Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

The word hammered in his head, keeping time with the relentless tapping of the rain. It whispered through the canopy of the great oak, a cold, insistent drizzle that soaked through his woolen cloak until the fabric felt like a sheet of lead against his spine. He pressed his back into the rough, grooved bark of the trunk, seeking any sliver of sanctuary the ancient tree might offer against the wind.

He shivered.

If he were a knight of substance, a man with a name that carried weight in the gilded halls of the South, he would be dry. He would be sitting within the high, silk-lined walls of a pavilion, watching the rain through a silver goblet of spiced wine while a squire oiled his plate and sharpened his steel.

But he was none of those things. He was not rich, he was not known, and he had no experience beyond the ache in his belly and the weight of a sword he barely knew how to wield.

His father never trained him much...

That was dumb, even for a boy like him. And yet, what other path was there for the son of a man whose only legacy was a collection of tall tales and a bitter tongue?

His father had been a creature of the lists in his youth. He would talk for hours about the Great Tourney of Ozenia for the Prince’s eldest, a sixteenth birthday that had supposedly made them rich for a decade.

His father claimed to have unhorsed two knights and a local lord, pocketing ransoms that should have lasted a lifetime. Or so he was told.

But that was a story of a younger man, leaner, faster, and possessed of a heart that hadn’t yet been pickled in cheap ale.

At the tourney the prince of Kakunia launched four years ago when his eldedst came of age, the reality had caught up with the myth. His father had been older, fatter, and slow. He was unhorsed at the second lance, the impact sounding like a crate of dry wood splintering. To keep his horse and his mail that was not yet rusted, his father had been forced to sign away the last of the silver from that legendary ransom.

”Silver can be earned back, boy,” his father had rasped that night as they shivered on a single rug outside a common tavern Vilon would have loved to sleep in. ”But the horse and the armor, that’s what makes us knights. It’s worth more than honor, because once it’s gone, you’re just another peasant in the mud. We’ll make it right at the next one.”

But the next one never came. Two years passed and on the third, finally a passing sickness claimed the old man.

His father had sold their rugs and his son’s only cloak to pay a doctor who brought nothing but empty prayers and a flagon of some medical wine of some kind.

Some days he thought of that doctor and wondered if he just pissed on that flagon and made way with thier money.

When the end came, he didn’t even have a shovel to dig a proper grave or an axe to fell the wood for a pyre. He had simply piled grey stones over the body, one by one, until the crows stopped circling.

He made some prayers and left ignoring how half a foot still stuck from the rocks , as there were no more to take.

His inheritance was a meager thing: a tired, aging destrier, a sword with a notched edge, and a set of mail that shed flakes of rust every time he moved. And the boots, he’d taken his father’s boots. They didn’t fit; his feet were larger, a trait he must have inherited from the mother he never knew.

”She was a whore,” his father used to say when the ale made him cruel and he had dared ask of her. ”Cost me three bronzii for the lay. Looking at how much you eat, I should have asked for a silverii back. You’re probably not even mine, just some other bastard’s mistake I’m stuck feeding.I am the one she pointed from a dozens” Then he’d usually threaten to kick his teeth in if the horse wasn’t groomed.

Was he a bastard? Maybe.

But his father had kept him. He had dragged him across half the principalities, sharing his bread and his beatings. He had the same matted brown hair, the same blunt jaw, or at least it seemed so as the mirrored image of rivers and lake were hard to gaze at properly.

He shivered under the oak, the rusted mail clinking softly. He was a knight of nowhere, a ghost in a dead man’s boots, waiting for a war he didn’t understand but hoped to give him a reason to exist.

He was dumb. He knew it. His father had been many things,bitter, drunk, and cruel, but he hadn’t been dumb. Only a fool would do what he was doing now: tramping across the rain-slicked belly of Kakunia to offer a notched sword to a man the high lords called a rebel.

Did that make him treacherous? The priests said bastards were accursed in the blood, born of raw lust rather than holy vows. If he were the son of a whore, that made him a double-distilled mistake. Maybe the treachery was just in the marrow of his bones.

But his father had once spoken well of the Rebel’s father.

He hoped to now serve the son, Merelao...He repeated the name in his head, a mantra to ensure he didn’t accidentally call the man a traitor to his face; that would make for a short career and a long hanging.

His father had fought beside the lord’s father in some battle, a famous one of some kind, but which he did not recall the name.

He earned a scar on his shoulder and enough looted silver to keep him fed for five years, perhaps it was from that money that he was born.

Whatever the case his father had called the old lord a ”man of the true sort.”

And now, the son had called for all true knights and men of spirit to answer the call of blood against a thieving uncle. Right of blood. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant for a prince, but if his father had bled for the sire, it felt right that the son should serve the heir.

Perhaps he would be fed.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

The rain kept whispering its mockery. He was a knight with no armor. He had sold the rusty mail for bread and oats weeks ago, and now his entire fortune sat in a damp leather pouch. He reached in, his fingers numb as they counted the coins.

Seven bronzii.

If Lord Merelao didn’t take him, he wouldn’t even have enough to buy a rope to hang himself.

Well at least he had a fire.

Provided it was a small one, going beneath the oak, a pathetic, flickering thing that struggled against the damp, but it wouldn’t last.

The wood around him was sodden, and the oak’s branches were far too high for him to snap. He huddled closer, praying for sleep to take him before the warmth vanished entirely.

Then, through the rhythmic patter of the rain, came a sound that wasn’t water.

He was on his feet in a heartbeat, he knew the roads were loose with bandits and he had no intention of getting robbed of the little he had.

With his heart drumming he fumbled for the hilt of his sword,his finger played with the hilt far more than Vilon would have liked, hoped and prayed for, before finally the steel begun rasping against the leather scabbard.

The blade was dark, lacking the gleam of high-born steel, but it was sharp enough to cut through grass, hopefully flesh wasn’t much stronger than that.

”Who’s there?” he shouted, his voice cracking slightly before he steadied it.

Darkness pressed in from all sides, the firelight only reaching a few feet into the gloom. The whistling stopped, replaced by the heavy, rhythmic squelch of boots in the mud. One man? Three? He couldn’t tell. The rain blurred the world into a grey smudge.

He started counting his heartbeat. One.Two.Three.

”Show yourself!” he barked, stepping away from the fire so he wouldn’t be a backlit target. He gripped the hilt with both hands, the cold rain slicking the leather. ”I said, who is it? Answer, or I’ll gut you where you stand!”

Whatever or whoever it was, the footsteps didn’t falter. They kept a steady, rhythmic pace, squelching through the muck as they breached the flickering circle of his firelight.

Vilon’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. His knuckles went white on the hilt of his sword as a shadow detached itself from the gloom.

”That is quite the welcome for a lady of my years,” a voice rasped. It was a rough, ancient sound, seemingly older than his old destriel and twice as weathered. He heard the wet, rhythmic smack of lips without teeth.

The shadow resolved into a person. It truly was an old woman.

”I...” Vilon lowered his blade an inch, his eyes darting into the darkness behind her to ensure she wasn’t the bait for a dozen daggers. When he made sure she was not he continued ”I apologize. It is dark, and I feared bandits.The roads are pulling with those, lots of bad armed men around.”

”There are many bad men in the night, that is true,” she said, her voice like grinding gravel. ”But there is no evil in this one. Just an old woman seeking a spark.”

”You could be an evil old woman,”

”There are no evil old women! That is a known thing fool!”

”Wh-You. I am no fool!” he snapped. He was dumb, yes, but she didn’t need to know that. ”And yet, you cannot speak to me in such a way. You are here to ask for my fire, are you not? Perhaps I should refuse you for your sharp tongue!Is that anyway to ask for kindness?”

”Oh? You would deny an old woman warmth?” She spoke with a gravity that made his face flush with shame. ”Perhaps I was wrong and there truly is evil in this dark after all.”

Vilon winced.What he was doing?She was just an old woman?

”I apologize... you may take shelter. That was ill-said.”

”Apology accepted, young man.’’ She said with a sigh ’’ And who might you be, to take such offense at an old woman’s chatter?”

As she shuffled closer to the flames, the light finally caught her face. She was old, far older than her voice had suggested, and her temples were wrapped in a thick, tattered bandage that covered her eyes, he realised only then when she moved into the light.

She went with a strange, eerie confidence for someone who could not see.

Why was she alone? Where was her kin? A thousand questions bubbled in his throat, but he felt the need to establish himself first. He straightened his back, which was kind of useless giving the lack of sight but still trying to look the part of a man with a legacy.

”I’ll have you know I have the honor of being a knight. I am Vil—Ser Vilon, son of Ser Avan of Tall Roast!”

The woman didn’t move, but the air around the fire seemed to grow colder. She may have been blind, but by the Five, it felt as though she looked right through his skin and into his hollow pockets.

”You are no knight,” she said. Her voice was flat, dead, and utterly certain. Ice crept down Vilon’s spine. ”There are no true knights anymore, didn’t you know boy?Greed and Vices took old of what was once good. Only false ones and ghosts now linger on.’’ She smacked her lips together’’ Do not call yourself a knight, boy. You’d be better off telling me you were a potato.They at least serve something and feed the hungry.”

Vilon opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off with a wave of a gnarled hand.

”But you are not a potato either. You are just a cold boy in a cold night, with naught for company but a starving horse and a poor, blind woman. Who is also hungry... have I mentioned that? So hungry she would make nice with anything you have to spare.”