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the rumors about the grand general abound. no noxian soldier hasn't heard them.
he can read minds.
he speaks with the dead.
he practices black magic the likes of which even the bloodmages can't dream of.
and more lurid things, of course. noxians have always been enamored of their own gory mythology. and did you know that once upon a time the noxii used to eat human flesh?
"do you ever shut up?" faris is only eighteen, this is his first tour.
it's an honor to be so young and to have earned a place in the grand general's legion.
the night snaps cold around him and his compatriot, eminat, who is older by a year or two, and insouciant. after two calendar years, the military is his lifeblood now. he's not so provincial as to walk the perimeter of camp with wide eyes, cringing at every shadow like it’s a trap waiting to catch him.
"i'm just talking. night rounds get boring, you'll see."
"what if someone hears?"
"about the general? everyone's heard it before."
"what if the general hears?"
"what if the general hears indeed." a low, cold voice issues out of the chilly night.
both boys jump.
"commander!" faris snaps to a salute.
eminat follows. the commander - gallier - considers both of them from beneath bushy grey brows. a raptorial gaze.
"since the night rounds aren't interesting enough to keep you from gossip, i have an errand for you." he looks them both up and down. "i trust it should be within your ability. the grand general wishes to speak with one of the prisoners. fetch one."
eminat looks confused and faris shivers, the back of his neck prickling.
"fetch...any prisoner?" eminat asks.
gallier's mouth thins out. "ask the wardens for the one who surrendered last - or still hasn't surrendered. and escort him to the commanders' encampment."
the frostbitten breeze snaps the hems of their cloaks.
"um," faris dares.
"you have something to say, soldier?"
"what if - ah. that is to say, what if the last to surrender was a woman?"
gallier's mouth twitches. “then bring a woman."
"yes, sir.” faris salutes. “noxus provides.”
“noxus provides. don't keep the grand general waiting."
*
it is a man, it turns out. the prisoner who meets the specific criteria. he’s lean and strong, but startling in that, behind the heavy fall of his dark hair, he has the smooth look of someone untouched by war and the elements.
born in rokrund and raised in the cold halls of the steward’s schools, faris has never seen a bloodmage but he imagines that they might look something like this man.
together, he and eminat march this stranger to his destination with his hands bound behind his back. even covered in the filth of the prisoners’ camp, and wearing nothing but the threadbare remains of a combat tunic, he doesn’t wilt or shiver. it’s admirable, faris decides and then his heart quavers slightly. is it wrong to admire the enemy?
no, his teachers tut him. echoes in the long hallways of memory. one of them snaps his knuckles with a reed. every opponent is a lesson. don’t let your pride keep you from taking the best of their tactics and making them your own. noxians adapt.
faris wonders if this man learned the same things. every opponent is a lesson. maybe that’s why he walks with them so icily, like an aristocrat only temporarily out of place. are there lessons to be learned from defeat, too?
they halt before a pair of soldiers standing watch at the entrance to the commanders’ encampment. stern figures, a man and a woman, their red sash ties denoting their honorable middle-ranks as drakki. the woman eyes faris, eminat, and their prisoner and says nothing.
“we’re, um—“ eminat starts. “commander gallier...”
“we’re escorting this prisoner to the grand general, on the orders of commander gallier,” faris finishes.
the man and the woman share a glance.
“go on, then,” says the man, stepping aside.
and so they go. faris fights the urge to crane his neck and look around in this place where the tents are larger and heavier, and the air smells of strange chemical vapors — the alchemy sustaining the sullen, reddish lamplight that leads their way to their destination. a vast, black tent. the heavy drapery entrance emblazoned with the crest of noxus itself. faris’s heart skips a beat. how to announce yourself to what he assumes is a council of superiors?
but eminat has the courage this time. he pushes past the fabric fall, pulling the prisoner by one arm. faris has no choice but to follow.
“commanders—“
eminat’s voice dies in the gloom. faris, grabbing their captive by his other elbow, glances around. he had expected commander gallier’s presence at least, if not an entire war council.
but inside the tent, the world sinks into half-shadows. the vapor-lanterns hanging from the tentpoles pulse with a weak, bloody glow that throws most of the interior into an ochre gloom save for tent’s vast field table — its surface aglow with some feat of luminous physic. the plains and peaks of valoran described in plumes of curling seafoam light.
and on the other side of this table: the grand general himself, washed in that chilly glow and limned along his shoulders with the ruddy fall from the vapor lamps.
faris’s heart jumps.
it’s a strange thing. in spite of the eerie drama of the lamplight, this man before them is just that — a man. broad and stern, with a gaze like obsidian flint, to be sure. but he breathes and his chest rises and falls and for a moment his expression even softens faintly at the appearance of these two greenling footsoldiers and their stately captive, like something about their presence amuses him.
faris grips his spear.
when he was only twelve, his mother bid him her almost-last farewell on the steps up to the steward’s school. she had tears in her eyes, but she shucked him under the chin and said be brave, love. he wasn’t sure why, or what he had to be brave about except the strangeness of the austere building and the fact that there were rules within that he had yet to learn.
it’s thanks to the boundless wisdom of the grand general that you have the opportunity to be here, one of his schoolmasters told him and his classmates, some months later. because of him, you and all your children will be literate. noxus provides many such gifts.
reading wasn’t so scary either, even if it had been hard. faris felt brave the whole time even when his masters determined, by a series of tests, that he had no clear affinity for any of the three principles of strength. he felt brave even when they put a spear in his hands in the sparring yards and said that perhaps he could be fluent in this, given enough time and effort. strength is sometimes the easiest principle to master, and noxians never surrender. they take the world as it comes and then some.
he took his spear and learned its language better than his letters at the very least and he felt brave in the yards, sparring with his classmates.
in the close-gathered gloom, the grand general rounds the table, his long coat whispering softly as he moves. just a man. his gait slightly uneven. crows feet at the corners of his sharp eyes.
but he closes the ten paces between the table and his summoned guests and faris thinks, ludicrously, of his mother near tears.
“the commanders,” the grand general says, stopping just in front of the captive man, “have taken their leave for tonight.”
the captive’s top lip curls. a cut of teeth in the dark. faris grips his arm with his free hand and sees eminat do the same on his other side. the grand general’s mouth tics just so.
“apologies, lord commander.” faris summons his voice from some dry hollow in his throat. “we...”
“excuses have no place in a soldier’s life,” the grand general says. his gaze never strays from the captive’s face. “and a wise man never apologizes before he’s been accused of something.”
faris cuts a glance at eminat who, for the first time all night, seems completely at a loss for words.
“yes, lord commander.”
the grand general’s coat shifts on his shoulders and one dark-gloved hand emerges from the fall of fabric, holding a sealed, slim envelope.
“for commander gallier,” he says, extending the envelope in faris’s direction.
faris hesitates, both hands occupied — one on his spear, the other on the prisoner. the grand general’s mouth curls a little more. a smile this time, but still understated.
“you don’t have to hold him,” he says.
“yes— um. lord commander.”
let slip the captive’s bound arm. the envelope is cool and smooth in faris’s hand. before him, this man his schoolmasters spoke of with a stony reverence makes a small gesture with that black-gloved hand.
“you are dismissed.”
one last glance at eminat whose wide-eyed look matches the strange way faris feels.
nothing to do but salute.
“sir. noxus provides.”
“that it does.”
*
outside the tent, the clear night sky.
a raven with six blood-red eyes glides through the air, cutting a black shape against the stars. she watches two boys walk in the direction of their next destination. little errand creatures, scraps of life in the frost. she caws once and her breath manifests as a gossamer veil. vapor wings in the moonlight.