Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Alpheo’s decision to use his navy to thrust deep into the enemy heartland, feeding and supplying his troops entirely through sea routes, was a move that the South had never seen before.

His invasion struck not along the predictable borderlands but through the soft underbelly of his foes, bypassing their watchtowers, their garrisons, their supply roads.

It was a campaign born of imagination , and it paid dividends with shocking speed.

In less than two week the banner of the Falcon flew over three cities and a castle, their gates taken before many even knew they were under threat.

His armies had also secured the iron mines of the region, a prize far more valuable than any stretch of farmland.

By the twelfth day, the campaign was already a success by any measure.

Still, whether Alpheo could keep these prizes was another matter entirely, but for now, his momentum was unquestionable.

Of course , It was not that the princes of the South had been blind to such possibilities. The notion of combining naval and land warfare was not beyond their wit, simply ....it was beyond their means.

Alpheo’s fleet and supply train had cost him 118,000 silverii to prepare and launch, a staggering sum when one considered that the average yearly income of a southern prince barely reached 45,000. The gulf between imagination and execution was not bridged by courage or ambition, but by coin.

Still being the pioneer of a fleet, Alpheo had also encountered the great South’s weakness: poverty and inexperience upon sea.

Without a navy, the princes had no sailors to call upon, no officers seasoned in maritime war. Even the Great Prince of Habadia, able to raise an army of five thousand at a word, was like a child handed an unfamiliar beast when confronted with a warship.

For centuries, their wars had been fought on horseback and on foot, bound to roads and rivers. The sea was something to fear or fish from, not to command.

Alpheo alone had broken this mold and as such his fleet was commanded not by his own countrymen,yet, but by foreign captains.

With them, his armies became a moving storm,landing where they pleased; this, after all was how he had won the second battle of Aracina.

Sailing through the sea , allowing him to avoid the Oizenian scouts and attack them in the night without ever giving their position away.

No prince could match this mobility. No prince could even pursue him if a coast was nearby.

And what could Oizen do about it? Absolutely nothing.

The only power in the region capable of contesting him at sea was the Confederation of the Free Isles, a loose alliance of pirate lords whose fleets had in the last decade ruled the trade lanes. But the southern princes had no hope of courting them.

Too many times had their coastal towns been raided, their ships taken, their people sold into slavery by those very same isles. Centuries of blood and plunder had turned diplomacy into a laughable dream, they would not even know who to approach to strike a deal, considering that the knowledge that they had of the pirates was of savages who knew how to sail the waves.

In their eyes, they had no government, and each one fought for himself.

Of course, that was not true, though not too far-fetched from the truth, as by every means they had a decentralized government that chose the common rules that their lords and, as such, the smaller captains would have to obey, but that was another matter; for now all that one needed to know was that any attempt to have diplomacy with them was unthinkable.

And so, with the South landbound and fractured, Alpheo’s strange marriage of sail and sword was, for the moment, utterly unstoppable.

His ships brought him food, weapons, and fresh troops while his enemies scrambled in confusion on roads he never needed to use. He was, in this moment, a warlord without a leash, something that of course his opponent still was not aware of...

When Sorza had first given the order for his army to march toward the contested ground, the reports he had in hand were simple and, in his mind, easily explained. Scouts claimed that mounted forces bearing the black-and-white stripes of the Peasant Prince had been sighted near the city of Apurvio.

He had already formed the picture in his head: the enemy had landed somewhere along the coast and was attempting to secure a beachhead, likely in Artalerita or Schom, while sending their riders to plunder the surrounding countryside. A nuisance, yes, but one that could be contained and crushed before it grew teeth, a prime opportunity considering that the enemy would have no way out if defeated.

A chance to break the myth of the Peasant Prince.

The truth that cames in the following days , when it reached him, nearly made his heart seize in his chest.

The enemy was not attempting to take a foothold. They had already taken it, seized it, fortified it, and expanded it with alarming speed. The most dreadful piece of news came last, as if the messenger himself hesitated to speak it: Malshut was lost. Along with it, the royal iron mine.

It was a blow that struck far deeper than the loss of a city. The mines of Malshut were not just an economic asset, they were the spine of the crown’s strength.

Under royal control, they had allowed Oizen to maintain an army better equipped than most of its southern neighbors, whose soldiers often marched to war with mismatched arms and half-rusted steel.

Sorza’s father had used part of that iron, as the majority he sold for a good profit, to forge weapons for his own men. The mines had filled his coffers, funded his campaigns, and kept his rivals dependent on his trade along with the local nobility.

One of the many reasons why Shamleik was having the best of Arkawatt during the war for the contested borderlands.

Now all that was gone. The wealth, the weapons, the leverage, all in enemy hands.

His course of action, in principle, was obvious: Malshut had to be taken back. But Sorza was no fool. Simply marching his army to the city and laying siege to its castle would be to dance to the invader’s tune.

When the invader’s force came, the siege lines would have to be abandoned, and the battle would spill into the open plains that surrounded Malshut.

And on that ground, the advantage would belong entirely to the invader.

He knew very well, even better than he had hoped, that the Peasant Prince’s light cavalry, nimble, fast, and unburdened by the heavy armor Oizen’s men wore, would have free rein to ride circles around them. Sorza could picture it clearly: his infantry boxed in and bled dry by an enemy they could never catch.

It would also work entirely against the formations Sorza had labored so hard to perfect. While formidable in defense, they were ponderous and ill-suited for swift maneuvers; on open plains, such sluggishness would spell certain ruin.

Which meant there was only one thing he could do...

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”Seems they’ve already chosen the ground,” Alpheo remarked, tossing the parchment he had been holding onto the table before him.

The eyes of his captains followed the paper, their curiosity palpable.

It was Egil who voiced what they were all thinking. ”What’s in it?”

”Our latest correspondence with our dear friend,” Alpheo replied, the corners of his mouth curling up. Truly, fortune seemed determined to place victory in his lap; all he needed to do was reach out and claim it.

”What’s in it?” Egil repeated, evidently unwilling to take the hint.

”The letter’s there. You can read it,” Alpheo said, gesturing toward the parchment.

Rather than do so, Egil plucked it up and promptly shoved it into Jarza’s hands. ”Here. You read it.”

Jarza exhaled through his nose, clearly bothered, but began to read aloud:

’’To Alpheo, consort of Her Grace, Jasmine of House Veloni-isha

From Sorza, by the Grace of Heaven, Prince of Oizen and rightful lord of the lands upon which you now trespass with your host—

Your presence upon my soil is an affront to my crown and to the order of this realm. By theft and treachery you have seized what is not yours. I offered you peace; you spurned it for war.

Therefore, I do not skulk in the shadows as you have done, but summon you into the clear light of day to meet me in fair contest. Let it never be said that I denied you the chance to prove your worth in arms, rather than by the coward’s arts of ambush and pillage for which you are known.

I name the field of our trial to be the plains east of Apurvio, two days hence from the receipt of this letter. There we shall array our banners, and let Heaven judge which of us holds the stronger right.

Should you refuse, it will be taken as proof before all men that you fear the sword of Oizen and the wrath of its prince. I shall then hunt you from my lands as one drives wolves from the fold.

Fail not in your answer.

Sorza of Oizen, Prince and Protector of the Rightful Lands East of the Zauern’’

Jarza lowered the parchment.

Egil crossed his arms. ”It’s a fine letter,” he said at last. ”So? What’s our answer?”

Alpheo raised his head, his eyes sweeping the room before settling on Egil. ”The only answer such a challenge deserves,” he said, his voice calm and steady.

’’We shall begin the march soon.’’