Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

No sound stirred in the deep bowels of the world as Merelao unveiled the spark that had ignited the conflagration.

He had long harbored suspicion that his uncle’s heart was a nest of vipers, yet it was only when the Fox’s shadow had delivered this that the last of his doubts had withered.

The throne would never be granted by decree; he would only sit once he made himself crimson hue from the blood of traitors.

”I do not believe it... how could you possibly have laid hands upon such a thing?” Sir Aldon’s voice was a ragged rasp, his eyes bloodshot and frantic as they bored into the beautiful man before him.

Merelao offered no immediate reply. He merely tilted his head, the fire-light catching the golden silk of his hair. The older knight, his patience shredded by the dark, rattled the bars in a silent demand for the truth.

”It was not my own hand that plucked this fruit from the vine,” Merelao finally confessed,. ”I was visited by certain... travelers, who saw fit to illuminate the reality I had only dared to suspect. One must tip the cup to the Fox; his agents possess a reach that makes the prince’s own shadows look like bumbling mummers.”

”Or perhaps it is merely foregery,” Aldon countered, his voice dripping with venom. ”A lie crafted to justify your arrival. The orders I received from His Grace, the command to muster, to arm the reinforcements, it was all false, wasn’t it? A snare of your trap.”

”Not mine, Ser,” Merelao replied, his smile widening . ”You would be astonished to learn how far the Fox’s fingers extend into the very marrow of the South.The order your received is no falsity, If you must accuse me of anything, accuse me of being swifter than my uncle. We fly the same banner, do we not? There was no treachery in my coming. I sent word of my arrival, and you opened your gates with a hopeful heart. For that, I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

He looked down upon the prisoner with a radiant, satisfied glow. ”It is why your fortress fell without a single drop of blood being spilt upon the stones.”

”And my men?” Aldon asked, his voice cracking.

”They are unhurt. They eat, they sleep, and they wait, just as you would have, had you been a more decorous guest.”

The older knight shook his head, a scowl of suspicion deepening the furrows of his brow. ”I cannot believe it. His Grace would not sit idly by, unaware that his final testament had been pilfered from his very bedside.”

”Perhaps the theft was executed better than you could think, Ser. Or perhaps,” Merelao’s lip curled in a flicker of exquisite disdain, ”the prince suffered a sudden chill of the spirit.I am sure he is not what he used to be, girth-speaking aside.

Perhaps he realized he was not yet prepared to wield the storm he had conjured. War is a hungry beast, and neither he nor I were quite ready to feed it then. There had been an unsteady peace between us. And perhaps we both favored the quiet instead of whatever chaos war would bring us.

It would explain the unseemly haste with which he ran to kiss the Habadian boot.”

He sighed as if disappointed ”Truly deplorable. To see a sovereign of the blood lowering himself to beg for the scraps of another. But then, what honor can one truly expect from men with brittle spines? They have the stomach for a feast, but never for a fair fight.”

”And you?” Aldon spat, the word choked with disgust . ”Is this the sermon you intend to impart from your high pedestal? Take care, boy, or you may yet find the stones crumbling beneath your feet. The Prince of the South may have clasped hands with the Habadian sovereign to betroth son to daughter, but you? You have gone and kissed the heel of the very source of this madness. Look at the chaos he has wrought. Is this the ally you have chosen? Would you truly lend your steel to a any man? A peasant of all?”

Merelao’s eyes flared with a sudden light dancing in his pupils like a trapped star.

”Alpheo is no mere man, Ser,” he countered, his voice a silken caress that held the weight of iron. ”What manner of man commands such demons as he? More than half the South has bayed for his blood, yet look around us. A host of twelve thousand appeared upon his doorstep, and what have they won? A graveyard is paved with their bones, yet the Fox stands with his sword ever ready, his gaze unblinking. Is that not proof of his valor? Of a skill that transcends the gutter of his birth?”

He leaned against the bars, a strange pleased smile playing upon his lips. ”We are kindred spirits, he and I. There is a kinship born of having the world rue your very existence. Only those who have stood alone against the storm know the true depth of their own souls. As a peasant who carved his power out of thin air, his will is a thing of legend. Truth be told, I may yet fall short of such a height, but this... this shall be my coming of age. This is where my name will be proclaimed.’’

Aldon could only stare, baffled by the radiant madness of the man before him. Merelao did not seem to see him anymore; his gaze was fixed on some distant, bloody horizon.

”I can hear them already,” Merelao mused, his voice rising scaring sir Rolan deeper into the corner. ”The trumpets of war are calling to our lands, Ser. They shall blow so loud that no man, from the highest lord to the lowest stable-boy, will be able to claim ignorance. The time for shadows and whispers is at an end; the hour of the blade has arrived.

Every soul in the South must now choose a side, or be crushed between them. Oh, I eagerly await my uncle’s forces.

I long to see them crest the hill, to hear the thunder of their hooves, so that I may smash them into the red dirt where they belong. It has been so long since the world offered a challenge worthy of my blood. Can you not feel it, Ser ? It’s calling. It is beautiful. It is sublime.”

He gripped the iron bars, his knuckles white, his breath coming in quick, shallow hitches of pure, unadulterated excitement. The torch fell forgotten into the dirt.

”The South shall burn, and from the pyre, I shall rise. This is the music I was born to conduct! As we speak the enemy is about to come to my head. They will try and they will fail. They shall be the first to fell by my sword...”

”You and what army?” Sir Aldon roared, the sound of his own voice a desperate thing against the crushing weight of the prince’s delusion. ”Your four hundred? At their very best? You command no host, boy, you command a graveyard! This is no war you’ve birthed, only the spluttering whimper of a dying candle. You are a rebel, nothing more, and you shall be put down like a rabid cur. You’ll be fodder for the worms before the moon turns her face!”

Merelao did not flinch; he did not even seem to hear the insult. He stood as a man in a trance, his eyes fixed on the flickering shadows as if they were the tidings of his future.

”Yes... indeed,” Merelao murmured, his voice a rhythmic, haunting lilt. ”My uncle will command many times my number. He will bring the weight of the Principality to bear, a tide of steel meant to drown my name. But how can I presume to build a legend without a proper challenge? To carve a saga from the mundane, one must embrace the impossible.”

He turned his gaze back to Aldon, his laugh as beautiful as it was presumptous.

”The Fox defeated a Herculean host twice his own strength at his first naming as a prince. The Bleeding Plains, they call it. A name that shall echo until the Father closes the book of all life. Then mine... mine shall be called the Red Field! To rival him, to look that peasant-made-prince in the eye and proclaim myself his peer, I cannot rely on the thin blue blood in my veins. Blood is a gift of the womb; glory is a gift of the blade.”

”I was born a lord, but I shall be reborn a titan. I must defeat thrice my foes. Yes. That is the only way. I will need the corpses of ten thousand of my uncle’s men to serve as the pedestal for my throne. How else can I stand before Alpheo and say, ’Here is a man who matches your will’?I am not a man of empty boast, I will not go to him begging for aid. I will go as his peers and then, in time and effort, his better.”

He leaned his forehead against the iron, a chillingly beautiful smile stretching across his lips.

”I do not fear the numbers, Ser Aldon. I crave them. I crave the challenge they shall pose for miserable is the ship whose hulls is untested by any storm...’’