Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

They had won.

Blake may receive all credits, be acclaimed as the hero sung by bards. But it was Cain that deducted the plan that made it true, and even though none may praise him for that, the knowledge was enough. Or at least he believed so.

The Confederation, mocked for generations as sea-scavengers unfit for soil, had done the unthinkable: they had broken a land kingdom on land. Days after the spears fell silent, the thrill still pulsed through Cain’s blood like a tide refusing to ebb.

For all their history, they had been sea-wolves. In water they were storms made flesh , but on land they floundered, gasping like fish left to die on sun-cracked boards.

Everyone knew it; the whole world spoke it as truth.

They were a bother, a nuisance nothing more...

Thirteen years ago, Red Grain carved that truth into the bone of their people, it was an hard lesson but well-earned.

Seventeen years raiding the same coastline had thinned the spoils to gristle. Greed festered, pride swelled, and their captains, drunk on memory of old glory , banded together to raid deeper into Agania. They burned villages they had no knowledge of, looted until their holds groaned with grain and silk, even reached Devium, the capital of the prince itself. They meant to ransom the land and sail home triumphant with the booty.

Instead Hularus of Habadia came to the aid of Evania, the old lion of the South, he shattered them against the land like waves on cliffstone. He drove them back into the sea with such fury that even their wives wept at the sight of what staggered home. For nearly twenty years, the Confederation remembered.

Until now.

And Cain had played a part in breaking that Empire of Sand. Still despite the plan having been his, he was not there to witness it.

”They were everywhere,” the man said, laughter made hazier by the wine he had been offered and offered, which he took and took. ”I swear it , twenty to each of us. We fought in front, behind, underfoot, overhead. You’re lucky to be cripple, brother.You wouldn’t have survived the day”

He spoke of skulls cracked under charging hooves like fruit too ripe to hold shape, of the Sand-Brute and his monstrous steed trampling flesh into sand. His words stumbled like half-drunk soldiers in a storm, but at one moment they softened, hushed:

”And then Kroll came.”

He spoke that name like prayer or curse.

”Hit their rear like thunder. I barely saw him but by the abyss, I heard him. Steel singing, men shrieking, and then the sand-born ran. Like mice from a burning barn.”

He grinned wide and took something out of his cloth, a collar that shined under the fireplace in the room. ”Trophies. A dozen at least. Gold teeth can you imagine? They’re so rich they chew with treasure.I was too tired to pursue them after they run, so I stayed behind and studied just how many were so arrogant as to put gold between their jaws.”

By the weight of the neck-collar it seemed there weren’t too few.

He bragged too long, too loudly, until his gaze glued itself to Shawana, who waited quietly by Cain’s side. Her shoulders tightened, breath thin as thread, and before the man’s hunger could find words, Cain had him led out.

That was the only interaction he had with one of his own that night.

One man, drunk on triumph and still half-covered in someone else’s blood taking the noise of victory with him. The others celebrated together,brothers in arms, sharing wine and women and stories that grew larger with every retelling. The sound of feasts echoed through the hall and the room of the entire palace.

Cain sat apart,as he always did.

”One lesson,” he breathed, more to himself than to her, ”that’s all it took. One step away from the crowd, and suddenly I understood my people better than I ever did inside them.”

Shawana said nothing. She simply watched, still as a lamb caught in the eyes of a wolf that chose, for reasons she could not trust, not to bite. The leather patch she’d given him to hide the lame eye sat warm against his cheek, soft against the scarred ruin beneath. It was the only gentle thing he carried.

”If fate had rolled its dice differently,” he murmured, ”you would have died the night we came. Your family too. You breathe only because chance chose to look your way.

That is who we are we raid, and pillage, and take.”

He lifted his head, and the candle’s flame carved dark beneath his brow.

”Kingdoms fight wars for pride, for land, for faith. We fight for wheat. For livestock. For warmth when winter bites. We exist because we steal. If we stop, we starve. That is the truth beneath every flag flown in our harbours.”

He looked at her then, not as captor to captive, not even as man to woman.

”That is what dragged me into your life,” he confessed ”My people tore yours apart. And I, whether present blade in hand or not, I was part of the tide that swallowed you.”

His fingers brushed the eye-cover again, and warmth flared beneath his ribs. The palace beyond them pulsed with celebration, laughter like thunder, tankards clashing, boots stomping on polished stone. Cain could picture the scene without seeing it: tables heavy with stolen grain, barrels bursting with stolen ale, men shouting victory through mouths stained with someone else’s wine.

He should have been there. He should have been laughing with them. By the abyss, it was his plan that brought victory!

But that hope and thought washed over him like waves on a cliff face he could never climb.

”I’ve stood beside them all my life,” he said slowly, voice hoarse with a truth finally spoken,his eye going over his limping leg ”and still, I have never stood among them.Nor will I ever , I suppose”

He rubbed at his chest as though something beneath his ribs ached

”I look at them now and feel... removed. Unmoored. Like a ship cut from its anchor, drifting from the fleet while they sail on without noticing they lost one of their own. They will feast tonight, and tomorrow .

We will raid when we do not feast. And the day will come when we push too far. When a great power grows tired of gnats biting at its throat and crushes us beneath its heel. When we either turn on each other, or the world turns on us.”

He stared into the darkness where the torchlight died, he knew there was no future.

”We will be ended by the same cruelty that sustains us,” he whispered. ”That is our legacy. Parasites, fattened on others, destined to be scraped clean.I just hope not to be alive when that happens, honestly I do not even think that idiot of a brother will do anything worth speaking.

He may hide his desire with noble ambitions, but really he is just throwing coal to make smoke. He will fail...I am sure of that. Still it is my responsibility to aid him, isn’t that what family is for?Oh yes and then there are those dreams... ” It was the first time he spoke so much, back home everything was so cold and lonely, it wasn’t like there was anyone who could listen to him here, and yet he still spoke. ’’Still I do not know why I do all of that. What has that fucker ever done to me that would compel servitude? Except of course, sending me up half broken?

What the hell has anyone done for me?I gave them this victory and not one came inside to give me any congratulations. The drunk bastard of before came here only because I invited him for a drink.’’

After a long silence, he laughed at his own situation, which he knew was hopeless and made for solitude, for at the end only death would await him; he knew he would take him the only way he lived, without another shoulder to lean on.

It was not a dream, the God of the Sea did not inform him of that...he just knew that was how it would happen.

”I have no one. Even though the only reason my brother keeps me is that I am useful to him. There is no love between us. He may resent me as dead weight, but I hate him.

Oh, how much I hate him...and I envy him,that is a given. He is everything I am not...

If I cannot find a place even beside my own family, where can I find one? Kroll only kept me because I entertained him, like a cat barking like a dog. Everyone thinks me a fool and deaf. As if I do not know what they say, or what they think of me. Even the sea spat me back,” he said, tapping the leather patch with a crooked grin sharp as a break in a bone. ”It chewed me up first, mind you, took a good fucking bite before it sent me ashore like rubbish. Still, my God can be cruel at times that’s for sure, but I dare not think about yours. You were deserted when the wolves came.”

He looked at her, truly looked.

”And yet you gave me this.” His fingers lingered there, gentle as his voice had never been. ”My first gift. Strange, isn’t it? That I gain kindness from the people we ruined.”

He rose from the edge of the bed, every motion slow, weighted, as though his own body resented carrying him toward another human being. He stopped in front of her, close enough that her breath might have brushed his throat, had she dared breathe at all.

”I am sure you hate my people,” he said quietly.His voice held no question. ’’Would you stab in the back had you the opportunity?

Your family may have lived...but countless others did not. Friends. Neighbors. Maybe even someone you loved.We came and upheaved what once was.”

His gaze searched hers, sharp and unflinching.

”Tell me, do you hate me for it?”

He expected fire, or a flinch, or even the smallest flicker of disgust. Instead, her eyes met his with unnerving calm, deep, steady, unreadable pools of dark amber. No hatred. No fear. Only a quietness he could not name.

He almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Him, a pirate-lord of the Confederation, reduced to spilling his soul to a girl who understood not a syllable of what he spoke. A barbarian confiding in the lamb trapped in his den.

With no choice but to stand there meekly.

He had spent years drifting at the edge of his own people. They sang and feasted while he sat apart treated like a cup that if held would broke.

Even now, the palace shook with celebration, and here he was, speaking to the only person who didn’t recoil at the sight of him.

Not even the sea had wanted him.Where did he belong?

She looked at her and wondered if she thought him gentle, because he hadn’t forced her. If she knew what he’d done,if she heard the screams he had caused, would she still look at him without trembling?

He remembered the man whose teeth he pulled one by one. He had promised him his family would be returned to him. The next morning, Cain found the man broken in the street, killed by the same people Cain had won victory for.

He did not really care about him.He was just....a stone that he had lost as he kicked it down the road.Still the fact he had made a promise he could not keep still gnawed at him....

Mad, Cripple , Unfit, he was told every title, and none fit comfortably.

He exhaled for he knew he had no future.

He averted his eyes away, that was his fate.

A life filled with....warmth?

An hand rose to his cheek, featherlight, as if she feared he might shatter from touch alone. He moved his eyes to where he had turned. Shawana’s eyes searched his face.

Her fingers lingered, gentle as dusk settling over still water.

What a fool. He thought as he looked into her eyes, and realised she was doing this because she feared to lose his favour and as a consequence the only thing protecting her and her family.

But then, he did not know what to think when she smiled.

Not wide. A small, careful curve of lips. A smile that a person would in his life encounter many a time.

Cain froze to that.

His remaining eye went wide; of all the responses, kindness was the one he had never prepared for.

Her thumb brushed once across his cheekbone.No words were exchanged. None were needed.

The pirate who razed nations stood motionless as a child before her touch,who found that for the first time in his life, he was wanted.