Lucius didn’t deal with Captain Kallum himself, he delegated that. What he did do was move the unit of troops down to the end of the harbor, and put himself between them and the city. He spared nothing more than a passing appraisal over the portly seaman, and left Lieutenant Tyrion to negotiate it.

Tyrion’s caliber eluded Lucius. We had surmised an impression of the man, but our preparations never included a direct conversation, and much can be learned from that. We took the gamble as best we could, but it was his gut that twisted into knots. It was his back that swords would plunge through if the ruse failed.

Lucius wrung his grip upon the handle of his blade as he waited. As practiced, he stood up straight and faced the Cynizia with square shoulders. The only weakness he showed was to ask for the donation of a shield, which one of the voluntaries provided.

He held no desire to fight without men at his side, but could only pray that the Voluntaries would close ranks around him should an attack come. Such heroism would never come from the auxiliaries. He couldn’t even look over his shoulder to gauge their expressions, to read their confusion. The true Lucius von Solhart would have been at the back, the first aboard the ship. The difference in action drew out doubt and whispers from the men, like a slow leak through a hull.

Showing his face would tempt out the cry, “Imposter!” and nothing he could say would help.

Only actions would. Only becoming the man they needed to save them would.

That was when he first encountered Medorosa Canta, face to face and man to man. The heir of the Canta merchant family was barely past his twentieth year. Shepherd’s temples had filled his head with their belief, and youth spurred him to action. Anger without temperance held up his half of the chaos; drove him to be the lynchpin of the revolt.

The night wind ruffled his loose silk clothes, flapping the lapel between his tanned skin and his bloody wound. He took after the old tradition, and wrapped himself with an embroidered sash within which was the scabbard of his dagger.

That was his honor blade, drawn and bloodied across his own chest to swear the vendetta. As per tradition, he still carried it unsheathed and would until he had sated the oath. Opposite the dagger, he gripped a broad bladed falchion. Like Lucius, he too stood in front of his men. “So you escaped with your life. I could have sworn your head was cut off,” Medorosa said, raising his voice far beyond what was needed for Lucius to hear across the street. He spoke for the sake of the soldiers, something he picked up from Aisha’s bardic practice.

“Bold words for a coward who ran from the wastelanders,” Lucius shouted back.(1) Lucius leveled his blade at the demagogue. “You should be ashamed that you took a blood oath like this. Attacking men in the street? Ganging up on them? Jumping out from shadows and attacking from afar? You’re just pillaging by another name. Why don’t you get out from behind the Medini skirts and duel me?”

Medorosa scoffed and surveyed the group. “No, no I think not, Sir Solhart. My duel is with von Raymi; you’re just in my way. Besides, I have the numbers here. Your cowards are crowding onto that boat!”

As they had been speaking, Tyrion had finalized a deal, swearing upon his honor to get proper payment for the captain for such a rescue, and the troops had begun piling onto the Gull’s Drunk Flight. At the same time, more and more men of Puerto Faro were joining the frayed rear of Medorosa’s gang.

Lucius didn’t lower his sword, he kept it pointed right at where he imagined Medorosa’s wound was. “Then come at me! Come walk over here and step within my reach and see what happens. You had your chance with me and now that’s gone.”

Medorosa scowled and glanced over his shoulder. There was a slight gesture and a dark arrow soared through the night sky.

Lucius cut it down.

Half the men of the Cynizia stepped back when they heard the click-clack of the shaft falling to the cobblestone, and then watched Lucius’ blade rise back up to point at Medorosa.(2)

“Are you afraid of a parlor trick?” Medorosa roared, turning his attention to his men. Had Lucius been holding a spear, he would have thrown it through the man’s chest. “He’s one man. We outnumber them nearly two to one and have them cornered.”

“He could have a stigmata,” the talkative Cynizia said, giving voice to their concerns.

“So what? Do you think he’s the dragon king or something? You think they would have left someone useful behind like this? Archers! Loose!” he bellowed. The Cynizia had the loosest form of tactical knowledge, in that they put the men with swords, clubs, and shields in the front, and the archers in the back. Aiming was near impossible for them, but a massed volley didn’t need to aim.

Lucius shifted his stance, throwing the shield over his head as the arrows rained down on him. Some hit his pauldron or his mail skirt and glanced off, while others buried into his shield. The tips pierced through or broke off, splintering with the wood. Lucius didn’t waver, he didn’t break eye contact with Medorosa.

To the credit of the Vassish, they closed ranks at once. Their shields locked together like the scales of a tortoise shell. The only gaps had pointed spears protruding from them and not a single arrow found Vassish flesh. The soldiers pulled in, retracting their formation and letting the Cynizia surround them. Their backs were to the barge and under Tyrion’s orders they marched back to it.

Before Medorosa could order a charge, for his men to waylay the retreating Vassish, Lucius bellowed out another provocation. “Hear me now, you Giordanan bastards! You let us into your city of your own free will. We came offering stability and trade. Our laws would have brought equality to you hopeless laborers. In Vassermark even the lowest born peasant can own land. Can you? Some scrap of sand with no water perhaps. Everything else though? Owned by the faith or by merchant cartels. One of which claims to be of your ilk. You feel this anger inside your hearts, the burning passion of Giordana you pride yourselves with, and you mistakenly aim it at us because we are foreign, because we are new and different, but it is not because we have done anything to harm Puerto Faro. We leave here tonight routed, and you will wake up tomorrow and come to know the tyranny of anarchy once again. This city is the hole you have dug yourselves, you hear me? You have cut off the ladder sent down to you with your own hands!”

The speech did little to stifle the Cynizia, but it drew in the surviving Auxiliaries that came charging in from all over. Soldiers by the twos and threes swarmed the mob from the shadows. Steel rose and steel fell. All sense of strategy and tactics vanished upon contact with the enemy, but the blood of the auxiliaries paved the escape for the Gull’s Drunk Flight. Some even managed to dive into the water and catch up with it.

Lucius cut down any Cynizia within his reach while backing up to the formation. The bloody mess was no place for heroics however.

An arrow pierced his leg and drove him down to his knees on the dock. One of the Cynizia drove a spear tip through his neck, bursting blood through his lips and lungs. He sputtered and coughed, drowning in his own vitae as the voluntaries hauled him aboard. The flow proved too fast and too sudden, robbing him of consciousness as they rowed out to sea.

A good thing too. Without his subsequent revival, he may never have been able to explain his changes as the sudden formation of his stigmata.

The accusation was false, and most knew it, but most was not all. Goading was Lucius’ specialty. The trick of cutting down an arrow took Lucius three months and several hundred near-death experiences. The effect always proved worthwhile. It was an inhuman, illogical feat that was able to grab hold of the hearts of his enemies and push them back.