table.

He stomped on a stack of papers, picking them up and tearing at them. Tears streamed down his face as he shouted at nothing and everything. Were he capable of using magic, he would have burnt down the tent long ago, creating a funeral pyre for himself. His mind, however, had to resort to echoing "Those bastards!", which only channeled his rage. Or, so he ranted to anyone in earshot.

A bulky messenger ran towards the tent flap. "Hail!" he said loudly, dodging a pillow. "Ran out of things to throw?"

Karikoff stormed out, fists balled, face red. "They killed her. Those bastards killed her. I saw the body myself." He screamed curses at the messenger, whose eyes glinted from underneath the helmet.

"The show must go on," said the messenger. He neared Karikoff, who fidgeted to show a thin tolerance of the messenger's close presence, to whisper, "Kasimir gave us our orders."

"He can enact them himself," replied Karikoff, pushing his way back into the tent. "I've spent too long pretending to be Kasimir’s gift to Catharnach, calling myself Kasimir’s escapee to my men, and being Kasimir’s agent. I clearly haven't spent enough time killing."

The messenger stood patiently outside. He leaned forward and whispered, "You are vital to this mission. Without you, we cannot hope to know The Mad King's plans and seize our target."

Karikoff appeared again, wielding a sword in one hand and an axe in the other, aiming both gleaming, pristine weapons at the messenger. "You wanted to kill him?" Karikoff bellowed. "That's what I'll do. And screw your target - I'll kill him too!"

It was fortunate that Karikoff had sent his men to patrol the camp, or he would not have made it ten steps without being shot dead for treason. The messenger looked around, saw no one,and took a few steps back. "We need hostages, or all of them in one place. If you kill the King, his son may take over. Or perhaps the King's husband, or the boy. The march will still go on."

"And if I kill all of them?" Karikoff spat, hair starting to levitate from the magical energy that appeared as white bolts of electricity around him. The messenger started to gravitate towards Karikoff, the helmet attracted to the metal weapons.

"Then Eimhin will flee, their country will collapse, and we will never be able to seize Wyandanch!" the messenger said in a high-pitched voice. "You must-"

"I would leave that city standing for a thousand years more if it meant I had my revenge," shouted Karikoff, lunging forward and swinging his sword in an arc at the messenger.

The messenger failed to duck, thanks to the attractive charge. As the sword connected with his head, denting the helmet, the messenger shouted in pain and alarm as he flew into another tent, causing it to collapse in loud pops from disconnected pegs.

Karikoff stood there, huffing as he gripped his weapons tighter.

"Sorry about this, old friend!" a voice behind him called out. Karikoff, too angry and breathing too deeply to even recognize the sound, hardly had the time to spin around before he took an axe to the gut.

Karikoff stumbled forward, clutching the axe embedded in his gust. The color drained from his face for the split second in which horror captured him in its arms, and he looked up at his murdered in an expression that quickly turned to recognition, then fury. "You bastard," he said, spitting blood on the ground.

The killer took his helmet off. "Hey, it's always handy to have the element of surprise," Kasimir said. "I would've been that poor man if I hadn't already tried something like this on The Mad King." He gestured to the messenger, who scrambled onto his feet and, with a nod from Kasimir, sprinted as fast as his legs would take him.

Karikoff fell onto his side, head resting next to Kasimir's boot. "This doesn't hurt," Karikoff whispered, anger fading away and being replaced by a pallid calmness that misted his eyes. "Not as much as I thought it would."

Squatting, Kasimir stared right at Karikoff's listless eyes. "It's done me a lot of damage," Kasimir said. "Cath can throw in one of his own puppets now."

Rolling his eyes, Karikoff coughed more blood, which ran down his chin. "You're so important," he said weakly. The electricity around him waned to the occasional bright spark, which Kasimir waved away with his hands. "I - just wanted them to pay."

"If you had listened," Kasimir growled, "They would've."

"Not soon enough," said Karikoff, wiping the blood on his face with an errant hand and looking at the results. "Will I see her?"

Kasimir stood up and shrugged. "Hey, no reason why you shouldn't."

Laughing, Karikoff tried to pull the axe from his stomach. He winced. "Best to have died by my King's hand, then?" Karikoff spasmed, somewhat out of mirth. His increasingly misty eyes seemed to be observing something beyond the world. In his laugh, he acted as though he were sharing a joke with whoever he was hurtling towards, like there was something funny in his own death. "I wish I'd done more."

"You've done enough," Kasimir said, reaching down to cover Karikoff's eyes. "Rest."

"I could've - killed - all those bastards - not the plan - but," Karikoff whispered, voice becoming increasingly faint. "Make them - pay - make those bastards pay." His spasming ceased and he exhaled one last time.

Kasimir sighed, wrenching the sword and axe from Karikoff's cold, dead hands, after putting on his helmet again. "I will," he breathed. Swiveling around, he marched off, trying and failing to scrape the blood from the weapons. The mess would have to be dealt with later, Kasimir reasoned. He had a good chance of being caught already, and he didn't want to waste his time. Slipping each underneath the backplate of his armor, he pulled a strand of rope from his pocket and wrapped it around his midsection, tying a knot over the backplate’s lower hole. Hopefully nobody would pay close attention.

He hated killing, but he did what he had to do. Karikoff had been an obstacle in the road to his country's survival, and he never much liked obstacles.