Chapter 1007

Orleandul rose fully, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of one hand.

“You should thank him,” he said, voice rougher now. “Your son avenged them before you even knew they needed avenging.”

Arslan stopped. Only for a heartbeat. Ludger. The underworld guild. Destroyed quietly. Gustav dead.

A child carrying a family’s old ghosts alone because he thought his father did not need to know.

Or because he thought Arslan would break. The idea should have brought warmth.

Pride.

Pain.

Instead, it drove the snapped thing in his head deeper. Ludger had known. How much? When? Why had he hidden it?

Because of Elaine? Because Ludger believed knowledge without action was just suffering? That sounded like him. That sounded exactly like him. Arslan’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth hurt.

The battlefield continued collapsing around them. The golems tightened the flanks. Orleandul’s reserves pressed forward. Lionfang’s forces were still struggling to reach the gate.

All of that mattered. Arslan knew it mattered. He was still Guildmaster. Still commander. Still responsible for every life behind him. But beneath all of that, something old and buried had risen from its grave and placed one demand above the noise.

For many years, Arslan had done what most men did when grief proved too heavy to carry with dignity. He became very good at pretending it was not there.

Adventuring helped.

There was always another monster to kill, another road to take, another contract with poor details and worse pay. There were taverns where no one knew his family name beyond what it could do with a sword. There were beds he did not stay in long enough to make promises. There were women with sharp smiles, gamblers with loose tongues, mercenaries with stories larger than their scars, and mornings where hangovers made excellent substitutes for memories.

He fooled around. He laughed too loudly. He drank enough to make bad ideas seem like reasonable exercise. He took risks that wiser men avoided and pretended it was courage instead of carelessness wearing a nicer coat.

People called him charming. Reckless. Talented. A little impossible. That was easier than being called bereaved.

His parents had died. His sister had died. The household that had shaped him had been reduced to graves, unanswered questions, and an inheritance of silence. So Arslan became a man who did not linger anywhere long enough for silence to catch up.

It still did. At night, mostly.

Between campfires and dawn. Between lovers sleeping and him staring at ceilings he did not recognize. Between one contract ending and another beginning, when there was nothing to sharpen, nothing to plan, and no enemy nearby kind enough to let him turn thought into violence.

He never truly forgot. He only learned how to stand beside the loss without looking directly at it.

Then Elaine entered his life like a blade wrapped in warmth and somehow decided he was worth keeping.

That had helped. More than he admitted. More than she probably knew, though Elaine had always been annoyingly good at knowing things people did not say. But even then, a part of him had remained braced.

As if happiness was a guest that could be murdered on the road if he became too comfortable.

Then Ludger appeared in his life.

Arslan remembered seeinf him for the first time and feeling something inside his chest shift so violently that it almost hurt.

Not healing. That was too soft a word. Healing implied the old wound closed. This was different. Ludger had not erased the dead. He had given Arslan a direction that was not backward.

A son. A future. A chance to make something right, even if he could not fix what had already been broken. Arslan had looked at the small, angry thing in front of him and made promises without saying them aloud.

He would protect this one. He would not waste his life running from graves. He would build something that outlived fear. He would become the kind of father whose child never had to wonder whether love was temporary.

Of course, Ludger had grown into a sarcastic little monster who built siege contingencies before breakfast and treated common childhood hobbies like other people’s problem.

But the promise had remained. That was why Orleandul’s words did not merely hurt. They reached into the foundation beneath Arslan’s life and cracked it.

His family had not died in an accident. Not bandits. Not misfortune. Not some meaningless cruelty of the road that could be cursed, buried, and never understood.

People had done it. Specific people. An underworld guild. And somehow Ludger had found them. Somehow his son had dug through old rot, followed trails even Arslan had not seen, and hunted the ones involved.

Alone. Without telling him. Why? The question hit harder than any spear. Why had Ludger never told him? Did the boy think he could not handle it? Did he believe Arslan would rush off and get himself killed? Did he think Elaine would suffer if the past was dragged back into their home?

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Or had Ludger simply looked at the truth, judged it a problem, and decided to solve it in that cold, terrifying way of his?

Father has enough burdens.

Arslan could almost hear him saying it. Not tenderly. Not dramatically. Just as a practical statement, like discussing grain stores or wall thickness.

That made it worse. Ludger, too young and too quiet, carrying his father’s ghosts in secret. Ludger killing people Arslan should have killed himself. Ludger deciding silence was mercy. Arslan wanted to be angry at him.

He was. A little. A lot.

He also wanted to find him, grab him by the shoulders, and ask what kind of idiot child thought avenging his father’s murdered family was a solo errand.

He also wanted to thank him. He also wanted to tell him that some truths hurt worse when discovered from enemies.

He also wanted… Orleandul charged.

The battlefield snapped back into motion with brutal force. The pale spear came first. Arslan barely brought his sword up.

The impact rang through his arms hard enough to numb his fingers. Orleandul did not retreat this time. He pressed forward, stance low, spear moving in tight, vicious arcs that gave Arslan no room to breathe.

Thrust to the throat. Sweep toward the knee. Reverse cut toward the ribs. Butt of the spear driving for the jaw.

Arslan blocked the first, stepped over the second, twisted away from the third, and caught the fourth against his shoulder instead of his face. Pain burst down his arm. The blow would have cracked a weaker man’s collarbone.

Orleandul used the opening.

His spearhead flashed upward and carved a line across Arslan’s chest armor. The enchanted edge bit through reinforced leather and metal, drawing blood beneath. Arslan swung back, but Orleandul had already withdrawn just beyond sword reach.

Not far. Never far. Just enough. The man was not dueling anymore. He was dismantling.

“Distracted?” Orleandul asked.

Arslan answered with a cut toward his neck.

Orleandul leaned away, spear shaft turning vertical to guide the sword past him. His hands slid along the weapon with smooth precision, changing grip mid-motion. The spear’s butt struck Arslan’s wrist.

His fingers nearly opened. Arslan tightened them through pain and drove his knee forward. Orleandul pivoted. The knee missed by a hair.

The spear shaft snapped down across the back of Arslan’s leg. His knee buckled. Mud splashed. Orleandul’s spearhead descended toward his face.

Arslan threw himself sideways, rolling through the blood-soaked ground as the spear punched into the mud where his skull had been. Pale mana discharged from the point, blowing a crater wide enough to swallow his shoulder.

Arslan came up on one knee. Orleandul was already there. Too fast. The spear swept horizontally.

Arslan blocked with his sword, but the angle was wrong. The force slammed the flat of his own blade into his chest. Air left his lungs. He skidded backward on one knee, boots and greaves tearing trenches through the mud.

Orleandul advanced with the calm of a butcher stepping around a table. No wasted movement. No rage. That made him dangerous. Arslan rose.

Barely.

The next thrust came for his left eye. He tilted his head. The spear carved across his temple instead, slicing skin and sending blood down the side of his face. Arslan stepped in, trying to crowd the weapon again, but Orleandul had adjusted. The spear shortened in his grip, held closer to the middle, turning from a reach weapon into a spinning bar of death.

The shaft struck Arslan’s forearm. Then his ribs. Then his thigh. Three hits in less than a breath. Each one reinforced. Each one placed with obscene accuracy. Arslan felt something crack in his side.

He swung anyway. The sword cut through rain and empty air. Orleandul had ducked under it. The spearhead came up from below. Arslan twisted, but not enough. The blade pierced through the side of his armor and slid under his ribs.

For a heartbeat, both men stopped. Orleandul looked into his eyes from an arm’s length away.

“There,” he said softly.

Arslan grabbed the spear shaft with his free hand. Blood filled his mouth. Orleandul tried to withdraw. Arslan held on.

The spear shifted inside the wound, grinding against bone and meat. Pain exploded white behind his eyes.

He did not let go. Instead, he raised his sword. Orleandul’s calm finally broke into alarm. He released one hand from the spear and formed a pale barrier over his forearm just as Arslan’s blade came down.

The strike smashed into the barrier. It cracked. Not enough. Orleandul kicked him in the stomach. The spear tore free as Arslan was launched backward.

He hit the mud hard, rolled once, and came up coughing blood. His left side burned. His breath came shallow. The wound was bad. Not immediately fatal. In battle, that distinction mattered more than comfort. Orleandul spun the spear once, flicking Arslan’s blood into the rain.

“You are strong,” he said. “But not focused.”

Arslan spat red into the mud.

“Talkative.”

“You should listen. Men in your position rarely get useful advice.”

“From murderers?”

“From survivors.”

Orleandul moved again. Arslan met him head-on this time. A mistake. He knew it as soon as steel met spear.

Orleandul was faster in exchanges now, reading the slight delay in Arslan’s left side, abusing the wound beneath his ribs. Every thrust angled toward it. Every feint forced him to protect it. Every step drew him into mud where footing favored the spear’s reach.

Arslan blocked a high thrust and countered low. Orleandul hopped back. The sword missed his thigh by a finger’s width. The spearhead snapped down toward Arslan’s extended arm.

Arslan pulled back, but the blade still cut across his wrist, shallow yet precise. His grip weakened for half a second.

Orleandul punished it immediately. A thrust to the shoulder. A slash to the hip. A shaft strike to the face. Arslan’s head snapped sideways. Blood sprayed from his mouth. His vision blurred at the edges.

He stepped back. Orleandul followed. Step for step. No breathing room. No chance to reset. That was the point.

Arslan had fought spear users before. Many. Adventurers loved weapons that made them feel clever from a distance. Most were predictable once pressed. They relied too much on reach and panicked when that reach vanished.

Orleandul did not. His spear was not a stick with a knife at the end. It was a line. A wall. A lever. A brush painting wounds exactly where he wanted them.

He used the shaft to deny angles. The butt to punish entries. The blade to threaten death. His footwork kept him just outside Arslan’s best range while never drifting far enough for Arslan to retreat cleanly.

Worse, the pale mana along the weapon changed subtly with each exchange.

Sometimes cutting. Sometimes blunt. Sometimes disruptive, causing Arslan’s reinforcement to stutter at the moment of impact.

That last part was a problem.

A serious one.