Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

When the carriage shook he had been sleeping.

He snapped awake, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. For a disorienting second, he blinked into the gloom, wondering if he was still dreaming. But no dream was this cramped, and no dream smelled so strongly of dry grain.

He tried to stretch, but it was a pathetic effort. He had been curled in a ball for so long that his limbs felt like rusted hinges. He had lost track of the hours, but he guessed it was the second day. Or was it the third? He’d slept, so that was something. Maybe nine hours? Ten? Time didn’t move in here; or if it did it was in his mind.

Maybe not even two had passed...

”Two days,” he whispered to the dark, his voice sounding raspy and strange in the small space. ”Just two days and then I’m out. No, three.’’ The cart jolted up ’’Better make it three. Can’t have them catching me the moment I pop my head out like a gooes’’

He sighed, the sound echoing off the wooden walls. He was bored, incredibly, existentially, unbelievably, alluringly bored.

His father had always said the mind could turn a palace into a prison or a cell into a sanctuary, but his father had never spent so many hours closed in such a small....actually he may have.

He had been a slave had he not?He surely did not sleep in a featherbed.

That made him blush, him complaining about sleeping for a day on a small cart, while his father must have passed nights in the mud.

He reached for the book he’d tucked into his tunic, but even with the sliver of light peeking through the floorboards, the words danced and blurred. It was no use. He could not read.

”Right then,” he muttered, looking at his own hands. ”What have we got today?”

He raised his fists. His left hand became a Crown’s hound. His right hand was a marauding Oizenian raider.

”Yield, traitor!” he whispered for the left hand. ”Never! I’ll have your head for the Sun Prince!” he answered in a gravelly tone for the right.

They lunged. Fingers locked, knuckles collided. The ”raider” took a thumb to the eye, or rather, the pinkie, and collapsed against his knee. It was the best entertainment he had, and even that felt pathetic and childish.

If a guard opened now and saw him playing with his fingers like a toddler in the mud, he’d die of shame before they could even put hand on him.

He leaned his head back, wincing as another bump in the road rattled his teeth. To pass the time, he let his mind wander to the front. He imagined himself atop a Great Grey, a lance leveled at a Habadian breastplate. He could almost feel the vibration of the impact, the spray of dirt, the roar of the Hounds behind him.

But then the fantasy soured. He thought of the men marching outside this very cart. The Legionnaires would be fine, tucked five to a tent with dry blankets. But the levies? The poor bastards his father spoke of who slept in the grass and prayed the clouds didn’t break.

”If it rains, many of them will be coughing by tomorrow,” he said to himself, his brow furrowing. ”Sucking in the damp and the cold. Falling behind the wheels.”

It was a terrible way to go. He could understand a sword in the gut, at least you could look your killer in the eye and curse him with your last breath. But to die of a chest-shiver? To die shaking in a puddle while the army marched on without you? That was just bad luck. There was no one to fight, no one to blame but the gods, and the gods were notoriously bad at apologizing.

”Third hell for them if they curse at the gods on their last breath,” he whispered the priest’s word, feeling a pang of genuine pity. ”Dirty, cold, and forgotten. Not me, though. I’m going to find a proper fight.” He was not going to die like that.

He closed his eyes again, trying to conjure the battle he would one day fight in, hoping for anything to drown out the endless, rhythmic creak-thump of the wooden wheels.

Somehow he could not imagine such a moment if not invaded by light. He could not see the bodies or the body, just an all-encompassing light...he had a really strange mind.

Actually, if he tried hard enough, he could pretend the sound wasn’t wood at all. If he concentrated, he could think of it as the thundering hooves of a cavalry charge. Yes....he could see it the sun shining down on their polished plates and the tips of their lances as they thundered on and on toward the enemy lines, the ground shaking beneath them.

Ok no....that was not going to work.

He was just too tired and too cramped. Luckily, he wasn’t exactly alone. Well, he was the only person hiding there, but there was a driver up ahead tending to the horses. Every so often, the sound of leather whistling and the soft neighing of the horses drifted back to him.

He didn’t know the man’s face, but he was thankful for the company. Sometimes, if he was lucky, the man started singing, not loudly, but clear enough for him to hear through the blanket. More importantly, the man sang the kind of songs that would make his mother turn pale. Those were, honestly, the most interesting parts of the whole trip.

His favorite one was Dirty Alice. The man wasn’t singing right now, so he decided to hum it to himself to keep the silence at bay.

”When I was a boy with hair on my stone,” he whispered, tapping his knuckles against the wood to keep the beat.

”I became old enough to want something more.

It was finally time to get a vice.

’Go to Alice, go to Alice,’ his friends kept on saying.

Mugs and froth, all the way to broth.

For three bronzii a lay gladly she will give,

And if she likes you enough, a little more she’ll mince.

Free of charge, so much to her you must mean.

So the boy went on with the bronzii in tow...”

He didn’t know the middle part very well, so he just hummed the melody, skipping ahead to the part that always made him want to laugh.

He was also sure he had skipped some verses on the first part, it sounded far less musical than it had been when he heard it.

”Oila, Oila, Oila!” he sang under his breath, grinning in the dark.

”The boy shouted with a finger up his arse

No more, no more, no more, he begged to the village’s whore.

’Come on, come on,’ she said, as two more fingers up were gone.

She kissed him and bit him on the ear, gentle and lewd,

Her tongue as flexible as a mule.

’Come on, come on, come on,’ she encouraged as he took up now a stone.

Gods no, Gods no, Gods no! He cried as he saw the wooden cock.

Alice was the girl, but well enough if the boy was cute, she liked to swap!

Dirty Alice, Dirty Alice, her name was.

Make sure to have a good time, for it will be her that afterward the shit shall mop.”

He still didn’t quite understand why Alice was putting things up the boy’s arse, or what the swapping part meant, but he knew better than to ever ask his mother or father about it. He figured with time and a bit more age, the answer would come to him.

Though surely it must be something funny....the man around the cart always laughed when they sang it.

He started to wonder if Alice was a real person or just a dirty story soldiers told to get a laugh out of each other, but his train of thought was cut short. The rhythm of the wheels changed, slowing down from a steady roll to a bumpy crawl. The horses snorted, the wood groaned one last time, and with a heavy, final lurch, the carriage came to a complete stop.

”Oh boy, oh boy, we stopped,” he whispered, his heart racing. He knew the end of the rumble meant the day’s march was over, but more importantly, it meant his stomach could finally stop growling.

He reached for his small bundle in the dark, his fingers fumbling until he found his stash. He’d been a fool not to slice the bread before he hid; after a day and a half in the heat, the loaf had turned into a brick. He tapped it against the side of the crate, and it sounded like a stone. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of the war with a missing front tooth, the bread was useless.

So, he reached for the second item.

He held it in his hands, staring at it through the gloom as if he could see its glory. It was a roasted sausage, wrapped in a bit of greasy cloth. Should he eat it now? What if he was starving tomorrow and had nothing left but the bread-rock?

But the smell was already filling the tiny space, thick and salty. Tomorrow was a problem for future-him, but now-him was hungry enough to eat the crate itself.

Basil, Basil, you earned this, he imagined the sausage whispering. Take a bite out of me. You’ll be so much happier once you do.You are still a boy, you gotta grow...rememeber your father?You ought to eat well....

He was a weak man when it came to roasted meat.

He let himself be swindled by the fragrance....he took a bite, and it was divine, salty, fatty, and perfect. He took a second bite, and it was even better.How could the man create such a thing.... He was just leaning in for a third, his eyes closed in bliss, when a voice sliced through the wood from just inches away.

”Oi, you feel that?”

Basil froze. He didn’t even swallow. He sat there, a chunk of half-chewed sausage in his mouth, feeling exactly like a deer caught in the glare of a torch.

”Can’t hear nothing,” a second voice grunted.

”No, no, not hearing. Smelling. Don’t you smell that?” Basil heard a loud, wet sniff right against the planks of the cart.

”Can’t smell shit,” the second man replied. ”Got a busted up nose, remember? What, did the horse take a leak?”

”No... it’s...it’s.... a sausage?”