A March of Kings - By Morgan Rice Page 0,45

casks of ale, the foam bubbling over, and slipped one into Gareth’s hands.

Gareth lifted it to his mouth and drank long and hard, gulping it all down, feeling it rush to his head. He looked around and noticed that they were the only three in the bar, and he was not surprised, given it was still morning. He already wanted this day to end.

Gareth looked down, saw the soil on his shoes from his father’s burial, and felt the sadness re-igniting within him. He could not get the image out of his head of his father’s body being lowered into the earth. It made him think of his own mortality, of how he had spent his life, and how he would spend the rest of it. More than anything, it made him realize how he had wasted his life. He was still young, only eighteen, but a part of him felt it was too late, that he was who he was. Was it, really? Or was there still any hope for him to turn his life around? To become the son his father always wanted him to be?

“Do you think it’s too late for me?” he asked Akorth, turning towards him as he set down his cask. Akorth finished a cask with one hand then raised a fresh cask with another. He finally set it down and let out a loud belch.

“What do you mean?”

“To become an upstanding citizen. A warrior. Or anything worthwhile. If I ever wanted to. Something along those lines.”

“You mean, do something responsible and worthwhile with your life?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You mean, to become one of them?” Fulton chimed in.

“Yes,” Godfrey said. “If I wanted to. Do you think it’s too late?”

Akorth let out a huge laugh, shaking the bar with it, slamming his palm on the table.

“All this business really got to you boy, didn’t it?” Akorth bellowed. “It scares me to hear you speak this way. Why would you want to be one of them? I couldn’t think of anything more boring.”

“You live the good life in here, with us,” Fulton said. “We have our whole lives ahead of us. Why waste time being responsible, when you can waste time drinking?”

Fulton screamed with laughter at his own joke, and Akorth joined in.

Godfrey turned back, looked down at his cask, and wondered if they were right. A part of him agreed with them: after all, that was the line he had always taken, the way he had always rationalized his existence. But he could not deny that a new part of him was starting to wonder if maybe there was something else. If maybe he’d had enough of all of this.

Most of all, what burned inside him was a sense of anger. And, oddly, a desire for vengeance. Not just against his father, but against his father’s killer. Maybe it was just a desire to understand. He wanted—he needed—to know who killed his father. Who would want his father dead? Why? How had they got past all the guards? How could they not remain caught?

Godfrey turned over and over in his mind all the possibilities, all the people that might want him dead. For some reason, he kept thinking of his brother. Gareth. He kept thinking of that meeting, the one he had left so abruptly, with all his siblings, when his father had named a successor. He had heard that after he’d left, his father had named Gwendolyn. It was actually probably the only wise choice of his father’s life—and probably the only thing Godfrey respected him for. Godfrey despised Gareth: he was an evil, plotting schemer. It was the wisest thing his father had ever done to cut him out of kingship. And yet now, look where they were. Gareth was crowned.

Something tugged away at Godfrey, something that would not disappear, that made him wonder more about him. There was some look of hate in Gareth’s eyes, something he had spotted since he was a child. He couldn’t help but wonder if Gareth had something to do with their father’s murder. In fact, a part of him felt sure that he did. He did not know why. And he knew that no one would take him seriously, he, Godfrey, the drunk.

Still, a part of him felt compelled to find the answer. Maybe if for no other reason than to make amends to his father, to make up for his wasted life. If he could not have his father’s approval in life, perhaps he could