Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”So, these are the new additions to my force?”

The voice was like silk drawn over a whetstone, belonging to the man who had been the architect of every nightmare that had plagued the Prince of Oizen for three bitter years, much to the man’s unawareness.

Around him, the atmosphere of the Port of Aracina was a mayhem that only a maritime and commercial town could have.

The shrill cries of street hawkers, the rhythmic thud of crates hitting timber, and the polyglot hubbub of a thousand souls echoed in the crisp, salt-tinged summer air.

For a fleeting moment, the man allowed his focus to drift from the ledger in his hand, surrendering his senses to the spectacle of a progress that defied all reason.

A decade had vanished since he first stood upon these stones. Then, he had been a sellsword, a nameless blade in a mercenary company hired by the desperate Prince of Yarzat to hold the line against an Oizenian tide, the same one three years afterward they would break.

He remembered the Aracina of old as a starve-riddled corpse of a city, a place of hollow eyes and apocalyptic whispers. In those days, the city had been a festering wound filled with refugees from the scorched countryside, where the only thing separating the living from the dead was a few meters of crumbling masonry and the luck of that siege’s draw.

Now, he stood in the Royal Port of Aracina, and the ghost of that dying city was nowhere to be found.

Where once mangy curs had fought over scraps, a kaleidoscope of nations now converged upon the hub that birthed the road that led to the Rising Gem of Yarzat. He watched an Azanian spice trader perched atop a camel, really an adertisement stunt he believed, navigating the throng with sacks overflowing with turmeric, cinnamon, and the dark, pungent gold of peppercorns. He noted the trader’s triumphant smile; despite the terrifying news of the Sun Palace’s fall and the chaos consuming the Azanian Sultanate, the markets of Yarzat remained hungry and lucrative.Perhapse he came from one of the areas more distant from the capital that had fallen and as such more or less unaffected by the scourges of the sea.

He wondered how long that’d last.

Elsewhere, the flow of wealth reversed. Ships groaned under the weight of Yarzat’s ingenuities and marvels, their holds brimming with crates of lye soap, barrels of sharp cider, and the precious antiseptics and strong liquors that were fast becoming the most coveted exports in the known world. From the sandy reaches of Arlania to the fractured principalities of the south, the world was becoming addicted to the fruits of Yarzat’s labor.

The man watching this transformation ran a hand through his long, unruly mane of curly blond hair, the locks tangling in his calloused fingers. Perhaps I should cut it, he mused, a rare moment of vanity surfacing. I am starting to look more like a mountain lion than a man

The thought passed as quickly as it had come. He steeled his gaze and returned his attention to the parchment in his hand, and more importantly, to the man who had delivered it.

”These are not your new additions, Carrion Crow.”

With a heavy sigh, one of the most dangerous men in the princedom, much to his own quiet, persistent misery, turned toward the sun-kissed figures to his right.

Lucius really hated that name.

It was a brand, a greasy mark of death that followed him like the shit stench of a pig pen. But more than the name, he hated the stillness of his own will; he hated that he could do nothing to scrub it off. In the secret, locked rooms of his heart, he had never wanted this life of knives and whispers. He would have gladly taken up the apron in his father-in-law’s tavern, pulling ale and trading dull jokes until his bones grew brittle with age.

He had only needed to be firm, to look Alpheo in the eye and say no when the Prince came calling for a man with his talents.

But he hadn’t. He couldn’t. And so, the tavern remained a dream, and this now was his reality, no matter how much he wished it was not.

”Is there something you wish to convey to me, Chieftain?” Lucius asked, his voice weary. He looked at the man he would be tethered to for the foreseeable future, a man who clearly viewed him as something found under a rotting log.

”Yes. These are not your ’additions.’ ’’ he repeated ’’ These are not your men, and they are certainly not your little crows,” The look on the Voghondai’s face was a masterpiece of unadulterated disgust, his lip curled as if he were breathing in the fumes of a cesspool.

”Have I committed some specific transgression to earn your ire?” Lucius asked, he searched in his mind for the answer.

He got none.

”No, Carrion Crow. You have not.”

Lucius sighed again, a sound of profound exhaustion. ”Then why address me with such venom? I do not believe I have ever sought you harm, nor hindered your path.”

”Because I loathe the necessity of our proximity,” Torghan spat, the words hitting like stones. ”I hate that I am forced to work with you. I hate that I must command my warriors to soil their hands alongside yours. I hate even the miniscule possibility that, in the eyes of the world, I might be seen as your peer. You give me the fucking creeps, Crow.”

That struck a nerve. The apathy in Lucius’s eyes flickered, replaced by a cold, sharp spark of resentment.

”Then take your grievances to the Prince,” Lucius said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a low, vibrating hiss. ”Were it up to me, I would cast aside every scrap of power he has draped over my shoulders. I would spend my days in the quiet company of my family, forgotten and content. But just as you find no joy in my presence, I find no pleasure in looking at your sneering face.”

He took a deep, shuddering breath, his fingers twitching at his sides. ”I did not ask to manage the Prince’s shadows. I did not ask to be christened with a name that makes mothers hide their children when I pass at court. But I am needed.

The Prince knows the world is built on the bodies of men like me, and I know it too. That is why he paraded me through his court; that is why he publicly lauded me for shattering that assassination plot and when I presented the head of that foolish boy that couldn’t help but follow in his father’s path, finding in me the same end of his bloodgiver... We both know that wasn’t a reward, it wasn’t a reward when he wrapped his head around me, it was a cage. He was showing the world how useful his monster is. He will never let me go.I made peace with that, at the very least as much as I could.”

Lucius sneered at the dust at their feet. ”Even if he did free me, I am marked. I will be the Carrion Crow until the day they shovel dirt over my face. And my daughter? She will be the Crow’s spawn. So yes, Chieftain of the Voghondai, take your grumbling to the fucking Prince. I don’t have the stomach to soothe your delicate spirit today. I am simply not in the fucking mood.”

The silence that followed was long and heavy, broken only by the distant crying of gulls over the harbor and the looks of the passerbies. Torghan ignored them all and studied the man before him.

Finally,he let out a short, dry snort. ”It seems you possess a spine beneath all that gloom. Perhaps you aren’t the hollow shell I took you for. Very well. I shall endeavor to keep my grumbling to a simmer.”

”That would be... decent of you,” Lucius muttered, the tension in his shoulders receding an inch. ”When can I expect our cooperation to begin?’’

”You have the names I promised. However, I shall require a week, perhaps more, to settle them into their new skins,” Torghan admitted, his hand trailing through his thick black mane as if trying to soothe a headache. ”These men have never held the leash of command, and the hounds they are to lead are a savage, splintered lot. They come from a dozen different hills, nursing a dozen different blood-feuds. To morph such a chaotic mass into anything obedient?It’ll require effort and time.

Lucius stood motionless, his gaze drifting over the turquoise expanse of the sea where the white foam broke against the harbor stones.

”The Prince maintains a stubborn faith that it can be done,” Lucius replied, his voice a flat, cold monotone. ”And strangely enough, time, that most fickle of mistresses, is currently on our side. We have the luxury of months to break their spines if they dare to protrude from the line. Your people have the tradition of this type of butchery in their marrow, do they not?”

”In a fashion,” Torghan said, leaning against a stack of crates as he shrugged his shoulders. ”In the high peaks, we fought like ghosts because the land demanded it and the might of our enemy too. Ambush and retreat were our mother’s milk when the Thrazanie would come on our hills; it was far simpler than the rigid, conservative walls of your Legions.

They will understand the basics of the kill, certainly. But to make them function as the Prince envisions? A dagger and a hammer are both forged of the same iron, Crow, yet their souls are vastly different. One seeks the gap in the plate; the other seeks to shatter it. You cannot swing a needle like a mace.”

”Which is precisely why I have been plucked from my shadows and placed at your side,” Lucius said, turning from the water. He scratched his clean-shaven face, the skin pale and sensitive to the salt air. ”All that is required is for me to bleed my knowledge into their minds. I have spent years as a student of the dirt, studying the veins of the terrain, and the fragile arteries of our enemy’s logistics.I made use of it against Oizen, slowing what should have been a month mustering, into two and a half.... Every whisper that reaches the Prince’s court regarding the layout of this field originated with me.”

He stepped closer to the Chieftain, his eyes reflecting a unyielding light.

”Make no mistake, O’ noble chieftain: we are wading through deep, treacherous mud. The coalition is a rising tide, and we are the only wall standing in the surf. For His Grace’s sake, and for the sake of the air we still draw, we must set upon this redeeming task with every ounce of malice and precision we possess. We are not just molding soldiers; we are crafting the instrument of a princedom’s survival.That should be enough to wanton all of our effort.”

With that he looked back at the sprawling port, his voice dropping to a whisper that terrified him too.

”For if we fail to sharpen this blade, it will be our blood and those we care about that’ll be shed.”