019

*2*

Censor Gregor sat by the glow of while four of his men slept around him. Two others were positioned outside the fire's light keeping the first watch of the night. So far the trip to Ayrillac from Merrybrook had been uneventful. The full moon had begun to wax and travelling through the night had become unfeasible.

The censor brushed his curly brown hair away from his eyes and then scratched his salt-and-pepper beard. He was too old for this, he should be at home with his wife enjoying a glass of wine by the fire. Travelling to towns within his province was one thing, and he excepted that as part of the positioned that allowed him to own the house that drank his wine in. But pulling the censor's back to the capital? All of them? It was a drastic step to tack during the harvest.

He was nervous. Not if the traveling, but of going home. Twenty years had passed since he marched away from Ayrillac as an infantry man in the Empire's legion. The electorate then was some nameless monster that his father railed at as he stumbled around their house. A beast who cruelly crushed his father and forced him to endure the hardship that was his own family.

His skill at the sword was passable, it kept him alive, but with numbers he was deadly. The game of Emperor's Towers that changes his life was still fresh in his memory. He held three cars in his hand, two of them were paired ladies, not an impressive round since the fourth tower had not yet been dealt, but he bet the farm and won. The censor, who had been watching took note, he exposed his card counting, which gave Gregor a cracked rib and a black eye during the night, but before matters could get any worse he pulled him from the infantry and put him into service as one of the censor's lictors.