Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Had the Prince of Yarzat not been sitting directly across the table, Alpheo was certain the young couple would have ventured even further into their indiscretions. They were bold enough to slip away in the middle of the feast, returning hours later with ragged breath and hair that told a tale of passion rather than pageantry.

It was an awkward sight at a banquet held in Merelao’s honor, but passion is a difficult fire to douse, and who in the camp was brave enough to voice a complaint?

Alpheo himself felt the sting of it. He missed his wife with a hollow ache that grew sharper in the frost of late October. Every morning he woke to an empty bed, a cold pang of ”nothing” settling in his chest where her warmth should have been.

But he was at war, and husband missing wife were probably the warmest of preoccupations.

The first few days of the Kakunian arrival had passed with surprising grace. No one had put a dirk in a neighbor’s gut, and the banquets had been merry enough, disheveled lovers notwithstanding. Merelao had spent his afternoons trading blows with the halberdiers of the Third with immense gusto, even admitting by the fire on the first night that he finally understood why the League hadn’t managed to budge Yarzat’s border by so much as an inch.

Everything was optimal. And then, as it always does when men of ambition break bread, it went wrong.

”I hunger for more than food tonight. I want the truth.”

The guest of honor spoke those words on the third evening. Why it had taken him three days to find his voice was a mystery, perhaps the wine and the Lady Ellania had successfully fogged his mind, or perhaps he had simply been waiting for the right moment to let his suspicions float to the surface like a corpse in a still lake.

”I was promised a bastard, and I have yet to receive him,” Merelao said. His voice lacked the heat of anger, but it possessed the cold, unyielding firmness of the Bastion’s own walls.

The cup of cider offered to him sat untouched on the trestle table. Even Ellania, usually a permanent fixture at his side, was nowhere to be seen. Merelao would not be distracted tonight; of that, Alpheo was certain.

Still it was due to come.

”You were promised the boy in the event of his capture,” Alpheo replied, his voice a totem of calm, wounded innocence. ”And we would have gladly transferred him into your custody. But I cannot give you what I bloody well don’t have, can I?And I find the tone in which you are speaking as if you are meaning something that could be misunderstood.”

Truth was a relative thing, and at this table tonight, there would be only lies. Alpheo had to play the part of the falsely accused ally, a man whose honor had been pricked by a preposterous suggestion.

Many told him he was a good liar.He hoped good would be enough.

”I have shown you only honesty,” Merelao countered, leaning forward until the candlelight danced in his golden eyes. ”When a host of twelve thousand was at your doorstep, I rose and cut the throat of their supply lines at Ricorum. My dear caretaker warned me many times that you were a snake who would eventually bite the hand that fed it. Perhaps I am only now seeing the wisdom in his words. A lesson well-earned is one that hurts, I suppose.”

Alpheo didn’t flinch. He had to admit, Merelao had been a stellar ally. But Alpheo had no intention of handing over a bargaining chip as valuable as the Big Bull’s son until the final blow was struck.

”And when you took the field at Ricorum, I sent my own warriors to halve the host your uncle sent against you,” Alpheo reminded him. He had drilled the Hounds in a common story; if questioned, they were to hold the line with a unified lie. ”I was told you faced a thousand men? You would have faced two, had my leal riders not shredded your uncle’s rear and dismantled his reserves before they could reach you.”

Merelao lounged back in his chair, the golden bull on his breastplate appearing to mock the room. He didn’t know the truth, not for certain. He had suspicions, but in the game of kings, a suspicion without proof is just a ghost or the truth only based on might and prestige.

If a king suspected something that it was the truth.

Alpheo needed the Kakunian’s swords for the march on Diroli; he had to turn those suspicions back into doubts.

”I am thankful enough for that, I suppose,” Merelao said with a dismissive wave. ”It would have been a tiresome labor to face such a force, though the glory would have been twofold. Perhaps then I would have two thousand riders following me now instead of one.”

He paused, his gaze turning razor-sharp. ”For a month, we heard no news of my dearest cousin. Not a whisper of the Bastard. And then, suddenly, he pops up at his father’s doorstep as if he had simply gone for a pleasant afternoon stroll in the middle of a war that has set half the continent on fire. A bit convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

The accusation didn’t budge the Prince. Alpheo sat like a gargoyle carved from the very cliffs of the Bastion, his expression as cold and immovable as the stone.

”When Lord Rykio and his Hounds fell upon their rear, they went several men deep,” Alpheo said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register. ”For every man who wept upon that grass, two more let out a roar as they buried their axes in breast, neck, and skull. The League’s lines didn’t just break; they shattered. They fled in every direction, Merelao. If you must know, we lost sight of the Bastard in the chaos. The Gods can attest to my truth, the boy likely ditched his armor to run faster.”

Alpheo allowed his brow to furrow, his jaw tightening until the muscles bunched. It was a masterpiece of controlled indignation. ”Not even you could have done better. I am thankful for what you’ve contributed to this cause, but I will not sit here and let you diminish the blood my men spilled for yours. I never had your cousin. If I did, why in the five hells would I have kept him from you?”

Merelao, didn’t look convinced. He merely shrugged, a lazy, feline movement that belied the whole turmoil inside him. ”If I were a betting man, which I am, for I bet my entire life first on you and then on the fields outside my city, I would say the Habadian Prince retiring from the fray had something to do with that decision.”

Can he damn read minds, Alpheo reflected a bit anxious.

”What does the Dog of Habadia care for the Bastard?” Alpheo barked.

”His daughter is betrothed to the boy.”

”And he, just like your uncle, is my enemy!” Alpheo struck the table, the wood groaning. ”The Habadian Prince retreated because you cut his throat by taking Ricorum. He depended on the Crownless Prince’s stores, and we turned those stores to ash. My Legate of the First smashed the host the League left behind in Oizen, dismantling their ranks and burning the grain meant to sustain a month-long siege.”

The story was ironclad. Alpheo knew Merelao was a lord of limited reach; he lacked the sprawling web of whispers required to verify the movements of three different armies in a dozen different provinces. He had no way to compare Alpheo’s words with the messy reality of the front.

”All they faced was starvation,” Alpheo continued, his voice rising with a rehearsed fury. ”The Habadian did the only thing he could, he whimpered back home. Why would I waste the chance to bring all of Kakunia to my side? If your cousin were in your hands, the entire Principality would have fallen to you. The Big Bull’s only strength is the loyalty his son inspires. Without the Bastard, the old man is just a fat ghost with no heir. Had Kakunia fallen to me, we could have cut off the Habadian escape and ended this war tonight. Trust me, my dear ally, if I had the Bastard, I would have taken his head myself just to see you smile.”

He leaned back, eyes narrowed, letting the silence simmer. ”While we favor having the Bull of Kakunia marching with the Falcon, I will only have an ally I can trust, one who won’t turn on me based on a bed of lies and suspicions. If you doubt my word, you are free to march your army wherever you wish. Go. Leave.

But know this: when the tales of Sorza’s defeat reach Southern ears, they won’t remember your ’suspicions.’ They will only remember that the Bull sent his army away before the blood was dry. The Gods will know the truth, perhaps, but the world will only hear whispers of failed courage and a future Prince who ran when the steel grew hot.And besides would you really do such a thing?Will you really turn your back to such a breathtaking moment?” he tillted his head.

He would make no excuses, no apologies , nor mistakes. Merelao knew and no word could change that fact. So he would use another bait.

’’But I think you will not ride on, curiosity will be a noose to tight to ignore. You’ll want to know, I suppose, how it will be to stand on that impossible field that should never have happened. Two armies that may be three that should never face each other.

So many impossibilities becoming truth.How dreadful a thing it must be to witness with only the words of others.

This war was fought with the belief that it would be a march upon my land and now it shall be dictated by the most important battle the South shall ever see. Will you really turn your back at this pivital moment?’’ Alpheo replied in his stead ’’No you won’t, because you cannot allow yourself to be forgotten, your previous words my lord, you will want to stand there, sword red and to see what beauty can come from men. This is who you are.

So do ride with me and see at last what should never have happened materialise ahead of your own eyes.’’

For a long time the tent went still, and both men could feel the chill in the air.

When Merelao finally spoke, his voice wasn’t the boisterous roar of the Bull or the melodic lilt of the lover. It was a flat, dead thing, as cold as a mountain pass in midwinter.

”I see.”

And both men , who both knew the truth of the matter, and yet strove for different one looked at each other.

Merelao saw in the counterpart, the snake Varo claimed he was.

And Alpheo, in turn, looked at the Kakunian and saw the inevitable birth of his next enemy.

But for now?They would be marching together, bull and falcon , side by side by hoove and wing.