Chapter 186 - 184:Fearsome Captains.

Chapter 186: Chapter 184:Fearsome Captains.

Drogger is sure he can hear laughter over the rain, but the present company seems to know better.

As well they should. This isn’t exactly the sort of spectacle he’d expect to see from some of his more promising soldiers, not at this age.

Maybe when they were younger and more reckless; rebellious in the face of castle decorum and expectations and desperate to prove themselves, but not now.

Sure, it’s not on his time, but brawls were meant for bars, and he liked to believe they possessed more discipline than the average mindless horde.

And he wasn’t in the mood for thinly veiled comments from his king about whether after all his time in the field, he just might be losing his touch.

​(He’s most certainly not, but Gurdet knows how much he hates it when he implies as much.)

​Although, he has to admit that he’s recently decided that it might be good to take some time away from his field missions; to spend some time in his own kingdom.

If Gurdet commands it, he’ll go, obviously, but he secretly hopes he doesn’t.

​(He’d never request to stay. Gurdet would only take that as all the more reason to send him away.)

​Drogger gives the two troublemakers one last chance to get to their feet without being tempted to knock each other back into the mud before he coughs, loud and deliberate, to get the attention of the sniggering crowd.

They snap to attention in an instant, their haggard expressions further paling and withering with dread.

They know they’re screwed, and when Drogger asks them, in no uncertain terms, what they’re all standing around for, they immediately scatter, breaking away into a run.

​They know better than to dare him to ask them twice.

​Some of them look like they’re still wearing the clothes they were in the night before. A few of them lose their footing and fall; the ground slick with mud.

A couple of them gag.

​(It serves them right. Maybe they didn’t incite the chaos but they certainly fanned the flames.)

​As the soldiers peel off, cursing and groaning, but running all the same, Khobi and Loac finally present themselves before him, and they look utterly appalling.

The heavy rain is helping some; washing away the worst of what’s made it into their hair and over their faces, but their clothes are beyond salvage.

​"Well?" he asks, the what do you have to say for yourselves unsaid but heavily implied.

​This sort of madness he expected from Khobi. Sure, Loac got into his own fair share of messes, but never anything like this.

Never anything quite so public, or...spirited.

​Gods, Gurdet was going to have a field day with this one.

​"The infirmary said I was fine to train," Khobi states matter of fact, and as hard as he tries to hold it back, Drogger’s eyebrow twitches.

As if that’s the problem.

​"Did they."

​It’s rhetorical, and Khobi must read his tone and his expression because he gets the message.

Drogger is quite sure that while the medics might’ve cleared him to return to training, they most certainly didn’t tell him it was acceptable to sneak out in the middle of the night to confront the prince of Crade in his own castle.

Some kingdoms would consider that right treasonous, nevermind that Loac had never been in any real danger.

Khobi is a powerful man and a force to be reckoned with, but Loac can handle himself, and with how mortified Khobi had looked the other night in the seconds where he thought he’d mortally wounded Loac, Drogger honestly doesn’t believe that he’s a threat to his prince or his kingdom.

​"Your Highness, please excuse Khobi," Drogger states stonily, and gives Khobi a pointed look; the one that tells him that his friends are getting further and further away, and he best get to joining them if he wants to be done before the day’s end.

"He has some laps to run."

​The dismissal makes Khobi set his jaw, but Drogger gets the sense that he’s less annoyed by the punishment laps and more that their fight has been interrupted again.

​"Yes, sir," he manages to grit out, and Drogger is proven right when the words come out laced with disappointment.

But he runs all the same, slowly at first as he struggles to gain traction in the mud he’s played a role in churning up, and then picking up speed until his shape blurs into little more than a dark shape in the gloom.

He must catch up though, because a moment or two after he vanishes into the distance, the distant cackling of voices rises up over the rain, accompanied by a high pitched squawk that Drogger instinctively knows belongs to Rogard.

​"Ew~ Khobi! Get off me!"

The barest sliver of light starts to peak through the grey clouds.

​Drogger stalks past Loac towards the swords lying discarded in the mud.

He doesn’t say anything, but Rogard isn’t the only kid that Drogger trained when he was younger, and had gotten used to seeing sulk.

Those kids are long since grown, and changed in ways his younger self never would’ve imagined, so he could be wrong, but it certainly seems like that’s what his prince is doing right now.

​"Your Highness," Drogger remarks evenly, with all the due respect his prince –and his Captain –deserves, "I can see you have unfinished business with Khobi, but these grounds are for training."

He wipes the worst of the mud off of one of them and hands it back to Loac, hilt first. The other he keeps, and uses it to gesture out into the rain as the space starts to fill with their men, most of whom have grown up together, competing for the same glories, drinking in the same taverns, and chasing the same women, and many of whom have been known to use the sparring rings to, as they say, let off some steam.

​Khobi included.

​He hopes Loac takes the hint.

​"I have no problem with you settling your personal scores. But do it properly."