Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The Prince of Habadia looked like he was swallowing a mouthful of wasps. He was a man used to the elegant lie of war, the bows, the ”honored adversary” nonsense, and the false modesty that highborn lords used to mask their bloodlust. Asag, however, seemed to have missed that Chapter of the handbook.

Nibadur knew he couldn’t win a contest of insults with a man who lived in a ditch,nor did he truly have such interest at heart, so he smoothed his expression and went back to his script. He wasn’t here for barbs after all.

”You have fought well, my lord. Truly,” Nibadur began, his voice flowing like expensive wine into a golden cup. ”Even those among us most... agitated by your stubbornness have to admit you’ve given us quite the trouble.”

At the mention of ”quite the trouble,” Asag looked like he wanted to point out that he hadn’t just given them trouble, he’d fucked them standing. Instead, he just raised his eyebrows, letting the jagged cave-in on his helmet do the talking for him.

”The Warrior of Wrath himself must be smiling down upon you,” Nibadur continued, his praise becoming a long, tiresome slog. ”A host of twelve thousand mustered outside these gates, and time and again you denied us the prize. I don’t think there is a soul among us who could have equaled such an endeavor. You are surely the finest weapon in the Fox’s arsenal. You have played the part of the anvil with such skill that you have blunted the very hammers of the South.”

”Blunted?” Asag cut in with a sardonic grin that made his facial scars twitch. ”Is that what you call losing thousands of men? A bit of blunting?”

”We are still here, are we not?” Nibadur replied, gesturing grandly to the horizon. He puffed out his chest, doing his best to hide the fact that his army was currently rotting from the inside out. ”Do you not see the banners, my lord? Fluttering as proudly as the day we arrived. And they will fly until the day we leave with victory.”

”I saw your colors well enough during the first week,” Asag grunted. ”Most of them are currently under a pile of my men’s shit at the base of the wall.Mayhaps after you fuck off back home,the peasants that will rebuild the lives you destroyed will bring home those pieces of silk and use them as carpet.”

”Well if you raise your eyes, you will see we have many others, and our heralds are still there, my lord,” Nibadur insisted, his smile tightening.

”Until the day we burn ’em,” Asag shot back. ”What’s the matter? Have you finally run out of peasants to throw at me? Is that why you’re here for a chat?”

”You remind me of Belon the Stalwart, Legate. You must know the histories.Even if you hadn’t been brought up by tutors, he still sang today.

’’Of course I do. He thwarted Aeron Misfooted at Eagle’s Fall for a full year. He was a master of the defensive, a man of iron and shadow, are you trying to make comparison?” He spat into the dirt. ”And as I recall, Belon ended up with a sword through his neck and his head on a spike.Hope I make the same end?”

The prince smiled softy, his eyes locking onto Asag’s. ”History is a repetitive teacher.Just a wheel that goes around and around.

Men may be different to one another but what they do was done a thousand times before.

Belon was magnificent, but in the end, the wall always breaks. I am here because I have no wish to see a man of your talent meet such a fate. There is but small honor in being the most capable corpse in the dirt.

You have fought long and hard, my lord,” Nibadur said, his voice dropping into a tone of somber respect . ”None would dare say otherwise. But do not mistake grit for immortality. If you hope to hear songs of your legend, you won’t hear them from a grave. You’ll be long dead before the first verse is written, buried under the same rubble you defended.

The hope of Yarzat will die the moment this castle falls.”

He leaned forward, his horse shifting slightly in the dirt. ”Only death awaits you if you turn your back on today’s business. It is a rare commander who can turn a pile of stone into a living nightmare for an army of this size. Perhaps you’d be of much better use to your Fox alive, with your soldiers at your back, rather than rotting with the ruins of these walls as your headstone.”

If Nibadur had hoped to give the man something to chew on, he was disappointed. Asag let the silence hang, letting the wind whistle through his dented visor just to see if the Prince had finally run out of breath.

”Are you finished blowing smoke up my arse, Your Grace?” Asag rasped. ”Is your vocabulary so full of empty platitudes that you need a thousand words to say something so simple? I’ve still got chores to do today, so speak your terms plainly and stop acting like you’re doing me a favor by breathing my air.”

Nibadur’s jaw tightened, his heart drumming against his ribs, but he kept his face as still as a mask.

”Very well,” the Prince said, his voice losing its poetic lilt. ”I offer you life. Yours, and every man behind those gates.

You will not be harmed when you march out. I will allow every soldier and lord to keep their weapons and as much as they can carry on their own backs. You will relinquish the castle to me, and a truce of two weeks shall be respected by both sides.

I’ll even allow you carts to carry your wounded and looking at you, Legate, I imagine you’ve got a long list of them.”

He paused, letting the weight of the offer settle.

”These are merciful terms, my lord. Probably the most merciful you can expect from a host that has spent two months watching their friends die on your spikes. I am giving you a golden bridge to walk across. Most men in my position would be offering you a rope.”

He searched Asag’s granite face for a sign of surrender.

Nibadur felt a surge of hope rising in his chest when he saw the legate assuming a thoughtful expression.

”Well?” Nibadur pressed, his eyes bright. ”Will you accept? ’’

Not even the horses dared to neigh and break the spell, as if the beasts themselves sensed the world was tilting on its axis, that this was the most important moment of all.

The only thing that moved was the stench, the cloying, sweet rot of the dead rising from the trenches, forcing the perfumed lords of the League to fight a losing battle against their own gagging instincts.

Asag didn’t seem to notice the smell. He was part of it. When he spoke, every lord leaned in, ears sharpened for the word that could end the war. Even if they didn’t wish for it, their instict propelled them to do so.

”You see the colors flying atop the gate, Your Grace?” Asag asked, tilting his head toward the ramparts. ”Not the Falcon of the Yarzat throne, but the other one. Our colors. The black and white stripes of the Legions.”

Nibadur’s eyes flickered upward, his face a mask of weary distaste. He could hear the shift in Asag’s tone, a terrifying calm. ”I see them well enough” the Prince replied.

”Quite bare, aren’t they?” Asag mused, his expression peaceful, almost serene, like a man enjoying the afterglow of a long rest with a slave giving him a foot massage. ”I once asked my prince if we shouldn’t have changed them when he took his bride. Something with more teeth. An eagle, perhaps, or a charging boar. I told him we should charge with something proud at our backs now that we were sitting on seats of power. Stripes seemed a bit thin for a man who did what he did.”

He let the silence hang for a moment, savoring it.

”Do you know what he replied with?” Asag asked.

The lords remained silent, their eyes darting between the Legate and the golden Prince of Habadia.

”He made a trumpet with his arse, Your Grace,” Asag said plainly.

Nibadur’s face warped, his composure fracturing into a look of utter, pathetic confusion. He blinked, certain his ears had finally succumbed to the siege-fever that claimed so many of his soldiers. ”He... he what?”

”He farted?” Sorza blurted out, his voice cracking in a tone so bewildered it would have done numbers on a theater.

”Indeed he did,” Asag said with a slow nod. ”And we laughed. We laughed like boys watching a dog chase its own tail. But looking back now, with the gravity of experience and a few more holes in my hide, I realize I did him a disservice. I thought it was a jest. A bit of camp humor for the men. It was everything but that.”

”Is that so?” Nibadur asked, his voice tight. He didn’t know whether to be insulted or concerned for the Legate’s sanity.

”Every move that man makes has a meaning,” Asag continued, his voice dropping into a tone of entire seriousness. He stared at Nibadur with the eyes of a man who had looked death in the face so many times they were practically on a first-name basis. ”It’s like the most basic cloth hiding a chest of gold for those who dare look beyond what’s in front of them. He wasn’t just being vulgar, Your Grace. He was telling me exactly the most important lesson of my life. And I swept it away with a laugh. Shame on me for that.

But perhaps I finally beheld it. Yes I do. I can finally see what he tried to impart on me...”

Asag leaned forward, his sorrel stallion shifting its weight as the Legate’s granite face loomed closer to the golden lords.

His face being that of someone who at the end of time , finally received the answer for the darkest doubt that had seeped in his mind, and was now fighting on wherever to relieve himself of the urge to spread its magnificence.