Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The Prince held his son’s gaze for a long moment, his weathered, brown eyes searching the deep emerald ones the boy had inherited from his mother. The wind died down, leaving the ridge in a sudden, expectant stillness, broken only by the rhythmic shifting of the horses’ weight.

A long sigh oozed out of Alpheo, sounding like a slow leak in a bellows.

”Half right,” he muttered, the words like dry gravel. ”You were half right. But the fact is, the primary goal was not simply to dislodge the war toward Kakunia. As fortunate as that outcome is, the damage we sustained here is a trifle compared to the war of nine years ago.

Back then, the south was in flames and the north was a hornet’s nest of rebellion. That took years to stabilize. Now? We merely had to toss a few bags of gold to Lord Damaris to keep his loyalty. These lands are his, not mine. What true care have I if his peasants’ thatch is scorched?”

Basil felt a cold prickle of disappointment settle in his chest. Aren’t these our people too? he wondered. Even if Damaris held the deed, they were still sworn to the Falcon of Yarzat. He looked down at his horse’s mane, wondering if this was the ”adolescent bashfulness” his father often mocked, a naive belief in the sanctity of every thatched roof that bowed to them.

His sorrel sensed the dip in his mood, tossing its head and blowing a wet snort into the autumn air. Alpheo, however, missed the boy’s turmoil entirely. He ducked under a particularly low-hanging branch, the leaves brushing against his black pauldrons with a dry, papery rasp, before popping his head back up.

”The truth is, I don’t trust Merelao,” Alpheo said suddenly, his voice taking on a sharper edge.

”You don’t?” Basil asked, blinking.

”Why would I? The man is a weather-vane in a hurricane.”

”Well... it’s just that he delivered his dues during the siege. I thought we owed him a measure of honesty afterward. Won’t he be enraged to find he’s been swindled?”

”Officially? We never found the bastard boy,” Alpheo said with a casual shrug of his armored shoulders. His warhorse, not the pure white one he used for parades but a massive beast of soot-grey, stepped over a fallen log with practiced ease. ”As far as Merelao will know, which is to say, what we choose to tell him, Latio escaped the ambush and is yet to be found. Lucius has already ’convinced’ the lad of that story too. It would be a stain on the boy’s honor to have it known he spent his captivity drinking piss, after all.”

”Piss?”

”A detail you needn’t dwell on. The point is, the truth is a luxury the Kakunians cannot afford, so no harm in making use of lies.”

”Won’t he suspect?” Basil pressed, his horse trotting to keep pace with his father’s larger stride. ”Ser Latio had an army at his back when he was taken. Someone must have seen what happened.”

”An army that has been... taken care of” Alpheo snorted, a sharp sound that punctuated the clip-clop of hooves. He reached up and wiped a fleck of grime from his nostril. ”Provided a few stragglers make it back, they will only whisper. And even if Merelao suspects, he will be so desperate for our support to keep his rebellion that he won’t dare pursue the matter.

A man with a knife at his throat doesn’t complain about the dirty nail of the hands that rescued him from the blade.”

”I see...” Basil muttered. Beneath him, his sorrel snorted again, a soft, vibrating sound as if the animal were sharing its rider’s unease.

”Is that disappointment I hear?”

”No! Well... a bit,” Basil admitted, looking up. ”It feels like we’ve pulled a fast one on a man who stood by us. It feels... small.”

Alpheo pulled his horse to a sudden, jarring halt. The great beast stamped a heavy hoof into the muck, sending a spray of black mud onto Basil’s stirrup. The Prince leaned over, his face a mask of hard, unforgiving lines.

”Have you already forgotten what I told you? All men are prone to lies, Basil. This was merely our turn to speak them. Did you think statecraft was a game of temple-vows and handshakes? Every accord is a temporary arrangement until it becomes more useful to break it.”

He pointed a gauntleted finger toward the horizon, where the smoke of the retreating army still hung like a shroud.

”Expect betrayal at every turn, from the prince in his tower to the stable-boy at your heels. This time, it was simply more useful to keep the boy as a leash for the future than to hand him over for a ’thank you’ from a lunatic. If you cannot learn to stomach the taste of a necessary lie, you will find the crown far too heavy for your head.”

”Yes, Father...”

”Moreover, the man is not a trusthworty ally,” Alpheo continued,”I trust a madman even less than I trust a sane enemy, for you cannot really deduce what his next move is.

If we had kept our word, the Kakunian lords would have flocked to Merelao’s side, ending their civil war before the first frost. And then what? Once he has his throne, what do we have left to offer him? What stops him from doing exactly what his uncle did?Clasping hands with Habadia to secure his own borders? Only a foolish sheep gives the butcher a sharp blade because he promised to trim the grass. You should not be surprised by what the butcher cuts next.”

The logic felt eerily, uncomfortably right. Basil looked at the muddy hooves of his horse.

There was truly nothing binding Merelao to them once the immediate threat vanished. If the Kakunians turned, Yarzat would be right back where they started: alone, with half the South marching toward their throat. Plus, even from a distance, Merelao had proven himself to be an eccentric, unpredictable dick.

His father was right, he was still too green...

”Remember this for the next time you strike an alliance: always keep chips on your side of the table to ensure your ’friend’ doesn’t find a better offer. I had an accord with the Prince of Shaaza once, and look where that got us.” Alpheo sighed through his nose, a sound of weary experience. ”A prince must be able to use a multitude of tools, the sword, the word, and the shadow. What we obtained today?” He smirked, a rare flash of genuine satisfaction crossing his face. ”That came from the shadow. These ’Leagues’ they boast of? They are made of glass and ego. They were prone to infighting from the moment the first tent is pitched.”

He reached over and gave Basil a private smile, followed by a heavy, affectionate pat on the shoulder that rattled the boy’s mail.

”Nonetheless, you did well today. I think you deserve a reward.” Alpheo reached into his leather saddle-pouch and withdrew a bright, plump orange. ”We left in such a hurry there was no time for breakfast. Here, eat, you need to grow else you’ll be as short as me....”

He tossed the fruit to Basil, who caught it with a start, dazed by the sudden shift from cold pragmatism to fatherly care. Alpheo pulled out a second orange for himself and began to skillfully skim away the thick, oily skin with his thumbnail. Both of them shared a deep, hereditary fondness for said fruit.

”Did you do something about that too, Father?” Basil asked, mirroring his father’s movements as he peeled his fruit. ”The infighting, I mean. It sounded as though you knew exactly where the cracks were.”

”I was waiting for you to ask,” Alpheo admitted. The harshness had evaporated from his tone, replaced by the quiet pride of a master craftsman explaining a difficult weld. He didn’t mind that his son had caught him in a deception; he wanted the boy to understand that sometimes one had to walk the barren road to reach the garden.

”You see, twelve thousand spears is an impressive sight, enough to make any man’s knees go weak. But an army that large comes with pre-built frictions. It is four princes’ egos crammed into one camp. All one needs to do to fray the ropes is pull a little.”

He popped a slice of orange into his mouth, the bright juice glistening on his lip as he chewed.

”There is... mh...” He swallowed, a small chuckle escaping him. ”The Lord of Diroli. A man named Marsh, or Mars, I forget which. He is a terminal womanizer who insisted on bringing his paramour to a siege.

Mind you, Basil, never trust a man who spends his days in bed while his levies die in the mud. Anyway, this woman always wore a very specific red silk cloth in her hair. A pretty little thing be it the cloth or the woman.”

Alpheo took another bite, the sweet aroma of the fruit mixing with the smell of damp earth. ”One morning, that cloth disappeared from her head. By evening, it appeared on the arm of a another lord, found tucked into his bed alongside a letter ’penned’ by a lover back home who tenderly asked to use it as a token of luck.’’ he gave a jolly laugh at that.

’’You can imagine the result. A duel at dawn. It ended at first blood, but the damage was done. The camp split into factions over a piece of silk.Then you put some small discrepancies over the way and you get lords having a feud with each other”

He glanced at Basil, whose eyes were wide and sparkling with a mix of horror and fascination. ”How did you know all of that? How did you even get the cloth?”

”Let us just say that dear Lucius is a master weaver of a different sort,” Alpheo said, his smirk widening. ”He has a mind for the small, ugly details that break great men. I pay him well to put such evil notions into my head.”

Alpheo finished his orange and used the back of his hand to wipe a stray drop of juice from his blackened breastplate.

”A prince must use many tools, Basil,” he said, leaning over to roughly scurry his son’s hair, unbalancing the boy’s black mat of hair. ” Clean hands Basil. Whatever you do always make sure you have clean hands”