Chapter : 713
The rhythmic clatter of the carriage wheels against the hard-packed dirt road was a monotonous metronome, counting down the seconds of a life Lloyd no longer felt was entirely his own. Outside, the lush, rolling hills of the Ferrum Duchy’s southern territories painted a picture of serene prosperity. Inside the finely upholstered carriage, however, the air was thick with the cold, sterile reality of war.
“The trap was crude,” Lloyd said, his voice a low monotone that seemed to absorb the light in the cabin. He stared out the window, but his gaze was turned inward, replaying the failed deadfall trap in his mind. “Amateurish, even. Relying on a single point of failure in the trigger mechanism. No redundancies. No secondary plan. They expected a fool. Or at least, someone without adequate protection.”
Across from him, Ken Park sat as still as a granite statue, his hands resting on his knees. His uniform was impeccable, his posture a testament to a lifetime of discipline. Only the faintest flicker in his dark eyes indicated he was listening. “Their confidence has made them complacent, Young Master.”
“It’s not confidence,” Lloyd countered, a dry, humorless smile touching his lips. “It’s arrogance. The assassins—Jager and Kael, as the Gilded Hand’s terrified leadership so helpfully provided—are professionals. But they are professionals operating with catastrophically flawed intelligence. They believe they are hunting a lordling, a soap-merchant with a bit of luck and a powerful father. They have no concept of who—or what—they are truly facing.”
The second failed ambush, the poisoned stream, had been more sophisticated. It spoke of a mind that understood logistics, a mind that knew how to turn the environment itself into a weapon. Yet, it too had failed. Ken’s monstrous display of strength, lifting the carriage clear of the water, had been a deliberate, contemptuous message. It was a declaration that the rules they thought they knew did not apply.
But Lloyd knew this game of cat and mouse on the open road was unsustainable. Each avoided trap was a temporary victory, but it also confirmed their location and direction of travel. His pursuers were like wolves, patient and persistent. They would continue to set traps, and eventually, luck or a moment of inattention would grant them the kill they sought. The Major General within him, the eighty-year-old soldier KM Evan, knew that predictable movement was a death sentence.
“We need to change the battlefield,” Lloyd stated, his eyes finally focusing on the rolling landscape. “This road leads to Zakaria, but it’s also leading us into a tactical box. They know our destination. They will simply set up their next welcoming party at the border.”
Ken’s response was a single, clipped word. “Agreed.”
“Therefore,” Lloyd continued, leaning forward and tapping a finger on the polished wood of the door, “we will give them a destination to watch. Just not the one we are going to.”
The plan that unfolded from Lloyd’s mind was a classic piece of military deception, a feint designed to send the enemy on a long and fruitless chase. That afternoon, they stopped at a bustling crossroads town. Lloyd, using the full weight of his ducal authority, commandeered a second, identical carriage. He hired a driver, a man whose greed outweighed his curiosity, and paid him an exorbitant sum to continue the journey east towards the Zakarian border. To complete the illusion, he placed a decoy inside—a mannequin dressed in a spare set of his own fine, but not ostentatious, traveling clothes. He even sprayed the interior with a hint of the rosemary elixir he favored, a subtle piece of olfactory misdirection for any pursuer with enhanced senses.
As the decoy carriage rumbled eastward, Lloyd and Ken slipped out of the town’s northern gate on foot, melting into the vast anonymity of the countryside. They were now ghosts, their trail deliberately and expertly erased. They traveled for the rest of the day through woods and farmer’s fields, avoiding roads and settlements, the powerful Lord Ferrum and his formidable retainer now reduced to fugitives hiding in the shadows of their own land.
As dusk settled, casting long, purple shadows across the landscape, they found shelter in a dilapidated barn. The air was thick with the scent of hay and old earth. Ken, with his usual silent efficiency, started a small, smokeless fire, producing dried rations from his pack.
Lloyd sat against a rough-hewn wooden beam, chewing on a piece of tough, salted meat that was a profound insult to the fine cuisine he was accustomed to. The Major General, however, was satisfied. The discomfort was a necessary component of survival.
Chapter : 714
“They will follow the decoy for at least three days,” Lloyd mused, staring into the flickering flames. “That gives us the window we need. By the time Jager realizes he’s been chasing a ghost, we will be gone.”
“Your orders, Young Master?” Ken asked, his voice as calm and steady as ever.
“We need a new identity. A new life, temporarily.” Lloyd’s mind, a finely tuned engine of strategy, began to construct the persona. He couldn’t be a merchant; it would attract attention. He couldn’t be a mercenary; it was too conspicuous. He needed a role that was both unassuming and essential, a position that would allow him to blend into the fabric of a city while granting him access to its people.
A doctor.
The idea was perfect in its simplicity and its audacity. A humble young healer, perhaps one who had studied at the lower rungs of the Bathelham Academy before finding his calling serving the common folk. It was a role that inspired trust, not suspicion. It provided a perfect, unassailable cover for his true purpose. With his [All-Seeing Eye], he wouldn’t even be lying about his abilities; he truly could diagnose illnesses with an accuracy that would seem miraculous.
“We head to Rizvan,” Lloyd said, naming a bustling, grimy port city two days’ walk to the northwest. It was large enough to get lost in, a chaotic hub of trade and transit where a new face wouldn’t be questioned. “I will establish a new identity there. ‘Zayn.’ A simple doctor. You, Ken, will go dark. Utterly dark. I want you to become a shadow in that city. Your mission is not to protect me, but to observe them. When Jager and Kael realize the trail is cold, they will double back. They will search. I want you to find them first. Learn their methods, their contacts, their chain of command. I want to know everything. We are no longer the hunted, Ken. We are the hunters, and we are setting our own trap.”
Ken nodded, the firelight glinting in his dark, unreadable eyes. There was no hesitation, no question. The order was given, and it would be obeyed.
Lloyd looked down at his own hands, the hands of a lord, an industrialist, and a warrior. He was about to trade his fine silks for coarse linen, his ducal authority for a healer’s quiet humility. The eighty-year-old soldier within him felt a grim satisfaction. This was the true nature of the Great Game. Not the glorious charges and grand pronouncements, but the quiet, dirty, and absolutely necessary work of survival in the shadows. The birth of Doctor Zayn was not just an act of concealment; it was an act of war.
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The city of Rizvan was an assault on the senses. Unlike the stately, clean-swept avenues of the capital, Rizvan was a city that lived and breathed with a raw, chaotic energy. The air was a thick, briny soup of salt-spray from the sea, the smoke of a thousand cookfires, the metallic tang of the smithies, and the ever-present, cloying sweetness of rot from the fish markets. It was a city of a hundred thousand souls crammed into a labyrinth of cobblestone streets, a place where fortunes were made on the docks and lives were lost in the shadowed alleys. It was the perfect place to disappear.
Two days after abandoning their ducal life, Lloyd and Ken arrived at the city’s southern gate, indistinguishable from the countless other travelers seeking work or passage. Lloyd’s fine silks had been replaced by a simple, durable set of a traveler’s clothes—a homespun linen tunic, dark wool trousers, and sturdy leather boots. The fabric was coarse and itchy against his skin, a constant, humbling reminder of his new station. He had even allowed a few days’ worth of stubble to grow on his chin, softening the sharp, aristocratic lines of his face. He was no longer Lord Ferrum, heir to a great house. He was just a man.
“This is where we part ways,” Lloyd said, his voice low as they stood in the shadow of a crowded market archway. “From this moment, you do not know me. You are a ghost, Ken. A rumor. Nothing more.”
Ken’s nod was barely perceptible. “Understood, Young Master. I will establish my network and begin surveillance. I will find a way to report, but it will be discreet.” He paused, and for the first time, a flicker of something other than professional duty crossed his face. It was a deep, almost paternal concern. “Be careful.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Caution is for men who have the luxury of time,” Lloyd replied with a grim smile. “I have a clinic to open.”
Chapter : 715
With a final, silent acknowledgment, Ken Park melted into the throng of the crowd, his large frame vanishing with an unnerving ease that was a testament to his lethal skill. Lloyd was now truly alone.
The persona of “Zayn” required a physical space, a foundation upon which to build the fiction. Lloyd spent the next few hours navigating the city’s poorer districts, his senses on high alert. He needed a place that was both visible enough to attract patients and obscure enough to avoid the scrutiny of the city’s guilds and authorities. He found it on a street that was a tributary to the main slum, a small, forgotten storefront sandwiched between a loud, boisterous laundry and a grimy tenement building.
The shop had been a failing apothecary, and the ghost of its former business still lingered in the air—the dusty scent of dried herbs and powdered minerals. The windows were clouded with grime, and a faded sign depicting a mortar and pestle hung askew from a single rusty chain. It was perfect.
The landlord was a fat, sweating man with a suspicious squint who was overjoyed to have a paying tenant. Lloyd, adopting a quiet, humble demeanor, introduced himself as Zayn, a healer from the countryside looking to set up a practice to serve the community. He paid two months’ rent in advance with a handful of silver coins he had kept, a sum that made the landlord’s eyes widen with avarice. The deal was struck, and Lloyd was handed a heavy, rusted key.
The next three days were a trial in humility. Lloyd single-handedly cleaned the filthy clinic. He scrubbed the floors until the original wood shone through the layers of grime. He washed the windows until the weak, watery sunlight could finally pierce through. He repaired the broken shelves and organized the few remaining jars of common herbs the previous tenant had left behind.
His body, accustomed to the privileged life of a lord, ached with the unfamiliar labor. His hands, which had commanded spirits and forged steel, were now raw and blistered from soap and lye. The Major General within him was quietly furious at the indignity of it all, but the strategist knew this was a necessary part of forging his cover. Every speck of dust he wiped away, every splinter he pulled from his finger, was an investment in his anonymity.
He used the last of his silver to purchase a few essentials: a simple cot for the back room, a sturdy wooden desk and chair, and a slate board for notes. He then made his most important purchase, visiting a back-alley bookseller and acquiring several well-worn medical texts. They were crude by his standards, filled with superstition and flawed theories, but they were the perfect props. He displayed them prominently on his new shelves, alongside the anatomical atlases his mother had given him. To any visitor, the room now looked like the humble but dedicated study of a serious, if impoverished, practitioner of medicine.
On the fourth day, he was ready. He painted a new, simple sign himself: a stylized serpent coiled around a staff, the ancient symbol of healing that was universal even in this world. Beneath it, in clean, clear script, he wrote: “Dr. Zayn. Healer.”
He opened his door to the city of Rizvan. For the first few hours, there was nothing. The river of humanity flowed past his small clinic, ignoring the new sign. Lloyd sat at his desk, pretending to read, and waited. His patience was that of a sniper, a deep, abiding calm that was his greatest weapon.
Just as he was beginning to wonder if his cover was too unassuming, his first patient arrived. A young woman, her face etched with worry, hesitantly stepped inside, clutching the hand of a small, feverish girl.
“Are you… the doctor?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Lloyd looked up from his book. He offered a gentle, reassuring smile, a carefully practiced expression that he hoped conveyed compassion and competence. The mask of Doctor Zayn slipped perfectly into place.
“I am,” he said, his voice quiet and calm. “Please, come in. Tell me what ails the little one.”
The game had begun. The Lord of Ferrum was gone, and in his place was a humble healer in a grimy port city. The assassins were hunting a ghost, while their true target was hiding in plain sight, preparing to turn the city itself into his weapon.
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Chapter : 716
The district of Rizvan known as the ‘Lower Coil’ was a place where hope went to die. It was a festering sore on the city’s underbelly, a maze of narrow, unpaved alleys that turned to sucking mud in the rain and choked with dust in the sun. The air was a permanent miasma of human waste, cheap gin, and the metallic scent of sickness. Here, life was a currency spent quickly, and the only healers were charlatans who peddled useless tinctures or priests who offered prayers for a soul already halfway to the grave.
Into this pit of despair walked Doctor Zayn.
His first patient, the little girl with the fever, had been suffering for a week. Her mother, a gaunt woman named Jahanara, explained that three other ‘healers’ had already taken her money. One had sold her a useless poultice of river-clay and dung. Another had performed a noisy ritual to exorcise a ‘fever-demon.’ The child had only grown weaker.
Lloyd—Zayn—listened with a practiced air of solemn compassion. He nodded gravely, his expression a mask of serene focus. But beneath the surface, the Major General was conducting a cold, ruthless analysis. He guided the child to a small examination cot, his movements gentle and deliberate.
“Let’s have a look,” he murmured, placing a cool hand on the girl’s forehead to check her temperature. It was a simple, human gesture, a piece of theater. In the same instant, he activated his [All-Seeing Eye].
The world of flesh and fabric dissolved. Before his inner vision, the girl’s body became a translucent schematic of life. He saw the frantic, panicked fluttering of her heart. He saw the architecture of her bones, the web of her nerves, and the slow, sluggish flow of her blood. The power, once a deluge of overwhelming data, was now something he could focus with pinpoint precision. He directed his gaze to the source of the heat, her immune system’s desperate battleground.
He saw it instantly. Her lymph nodes were swollen and inflamed, glowing with a dull, angry red in his perception. And within her bloodstream, he saw them: microscopic motes of hostile life, a specific strain of bacteria he recognized from his Earth-life studies. It was a common but aggressive infection, one that this world’s medicine, with its focus on balancing humors and exorcising spirits, was utterly unequipped to even identify, let alone treat.
He deactivated the power, the world snapping back into its mundane form. The entire diagnostic process had taken less than three seconds.
“It is a fire in her blood,” he told the anxious mother, using the metaphorical language of this world. “The body’s natural waters are not enough to quench it. But there is a cure.”
He went to his sparse shelves and ground a simple combination of two common, cheap herbs—a willow-bark derivative for the fever and a specific type of root known for its mild antibacterial properties. It was the 19th-century equivalent of aspirin and a weak antibiotic, but for this world, it was a miracle. He gave the powder to the mother with precise instructions for dosage. He refused payment, asking only that she return in two days.
She returned the very next day, her face a mask of tearful, disbelieving joy. The little girl, whose fever had broken overnight, was weak but alert, clutching a small wooden doll. The fire in her blood had been quenched.
The story of the miracle spread through the Lower Coil like wildfire. It was a whisper at first, a desperate rumor passed between neighbors in hushed tones. The new doctor, the quiet one with the sad eyes, he was different. He didn't ask for coin you didn't have. He didn't sell you false hope. He healed.
His second patient was an old fisherman, a man whose hands were so crippled by arthritis that he could no longer mend his own nets. The man had resigned himself to a slow starvation. Zayn examined the gnarled joints. With his [All-Seeing Eye], he saw the inflammation, the eroded cartilage, the calcium deposits. He couldn’t cure the incurable, but he could manage the pain. He prescribed a potent anti-inflammatory salve made from a common marsh weed, and within a day, the old man could move his fingers without screaming. He brought Zayn a small, perfect fish as payment, his eyes shining with a gratitude so profound it was almost painful to witness.
The trickle of patients became a steady stream, then a daily flood. They came with the endless, miserable litany of poverty: hacking coughs from the damp air, skin rashes from the filth, infections from untreated wounds, the deep, gnawing hunger that was a sickness in itself.
