Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Maisse , a small, dull jewel pressed between Romelia and Veveipon. Barely seven thousand souls, if the tax rolls were honest, and not one more worth mentioning. In normal times, no general would have wasted ink or blood over it. It had no fortress, no trade road, no river to bless its fields. It was a quiet city of wheat, wine, and petty families squabbling over the mayor’s seat.

But chaos had a habit of turning the unimportant into the unavoidable.

Now, that same inconsequential city found itself sitting between two great beasts: the Rebel Prince to the north, and the Imperial host to the south. And like a lamb between lions, its only sin was being in the way.

Word from the scouts was clear: the enemy vanguard had been sighted near Maisse. If the rebels wished to siege the Eternal City, they would want their rear clean and their supply line unbitten.

It was by then that the first response of the war was finally sent.

Most notably, it was not to be a military one as much as a literary response.

”So what do you think of it, Your Grace?”

Mesha’s voice , soft and boyish yet trying to sound firm , carried through the tent. There was tension in it, and something else beneath it too: a note of anxiety, thin and sharp.

Alpheo looked up from the letter he had been reading. He did not speak at once; instead, he took a slow breath, letting his eyes drift across the tent’s interior.

This was no war council. The great lords were absent , no Croxiatus, no Vratinius, no Isidor. The only men present were those who had earned Mesha’s private trust, actually they were only his blood relative...

It was the perfect place for what they were to do.

”Well, Your Imperial Majesty,” Alpheo began at last, his voice not containing anything that was not self-control ”I will answer you, though not before asking something of my own. Forgive me if I seem evasive , but the truth of my answer depends entirely on the truth of yours.”

Mesha frowned slightly, confused but nodding for him to continue.

Alpheo folded the letter neatly on the table before him. His tone changed, grew quieter, and the candlelight caught the faint gleam in his eyes.

”Please, Your Majesty,” he said, ”tell me everything you know about your brother.”

The words struck the young Emperor like a slap he hadn’t expected.

”My... brother?” he echoed.

At that moment, Keval stirred.

His gaze, when it met Alpheo’s, was careful.

”The Imperator,” Keval said slowly, breaking the silence, ”was but five when the Second Prince was sent east... to Red Rose. A warden”

Something unreadable passed over the regent’s face as he spoke those last words....which made Alpheo curious more than anything.

”I do not remember him well,” Mesha said at last, voice thin where the tent was thin and the evening colder. ”We never spoke in any real way. But I remember what he put my father through , the letters, the scandals, the kind of trouble that clinged to him as oil.” He rubbed a knuckle along his jaw and looked away toward the table

”He kept a summer house outside the palace, a place for entertainments the court acted as it never knew about,” he continued. ”There, away from prying eyes, he staged every excess. The older rumors , those more than two years old, are mostly true. The newer ones... carry kernels of truth wrapped in gossip. I do not know if he truly in the hands of shamans and magic, though he does wear a mask on his face after his sickness.’’ He sighed at that

’’I prayed so long it would take him, but instead it only left him scarred. A pity really would have spared us a lot of troubles.

Still, he is a man of appetites and quick pleasures, fickle as a spoiled child and twice as demanding. Pride sits on him like a crown; it’s what makes him reckless with other men’s honor. He bedded more daughters of southern houses than a rooster in spring, and paid the price of anger for it.”

Mesha’s mouth tightened. ”He despises priests. Any preacher who tried to claim his soul left pale and silent within a week. He is no simpleton: sharp, quick, wickedly clever when he chooses. But lazy, oh, he was lazy, and the world he prefers is one of velvet and vice. ”

’’Seems like he took the world of steel as his new favorite.’’ Alpheo commented as he listened without surprise. He had heard a dozen versions of the same story over the years, but the pattern was the same. Little variations, same stain. Still hearing them from his own brothers allowed him to realise they were more true than he had accounted for.

And yet something deeper nagged at him, something that had been the seed of this war from the first whisper: why split the heirs at all?

”Why did your father send both elder brothers away?” Alpheo asked the question he had wondered for nearly a decade. He kept the question blunt: ”It seems...foolish. It hands every province a reason to back a different prince.”

Mesha’s face changed, stiffening first, then faltered, as though he were trying to draw sense from a tangle of memories best left buried.

”There were... accusations,” he began at last, his tone low and cautious. ”Grave ones. The worst was that he caused the death of a priest, a stubborn man who dared chastise him too loudly and that made mass outside my brother’s summer house, in order to shame him.

My father could not ignore it once the temple joined the chorus of nobles demanding punishment. Their voices grew too loud, too united. He had to act, so he sent him away, to cool the pot before it boiled over.”

Alpheo listened in silence for a moment before asking, ”And the eldest?”

Mesha hesitated. The words came slower now,as he had to make a point to hide another. ”He was sent north,” he said finally. ”Father hoped the northern lords would find in him.....a prince to trust. Their loyalty to the crown had been thinning for years, and he thought that by sending Maesinius among them, he might silence the voices of secession.”

He stopped there. The silence that followed was heavy, and Alpheo didn’t need him to finish the thought.

Everyone knew how that plan had ended. Gratios’s hopes had turned to dust, the prince sent north to bind the realm instead became its rallying banner when the youngest seized the throne.

All knew who was to inherit;and yet all turned a blind eye.

Mesha certainly could not admit aloud what every man in that tent already knew: that the crown he now wore was taken from the brother it had been meant for, and that in claiming it, they had all played their part in shattering the empire they pretended still lived.

”Very well,” Alpheo said skipping over the heated subject, straightening the letter on the table and smoothing the crease with the flat of his hand. ”The rebels have two choices, one is meeting us into the field and take the throne in a matter of weeks. The other is slowly expanding their area of control and divesting your Imperial Majesty of face. The latter is safer but is more time-taking.

The choice ahead of us is instead much simpler.’’ He looked at everyone on the other side of the table, while those on his already knew what he was about to say.

’’We must force the rebels’ hand. Make them choose battle rather than let them bleed us dry by courting nobles. If they come to meet us, we trap them in one decisive test for the crown. If they sit and seduce the lords, they strangle the capital with time and treachery.We may pnly have a chance with the first.”

He flicked the paper aside and watched it land like a discarded flag. ”This letter might bait them into that test,” he said, tapping the wax-streaked vellum, ”but no honest man can promise it will be answered. The safer course is for them to coax the nobles; that option is ruinous for us, yet more certain for them.”

Mesha shifted, anxiety tightening the boy’s features. Alpheo watched the young emperor fumble for steadiness and yet hoped he would seize it when they would be in need of it.

Silently , the prince reached for the ink deciding to make the choice for them, he uncapped the bottle with fingers that had steadier lives behind them than the hand suggested, and dipped the quill.

”You assured me,” Alpheo said, looking up at the circle of Mesha’s closest, Keval, Tyros, ”that your name and coin would move men. If that is so, then we will use what you can give.

This time I ask for no gold nor favor, but it will be still a hard thing to ask nonetheless. We must wound their pride. We must nudge at whatever the prince values more than his safety. I hope you understand that”

He let that set in, saw the flush of confusion on Mesha’s face. ”In short,” Alpheo continued, ”we will not wait politely for our doom. We will provoke. We will taunt. We will make him choose and bait him into action.”

He paused, ink-dark droplet trembling on the nib. Around them the tent’s canvas shifted; outside, men readied gear and horses snorted into the dusk. The others in the tents leaned forward in interest.

Alpheo finished with a small, almost private smile, one he used as both blade and balm. ”Luckily for you,” he said, ”provocation is a specialty of mine. I have a habit of getting men to swing at shadows I paint for them.

And if there is a hammer to our problem, I can find the swing.”