Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Asag had once been a boy who believed in gods. He remembered kneeling before the family shrine, going to the temple at least once a week, his small hands pressed together, whispering evening prayers to the Five Gods Above , with the earnest devotion only a child could muster.

The All-Knower’s wisdom, the Bringer of Mercy’s compassion, the Warrior of Wrath’s strength, the Sea-God’s tides, and the Father of Laws’ order - he knew each by heart, believed each would protect him if he proved faithful enough.

Night after night he prayed until his knees ached against stone and his voice grew hoarse. He truly believed devotion would earn divine protection, that the gods would smooth his path if he never faltered.

They didn’t.

When yellow fever came, it took his mother slowly. She’d been strong - broad-shouldered, warm, her hands calloused from fieldwork.

The sickness withered her like blighted crops. Asag spooned broth between her cracking lips, wiped sweat from her brow with trembling hands. Every night he knelt before the shrine, whispering to the Bringer of Mercy until his voice broke, weeping until his tears darkened the altar’s wood. ”Please,” he begged. ”Don’t take her.”

The fever burned through her anyway.

Then came the drought. Fields that once rippled gold turned brittle brown. Earth cracked like old bones under a merciless sky. His father - who’d never bowed to anyone - knelt in dust and prayed to the All-Knower for rain.

None came.

Debt followed. First for seed, then for food, then for one more desperate season, one more gamble that the gods might finally listen.

They didn’t.

When lenders came to collect, nothing remained but flesh. Asag, eldest, saw how their eyes measured him and his brothers - four strong boys, one girl. A family’s worth reduced to silver. That night his father sat hollow-eyed at the table. No words were needed.

At dawn, he and one of his brothers were gone. His father’s once-steady hands trembled around a coin pouch, which must have weighed more than everything he’s ever held in his hands, or at least he believed so .

Asag never prayed again.

Faith was for those who could afford delusions. The gods didn’t answer. Either they didn’t care or they did not exist, both were as terrifying as the other.

He learned the only truth that mattered: The world didn’t care if you believed in it. It would break you anyway.

And so he watched them, kneeling on the stone, hands clasped so tightly their knuckles whitened, faces lifted to the heavens in trembling reverence. When the siege tower collapsed—when the wooden giant, the supposed unbreakable instrument of their doom, was swallowed by the very earth beneath it—there had been a single heartbeat of silence. Then, as if gripped by some divine revelation, the men on the walls had thrown themselves into desperate prayer.

They believed.

They believed the gods had intervened, that She Who Brings Mercy had looked down upon their plight and deemed them worthy of salvation. They saw the shattered ruin of their enemy’s greatest weapon and thought it proof of divine providence, a miracle woven into the fabric of the mortal world.

It disgusted him.

They called it a miracle. They claimed the gods had reached down and smote their enemies. They believed.

Of course they did.

Men always needed something to believe in, especially when facing death. And what better comfort than the idea that divine forces favored their cause? That their suffering mattered to powers greater than themselves? That there was meaning in the blood and the mud and the screaming?

Asag knew better.

There had been no divine hand at work here. No merciful goddess intervening on their behalf. Only careful planning, backbreaking labor, and precise timing.

His engineers had spent sleepless nights digging those tunnels, reinforcing them just enough to hold until the crucial moment.

This wasn’t a miracle , the gods had nothing to do with it, he had instead everything in it. Simple strategy. Simple murder on a grand scale.

By human minds and by human hand.

Yet he said nothing to dispel their illusions.

Let them believe. Let them kneel and pray and thank their absent gods. He thought as he laid eyes on one man crying with hands toward the sky.

Because faith, however misplaced, made men fight harder. A soldier who thought the gods favored him would stand when his body begged to collapse. Would raise his sword when his arms screamed in protest. Would hold the line even as death stared him in the face.

Faith was a weapon as sharp as any blade, and Asag would wield it without remorse.

His gaze drifted back to the ruined tower, where the last groans of the dying were fading into silence. This victory had bought time - precious, irreplaceable time. But it hadn’t won the war. Somewhere in the enemy camp, sharp minds were already piecing together what had really happened. Engineers would examine the wreckage. Scouts would search for clues. And eventually, inevitably, they would find the tunnels.

That couldn’t be allowed.

Asag turned sharply, his eyes finding the lead engineer amidst the celebrating soldiers. The man was grinning like a fool, his face alight with the giddy pride of a craftsman who had just seen his creation perform perfectly. There was something almost childlike in his delight, as if he’d pulled off some grand prank rather than orchestrated mass slaughter.

”Collapse the mines,” Asag ordered when he reached him, his voice low but carrying the unmistakable weight of command. ”Every last tunnel. Fill the entrances and pack them tight.”

The engineer’s grin didn’t fade - if anything, it grew sharper, more feral. There was a particular kind of man who took joy in destruction, even when it was his own carefully built structures being reduced to rubble. With a quick, almost jaunty salute, he turned and vanished into the crowd, already shouting orders to his crew.

Asag watched him go, then returned his attention to the field beyond the walls. The enemy would regroup. They would come again, harder and angrier than before. And when they did, he would be ready.

Because while faith might move men, it was cold, ruthless calculation that won wars. And Asag had long since stopped believing in anything else.

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Shamleik sat rigid in the saddle, his gauntleted hands clenched so tightly around the reins that the leather groaned in protest. The world seemed to narrow to the sight before him - two armored soldiers bearing the broken body of his nephew with terrible solemnity. They moved as if carrying something sacred, their steps measured, their heads bowed. But no amount of reverence could disguise the awful truth: Shawona, firstborn son of his brother, scion of royal blood, now just another corpse on this gods-forsaken battlefield.

The body made no sound as they laid it gently upon the earth. No groan of pain, no final rattling breath. Just the dull thud of dead weight meeting hard ground. Shamleik’s throat tightened as he took in the ruin of what had once been a proud warrior. The armor was dented beyond recognition, the once-polished steel now caked with dirt and blood. Shawona’s face, normally so full of fierce vitality, looked strangely peaceful in death - as if he’d simply closed his eyes for rest rather than had them forever stilled by the crushing embrace of earth and timber.

A father should never have to bury his son. The thought struck Shamleik like a physical blow, stealing his breath. His brother would be shattered. The man who had sent his firstborn to war would now receive him back as cold meat wrapped in funeral linens. The image rose unbidden in his mind - his brother’s strong hands trembling as they touched his son’s lifeless face, the terrible silence that would follow, the way his voice would break when he finally found words-

Shamleik forced the thoughts away. Now was not the time for grief. Not when rage burned so brightly in his chest it threatened to choke him.

His gaze lifted to the distant walls where that bastard Asag no doubt stood gloating over his handiwork. The oathbreaker. The traitor. The man who had spat on every law of gods and men by staining his hands with royal blood.

The air around him was thick with tension. The assembled lords and commanders stood like statues, their faces carefully blank but their eyes betraying the same fury that coursed through Shamleik’s veins. None spoke. None needed to.

The battle had stopped of its own accord when the tower fell. No retreat had been sounded, no orders given. The soldiers had simply... frozen. As if the very earth had turned to ice beneath their feet. They had seen. They all had seen who was leading that assault. And now they stood in that terrible limbo between shock and vengeance, waiting for someone to give voice to the fury that simmered in every heart.

They would get that bastard head on a pike.

The prince did not allow the silence to stretch. With a sharp tug of his reins, he turned his horse toward the head engineer, fixing him with a glare like tempered steel.

”Build two more siege towers,” he commanded, his voice a blade, cutting through the heavy air. ”I want them ready in a week.”

The engineer, still pale from watching the last one crumble into ruin, stammered, ”Y-your grace , a week is too little time. The wood must be gathered, the supports alone will—”

Shamleik’s eyes flashed with a cold, lethal promise as he cut him off. ”Then I suggest you move quickly. Shall I count the days on your fingers? Or shall I start removing them now to help you work faster?”

The engineer swallowed hard, his face losing what little color it had left. Without another word, he bowed so low his forehead nearly touched the dirt, then turned on his heel and rushed off, his feet kicking up dust as he went.

Shamleik let him go, his focus already shifting. He turned next to the gathered lords, his voice rising, not in grief, but in declaration.

”Whoever among you can claim his men have slain the wretched mercenary on those walls—” He gestured sharply toward the city, where the defenders still stood, where the man who had taken Shawona’s life still breathed. ”—will be rewarded with lands, gold, and titles. And if he is brought to me alive, his captor shall receive twice as much.’’

His horse snorted, stamping its hooves, as he straightened in the saddle angered by the lack of reaction

”You have heard me!” he snarled, his gaze sweeping over the gathered lords. ”Stop standing there like damned statues and ready the troops! I want that fucking bastard brought to me in chain and with his knees broken!”