Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The staircase groaned under the weight of tribute as three men ascended, their arms laden with offerings. Around them, the Great Hall of Kakania was a riot of blooming decadence, a feast that felt less like a celebration and more like a siege of the senses.

Every delicacy known to the two continents was piled high upon silver trays. Spices that had journeyed through the sweltering arteries of Yarzat were tossed into stews with reckless abandon, their scents mingling with the aroma of roasted meats and exotic fruits. This was the legendary hospitality of the Great Bull of Kakania, provided in such excess that the very air seemed to thicken with the scent of grease and opulence.

No expense was spared for his son.

Of course, ”Great Bull” was a title that was never uttered in the face of the man. And to use it within these walls was to courting a swift and messy end.

”We have come to express our profound congratulations and our hope for your son’s continued prosperity, Your Grace,” the first noble announced, dropping to his knees with a rehearsed flourish. He unwrapped a small, heavy statue of solid gold, a bull, horns lowered in a charge, the heraldic pride of the Kakanian house. He bowed his head first to the seated sovereign, and then to the young man of the hour, Sir Latio.

”May the coming year be even more auspicious than the last, Sir Latio,” called the second lord, presenting a casket of rare gems, followed quickly by the third with a bolt of shimmering, sky-blue silk.

”We thank your lordships for these... offerings... and for your predictably kind words,” the Great Bull himself rumbled. His voice was horrible to the ear, throaty, nasal, and wet, sounding as if the words were being forced through a flute clogged with honey and phlegm.

The Prince of Kakania, Lavus Marcio, shifted in his seat to look upon the celebrated youth. The massive oak chair let out a tortured, splintering creak under his colossal bulk. As he moved, the flesh of his cheeks and chin flapped like the wattles of a prize hog.

In the peak of his youth, Lavus Marcio might have truly been the warrior of legend. But thirty years of unbridled indulgence had dragged him headlong down that hill. Of the martial grace he once possessed, not a single trace remained. His hands were a horrific sight, swollen, purple, and inflamed by the gout, clumsy appendages that could no longer close into a fist, let alone wield a sword. They were suited only for the steady, relentless navigation of a fork to his mouth.

His age of glory had been buried under layers of fat and infirmity. Now, he was a gout-ridden titan who moved only when propped up by a small army of slaves or shifted by the sheer, straining willpower of his attendants.

A prisoner and slave of his own appetite.

He hadn’t felt the leather of a saddle in five years. The last time he had attempted the feat, his favorite stallion, which he had captured personally in a blood-soaked skirmish twelve years prior, had simply dropped dead the moment Lavus’s weight hit the stirrup. The animal’s heart had surrendered before the Prince’s buttocks even touched the seat.

Since that day, Lavus had never sought another horse, a mercy for the equine world, and a final, humiliating admission that the Great Bull was no longer fit for the field.

Turning to the young man at his side, Prince Lavus pulled back his lips to reveal a smile of crooked, yellowed teeth. ”But tell us the truth of it, my dear boy. Which of these trinkets has managed to take hold of your heart? Which one shall we keep at heart?” He asked, his eyes wet with a raw, unconditional love reserved only for the one piece of himself he liked most.

”I would say my heart remains exactly where it was last week, Father,” Latio replied with a calm, practiced grace. ”And I believe it shall remain there for many years more.” He gestured subtly to the circle of physicians hovering in the shadows, gift sent not for the boy but by him . Their tinctures and poultices had done more to ease the fire in Lavus’s joints than all the prayers of the priests in Kakania.

A visible warmth seeped into the Prince’s bloated face, a flush of pride that pushed against his multiple chins. ”I thank the Star every day for blessing me with you,” he rumbled, turning a heavy, expectant gaze toward the surrounding lords as if daring them to find a flaw in the statement.

The court was, of course, a well-oiled machine of sycophancy. They leaned in like tall grass caught in a gale.

”A paragon of filial piety!” cried one, clutching his chest. ”The true delight of the realm, Your Grace.”

”A miracle of nobility,” chimed another. ”One need only look at him to see the lineage of old.”

”Virtue and noblesse personified!”

If there was one thing that truly distinguished the Kakanian court, aside from a sovereign who required a team of slaves to traverse a hallway, it was the fact that the Prince’s most favored, and indeed only child , was a bastard.

Latio was a living ghost of what Lavus of the Royal House Marcio had once been. Where the father was an ocean of indulgence, the son was a desert of restraint. Latio ate sparingly, drank with caution, and moved with the swords in a way that would make many catch their breath.

Latio looked exactly like his father’s youth, a perfect carving from a rotted block of wood. He would have indeed made a perfect heir; alas, he was born of a common-born mother, which denied him the throne.

Lavus treated the word ”bastard” as a capital offense. In his eyes, Latio was the blood of his, and the future. He showered him with the legitimacy of love, if not of law.

Unfortunately, the heart is a poor lawyer. No matter how much Lavus adored the boy, the cold statutes of the realm remained: a bastard was a man with no name, legally entitled to nothing, not even the bed he was born in.

Unless of course a ceremony of legitimisation was done....

It was a political wildfire waiting for a spark.

And it was also the reason why a full quarter of the realm’s highest lords were conspicuously absent from the feast. For if they had been there, they would have been looking at the Great Bull’s swaying gut and wondering exactly how much blood it would take to ensure a ”nameless” boy never sat on the throne.

The profound love of a father had achieved what a dozen enemy invasions could not: it had brought a great princedom to the precipice of collapse. All that stood between the fragile quiet of the status quo and the screaming chaos of civil war was the heartbeat of a single man.

Now who that heartbeat belonged to, was just a matter of perspective.

Yet, until the first blade was drawn and the first throat opened, the conflict remained a delicate, high-stakes ballet of wits and influence.

”Still, Father, if I were forced to choose between the tributes of today, Lord Proppu’s gift would indeed take the prize,” Latio remarked, his voice smooth as polished marble. He inclined his head toward the other two nobles with a disarming smile. ”I mean no slight against your magnificent offerings, Lord Merry, Lord Vaeri. But when a man is posed in front of his own family crest, wrought in such fine gold, he cannot help but be ensnared by his own pride.I hope you will forgive this transgression of mine, we are all victim of some vices.”

Lord Proppu’s chest swelled, his posture straightening with a sudden, visible surge of arrogance. In a court where proximity to the Prince was the only currency that mattered, such a public validation was worth more than a manor. It did not matter that it belonged to the prince’s son.

”It is my profound honor to have provided something to your liking, my Lord,” Proppu replied, his eyes darting toward the other courtiers to ensure they had witnessed his triumph.

”And I hope you find my father’s hospitality to your liking in return,” Latio continued, his tone light, almost jovial. ”Half of that hospitality consists of wine and food so rich you shall find yourself enslaved by it. I myself often bear a heavy guilt for our Kakanian table whenever I sample the lean cuisine of Yarzat.”

Latio spoke with the easy familiarity of a lifelong friend, though everyone in the room knew the truth: he and Proppu were practically strangers.

Proppu was not one of the prince’s men, he was on the other court of the game. Which made his presence here as much as confusing as it was a blight and an opportunity , stewed all at once.

He was, by all laws of fealty, a direct vassal to Latio’s cousin, the man who stood as the ”legitimate” claimant to the throne.

If not by love, then by law.