Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”The men seem to be in high spirits,” Cain commented, his voice drifting with a slight, uncharacteristic slur. It was only his third cup, but Cain had always possessed a mind of crystal and a body of glass; the wine was clearly beginning to cloud the former while heaving the latter.

Kroll, oblivious or perhaps just indulgent, seemed more than happy to keep his brother’s cup brimming.

”They’ve just won a victory,” Kroll grunted, leaning back as he surveyed the chaos. ”They’re drinking, they’re rutting...”

A sudden, violent commotion erupted at the far end of the hall. A table groaned and snapped as a warrior was slammed onto it, blood geysering from a fresh opening in his gut. A girl’s scream pierced the air, only to be drowned out by a wave of raucous, drunken laughter.

”...and seemingly gutting each other while they are there,” Blake finished, his tone dry.

”Aye,” Stormcaller muttered, his lips pressed against the throat of a buxom girl, one of the late Sultan’s many bastards, if the rumors were true. She seemed remarkably content with the pirate’s rough attention. ”Take heed, Cain. Unless there are at least two guttings and a stray beheading, a feast is considered a dull affair by the Isles’ standards.

”

”You are indeed right, Harrick,” Cain replied, his tone sharper and more confrontational than usual. The wine had stripped away his usual layer of quiet . ”I suppose with only a single man dying on the table, you’d consider this whole evening a fucking bore ain’t it?That why you are trying to even the numbers?”

Blake saw the spark in Stormcaller’s eyes and stepped in before a real argument could take root. ”No matter the feast, everything feels a bit slow after the blood of battle has cooled.”

Thankfully, the girl on Stormcaller’s lap whispered something wicked into the warlord’s ear. Soon a smile bloomed across his face, and the jab from the ”Cripple” was instantly forgotten in favor of the prizes at hand.

”Ease up on the wine for my brother,” Blake hissed to Kroll under his breath. Kroll nodded subtly, finally catching the tension in Cain’s jaw.

Blake turned to his brother, keeping his voice low. ”You all right? You seem... tense.”

”Just the wine,” Cain snapped, staring into the dark depths of his cup. ”And I suppose the sound of a thousand men screaming your name. I recall the plan for the harbor was mine. The strategy for the Twin Cities? Mine as well. I haven’t heard a single whisper of thanks for that.”

Blake opened his mouth to respond, but Cain didn’t give him the opening.

”Don’t look at me like that. Forget I said it,” Cain muttered, waving a hand dismissively. ”I know our people. I know what I am to them. It’s a miracle they even stomach me at the table.”

He emptied his cup with a jerky motion and thrusted it toward Kroll for a refill. Blake moved faster, his hand covering the rim of the chalice before the wine could flow.

”Perhaps you’ve had enough of the grape, Cain. You ought to eat something. I’m sure your slave is eager to feed you herself.”

”Her name is Mitra,” Cain corrected, his voice cold.

Even with a name she is still a slave, Blake thought, but he bit back the retort. He watched as the girl reached out, her fingers delicately grazing the black silk of the patch over Cain’s ruined eye.That had been her gift apparently...he looked much better with it than without.

Cain turned to her, murmuring a few words in broken, halting Azanian. She retreated to her seat, but her hand lingered on his arm.

Blake watched them, a new weight settling in his chest. I need to find him a wife, he realized. A man about to become the brother of a King couldn’t be seen clutching a nameless slave like a common deckhand. Of course, finding a bride for the ”Mad Cripple” wouldn’t be easy, even with the crown’s shadow over him.

But as Blake looked out over the hall, a grim smile touched his lips. Once he made his bid for the throne, the Isles would be crawling with widows and sycophants desperate for the King’s favor. He would find a daughter of a noble house, someone with a name to lend Cain the legitimacy his legs couldn’t provide. If the girl was lucky, she’d only have to deal with a bit of wine and a bad performance in bad. If Cain was lucky, she’d have half the heart Mitra seemed to show.

The flickering torchlight cast long, dancing shadows across Cain’s face as he leaned in, his voice a low hiss that sliced through the cacophony of a thousand drunken marauders.

”Ashawa,” Cain muttered, his single eye fixed on Blake. ”Ask Kroll for his blessing to grant Ashawa. He has no thirst for land, but the courtesy will cost you nothing and buy you much. He will not refuse.”

”I already have Khairo,” Blake replied, gesturing to the sprawling marble splendor around them. ”What need have I for a river-city? I am a man of the salt and the swell, not a mud-grubber.”

Cain’s gaze sharpened, the cold intellect behind the wine resurfacing. ”It is not for you. Give it to Short Ragnor.”

Blake knew the name.

In passing.

He had carved his reputation into the history of this campaign by feeding the Lord of Drunum to the sharks, a bloody feat that would eased the takeover of the city that sat like a plug in the river’s mouth.

In two years, they had mastered the northern waves, but their grip on the dirt was fragile. If they were to hold this land, they needed a chain of cities, not just a single palace in the sand.Even if just to feed their own armies.

Still, the politics of the Isles followed them to the sands. ”Ragnor is not one of my men,I am sure Tonitz would like a lorship ” Blake countered. ”Ragnor sails under SaltBeard’s colors, can’t see what good is there to give him a city.”

”Even more reason to hand him the keys,” Cain said, a sharp look creeping onto his face. ”You cannot forge an empire out of your own captains alone. You need the Great Seafarers, but you would be a fool not to bleed them white while you use them. Does SaltBeard have the means to make Ragnor a Lord? No. But you do. When the wind turns, who will Ragnor support? The old man happy to rot in the same grey seas they’ve known for centuries, or the King who gave him a city of silk and stone?He has no way to hold onto his new land if you fall, so he shall follow and put a crown on your head himself, if that means keeping his title.”

Blake let the logic settle. His brother’s mind was a wicked instrument, but it played a beautiful tune. He realised that the more time he passed with him.

Soon he caught Kroll’s eye , explained the request and gave a subtle tilt of his head.In response he offered a sharp nod to Blake and a grin to Cain.

One heartbeat later, Blake was airborne. He vaulted onto the table of honor, his heavy boots crunching into a plate of seasoned peas and sending a silver flagon clattering to the marble below. He didn’t need to shout for silence; his presence was a thunderclap.

”HARDGUT WANTS TO SPEAK!” a veteran roared somewhere from the front.

”SHUT YOUR BLOODY MAWS!” another bellowed.

The silence that followed was heavy and expectant, like that of dogs waiting for the piece of meat. Blake surveyed the sea of faces, scarred, sun-burnt, and hungry. He saw the fire of the Old Isles in their eyes, but something else too: the greed of a New World.

This was the fruit of Cain’s labor. While Blake had been breaking hulls, Cain had been breaking hearts back home. He had sent messengers to the Isles armed with chests of sapphire-encrusted scimitars, six-limbed ivory tusks, and pelts of lions that glowed like gold. He had even sent live, screaming beasts to the docks of Elio, Methon, and Kacos, parading them through the muddy streets while bards sang of a land where the sun turned sand to gold and every man could be a prince.

The desperate and the daring had listened. Men who once spent their lives waiting in damp taverns for a captain to notice them had pooled their silver to charter longships for the crossing.

When they came people under their pay would do everything to cement the Red Angel’s image in thier eyes, an easy enough feat when he provided proof of the worthiness of the name.

The result was a miracle of carnage. An army that had limped into the harbor after an assault and a battle with barely four thousand blades had swelled to six thousand veterans of the breach, with maybe even half a thousand more on white sails currently carving their way across the Azanian Sea.

”I swore to you that I would deliver glory, gold, and a name that would make the world tremble. Look around you, have I not kept my word?”

The hall shook. A thousand palms slammed against oak tables, and a thousand boots hammered the marble floor ”HARDGUT! HARDGUT! RED ANGEL! RED ANGEL!”

”We have taught the men of the dunes the true strength of the spray!” Blake roared, his voice cutting through the frenzy like a prow through ice. ”The northern waters are ours to command! Now, we turn our steel toward the stone. We shall dismantle the cities of those who dared defy us. We will put their men to the sword and their women to our beds!”

The palace went feral. Warriors screamed, leered, and brandished their cups like weapons.

”But a kingdom of sand and salt requires more than just killers. It requires lords!So then let us make new one! Arise, Ragnor, son of Jandel. Arise and take what your steel has earned!”

For an heartbeat Ragnor hesitated, his eyes darting about as if searching for the punchline to a cruel joke where he was the butt. But as the roar of the men turned toward him and people clapped his back and shoulder, he stood, rising from his bench like a mountain emerging from a fog.

”Before these witnesses, I name you Lord of Ashawa! May its walls be your fortress and its river your gold-mine!”

The shout that followed was deafening. ”LORD OF ASHAWA! LORD OF ASHAWA!”

Ragnor basked in the adulation, a smile cutting across his weathered face that was sharp enough to cleave a gale. From the corner of his eye, Blake glanced at SaltBeard. The old warlord was nodding slowly, his expression stoic.

He recognized Ragnor’s merit, but the subtle poison of Blake’s gift, was a nuance his old, battle-hardened mind couldn’t grasp.He still did not understand.

SaltBeard was a shark; he understood the bite, but not the hook.

Blake had no intention of educating him.

”More lords and more riches will follow for those with the stones to take them!” Blake shouted, his arms spread wide. ”Let us bask in this glory until our grandsons speak of us as we speak of Romelia’s Bane! But we shall do better! The Red Fish only lingered in the South for a few years before the tide took him after the Red Scythe. I intend for us to stay! Eternal plundering! Eternal glory for our fleet!”

As the men lost themselves in a fresh wave of delirium, Blake turned back toward the high table. He saw Cain’s carefully cultivated mask of disinterest and Kroll’s savage, knowing grin.

”But stay your cups!” Blake’s voice dropped into a register that commanded a sudden, sharp silence. ”There is one more debt to be paid. One man whose feet may not stand upon a swaying deck, but whose mind has steered our fleet through the eye of the storm to reach this golden shore. None of this, not Khairo, not the Twin Cities, not the gold in your pockets, would be possible without him.”

He turned fully toward his brother, relishing the way Cain’s single eye widened.

”Cain! My blood and my counsel! I name you Lord of Gogachere!”

The only thing Blake liked more of that moment apart from the anadulterated astonishment on Cain’s face was the silent army behind him. For once, the architect of a thousand schemes had been caught without a plan. He looked at his brother, then at the silent, staring army, and for the first time in his life, the man of a million words had absolutely nothing to say.