Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The sack that had fallen upon the city of Artalerita, when it passed into the hands of the Yarzat army, gradually shifted into a strange, uneasy coexistence between conqueror and conquered.

By the standards of war, the looting had been almost restrained. This was not born of mercy but of necessity,Alpheo valued speed and momentum in his campaign far more than he cared for the purses of his soldiers.

The Yarzat host had other objectives ahead, and lingering to bleed the city dry would only dull their edge.

Of course, such restraint was only possible because Alpheo commanded a sizeable standing force directly on his payroll.

Men who fought and marched for his banner year-round and owed their livelihoods entirely to him. When the prince said ”jump,” the only thing they asked was ”how high?”

In most armies, if a general attempted to halt looting after only two hours, he would be met with laughter, and if pressed, the soldier could even go to arms.

Even the nobles might turn a deaf ear to the order, their own retainers joining in the plunder with as much zeal as any common soldier. After all, with what face could a commander deny his men the very reward that had lured them into war in the first place?

Most soldiers, after all were not paid for their service monthly , and the only reward they got out of it was obtained through raiding and looting.

Alpheo’s position was unique, not the standard. The loyalty of his professional core gave weight to his word, and he used that weight like a hammer.

As with the majority answering to him, he could easily threaten the minority to obey him also.

In truth, a proper sack could last for days, with soldiers taking their time to wring every last drop of wealth from their prize. Looting, raping, burning, and enslaving were all commonplace in such events, though enslaving the populace was usually the mark of a commander with no interest in holding the place or one eager to turn the opportunity into a quick buck.

Artalerita, as such, was spared the worst of it. A week after the initial breach, it had transformed into the operational heart of the invasion.

The citizens, while still living under the shadow of occupation, had in many ways returned to their daily routines. Anxieties remained as every squad of Yarzat soldiers marching through the narrow streets still drew stiff backs and wary eyes, but the days still went on their own.

For some, the occupation even brought opportunity. The dock workers, in particular, saw their fortunes rise. Artalerita was the only reliable supply hub Alpheo possessed, and the lifeline of his army depended on it. Every week, dozens of ships arrived laden with grain, dried meats, pasta and other necessities for the thousands of men now garrisoned in the city and for those in the field.

In peacetime, dock work was a fickle trade, some months brought steady work, others left men idle and hungry. But now, the influx was constant. After a full week at sea, most sailors had neither the strength nor the will to unload their own cargo. The task fell to the local laborers, who could earn a quarter of a silverii or three bronzii for a day’s toil unloading the heavy crates.

And the man responsible for the dockworkers’ sudden prosperity now sat in the governor’s chamber, poring over maps and dispatches, weighing the next steps that he was to undertake.

Alpheo had barely settled into the captured city, yet already his mind had leapt beyond it, studying the wider board on which he played.

The past fortnight had been nothing short of a lightning storm across the Oizenian southern frontier. In barely two weeks, he had carved out a foothold deep into enemy territory with a speed that left his information staff scrambling a bit to keep up, with some difficulty in communication between the north and the south detachments of the army.

There was only one word that could describe the pace of his offensive, blitzkrieg.

What was remarkable was not just that he had reached his objectives, but that he had exceeded them. The campaign had been planned with contingencies, he fully expected some targets to prove too costly or stubborn to take in such a short time. Yet instead of setbacks, he found himself looking at a map where every marker had fallen neatly into place.

Even news from the northern wing of his advance, led by Jarza, was unexpectedly good. Jarza had secured the city of Shom, modest in size, of little immediate strategic or economic value, but important in the original scheme as a potential logistics base if Artalerita resisted longer than expected.

The plan had been simple, almost crude: strike at multiple points, pour resources into each thrust, and hope that something stuck to the wall.

It had worked better than he dared hope.

Shom was taken, Artalerita had fallen, and the Yarzat banners flew over both. Yet the capture of the jewel in the south had dulled Shom’s value. Artalerita’s docks and supply depots now served as the beating heart of his invasion, making the smaller city redundant for the moment, but still a good thing to keep.

Without hesitation, Alpheo sent new orders north. Jarza was to leave behind only a token garrison to hold Shom and bring the bulk of his men south to join the main host. The war had moved on, and the army would move with it.

He had also received fresh dispatches from Asag, detailing an unexpected triumph. Thanks to a plan conceived by Egil, one so audacious that Alpheo had to reread the report to believe it, they had managed to seize the city of Freusen.

The gates were taken, the streets secured, yet the city’s lord and a knot of his retainers still held out within the keep.

Asag’s letter outlined his intended course of action: to hurl every able-bodied man within the city against the walls of the keep in relentless assaults, exploiting any weakness with the main army the moment it appeared.

The sheer ruthlessness of it gave Alpheo pause.

He had not expected Asag to be so cold-blooded in his approach. Still, he could not deny the logic behind it. War was no place for delicate sensibilities, and if the method worked, the quicker the stronghold fell, the better.

His reply was brief and direct. He instructed Asag to press on without hesitation, to keep the pressure constant until the defenders cracked. Reinforcements would come soon enough if his plan did not manage to breakthrough the keep’s defenses.

And once the main army arrived, if it hadn’t already done so, the keep would be ground down and brought to heel, and the entire city secured.

Freusen was however, important enough to warrant such attention, it was not just another conquest; it was the stepping stone to the real prize Alpheo had set his sights on. That goal was the sole reason he had spurned the Oizenian prince’s offers of peace.

Until it was in his grasp, there would be no talk of ending the war.

At present, Alpheo however was not basking in the glow of his victories, nor dwelling on the swift string of conquests that had fallen into his grasp.

Instead, he sat in the governor’s chamber of Artalerita, hunched over a sealed missive.

This one concerning the movements and decrees from the heart of the Oizenian princedom itself.

Naturally, he could not micromanage every thread of the sprawling web of informants that fed him intelligence. For that, he relied on one of his highest acting agent, Lucius, who directed the portion network that acted in the princedom, collecting reports from dozens of scattered agents, weighing their worth, discarding the worthless, and binding the rest into coherent dispatches .

From there, the information traveled aboard the same ships that ferried supplies to Lucius-led guerrilla detachments.

It was an arrangement that had proven unexpectedly effective. With informants embedded across enemy territory, the bandits raiding forces could vanish before a patrol even reached their trail, or ambush them with uncanny precision.

As in hostile lands, where communication had to cross mountains, rivers, and the scrutiny of enemy patrols, it was far safer and faster, for the center of command to remain distributed rather than rigidly centralized.

A spy network could not be run like a state bureaucracy. Letters and ledgers might keep a treasury in order, but in the shadow trade, speed determined victory, and delays could spell ruin. If word of an enemy advance reached him too late, the failure might bring more than just lost ground, it could place Alpheo himself in danger of being discovered.

And that would be a catastrophe from which the campaign could never recover.

Still what Alpheo was reading was hard to believe .

It noted the many sweeping military reforms that the Oizenian prince, Sorza, had initiated in his capital.

Alpheo’s eyes narrowed as he leaned back in his chair, tapping the folded parchment against the table before raising his head.”How reliable is this?” he finally asked.

One of the two men who had delivered the dispatch stepped forward. Alpheo recognized him immediately: Ebran, Lucius’ apparent second in command.

”Captain Lucius himself confirmed it, Your Grace,” Ebran replied. ”He instructed me to place this in your hands directly.”

Alpheo studied him for a moment, then gave a small nod as , slowly, a faint smile curved his lips.

Well, he thought as he folded the report that brought him quite the surprise, they do say it... Imitation is but the highest form of flattery.