Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The reins of his old stallion were slick with sweat as Vilon handed them to a stable boy in the sprawling Yarzat-Kakunian camp. He didn’t let the lad lead the beast away until old Chestnut had received his due, a handful of bruised apples, a scoop of dry oats, and a few whispered promises accompanied by a heavy pat on the neck.

The old man was as stubborn as a mountain mule and twice as willful as a boy in a growth spurt, but he was the only family Vilon had left in a world that seemed to have no place for him yet. With a small ribbon bearing a scrap of parchment tied to the horse’s mane to mark him, Vilon finally turned to walk the camp, his boots sinking into the mud.

This was the farthest he had ever traveled from the rolling hills of his youth. His father had been a man of Ezvania who migrated to Kakunia dreaming of tourney gold and silk favors.

He had hit it big once, or so the story went, before a streak of losses and the bottom of a wine flagon had swallowed his purse whole. Somewhere along that dusty road, he’d picked up a bastard son from a tavern girl who had pointed him out from a crowd of dozens, each one his father, or so he said.

His father said a lot of things.

”You were a mistake I decided to keep,” was the one he would usually go with, most often followed by a clout to the ear that made Vilon’s head ring. Yet, for all his faults, the old man hadn’t abandoned him.

They had made a nest of sorts in Kakunia, living the life of wandering masterless knights , the kind of men who were often little better than bandits, though his father had never quite stooped to thievery. He had been fair with his beatings and kinder than most with his silence, often just patting Vilon’s head with a heavy sigh and asking, ”What can be done?”

Now his father was under the earth for the worms, and old Chestnut was the only legacy Vilon carried.He should have said some words for the old man when he went from the pox, but he did not know any.

So he could only turn to the Weaver and make a pray for a tear.That must have been ill-done, or he must have said a wrong prayer, because next he knew. He had the pox too.

Luckily it did not claim him, and from the looks of it he was not left scarred. It did not last very long besides, after a night’s rest he was as good as new.

Life in the Prince’s army was a relentless cycle of marching until the sun died, then scrambling to strike camp. Vilon, who now donned a suit of mail thanks to the Prince’s sudden generosity, was still not well-off enough for a tent. He slept on the hard ground or beneath the low branches of trees, wrapped in a cloak that smelled of wet wool and woodsmoke.

It was a state of affairs that made him a pariah. The other wandering knights, men who had come with perhaps a squire and canvas shelters, looked at him as if he were a stray dog that had wandered into a banquet hall. They were not ”true” knights, Vilon decided; they were neither fair nor kind.

The cruelty had started on his second night.

Two knights in fine mail and polished plate had approached him, Ser Harys of LostHill and Ser Maleor MerryWater. Harys was a square-chinned man with a mop of brown hair that fell into his eyes, the third son of some minor landed knight in the Kakunian hills. Maleor was different; he belonged to a clan that had originally drawn steel for the Lord of Postelbia to take Merelao’s head, only to pivot and march under the Bull’s banner when the wind changed for his lordship.

Turncoats are a dime a dozen in this camp, Vilon thought, but he kept his mouth shut. He was hungry, and they were offering him a place by their fire.

They had shared meat and bread amongst themselves, laughing loudly as they tossed Vilon the side-dish of turnips. Being a large man who ”ate for two,” as his father had always complained, Vilon had accepted them with a wide, grateful smile. They weren’t good, and they weren’t bad, but they were free.

”He likes them!” Harys had roared, slapping his knee. ”Look at the way he worries at them!”

Maleor had chuckled, leaning back. ”Have another, then. We wouldn’t want a warrior of your... stature... to go faint. when blood flows down.

Vilon had eaten his fill, oblivious to the edges of their humor. It was only the next morning that the whispers reached him. He had been dubbed ”The Turnip Knight” by every man with a horse and a plate. Apparently, turnips were the food of peasants and swine, not men of the sword.

It was such a stupid thing. He decided.Were they not men too? Did their stomachs have different laws than his? Would they catch the pox if they touched a root vegetable?He had got the pox once, but it was not because he ate a cabbage or a carrot.

The next time he had passed Ser Harys on the camp road, he had raised a hand in greeting. Harys hadn’t even looked at him, snubbing him away with a flick of his wrist as if Vilon were a mangy cur searching for scraps in the dirt. Maleor had simply laughed, a high, mocking sound that followed Vilon through the camp.

He walked alone now, his mail heavy on his shoulders. He was a knight of the Prince, or so some said, but in the eyes of the camp, he was just a peasant with a stomach full of peasant food and a horse too old to gallop, that should have been not saddled but given a plow for peasant’s work.

”The beast will die as soon as its hooves touch the mud,” Ser MerryWater had sneered last they met.

That, he believed, was ill done. Why would they be so cruel to a comrade-in-arms? Ser Harys had been anointed with the five oils by a priest . How could a man blessed be so unchivalrous? Vilon could not understand it. Truth be told, there were many things he did not understand. Apparently, they were allies with the Yarzats, yet they held each other in such ill favor that brawls broke out whenever their paths crossed.

Most of the time it was just a matter of bloodied noses and bruised ribs, but once, two knights had drawn steel. They had both been hanged before the sun set. Since then, the punches had grown fewer, replaced by venomous glares and spat curses.

Though they were as distant as they could be between them, there were still time where they would meet each other.

Tired of the stifling air of the camp, Vilon had set his feet toward the periphery. He followed the line of tents belonging to those sworn to the lord of the southeast,there weren’t man, as they were the smallest in the camp,they were men from a land of hills and deep timber where life was measured in sheep and pelts.

The field beyond the camp was a queer thing too. It was not yet filled with men of steel, so it remained... normal? That perhaps was the best word to describe it.

It was a nice place, though ”nice” felt like a poor word for a patch of earth where thousands were preparing to murder one another.

The land was a vast, unbroken plain, as flat as a tabletop. There wasn’t so much as a mound or a hillock to break the horizon, making the sky feel unnervingly large.It was the perfect place of a charge, that he knew. The only feature of note was the river, a ribbon of cold water eight men wide and All-Knower knew how many deep. Along its banks, thick, emerald grass sprouted high, reaching all the way to a man’s thighs, swaying in the wind like a silent congregation for mess.He had gone twice or thrice to mess, but it was such a tiring affair.

’’You are a bastard, so you ought to be more pious than you can already are’’ his father had said that when they had stopped on a village to pray on the temple.

Bastards were born of lust, and were evil of nature, that was well known.

A single bridge, narrow and weathered, was the only thing that allowed passage from one side of the bank to the other. It looked small and fragile against the immense emptiness of the fields.

Despite the coming war, the river was alive. Vilon watched as men from the lower ranks waded into the shallows with nets, hoping to supplement their meager rations. He had once stopped to help a group of them haul in a heavy catch, his large frame making easy work of the water-logged netting. In exchange, they had given him a fat, silver-scaled fish.

That was a such nice thing of them.

He had boiled it over a small fire and eaten it with a quiet sort of peace, the taste of the river was surprisingly good.It was soft and had a squashy taste at it.

He stood by the bank now, watching the water flow toward Oizen, wondering if the fish knew that the grass would soon be stained a color much darker than green.

It wasn’t that the field was queer, it was beautiful and nice as many other he had sighed, what was instead queer was what they were doing to it...as from the looks of it it seemed as if they wanted to toil.

And so he stood there looking at all of them working and yet, the All-knower would not bless him with an answer.