Death After Death

When he reached the seat of Lord Corwin’s barony, he stayed at the inn as he usually did and spent the next couple of days buying men drinks and boasting about his exploits until he caught the attention of the Baron just as he’d done the first time. It was funny to Simon because the last time he’d been in this situation, he’d been trying to avoid gaining too much attention, and this time, he’d been actively seeking it out, but it hadn’t seemed to move the needle much. It was enough to make him wonder just how much causality really mattered and how much some things were up to fate.

He told some of the same stories as last time, though he toned out the ones that they’d found unbelievable before and focused on his mercenary work against the goblins and the centaurs. That was enough to get him invited to the Baron’s study, where the infestation of the silver mines was explained while he patiently pretended not to know any of that, and he was invited to purge them.

Somehow, this moment had seemed more interesting the first time Simon had lived it, but then, in his mind, it had been one of the first times that a total stranger had considered him a hero. Now, he’d had so many of these conversations that it was just another job.

Well, not just any other job. It was one of the most important escort quests the Pit had to offer as far as he was concerned, and he wasn’t going to fuck that up.

In fact, this time, he was harder on Gregor than before. As ungainly as Simon was at his current weight, at least he could still move in his leather armor, but he made his young apprentice struggle and squirm in his plate mail until even he agreed that it wasn’t suitable for the mines.

“Fine!” the young Viscount told him as Simon helped the young man switch his armor out for the leathers of one of the guards. “But if I’m not wearing my plate mail, I don’t see why I should wear anything at all.”

Simon smiled at that. He understood that mindset far too well at this point. But he didn’t lecture the boy. Instead, he simply said, “The mouth of a goblin is a dirty place. What wounds they leave usually get infected. Better they get a mouth of cow leather instead, just in case.”

Not that they’d be going into there, of course. That was just asking for trouble, and Simon smoked them out the same way he did before. They spent the better part of an hour stacking dry and green wood in the mouth of the cave, and then they lit it.

“So, do we just wait for the goblins to come out then?” Gregor asked, stepping back away from the flames as they grew smokier.

“We’d be waiting a long time, I think,” Simon said, looking at the blaze they’d created. “You see how the smoke goes into the mine? That means there’s airflow from the vent shafts.”

“Well, of course, there is,” the boy shrugged. “How else would the miners breathe.”

“Breathing is good,” Simon answered, “But do you think anything might be able to climb down those shafts and make a nice home?”

Slowly, Gregor connected the dots, and Simon took his time, letting him guide them from vent hole to vent hole with nothing but his sense of smell and a little prodding.

When they reached the last one, Gregor asked, “Well, still no goblins. What now?”

“Well, we keep looking for smoke until we find them, I expect,” Simon shrugged. “I think I smell more from this way.”

He didn’t, of course. He just knew where the real nest was, and a few minutes later, they were fighting them by the river. Only this time, Simon didn’t charge in. He let Gregor do that, playing more of a role in the fight than he did the first time.

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Last time, Simon had been worried about how to keep the young man safe, but this time, he had both a much better understanding of the lad’s talent with a sword and a lot more experience with a bow. With a few arrows, picking off a runner or killing one of the monsters that was sneaking up on Gregor was the easiest thing in the world.

By the end of it, they’d killed eight, and once the two of them had finished filling a sack with goblin heads, Simon showed him the warren that they’d come out of. He hadn’t known about this the first time until days later, but he thought it would suitably impress the kid to point out the dozens of corpses that lay just inside where they’d suffocated.

“Wow…” Gregor exclaimed, not sure what else to say.

At dinner with his father that night, that was the point that young Gregor repeated the most. “If we’d just charged in, then we would have been outnumbered twenty to one, but thanks to Sir Jackoby’s experience, we only had to fight a few.”

Simon let the young man boast on his behalf and simply enjoyed the moment. If getting assigned this escort quest had felt more mediocre than before, then seeing it end so well felt amazing. Of course, his father, Gregor Corwin the Second, was thrilled by all of this and offered Simon a full purse of silver and promises of keeping him on retainer.

Unlike his time spent with Lord Raithewait, Simon already knew that this time would be spent mostly just making himself available to spar with his sons and tell stories every week or so over glasses of wine, so it was easy to agree to. Mostly, though, Simon worried about when the news of the King’s death would arrive in Slany.

By now, it was something that had happened. It always happened, of course. The only question was how long it would take the news to travel and what consequences there would be as the world learned of it.

It wasn’t until the following week when a traveling tinker let the tavern know that the King was dead. “I’ll tell ya true, from a man that heard it in the capital for hisself. Our old King, Gods rest his soul, has passed, and his son has bent the knee to his father’s brother, the Duke of the North, Lord Brin himself will stand as Regent until the time comes for the young Prince to ascend to the throne.”

Despite the fact that it was technically sad news, the people still celebrated that night. The next day, the Baron held a somber ceremony and then went to the capital with his son, leaving Simon behind to guard the rest of his family while he paid his respects and swore allegiance to the Prince and his Regent.

That worried Simon, of course, but he wasn’t about to demand to go. It was probably fine the way it was, after all. To him, the news finally allowed him to exhale a breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding until now, and he relaxed, splitting his time between teaching Gregor’s younger brother how to better use a shield and documenting some of his theories on magical symbols in a blank journal he’d purchased in the capital.

He didn’t have any particular insights beyond some of the symbols that sometimes haunted his dreams, but he was hopeful that when he left this level and went deeper, he could get another look at the Golem master’s grimoire and try to draw some more interesting conclusions.

Still, he remembered the sigils he’d used to inscribe his flaming sword well enough, and he studied those. The only part he didn’t draw was the symbol he’d used to bind the circuit to himself with blood, turning himself into a spiritual battery. That symbol felt a little dangerous, given how quickly it had reduced him to an old man last time.

Simon also planned to draw the symbols in the church this time, too. That level seemed easily solvable if he just put in a little work. It was just dangerous as hell. “It’s like one of those movies where you don’t know if you should cut the red wire or the blue wire,” he told himself as he sketched. “A chalk mark here and you open the gates of hell wide, but a chalk mark there, and you slam them shut, or is it the other way around?”

Everyone returned from the capital a few weeks later, safe and sound, which was cause for yet another party. Simon had been planning on leaving shortly after that, but the longer he stayed, the harder that became. He was happy here. Happier than he’d been in… well, since her, and it was hard to let that go.

So he stuck around as spring turned into summer and summer turned into fall. He continued to sketch his runes and try to understand the linkages and the relationships. One thing he learned in time was that even though he didn’t remember all of the runes from the book, playing with them enough would make the symbols come to him sometimes. It was like just understanding the sound was glimpsing some larger reality or meaning.

Usually, that required a mixture of intense focus and at least a little drinking like he was some kind of two-bit clairvoyant, and the longer he spent in the service to the Corwins, the less interested he was in doing anything but just living.

He helped bring the harvest in that year and even started to learn the basics of brewing from the innkeeper because he’d expressed an interest one day over dinner. That was a different and altogether more interesting alchemy. Haranah, the barmaid, had even dropped a few hints. She was a pretty strawberry blonde, but of course, he wasn’t ready for that sort of thing. Simon just focused on integrating himself into the community, learning new things, and helping those around him for months.

In time, they stopped bringing up Simon’s strange name or his foreign accent. Truthfully, he was about the happiest he’d ever been the day the rider from the Earl came through town, letting them know that the Prince had died under mysterious circumstances and the regent was claiming the throne for himself. Simon’s heart sank like a stone at the crowded table, even as those around him began to whip themselves up into a frenzy.

Not only did this mean that the war he’d worked so hard to avert was almost certainly back on now. It meant that Simon had sent that spoiled kid to his death with his stupid prophecy. The King was definitely going to have to die on fucking principle now.