Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

For a long moment nothing at all passed Mavius’s lips. He sat with the handkerchief bunched in his fingers and folded it and unfolded it again, a motion that became its own little liturgy. Landoff watched the cloth in the man’s hands,watched the dark smear of puke and felt the hair rise along his forearms.

The motion went on for a full minute: close, open, close. The thing looked less like a handkerchief and more like a relic of some private sacrament. Then, without warning, Mavius flung it to the floor. The rag hit the marble and slumped there; and from the way Mavius looked at his overturned shivering hand, it was most certainly not by will.

Landoff’s throat tightened.

It seemed that his worries were founded: the ritual had taken more than pigment from the Emperor. Sacrificing and eating his son, may have evaded death, but it most certainly did not save him.

He doubted he still had long to live. Which meant he needed to think of what would come after.

Growing weary of the silence,Mavius finally opened his mouth ”How far we have fallen,” he stated, voice flat behind that iron mask, ”that the eagle must now stoop to beg the aid of a falcon.” He tipped his head, measuring Landoff with a look that mixed grievance and calculation. ”I remember my little brother as a soft thing once, too soft for the mantle. I would have spared him even if he’d knelt before me. I remember the scent of that red-haired slut when I first heard the news. He’s grown into a man now and no longer has that bitch over him; he has no excuse for mercy.”

He slouched back in his chair and gave a lazy, vicious laugh. ”He stole my inheritance, and for that he shall pay.”

”I confess,” he continued, leaning forward, ”I was surprised to hear of his tastes. Does the Pretender take the prince, or the prince the Pretender? Given Mesha’s upbringing, always under his mother’s skirt,I’d wager the prince would lead.” He sneered, as if the idea were a joke. ”His mother’s grip on his balls perhaps made him a girl.”

Landoff kept his face composed, but the old soldier in him bristled. He had exposed his worries was this all he had to say? Some sex jokes about who was the one getting fucked?Was this all the seriousness he could muster?

”Come now, Lord Father,” Mavius said, casting toward Landoff a look that tried for amusement, ”why so glum? You bring tidings as if announcing the end of the world, when they are barely worth the breath.”

Landoff’s reply was slow, chosen. ”I do not agree with your tone, Your Imperial Majesty.” He kept his voice level; steel glinted beneath the calm. ”This is not gossip and it is not theatre.We are speaking about war’’

Mavius snorted, half-laugh, half-dismissal. ”Oh please,” he said, fingers rubbing the stained rag into a smaller, fouler knot in his fist. ”So the transportation of thousands of bushels, the arms and armor, do you really think it could have been done in silence? Come, these are old Romelian provinces; stories travel. We have eyes in the south, and traders, and men who sell news for a coin. You would be a fool to think the road goes only one way. What stings you so, Lord Father? Is it that old age has dulled your wits?”

The barb was flung like a gauntlet. Landoff’s face did not betray more than a tightening around the mouth, but the silence afterward said everything the words could not.

”’The enemy knows we’re preparing an invasion,’” Mavius said, voice rising like a struck bell. He leaned forward, fingers drumming the arm of his chair. ”So what? Does that undo what we have done? Does it make the old lion wake from his coffin? Now is the time for action, Lord Father. Tell me, what would you have me do? Tell me to hide because my brother has whispers on the wind? This is a golden chance to end the civil war at a single blow. Mesha’s position is fragile; the peasant of the south is with him?Better yet! One sharp stroke and three heads fall.”

He straightened, eyes narrowing to knives. ”The reins of state were kept by the old regent. Without him, their head is loose on its shoulders. We need only leave the Fingers and dictate the tempo of war on our terms. We had three years to prepare,. We have never been stronger, and our enemies never weaker.”

Landoff’s face did not change, but the old soldier’s voice carried a new edge. ”I am honestly more worried about their foreign support.”

Mavius barked a laugh, brittle and small. ”It’s humiliating enough that Romelia would call that boy an ally. Do not dignify the southern prince by imagining his troops as anything but sows. I’ve heard the southerners now call their peasants ’legions’, an unmanly jest, he pretends to be the Red. Do you seriously worry over names when we can take the land?” He waved his hand dismissively as if brushing away gnats.

”Underestimating an enemy has never done anyone good,” Landoff warned. ”Many scoffed at the Peasant Prince and were taught otherwise. He understands war in a way no noble under us does. He is idolized by his troops. He has more campaigns and triumphs in eight years than most men see in a lifetime. To take him for child is to invite surprise. It is most certainly not normal for a man to have so many battles under his belt.”

”You fear the man?” Mavius asked, mock incredulous.

”Not fear, recognition,” Landoff said quietly. ”He is a formidable mind as well as a brave one. The Pretender holds him in high regard. Between the two, counsel will be given and taken. ”

Mavius’s mouth thinned. He let the admission sit, then shrugged it off with the theatrical arrogance of a man practicing courage. ”Fine. Fine. I will admit the Yarzat prince is something to be minded.” He pushed his cup away and tapped the rim with a thumb. ”That ambitious fool. I could have kept him a vassal, on our table, under our thumb, if he had only given up his petty luxuries of cider and soap. Instead he signs his own death warrant by allying with my brother. After I take the throne, I’ll court the Peasant Prince’s enemies, promise Romelian support, secure trade secrets for myself, and empty their coffers. With our own monopoly on their markets, the rest will fall in line. They will learn what it means to be restrained once more.”

Mavius’s voice grew softer as he went on. ”Perhaps a small demonstration is in order, a nudge to remind the south the eagle still rules the sky. A taste of our steel, a show of force to put Yarzat back under our influence. I know that the bitch that shares the dog’s bed, is a pretty thing, all right. I wonder what she’ll do to keep her crown and her son. Of course, the husband’s life is forfeit after what he has done, but I am not unmerciful enough not to show kindness to a child and his mother....’’ He sighed as if he found the matter a bore ’’So much to do and so little time.”

Landoff’s skin went cold with disilussionment as he kept his eyes down onto the ground.

The emperor’s words had slid from strategy to venality. He had counseled the man for nearly a decades, steered him from ruin more than once, and now watched as that trust narrowed into a dangerous solipsism.

Mavius watched Landoff closely, taking measure. ”Well?” he demanded. ”Do you not yearn for the days when a single stroke could settle things? Do you not envy the finality of a clean conquest?I believe we have left the south alone for too long, from that it is clear they grew complacent. Perhaps it is time to rectify that?”

Mavius drifted from point to point, plans, boasts, cruel fantasies, until the old man’s face betrayed a patient man pushed past endurance. He had been steady through murder and sacrilege, through treaties that changed with the mood of a room; even so, the Emperor’s detachment from counsel had frayed him.

”Your Imperial Majesty,” Landoff began, careful as always, ”if I may speak once more for the shaman—”

”By the gods’ ears!” Mavius snapped, the word a whip. ”Is this the fifth time this week you’ve begged me? Shall I be lectured more by you than I have been by the priests?” His voice rose, thin as cracked ice. Irritation flared, then curdled into something meaner. ”You mistrust the shaman, very well. I will make use of him. When his work is done, I will burn him if I must. We will take what we need from his art, and then discard the creepy bastard.”

Landoff’s jaw clicked. ”Your Grace, I fear that will be too late. If the nobles witness what he does, if they glimpse the means by which you win, what then? Fear can bind a court as well as loyalty; superstition will breed factions. The shaman’s arts may secure a victory, but they may also break our unity.”

Mavius snorted, rising to his feet with the impatient energy of a man already rehearsing triumph. ”When the Pretender is dead and the elder lies buried under snow, who will dare stand? Do you think the great houses will choose treason over survival? They will bend. They always do.”

”There is the Church,” Landoff said quietly

Mavius’s smile was a knife. ”The Church will bend or it will burn. If they crown me, their altars will sing a new hymn. If they refuse, I will strip their wealth and put their priests among the hungry who once knelt to them. Power is practical, Lord Landoff. It is barter and ledger, not prayer.If you ignore it and press your claims they will be harmless’’

Seeing the thin line on Landoff’s lips, Mavius would have smiled, though it would have been useless, so he let his tone do the work.

’’Come lord father give a smile, we are on the verge of greatness!

It is the right of the victors to impose whatever conditions on the defeated, I could organise a orgy with their wives and daughters, and they would have no choice but to kiss my hands as they salute me. Be steadfast in our preparation. Victory is in sight both for the throne and our plans for the South!’