Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”I beg his lordship to open his arms to the side,” a burly man muttered, his voice sounding like gravel being ground in a mortar. He passed a rough hempen cord around the young man’s waist, pulling it taut before using a small knife to nick a mark into the fiber.

He toiled in a rhythmic, unsettling silence. He spoke only in clipped instructions, moving around in a way that forced him to show the back of his thinning white hair every time he bent to adjust a measurement.

Truth be told, the man upset Latio. He possessed a devious, lopsided smile that revealed more blackened stumps than healthy teeth, a fact he seemed self-conscious of, as he habitually shielded his mouth with a grime-stained hand when he spoke.

But no hand could shield his stench. Despite the cloying layers of cheap perfume the man had doused himself in, a foul, organic rot wafted from his pores, as if his very internal organs were beginning to liquefy.

”I had thought myself already in possession of a perfectly serviceable set of plate,” Latio intoned, extending his thigh outward to allow the man to measure the breadth of his limb. The armorer slithered between his legs with an utter lack of decorum, his cold fingers lingering on the silk of Latio’s breeches.

The eldest son of the Prince of Kakunia turned his head away in disgust, seeking the gaze of his father.

”What? That old thing?” the Big Bull of Kakunia muttered currently occupied with wiping his meaty, sweating cheeks with a square of fine silk.

”It served me well enough when you set me off to hunt bandits in the Western Marches,” Latio reminded him, his mind briefly flickering back to the first time he had tasted the copper tang of blood on the wind.

Prince Lavus frowned, the heavy folds of his brow deepening. ”Bandits that I bet scattered the moment they heard the first neighing of a warhorse. There is a gulf between starving outlaws and proper soldiers, Latio.

The Fox of Yarzat has nothing but proper soldiers in his shadow. The armor you had was suited for a bastard’s skirmish. Do you still intend to remain so? Will you give ear to the delusions of your maddened cousin in Ozenia, or will you dress for the slaughter to come?I’d yet have my son ruin men, instead of coming back to me a bloody ruin.”

The sharp snap of the measuring cord being recoiled broke the tension. ”I beg to leave by Your Grace’s kindness,” the armorer whispered, bowing low. ”I have all the measurements my steel requires.”

”I never had cause for displeasure from you when you served my father, Belwa, nor in the years you have served me,” Lavus said, his voice a low warning. ”I expect no exception as you forge for my son.”

”Nor should you, Your Grace. I shall make iron for your son that even the gods would envy.He’ll be you twenty years aback...” With a final, toothless grin hidden behind his palm, the man backed out of the room.

”He gives me the fucking creeps, that one,” Latio muttered, finally relaxing his posture as he shook out his cramped limbs.

”Belwa is a master of his craft. You’ll change your opinion of him when he presents the result of his toil,” Lavus replied, his eyes drifting back to the heavy vellum parchment on the table a letter he had been staring at for hours as if it were a coiled viper. ”When you are in the thick of it, and every man on the field is eager to take a swing at your head, you will be glad you suffered under the man’s stench for a few minutes.”

Latio walked to the sideboard, filling a silver cup with dark, heavy wine. ”Do you truly think it will come to a pitched battle, Father?”

He received no answer. The prince remained motionless, his gaze fixed on the ink of the letter.

”Father?”

The sound jolted Prince Lavus. He blinked, the fog of his thoughts clearing for a moment. ”What is it?”

”I asked if you think battle is truly to come. Or is this all just the rattling of swords in sheath?”

”You are preparing to invade the home of a man, Latio. Anyone who dares to call himself a man at all should give battle under such circumstances.”

”Except we are doing so with overwhelming numbers,” Latio countered, a note of youthful confidence in his voice. ”The Oizenians, the Habadians, the Ezvanians and our own banners... there is no hope to be found for the Fox on an open field. He’d be a fool to stand.”

”Not that there is much hope he may find elsewhere,” Lavus said, giving the letter a final, troubled look before casting it aside onto a pile of requisitions, the emblem of the sun left laying on the table. ”He will find himself with his foes pressing down on him from all cardinal points. Perhaps he will choose a quick death on the field rather than witness his capital being reduced to ash.”

”Or he could come to the table,” Latio suggested, sipping his wine. ”He could negotiate once he see that the weight of the iron favors us. Even a fox knows when the hounds have him cornered.”

”That is a wish, Latio, and not even a good one at that. You speak of negotiation because you have not yet stared into the eyes of a man who has built his house from nothing. I know that type of man well. They do not bend, and they do not haggle over the price of their soul. Alpheo will not relinquish a single stone of his walls while he still has breath to curse us. He will first break every single thing he possesses before he concedes a finger’s breadth; your uncle was of the same type.’’ The silence lingereed for a bit. His father did not name his brother many times.

’’Do not look for a peaceful exit, son. Men like the Fox only stop fighting when the ground is too wet with their own blood to stand on.You ought to make yourself used to that, you shall face it once more on the future.

Bloody your horns and learn how to use them. I would have delivered you a future of peace my son, but the horns calls for war, and you are to prepare for it.”

He took exception to that, thinking long of his father’s words though not of the right one.

Finally, he straightened his back and asked the question that every father in a house of high blood fears most.

”How many shall I lead?”

Prince Lavus tightened his grip on the silk handkerchief, his knuckles bulging like white stones, though he kept his face with indifference not to let his fears out.

”Not many,” the Prince replied, his voice a low grate. ”Our primary contribution to this league is the belly of the beast.’’

That took the young man wrong ’’We are bulls!’Our herald is not a scythe!’’

’’The Prince of Habadia would have been content with our granaries alone, but I insisted you lead men. It is time the world sees you as more than a silhouette in a garden.

You shall lead a thousand swords, perhaps slightly more. It is a symbolic force. You are there to show the Bull among the banners, to remind the world of our horns while they drink from our udders. ”

Lavus leaned over the table, his shadow looming large. ”And listen well: you are to be the very soul of respect when you stand before Nibadur. He is the architect of this age, and soon, he shall be family. Your future sits in his palm.”

Latio’s eyebrows shot up. ”The Prince of Habadia... he will personally lead his host?”

”Aye,” Lavus said, the word heavy with a begrudging respect he could never attain anymore. ”As strange as it sounds for a man of his station to lead an expedition so far from his own walls, I wonder what he has in the pot to stir himself so....”

”You think they will make songs of this?” Latio asked completely missing his father’s hint, a flicker of youthful romanticism sparking in his eyes.

The prince sighed, seeing that...to be young again...

”A grand coalition against a common foe?You think that would make a good one?

This is the first time in a century that the princes of the South have moved as one fist,” Lavus noted dryly. ”The last time such a thing occurred, it was to drive back the Misfooted himself.”

”But didn’t that end in our defeat?” Latio asked, straining to recall the dry history lessons of his tutors.

A short, mirthless chuckle escaped his father’s lips. ”Did you ever hear a song about that defeat, boy? No. History is a fickle poet. What eight thousand southern swords could not accomplish on the field, fifteen meters of free-fall indeed did. They don’t sing of the lost battle; they sing of how drunk the Emperor was when his horse forgot how to walk.Or how it was his brother that pushed him off to take the crown.

They named that cliff king’s wings, our ancestors were funny guys...”

”I have heard songs of the Fox, though,” Latio countered softly. ”They sing of how he broke many armies.”

The laughter died on his father’s lips as if it had been struck by an arrow. Lavus felt a cold spike of anxiety prickling his spine. Can he not keep that thick head of his on the task at hand? he thought, his displeasure mounting.

”If they sing of this, Latio, they will make it a mockery,” the Prince admonished a bit angry, could he still walk by his own he would have entered into his son’s space until the boy could smell the wine and the worry on his breath. ”They will laugh at how four Great Princes had to gather their strength just to hunt a single fox. What glory do you hope to find in a massacre? There is no honor in twelve thousand marching against three.”

He mentioned his boy closer so that he could grab his shoulders, his grip uncomfortably tight. ”Stupid boy. Stop dreaming of minstrels and epic verses. Think instead of currying favor with Nibadur. Think of the alliance. Your throne, depends on the Habadian prince’s goodwill, not on the lyrics of some drunken lute-player. You are not going there to be a hero. You are going there to be made a prince.”