Chapter 14: Over my Dead Body

Alan Marshall hiccupped then slammed his bottle of whiskey down on top of his chipped, wooden command desk. He eyed his three lieutenants with disinterest. They’d been prattling on about something or another for close to an hour, and only now was Alan beginning to listen to a word of what they had to say.

“Can you repeat that?” Alan asked. “You said something about a war?”

“Commander Marshall, I feel like you’re not listening to us,” Marcus, his junior lieutenant said. The stone-faced man seemed to be trying his best not to shout, ripples of stress and frustration forming on his fierce eyes and shimmering down his dark skin.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, I hear you I hear you.” Alan Marshall picked up the bottle again, taking another gulp of the strong drink.

First Lieutenant and Cavalry Sergeant Rebecca Hearthorn growled at Alan, a gesture that would normally land her a week in the dungeons. Luckily for her, Alan wasn’t much one for formality or rules.

She raised her voice at him. “Within five days’ time, an army unlike any that we have ever seen is going to attack our city. We need to evacuate now; we number but three thousand, while they number half a million. Do you not understand that, commander? A half million soldiers are marching on Steadrow-Pillar. What’s more, we don’t know who our enemy is or which nation they belong to! They have come out of nowhere and have massacred over twenty of the Kingdom’s smaller villages. And now they’re coming for the first of our cities. We need to pack up and leave.”

Marshall smirked. “Did anyone ever tell you how sexy you look in full armor, Rebecca?”

In one of the biggest displays of protocol-breaching behavior he had ever seen, Rebecca unsheathed her dagger and slammed down on top of his desk, right between his folded hands and less than an inch away from his fingers.

Marshall didn’t let the gesture get to him.

“Look, gentlemen,” he began, but paused when he met Rebecca’s glare. “And lady. I am not about to hand over Steadrow-Pillar to an invading army. It’s no secret that I was only sent this far away from the capital for my drunken insubordination.” He smiled. He was so proud of it.

“But wherever I am, with however many men I have, I won’t yield even an inch. If they’re going to take this city, then that’s fine, but they’re going to lose a lot of lives in the process.” He gulped down another mouthful of the disgusting green liquid.

Alan Marshall was accounted one of the greatest tacticians and commanders in recent Kingdom history. But his frequent acts of drunken stupidity—which were always totally cool and awesome!—had forced the king to send him to this dump of a city, so far away from home.

Most people were shocked when they learned he had no shame, but why would he? Every prank he pulled was amazing. He had escaped execution repeatedly due to his performance in battle and his loyal service to the Kingdom.

But his last incident was, as they say, ‘the straw that broke the Cockaliths Wibbledom.’ He had woken up in the dungeon below the good King’s castle, with no recollection of what he had done to get there, which meant whatever he did had to have been awesome. The judge had offered him a choice between execution and being sent here. At first he’d chosen execution, but then the judge offered him a bargain he couldn’t refuse. The Kingdom agreed to give him the full report of his criminal behavior on the night of his arrest in return for his service here at Steadrow-Pillar.

Alan still couldn’t believe what he had done, even for him! Supposedly he had interrupted a political dinner of the highest and most important caliber. The report said that the King, Queen, and all the major nobles of the entire Kingdom had been gathered to make some of the most important decisions in Kingdom history.

The report continued to note that they were only moments from signing a treaty that would usher in a new dawn of prosperity, when out of nowhere the dining room door slammed open, and Marshall had walked in. He was completely naked, except for the Queen’s panties he wore over his head, which the report alleges he stole from the pantry.

That alone would have been bad enough, but there was more. It then stated he vomited all over the floor and tripped on his own vomit, tumbling and falling face first onto the royal carpets. The report claims he tried to pick himself up by grabbing onto the expensive Rezza-spider fabric of a nearby table, but he only ripped it off and caused the candles burning atop it to tumble over and start a huge fire. The entire dining hall had to be evacuated, and the treaty was never signed.

If all that was hard enough to believe, the report had one final page. Supposedly on their way out of the burning room, Marshall had drunkenly wobbled his way over to Saerina, an Elvin princess from the city of Elvadin, and the most important and prestigious guest that had visited the Kingdom in over two thousand years.

The report claimed he stumbled over to her, naked, with vomit and booze covering his chest and face, and began to do an erotic dance in front of her, grabbing his genitals and shaking his rump as the room went down in flames around them.

It was the very next morning, awakening in that dark cell, that commander Alan Marshall realized he had but one single regret in his entire life: that he couldn’t remember any of it.

“You three should set out and find Patrick,” he demanded between large gulps of wine.

Marcus and Rebecca glanced at each other and nodded as if a wordless message had crossed between the two of them.

“Listen, commander,” Rebecca said. She was positively gorgeous, with swift red flowing hair, bright green eyes, and long luscious thighs that were sadly covered most of the time by her grey battle armor.

“If you die here, and we don’t have you when this army crosses deeper into our territory, this could very well spell out the end of our nation. Probably not just for us, either as, whomever these people are, they seem to be inclined to wipe out everyone in their path. It is for this reason, Marshall, that you need to come with us and find Patrick. You know as well as I do that once the King or Patrick becomes fully aware of this threat, you’d be called back immediately anyway. I don’t much care for you—it’s no secret—I think you’re vulgar, disgusting, and a pig.”

“Why thank you. I was aiming to be all of those things. It seems my hard work has—”

“But!” she interrupted. “I will not stand idly by and watch my entire race be slaughtered because the one man who could have done something about it decided to get himself killed out of some ridiculous pride.”

Marshall frowned as his three subordinates closed in on him. They were really going to kidnap their own commander?

Damn, he thought. I need to be more strict with my underlings.