Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”I suppose I have misjudged the situation” Merelao muttered, tilting his head until the candlelight caught the sharp line of his jaw. He shook his head slowly, a stray lock of gold shimmering. ”I must confess, I am a novice in these arts, scurrying through the gloom like a viper or a common rat is a skill I have yet to master. It would seem you are the veteran of the gutters, no? So, as a senior should with a wide-eyed newcomer, I beg of you: guide me. Lead me through the labyrinth to which I am so ignorant of.”

”It would be my distinct pleasure, my lord,” Alpheo said, his snort cutting through the high-born jest.

”It appears to me that you are working with a misunderstanding of your role in all of this. I am not extending my hand merely to pad my ranks with a few hundred extra lances. If that were the case, I would be doing nothing more than throwing silverii to filth-backs.”

”Filth-backs?” Merelao repeated the word as if it were a strange insect.

”Ah, my apologies,” Alpheo said, catching the sudden furrow in the lord’s brow . ”A colloquialism of Yarzat. A slip of the tongue,nothing more I believe with time you will come into contact with this new sayings.

What I mean to say is that you are vastly underestimating your own weight on the scales. You underestimate the resources that will soon flow at your back, and just how much of a deal-breaker your very existence will become.”

Alpheo watched as his subtle flattery began to take root; the cold suspicion in Merelao’s eyes softened, replaced by a blossoming, easy-going smile. The vanity of the Bull was a lever, and Alpheo was beginning to pull.

”My lord, while the rest of the world hazes their minds and breaks their teeth against my walls, and I assure you, I shall make that an agonizing labor for them, yours shall be the star role in this theater. Your entrance shall be the hand that overturns the table, the final dice roll that decides the game.”

Merelao’s smile lingered ”Usually, I would mark such a sentiment as the rankest of lies, yet somehow, I find myself leaning toward belief. But tell me, why would that be?’’

”For the divine power of surprise, my friend. I may call you that, yes?” Alpheo leaned his elbow onto the table, his posture shifting. The prince appearing more and more like the swindler found in a roadside tavern.

Merelao gave no protest to the sudden familiarity.

”At the Bleeding Plains, I shattered the Herculean host not with superior numbers, but with a surprise barrage from catapults my engineers had assembled in the dead of night.

At Aracina, I made a mockery of the Oizenian scouts by coming from the sea, a road no southern prince had ever dared to sail with a war-fleet.

I made use of it once again when the Prince of Oizen had poured his soul into fortifying his land borders, only to suffer a stroke when I appeared in his soft underbelly with a supply line he couldn’t touch. Treacherous road? Most certainly . But it paid the dividends in blood and gold. Tell me, my lord... what is it that gave me the edge time and time again, no matter how the odds were stacked?”

The question hung in the air, a sparkling lure. Merelao went silent, his mind clearly racing through the histories of Alpheo’s butcheries. He sat for a moment, tracing the rim of his glass, before suddenly thrusting a finger upward.

”Your pretty head, I suppose?” The nail of Merelao’s finger pointed directly at Alpheo’s brow-

”Precisely! No matter the geography the enemy occupies, no matter the preparations they cultivate in anticipation of my arrival, I have always made it my priority to shatter them all.

I overwhelm their clarity until they are drowning in a sea of variables they never accounted for. I do not wait for the initiative; I seize it , overturning the very table where they intended to play chess and forcing them to play a new game.”

Alpheo leaned in.

”I possess the finest infantry in the South, as the blood-soaked fields of Romelia recently demonstrated, perhaps the finest on this continent. My officers are loyal to the marrow; they would sooner tear their own limbs off with their teeth than entertain the notion of surrendering. But I am not a fool. I do not play under the arrogant misconception that my reputation alone will carry the day.

My name is becoming an epithet for cunning, and the enemy is learning. They will be wary. They will be watching for the Fox’s tail behind every bush.”

He paused, a dark, calculating glint in his eye.

”But a man walks with a proud, sure stride if he believes he already knows where the trap is set. That is why you shall be the pivot upon which the world turns. The price you think too high for your aid? It is a pittance compared to the cataclysmic importance you will hold in the architecture of this war. And that importance will not flow from my hands, but from yours, which brings us to the core of your error. You are drastically underestimating the sheer potency of your own position.”

Merelao let out a soft, musical laugh. ”I am accustomed to the world telling me I have an overly-inflated view of my own brilliance. To be told I am thinking too little of myself... I must admit, Alpheo, this is a novelty.Though a refreshing one...”

”My friend, you are the legitimate heir to the Throne of Kakunia. Every lord in the South knows it, just as they know the frantic, pathetic games your uncle plays to keep the crown from slipping off his brow. Kakunia is not a state; it is a boiling pot with the lid hammered shut. Your uncle is straining with all his might to suppress the steam, but he cannot hold it forever. It is a land waiting to erupt, needing only the gentlest of nudges.”

”Civil war?” Merelao asked, his tone suddenly flat, almost bored. ”That is the grand design? A rupture of the state while the wolves are at your own borders? I must say, I expected more from the ’Fox.’ You know the balance of forces as well as I. For every lance I can muster, my uncle has three. With Habadian gold, he will have five. My sworn lords will think twice, and then a third time, before following a ’mad’ prince into a slaughter.”

”You are wrong,” Alpheo interrupted, his voice like the strike of an iron hammer. ”Completely and utterly wrong on every front. I do not intend for you to rise in rebellion now, that would be a suicide pact, and I have no interest in corpses. As I am sure you do.

No, the rebellion comes after. First, I am going to make a hero out of you.”

Merelao’s eyes widened slightly, the boredom vanishing.

”We are going to weave a legend, my friend. They will sing songs of this war that will drown out the psalms. You will no longer be the ’Mad Bull’ whispered about in shadowed corners; you will be the Courageous Bull, the Valorous Bull, the Horned Warrior of the South.

Your epics will be shared from the highest courts to the lowest taverns until there is not a soul alive who hasn’t heard of the man who played a fool of half the continent. Can you imagine that day, friend? The sheer weight of that glory?Never will your name be forgotten...”

”You know,” Merelao said, a slow, dangerous smile creeping across his lips. ”The funny thing is, I know perfectly well that you are playing me like a lyre. But please... by all means, do not stop.”

Alpheo’s smirk deepened. ”You will become a myth. That is your profit from this war. Only when the world looks at you and sees a legend will you strike. You will raise your banners, waving the proof I have given you, the evidence that shall make fool of your uncle, to galvanize the wavering. When your cause is no longer a mere rebellion but a just war of restoration, you will gain the moral crown. Men are loath to bend the knee to a bastard, and I have given you the steel to prove he is exactly that.

It will be a spectacle for the ages. Knights without banners will flock to your standard to bathe in your light. Great lords will cast aside their neutrality to march under your trumpets, eager to claim they stood with the Legend. Only then shall we push forward to claim your birthright, an army born of your name in front, and the iron of Yarzat riding close behind.

It will be a sight that will glimmer eyes for a thousand nights...”

To the surprise of the prince, Merelao began to clap.

”Bravo! Bravo!” he cried, his voice ascending to a pleased peak. ”That is the Alpheo I was promised!The one I searched for. Not a man of prose, but the hero! You don’t just offer me a throne; you offer me the very sun to place upon my brow.Delicious! Truly, I expected nothing less from the architect of so many men’s ruin.”

Suddenly, the applause stopped and his smile vanished, leaving his face as flat and cold as a frozen lake. He leaned back, the shadows reclaiming the gold of his hair.

”However,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous velvet, ”you are forgetting one vital element in your grand orchestration. One small detail that threatens to tear the whole thing down.”

He reached out, tracing a slow circle in a spilled drop of wine on the table.

”I am acutely aware of the mire that clings to your name. Cunning is a divine attribute when it is turned against an enemy. But when it is turned toward an ally? You have built a legacy out of the unexpected strike and the broken rule. You are the Fox who thrives in the tall grass.”

Merelao raised his eyes, and for the first time, there was no playfulness in them, only a bleak, ancient recognition that there couldn’t be two protagonists on a stage.Someone had to relinquish the grand post.

”I know the rumors that follow me like carrion birds,the madness, the blood, the instability. I am a monster to some, a miracle to others. But I also know the rumors of you. I know that you do not play games you do not intend to win, and you do rarely make friends. So, let us strip away the songs and the glory for a moment and speak as we truly are.”

He leaned forward, his sapphire eyes burning with a cold, crystalline light.

”What trust can one devil truly hold toward another? If I am to be your ’Legend,’ how do I know you aren’t simply building a pedestal high enough so that when you eventually kick it out from under me, the fall will be certain to break my neck?That is the final question I shall pose you....”