Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Torghan ducked as he crossed the threshold of the house, passing through a door that had once seemed to scrape the sky but now barely cleared the crown of his head.

The June sun hit him square in the face, blindingly bright and smelling of dry pine. The warm air embraced him like an old friend, caressing his scarred face as he scanned the road. He knew Jarza was occupied with the ”family” through a translator, but the small, portly man who had done all the talking was already making a brisk exit toward the camp.

Torghan set off after him. Heads turned as he passed, familiar faces peering out from low-roofed houses, their eyes wide at the transformation of the boy they once knew. A sharp pang of nostalgia struck him, bitter and sudden.

He had a friend here once. They had stood side-by-side on the day the foreigners first arrived, changing the course of their lives forever. Torghan had begged him to join the trek across the sea, but the boy had refused, clinging to the dirt of his ancestors. He had hoped they would meet again in triumph. Three years ago, that hope died in the mud of the reclaiming war. Dying for a patch of earth you loved wasn’t the worst fate, but it was an end all the same. Now the few connections he had here...were slowly dying out.

His eyes drifted to the edge of the great forest where the foliage grew thick and dark. A fox with fur the color of dried blood poked its head out from beneath a massive root. Its nose twitched, pointed toward the camp, no doubt intoxicated by the scent of the smoked meat the First Legion was preparing for lunch.

Torghan didn’t run, but he lengthened his stride, his boots crunching rhythmically on the gravel until he caught sight of the retreating envoy.

”Serafim!”

The portly man turned, his silk robes looking entirely out of place against the rugged backdrop of the hills. He blinked in surprise, then offered a practiced, shallow bow. ”Chieftain Torghan. A pleasure to see you under the open sky.”

”A word,” Torghan grunted, coming to a halt.

”I wouldn’t dare say no to His Grace’s most loyal servant,” Serafim chirped, though his eyes were wary. ”If there is anything you wish to extract from my mind, it would be my distinct honor to provide it.”

Torghan had no patience for the verbal dancing. He knew the Prince himself despised the performative rot of the court, preferring the company of the sword over the word. Those Alpheo held in high regard were almost exclusively men of iron, not men of ink. Which would explain why he left all the work of the court in the trust of his wife.

A wife...shouldn’t he get one too? He was a chieftain after all. Before, he could use the excuse of being new to the land and work to earn his place there, but now? As one of the closest servants to his grace?

Perhaps he could start searching... he just realized he was digressing when he saw Serafim shifting nervously, as Torghan had never stopped gazing at him.

”At the meeting, my father called you ’Soft-tongue,’” Torghan recalled setting his mind back into the matter at hand”You didn’t flinch. You didn’t even blink. Does that happen often?”

”Is there any reason to—”

”Just answer the damn question.”

The envoy’s smile faltered, replaced by an expression of weary, professional resignation. He sighed, a small sound that seemed to deflate his chest. ”Yes, Chieftain. It is not a rarity. It appears your people do not hold mine in particularly high regard.”

”Yarzats?” Torghan asked, his brow furrowing.

”No. Envoys.’’

Torghan let the silence stretch.

He understood the friction of two worlds colliding; he had lived it. Transitioning from the raw, survivalist honesty of the mountains to the gilded labyrinth of Yarzat had been like learning to breathe underwater.

He had discovered that the ”civilized” world possessed wonders like vaulted stone ceilings and endless wheat fields, but it also harbored concepts like bureaucracy and diplomatic immunity, ideas that were as foreign to a Chorsi as a desert was to a fish.

He shifted his weight, his heavy armor creaking like the hulls of the ships that had brought him here. ”I am certain the Governor of Salthold is aware of how my people treat your kind,” Torghan grunted, his voice sounding like grinding stones. ”Why did Valerian not intercede? You work for him, but you walk under the protection of the Crown’s shadow. An insult to the envoy is an insult to the Prince.”

”And did you hope that if he had intervened, it wouldn’t have come to this? To an army at the door?” Serafim asked suddenly. The portly man’s jovial mask dissolved. He tilted his head, his eyes narrowing with a sharp, clinical focus that seemed to peel back the layers of Torghan’s skull. ”You fear it, don’t you? You believe your father might actually go against us. Against Yarzat. Against... you?”

The question hit Torghan with the force of a mace to the gut. He felt the phantom chill of the mountain wind. ”He is no fool,” he spat, the words coming out more as a defensive growl than an answer. ”He wouldn’t dare.”

”And if he did?” Serafim’s voice was a whisper, cold and precise.

”I will do what must be done,” Torghan snarled, fixing the envoy with a gaze so lethal it would have sent a lesser man to his knees. ”Do not play these palace games with me, Soft-tongue. While you were here tucked away in Salthold, nursing your wine and playing with your ledgers, I was drowning in the mud of the North of those Romelians, bleeding beneath His Grace’s banner. You will answer the questions I give you, and you will keep your nose out of me.”

A bright, practiced smile boomed back onto Serafim’s face, though it didn’t reach his watchful eyes. ”A thousand apologies, Chieftain! That came out quite poorly, I confess. It was never my intent to provoke. I merely sought to gauge if, in your expert counsel, Chief Varaku might be seduced by the pride of his peers into a fatal error.”

”You’ve been perched here for eight years. The Governor himself married into my bloodline to secure this land,” Torghan reminded him, his voice low and dangerous. ”Don’t go digging in dirt that doesn’t belong to you. You already know how this ends. My father will see right and set himself with us...if he does not I will strike him down personally with my axe and see that my brother is of a different mind.”

”Indeed, I believe I do,” Serafim replied, his language shifting back into the flowery, overly-refined cadence of a man who dealt with words. ”As for your earlier inquiry regarding the Governor’s silence... while I hold the utmost admiration for Valerian, the man is, shall we say, a creature of high-born brawn. It does not help that he holds my profession in the same casual contempt as your father does. He sees no reason to shield me from a few verbal barbs when he is busy building a province here.”

He looked at Torghan with a pleading, wide-eyed expression that was entirely too polished to be sincere. ”I beg of you, Chieftain, do not harbor the wrong impression of our Governor. Valerian has been the most impeccable servant the Crown could have asked for in this desolate reach. You have seen the fruits of his labor with your own eyes...”

Torghan offered a nod. He had seen the sprawling arbor, the bathhouse which he had come to love in Yarzat already, and the sturdy, reinforced wooden walls of the settlement.

”He did what the terrain demanded,” Serafim admitted. ”We needed the goodwill of the Chorsi to breathe. If the price of that breath was a few barbs thrown at an envoy, then the price was cheap enough, I’d say.”

”And what of the tribes that threatened you? Those who promised to give you wings from the cliffs?” Torghan’s eyes narrowed, ’’Was that bearable too?”

Serafim shrugged, a small, fluid movement of his shoulders that seemed to dismiss the threat of death as a mere accounting error. ”Namely? No. It was an indignity. But what were we to do, Chieftain? Commit suicide by moving to war with our few hundred men? A man of high blood would likely have done so, pride is so heavy and vain banner, and he would have certainly seen this entire province reduced to cinders and bone before the first winter. I stand by what I said: there is no finger to be pointed here. We played a poor hand with the skill of masters.”

The envoy turned to Torghan, his gaze softening into something uncharacteristically earnest. ”If the sight of Yarzat boots on your old home makes your heart sit strange in your chest, I am truly sorry. But you are a soldier; you knew this was the destination from the moment you set sail. We need the tribes to respect us, and while the Chorsi have learned the value of our coin, the others must now learn the weight of our steel. The army will be out of these mountains as soon as the ledgers are balanced. With Godspeed, if you wish it.”

He indeed wished for it...

”Still, it was fortunate you caught up to me,” The portly man looked around, ensuring the wind was the only thing eavesdropping on their conversation. ”There is a matter I have long wished to inform you of. A detail that didn’t belong in the council room.”

”What is it?”

”It is a matter of duty, of course. My and your duty to the Prince, and perhaps, your duty to your blood...the new one.”