Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Panic seized the Imperator the instant every head in the chamber turned toward him. It was not the shouting or the sudden silence that unnerved him, but the expectation that he must know what to say, what to do.

He did not.

This was his first war, and his understanding of strategy was as thin as a child’s grasp on how to forge the sword he was just gifted.

His instinct was to seek the comfort of guidance. Tyros. His uncle had always known what to do when dealing with warfare, though he had been strangely silent since the start. Was he testing him?Did he not understand that was not the moment for that?

But even as the thought crossed his mind, Mesha knew what that would mean. To turn now to Tyros, before all these squabbling lords, would be to proclaim to the court that the boy on the throne was still just that, a boy.

And in times such as these, monarch who were seen as boys didn’t last long enough to become men.

He swallowed hard, forcing his gaze down to the map, as if the lines and ink could whisper the answer. Nothing came.

Then, like a spark in the dark, his eyes found Alpheo’s across the table.

Mesha straightened slightly, forcing the tension out of his shoulders. ”Before I give my aye or nay,” he began, voice wavering at first but finding a steadier rhythm as he spoke, ”we should perhaps seek the counsel of our great friend from the South. There is no one here who has achieved what he has , in so short a time, against so many odds. It would be folly not to hear his mind before I speak my own.”

The words were dressed in honor, his tone bright with deference , but his eyes, when they met Alpheo’s again, were pleading.

Alpheo caught the meaning at once.

Gods, how many times had he already done this, played the shining knight to the boy’s trembling crown? Too many to count. Yet there was no resentment in him, not this time. This was, after all, precisely the kind of moment he had been waiting for.

He inclined his head, allowing a kind smile to curve his lips before he rose to his feet. ”Your Imperial Majesty,” he said, bowing in thanks”I would be honored to offer my humble counsel. If the court would grant me but a few minutes of their attention, I believe I might be of help.’’

’’Our ears are with you, Your Grace,’’ Mesha reassured him while thanking him with his eyes

”Both his lordships make fair points,” Alpheo said, inclining his head toward Isidor and Vratinius. The words drew the room’s attention back to him like a strap.

Lord Vratinius returned a grateful, panting nod; Isidor answered only with the tiniest lift of his chin formal, guarded, they both however waited for his real opinion. Alpheo noted it: Isidor had not forgotten that Yarzat’s fleet had stayed ashore at Harmway.

”As Lord Isidor said, if we do nothing the rebels will find a road to besiege the capital. He urges we meet them before they can. And as Lord Vratinius warned, to march blind across lands whose loyalties are uncertain is to invite knives in the dark.” He let the implication hang between the benches without naming whom those knives might pierce.

”It is better to face five enemies, you know than one you imagined a friend.”

A ripple of uneasy muttering ran the length of the hall , the ugly sound of men who did not like to hear treason spoken aloud. Before the uproar could swell, a voice like a hammer cut the room in two.

”Vratinius spoke of it already ! Nothing new! Let the Prince speak his mind .” Tyros Achea, new paterfamilias of the Achean house and Mesha’s eldest uncle, barked the order. The room obediently stilled. Alpheo nodded at him, and Tyros returned the gesture with a smile.

”I agree with both Isidor and Vratinius,” Alpheo continued, voice steady. ”We must meet the enemy, but not recklessly. We should not rush to his present position and be baited into the sorts of traps cavalries and numbers make. We should force him to fight where the terrain robs him of his advantage.”

Tyros looked at him, eyebrows curving with interest. ”You have counsel on that, then?”

”As a matter of fact I do.” Alpheo cleared his throat and rose. He crossed to the map with the easy gait of a man who had walked battlefields enough to know their secrets. Fingers spread over the paper, he tapped a narrow stretch of ground to the north-east of the capital , closer to the city than to Veveipon. ”Here,” he said.

He let his gaze sweep the assembly.

Some noble faces flushed with anger at the implication of what he had proposed; others, the more practical and the ones whose losses from deserting those regions meant nothing, nodded to the plan.

Alpheo might have made the easier political choice and agreed with Vratinius to hunker inside the city , to turn the walls into a meat grinder and let the enemy bleed himself to death on stone. That was a good option. It was also a game of attrition that would hand the initiative back to a foe who had already proved he could move faster and gain more loyalties from the sorrounding fiefdoms, who would have most certainly flocked to him if they bunkered in the capital

Alpheo’s instinct was different.

He had made his name on motion. Standing idle behind walls to be measured and assaulted was not the way he had ever sought victory. And there were political consequences, too: let the rebels ring the capital’s gates and the talk would be not of triumph but of a throne besieged.

He could see the calculus in the lords’ faces, he wondered how many of them were truly loyal or were already thinking of humping ship.

He had little faith that either their virtue or rank would hold when the first true test came. Experience taught him that the knife in the dark rarely came from outside alone.

”As I’m sure most of you know,” Alpheo said, lifting his head from the map so the chamber could see his face, ”a river runs along the eastern flank. Hold the ridge where I point and you deny the enemy the use of that flank. One bank is a wall you cannot wheel an army around, they only have one ground to flank us. If we shape the ground to our advantage, the advantage of their superior headcount will be halved by some before-battle preparations.”

He let that sit, measuring the room as much as the inked roads. Then he looked up and let his eyes sweep the line of lords.

”That would leave most of the eastern core in enemy hands,” Isidor snapped, voice tight. His fingers drummed the table where the map lay; the sigil on his sleeve seemed to bristle with the thought of lost fiefs.

”One cuts a rotten limb before it kills the body.”

”It’s easy to say when the arm isn’t on your shoulders,” he shot back, and the room erupted with the same practiced outrage that always followed propositions that robbed men of safety for the sake of strategy.

The lords who had holdings nearest the Fingers banged their fists and rose hotly to their feet; their voices were peppered with threats and pleas in equal measure. Castles and walls might stand, they argued, but raids would follow, revenues would bleed out, and the tax rolls would run thin unless the lands were held.

Alpheo watched them, unmoved by the immediate clamor. He turned his gaze to the boy on the dais, the crown too bright for the worry etched under it. ”Your Imperial Majesty,” he said, voice low but carrying, ”this campaign will not be settled by the possession of towns on a map. It will be decided by which army breaks first on the field. If you defeat the rebel host in the open, their momentum collapses; the men who bent knee in the panic of fortune will see whose banners still stand and where their interest lies. Victory on the plain gives you the choice to welcome back the wavering, or to make example of them.”

Then, louder, and with a weight in his words that landed like a gauntlet upon the table: ”I know what this means for those whose holdings lie in the path of the enemy. It means loss. It means raids and burned harvests. It means wallets emptied for months. For that loss I offer recompense.” He paused, letting the statement cut through the room’s noise like a blade. ”I will relinquish my share of the booty , my personal portion of the coin and goods I brought , to compensate any lord who suffers under this decision.”

His eyes flicked to Mesha. Alpheo let the implication hang: the prince had greater moral claim if he would mirror the sacrifice.

”It falls upon every man in power to give up a little when the state burns,” Alpheo continued, voice rising so every man could hear the scaffolding of his argument, with a eloquency that would make Cicero blush. ”If we are to cauterize this wound, it is the strong who must relinquish ease for survival of the state. That is the contract that makes it endure where others fall.”

He swept the room with a cool, dangerous humor. ”I am a foreigner. I do not own these lands. I have no ancestral vault to protect here. I do not have anything here that I should fight for.

Yet I offer my vault. What is your excuse, then, lords of Eternal City, for refusing what a stranger will do for your good?

Is this the extent of your honor? If it is, then no matter how thoroughly displeased I would be, it would pale in comparison to that of your ancestors seeing what they fought for burn so readily.

They would weep to see what has been done to their proud eagle.’’

He looked up at the eagle effigy on the chandelier. The other lords mimicked his movement , untill all stared at the sacred animal.

’’No longer screeching, no longer flying.

Weep indeed they would.”