Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”Sir Aron Mizio, envoy in the stead of Her Grace, Jasmine Veloni-isha, First of her Name, Princess of Yarzat, Princess of Herculia,protector of the Highlands and Lowlands, presents himself to the court!”

The massive gilded doors were shoved open with a violence that felt intentional, as if desiring to startle the man who stepped through. Aron took a singular, bracing breath and stepped into the lion’s den.

The assault was immediate.

The air in the Oizenian court was thick, a suffocating mixture of heavy, cloying perfumes and the stale heat of too many bodies packed into a stone box. Aron’s nose wrinkled instinctively. Between the stench of the shit-ridden streets in the city, that he could feel miles away, and the perfumed rot of the palace, he decided he preferred the sewers, at least the filth there didn’t pretend to be roses.

He marched forward, his boots striking the polished marble with his rythm refusing to be cowed by the silence of the room. A wave of visible hostility washed over the benches; courtiers, knights and nobles peered over their eyes cold and slitted. Aron let the hatred slide off him like oil over water.

He wasn’t dull; he knew the Golden Falcon of Yarzat was viewed here , and knew how much it hurt for them to see the ”upstarts” who had humbled the old blood.

Still...too much antagonism, Aron thought, his gaze sweeping the hall. The Crownless Prince won’t have to work hard to raise an army. He doesn’t need a reason for war; he just needs a spark.

Aron knew he would probably be just that.

He came to a halt a dozen paces from the throne. Prince Sorza sat there, draped in his silks, especially well-suiting him considering how mismatched he will always be with iron.

Aron’s eyes even caught the imperceptible curl of the Prince’s lip. He looked every bit the sovereign, yet Aron couldn’t help but remember him as the prince who had abandoned his army at Apurvio, fleeing while his men turned into feast for rats and worms. Someone had been busy inflating the Crownless’s ego since then.

Etiquette demanded a dance. Aron gave a shallow, formal bow and immediately straightened his spine.

’’I greet the Prince of Oizen’’

He waited. One heartbeat. Two. The silence stretched. Sorza remained motionless, a porcelain doll of a man, waiting for the Yarzat envoy to stumble over the silence.

Aron exhaled a sharp burst of air through his nose. ”I recall, by the ancient laws of hospitality, this would be the hour where the guest is offered bread and salt... Your Grace? Are the royal stores perhaps running short on flour?”

A ripple of amusement, sharp as a glass shard, crossed Sorza’s face. It vanished as quickly as it appeared. ”You are not a guest, Sir Aron. Hospitality is for those whose presence brings us pleasure. You are a messenger. Speak your piece and begone from my sight.”

A chorus of rat-like snickers erupted from the back of the hall,seemingly fitting with their personas.

Aron didn’t flinch. ”I am pleased to see Your Grace is in such spirited health. The last time I had the pleasure of your company was three winters past, in the Princely camps. You emerged from your tent with such a magnificent scowl... I see the years have not softened your temperament.”

”As I said: speak,” Sorza snapped, leaning forward ”I will not demean myself with childish bickering. Every time the Falcon of Yarzat flies into this court, it brings nothing but ill-omened winds.”

”I fear this visit shall not be the exception to that rule,” Aron replied, his voice dropping into a formal, icy register. He cleared his throat, the sound echoing in the rafters. ”Her Grace of Yarzat has sent me here to inquire upon the terrible events festering within the lands under your dominion. For the last week, upon the borders shared by our sovereignties, there has been a worrying, systematic rise in banditry.”

Sorza waved a languid hand. ”A tragedy, truly. But I am ill-made to police every shadow in the wilderness. Banditry is a common plague, one we are laboring to cure as our resources allow.”

”It is a peculiar plague, then,” Aron countered, his eyes locking onto the Prince’s. ”For it seems these ’bandits’ possess a most discerning eye. They have targeted only the carriages bearing the Royal Herald of the Yarzat Crown. They leave the local trade untouched, yet they put our merchants to the sword with a chilling efficiency.Quite the oriented swords , I’d say’’

His words were the stones that rippled the water.

”Even the bandits know where to strike to get the most ill-earned gains!” a voice shouted from the gallery, followed by a roar of jeering laughter.

”Indeed!” another courtier chimed in, stepping forward with a sneer. ”The Yarzat merchants can well afford to swallow a few losses, considering how much gold they withhold from our coffers by refusing to pay the ancient customs.’’

’’Perhaps the ’bandits’ are simply collecting the taxes your Crown is too arrogant to pay!”

The hall erupted in a cacophony of agreement, the sound of a court hungry for a fight. Aron stood at the center of the storm, his face a mask of stone, waiting for the Prince to rein in his hounds, or let them loose.

Aron let them bark.

He watched with a look of detached amusement, as if observing the frantic yapping of kennel hounds from behind a sturdy gate. When the noise reached a fever pitch, he didn’t raise his voice; he simply stood perfectly still until the silence of his own composure forced the court to settle.

He raised a hand, and the room adjusted itself to a wary, brittle quiet. All eyes turned to the envoy, and Sorza leaned forward, his expression one of bored expectation.

”I am sure the court will be well pleased by the conclusion of this affair,” Aron loudly declared, his voice ringing out to the furthest corners of the vaulted ceiling. ”And you may even thank us for taking care of this ’plague’ of yours. As Your Grace is well aware, Yarzat steel is notoriously sharp. It required very little effort to see it tasted against the discarded flesh of those who haunted the roads.”

The reaction was instantaneous, a spray of sparks from a flintstone hitting dry tinder.

”Yarzat soldiers marched onto our lands?” a knight shouted, his hand flying to the hilt of his sword as if he were going to do shit about it, his face flushed with a sudden, violent indignity.

”It seems the Peasant Prince has grown arrogant in this peace!” another voice boomed, this one belonging to a noble draped in heavy velvet. Aron’s eyebrow rose a fraction as he noted the small emblem of the Oizenian sun pinned to the man’s breast.

A member of a royal branch. Given how he stood among the other rabble, probably a secondary one.... ”We ought to humble him for such a transgression!”

Sorza, however, seemed to partake in the outrage with even more theatrical fervor than his subjects. He rose halfway from his throne, his face contorting into a mask of regal fury. ”How dare you march your troops upon my sovereign soil?” he thundered, the sound meant to incite tremors in the man standing before him.

Aron didn’t tremble. Instead, he took a step forward, his boot smashing against the marble with a sound like a hammer on an anvil.

”It should be us who take ill of this situation, not you!” Aron’s voice rose to meet the Prince’s. ”For in the clearing of that ’discarded flesh,’ we discovered that those scums were hand-in-hand with a lord of this very court! We demand Your Grace explain the conduct of Lord Vastien of Aragustaven. For we have proof that it was he who emboldened those outlaws, he who gave them their targets, and he who ensured they struck only the carriages of the Falcon!”

The hall exploded.

Shouts of ”Perfidy!” ”Liar!” ”Idiocy!” rose in a chaotic tide of sound, like an avalanche of snow coming down the Gods’ Hand.

The courtiers surged forward, a wall of silk and steel, their faces twisted in snarling denial. Aron paid them no mind, his gaze locked onto Sorza’s as he continued through the storm.

”Her Grace, Jasmine Veloni-isha, was deeply upset to discover such a profound lack of honor among the nobility of Oizen! She has sent me to demand that justice be wrought by your royal hand. She demands that immediate punishment be laid upon Lord Vastien for his treason against the peace, and she demands full compensation for the merchants who saw their livelihoods burnt and their blood stolen by your subject’s command! To do less is to admit that the Oizenian crown condones the work of common thieves!”

The shouts rose to a deafening roar, the air thick with the promise of violence. Suddenly, the man with the royal sun-emblem of before stepped into the center of the hall, pushing his chest forward with the bravado of a brawler. He turned toward the throne, his voice booming over the rabble.

”Cousin!” the noble cried out, gesturing wildly at Aron. ”How can you sit there? How can you remain so calm while such filth and baseless accusations are laid against a man like Vastien? A man who has fought harder than any other against the plagues of this state? This is a slur upon our blood, a lie crafted in the shadow of the Peasant’s prince!”

Sorza looked down at the envoy with an oily smirk, he seemed he had finally got what he wanted. He leaned back into the velvet of his throne, his eyes twin chips of ice.

”I remain calm, Cousin,” Sorza said, his voice carrying through the room with a chilling, artificial sweetness, ”because I know his words to be a lie.For what could you expect from people who go their knees for a peasant? Would lord Malis’s knee bend for a sticky commonborn?’’

’’Certainly not’’ Lord Malis cousin to his grace, aired up.

’’Neither would any sane person....’’

”Your Grace!” Aron’s voice cut through the sneering laughter like a whip-crack. He had walked into this hall expecting discourtes. But this....this blatant dismissal of a royal grievance, was a bridge too far.

”I was sent by Her Grace to deliver a second demand, should the first be met with such... predictable blindness,” Aron stated

With a motion he reached into the folds of his cloak.

What came out spurned the Oizenian guards inot action as they surged forward to shield their Prince. Sorza, however, remained seated, his eyes glinting with a flicker of genuine curiosity. He waved his guards down with a lazy hand , his gaze fixed on Aron’s hands.

The envoy held out both palms. In his left, he gripped a dagger bearing the falcon. In his right, he held a pristine white swan-feather quill.

”In my hands, I hold the only two languages your court seems to understand,” Aron declared, the silence in the hall opening up for his words. ”I hold peace, and I hold war. You may make your choice for what shall be wrought upon your lands this day. One so that we may sheath death, the other for the tally of them.”

Sorza looked at the quill, then at the blade, a slow, ugly sneer curling his lip. He leaned back into the gold-leaf shadows of his throne, the image of a man who believed he held all the cards.

”The choice was made before you ever crossed the border, dog of Yarzat,” Sorza spat, his voice dripping with a casual, terminal arrogance. ”Go back to your mistress that lays with peasants and tell her that Oizen does not negotiate with merchants and bastards.”

Aron’s gaze didn’t waver. He felt the weight of the moment, knowing well what this meant.

Who knew?Perhaps in the future they would tell of this moment...

”War is it, then?” he asked, raising the dagger just a hair.

”If it is to be,” Sorza replied, his tone bored, ”then let it be.”

”Very well.”

Aron opened his hand. The dagger fell, the heavy steel clinking and skittering across the pristine marble floor with a discordant, final ring that echoed in the high rafters like a bell for a funeral. He didn’t look at the blade but straight into Sorza’s eyes.

”We accept your terms.”