Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Basil did not recall climbing down from his horse. Perhaps he had been hauled from the saddle by Asag, or perhaps he had simply lost his grip on reality and slipped into the mud.

He stared down at the clear, rushing water of the swerves. Before him lay the small, hidden pontoon bridge, a thing of hay and lashed timber that skipped from one bank to the other like a secret kept from the world.

His father had publicly put the great wooden bridge to the torch in a display of iron-willed defiance, yet he had tucked this coward’s path away for his son and his lords, should the world turn cold.

And the world had turned very cold indeed.

So why was he drifting toward the safety of the far bank, while his father remained pinned to the red earth of the Lampianis? The dream came unbidden, a dark tide rising in the back of his mind. He saw the iron crown descending, its edges pressing into his brow. He heard the roar of a crowd chanting a name that was not yet his. He felt his mother’s hands, firm and trembling, holding him down upon a throne that still smelled of his father’s silk and sweat, until he bled there.

In the heart of his father’s dream.

For a time, he had seduced himself with the comfort of denial. It is only a dream, he had whispered to the wind. Father is alive. The war is a dance we are winning. But the sun was setting on such lies. It is the only truth of life, the only truth of human, they burn , they live, they eat, they fuck and then die.

Nothing but a speck of dust blown by wind.

He was not ready for the weight of it. He was not ready for the silence that follows a giant’s fall.Too big an hold to fill that one.

As he crossed the water, the two men he had ridden with followed close behind, their horses’ hooves muffled by the hay. A single glance at their faces confirmed his own terror, yet as he raised his eyes to the Legate, the fear found no purchase.

Asag did not look like a man fleeing a slaughter. He didn’t even look anxious. He sat his horse with a chilling indifference, as if he lacked even the curiosity to wonder how many of his men were being butchered behind them.

He had stopped limping weeks ago, the stick he once leaned on discarded. His injured arm remained tucked into its sleeve, but the ghastly purple hue of the rot had vanished long ago. It wasn’t even bandaged anymore, the wound had closed, even if the man inside had not.

Basil’s mind drifted to the stories of Aracina. They said when his father had slain the late Prince of Oizen, the man’s face had been so mangled they had to fit him with a clay mask painted a mocking shade of pink.

Would he see his father that way the next time they met? Would that warm, calloused hand be cold and stiff, the skin devoid of the luster that usually accompanied his laugh? Would he be a thing of clay and silence instead of a man of fire and gold?A shade?An echo?

He shouldn’t have been brought away. If he had stayed on the field, the dream could not have come true, for he would have stood where his father stood. His father should not have sent him away, and the Legate should not have obeyed so quickly.

”Fath—” Basil began, his voice cracking, but the word was cut down before it could breathe.

”I will hear no more,” the Legate barked, his voice bullying and cold. ”It was your father’s decision. You have already cost me enough time and trouble today. Sit still.”

Basil noticed the guards watching them, shadows in white armor that he couldn’t bear to recognize. He couldn’t bring himself to care about their names or their stares. All that mattered was the smoke rising from the horizon behind them.

”You shouldn’t have left him,” Basil said, his voice hardening, uncaring of whatever punishment his uncle might threaten. What were a few slaps or a harsh tongue compared to a murdered father? ”You left him alone in that field.”

Asag’s jaw tightened. ”Is that how we’re doing this? The spoiled brat who cannot accept that some things are simply beyond his reach?Death reaches for us all, and we are powerless to stop it. Stop being such a brat, if worst come to pass long will be the walk.”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know about the iron crown or the red throne in Basil’s dreams. Even if Basil told him, the Legate was a man that didn’t put stocks in such things; he wouldn’t believe in the whispers of a child’s mind.

”I may be a brat,” Basil spat, using the only weapon he had left: shame. ”But you were his friend. His Legate. How could you desert him when he needed you most?”

The effect was instantaneous. For the first time, the impassive mask cracked. It was a queer sight, a man who had stood unshaken against half the armies of the South was suddenly rattled by a boy’s accusation.

”Do you not see the state of me?” Asag asked, his voice thick with a resentment that mirrored Basil’s own. ”I could offer him no service with a sword. I could not stand in the mud and hold a line. I advised him until my tongue was dry. He could have left the command to me while he went to play hero in the fray, but what command was there to hold? Every reserve was spent. Whether the lines hold or break is now in the hands of who knows what, not mine.”

He turned his head and spat into the weeds. ”The best service I could provide was to carry his heir to safety. You shouldn’t even have been on that field to begin with.Your father was right, you were not ready.”

”Who cares about that? Everything is lost if Father dies!” Basil screamed.

”Nothing is lost!” Asag turned on him, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp anger. ”And your father won’t die.But if he will ,we shall live on. We shall live with the fallen, build after what they have lost!”

How could he say that? Basil wondered. How could a man so experienced in the trade of war be so blind to the reach of a stray blade?Death was but a blind scissor that went snap-snap to whoever it cared to cut.

”If you believe that, you’re a fool!” Basil cried. ”The bridges are ash. If the Legions break, there is no retreat. He will be for the worms, and with him, every dream he built. Our future dies with him!”

”You know nothing,” Asag growled.

”I know he was the only thing holding this together! Without him, we are nothing!”

”You fool!” Asag’s voice rose to meet the boy’s. ”Do you truly think your father missed that fact? Do you think he’s a man who leaves his life to chance?”

Basil went still, the confusion dulling his rage.

”Your father had plans in tow for this exact eventuality,” Asag said, his voice dropping into a low rasp. ”He knew better than anyone how precarious the dream was. He isn’t a fool. He needed someone to execute those plans, someone he could trust with the aftermath. I liked running from that field no more than you, but as things stood, I was the only person left he could trust with that future. Moreover...” He paused, his eyes narrowing as they settled on the boy. ”Things are not as bleak as your fears make them out to be.”

Asag turned, jamming his foot into the stirrup and hauling himself into the saddle with a grunt of effort. He reached down, offering a hand to Basil.

”What do you mean?” Basil asked, taking the hand. He felt himself being hoisted up, seated firmly between the horse’s neck and his uncle’s chest.

”Your father may have burned the bridge, but he did not burn they way out,” Asag said, his voice low against the steady clip of the horse’s hooves. ”There is a camp south, entrenched and waiting.He ordered his legions to build it in secret. If the line breaks, the legions will turtle there. They will make defense and hold.”

A heartbeat of silence followed, thick with the things a soldier never says aloud. Asag stared ahead at the shifting shadows of the trees.

”If that comes to pass, your father will find a way. He has a mind like a maze; he always finds the exit. But if the worst should claim him... I have my orders. If your arm rots, you cut it off, lingering on it will only get you killed.

We understood that long ago in the red sands. Many were the wounded that did not recover, so we cut their throats, mourned them and carried on. ’’ For an heartbeat the silence lingered, as he regarded that dark past. ’’I will see you seated on your mother’s throne. Our vaults are not empty. Our warehouses are still choked with steel. Winter is a cruel master, and we will use the frost to buy the time we need. We will raise fresh legions, even if we must drown ourselves in debt to do it.

Moreover there is still Romelia and they won’t be indisposed to us if we use the right means, our industries are still strong, our arms are still not weak, and your father is still not dead.

We will maneuver. We will survive.”

The legate tightened his grip on the reins. ”The path will not be easy. The burden will not be light. But your father entrusted me with it, and that is all the law I require. If a great evil truly awaits us, I will do my best to be the shield between it and you. But for now? Trust in your father’s cunning, and trust in my word. That is the only key to hope.”

”And how can I do that?” Basil whispered. ”I can hardly breathe right now. How do we survive it? Not the Principality, not the wars... but us?How can you do it all of this?

How will Mother and Rosalind live with the silence he leaves behind? What of our pain?What of yours?”

”Pain?” Asag spat the word as if it were a mouthful of bile. ”Do you truly know what pain is, boy? It is a shapeless thing. To some, it is a tool; to others, a lesson. To many, it is a leash that keeps them whimpering in the dark. We make of our agony what we will.”

The Legate looked down , his gloved hand going to his forehead and his scar. ”I suffered mine long ago. It became a leash for me. The poets say pain teaches mercy. They say it makes you kind because you know the weight of a wound.

Those people are fools who have never felt more than a thorn’s prickle. Pain doesn’t make you kind; it makes you hard. Or it makes you nothing.”

He leaned closer, his stern gaze narrowing. ”You may learn from it, or you may simply suffer until you vanish. All it taught me was that fire burns and the world is cold. History doesn’t care for your efforts or your ’good intentions.’ It only remembers the victory or the failure. That is the only truth the dirt recognizes. If this is to be your father’s failure, then you must make it the fuel for your success.”

As he saw the boy’s trembling lip, the iron in Asag’s expression softened, a rare flicker of the man who was Alpheo’s friend and that until then seemed so distant. ”But we speak of ghosts while the man still lives. Your father may yet claw his way out of that mud. You will see him soon enough.”

”I won’t,” Basil whispered. He turned his face upward, letting the cold wind catch the tears that had finally broken free.A trail of saltwater washed down his cheek ”I know I won’t.”

Asag pulled the horse to a sudden slower trot. ”And how could you possibly know that?”

”Because.....”He lingered and then turned his eyes away.

’’I just know it.’’