Faith: The Hierarchy

(Part of a continuing series. Previous post here, first post here.)

Jared moaned wearily as he rose to consciousness. Someone was shaking him. "Whaddyou want?" he asked groggily.

"Ceremony tomorrow," the mysterious awakener told him, unseen in the darkness of the barracks in which Jared slept. "Hour after dawn. Supposed to be a surprise This junk the best set of clothes you have?"

"Yeah," Jared said, eyes only half-open.

"Get something decent. Fit for seeing the Prince," the unseen interlocutor told Jared, and moved away.

Jared rolled over and went back to sleep.

Six hours later, in a borrowed set of dress clothes, he stood in line, one of perhaps two hundred other soldiers present. They were, Jared had gathered, recent recruits into the Prince's army, now being formally sworn to his service en-masse. To Jared's right was a woman from his unit, recruited about two weeks before Jared. To his left was another foreigner, clearly so by his skin tone and accent. Jared tried to make small talk with him, but was repelled by his prickly attitute, and so turned to speak exclusively with the woman he knew.

Something about the man to Jared's left was bothering him; but he didn't figure out what before the Prince appeared. He was a thin man, perhaps ten years older than Jared (though his upper-class upbringing made him seem younger than he really was), regally dressed in ermine and silk. He gave a short speech, setting out the woes of the times, praising those who now served to defend the city-state of Ostek; then he began pacing the rows, administering individual oaths.

Jared figured out what was bothering him. He'd been issued a ceremonial, wooden sword for the occasion, as the Prince preferred not to be in a crowd of strangers with real swords; but judging by the hilt of the soldier to his left, the foreigner, he was carrying a real weapon, one that had seen action. That was odd. Why was he carrying that?

The Prince neared.

Jared nudged the foreigner, asked him about the sword. The man scowled and refused to answer. Jared became, if anything, even more curious - but he had to stop speaking. The Prince was close by, two rows away-

Jared saw a glint of metal to his left, and looked, and saw the foreigner with a loaded miniature crossbow in his hand, and acted-

the assassin's shot went wide as Jared knocked into him, grabbing for the sword in his sheath-

for moments, as they wrestled, no-one seemed to notice, and Jared had no breath to spare for a cry for help-

Jared seized the sword, got a blow to his injured side that reopened the wound and sent him sprawling in pain-

the assassin attacked Jared, focused on trying to kill him, and the sword in Jared's hand came up lightning-quick and opened his throat-

and suddenly there was noise everywhere, soldiers were running to and fro, bodyguards appeared around the Prince, the assassin was bleeding on the ground, and Jared could feel a dampness spread down his side as blood from the reopened arrow-wound soaked his borrowed formal clothes.

The Prince appeared next to Jared, looking at the assassin - who had, perhaps regrettably, become a corpse in the short intervening time. Jared did his best to explain what happened while someone else shredded the remnant of his shirt to bind his wound with.

"But who is the man?" the Prince asked, exasperated and a little bit afraid. "He's not some lunatic - that weapon of his speaks of money. Who would pay that much to have me dead?"

The assassin's body was searched, contents splayed around him. And in the mess, Jared spotted something that he recognized.

"There, your Highness" he said, somewhat hesitantly pointing. "Those coins. They're all old and foreign. But those three - the copper ones, sort of six-sided. I recognize those. They're from a place I've been, near my hometown."

"What's so odd about that?" the Prince asked.

"My hometown is in the Center of the World," Jared told him.

"Oh," said the Prince - knowing, as Jared did, just how little trade (or any contact) went between the mountains and valleys of the Center of the World and the World Outside.

The Prince stood for a moment, thinking. Then he snapped his fingers. "You," he said, pointing to Jared. "You're my new advisor. You've already shown initiative and skill. And you know something about whoever's trying to kill me."

Jared, somewhat shocked, agreed, "Yes, but-"

The Prince ignored him. "I'll expect you just after noon. The castle seneschal will tell you where to go. Come prepared."

Jared was left standing, slack-jawed, as the Prince walked away, talking urgently with a new arrival. The assassin's body was carted away.

"So, looks like you're moving up in life," the soldier Jared knew told him, tone lighthearted. "Figure our beloved Prince remembers he never actually swore you in?"

It was not, Jared thought, the first thing on his mind.