Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”All men must serve,” the old decree went.

A peasant serves the dirt and the lord who owns it. A lord serves the princes who claim the sky. For Rodry, service had been a long road. He had served in the hollow-bellied days of hunger and bone-chilling cold, and now he served in the stiff luxury of white silk and grey plate.

When he had first donned the white cloak and swore the words, he knew he was trading his life for a type of honor that only ends when the heart stops or when they willing throw the cloth away for the love of a family. He was reminded of the weight of that trade as he tilted his cup, letting the lukewarm swill slide down his throat.

”He was a good man,” Shit-Mouth muttered. His eyes were as glassy and wet as the brown sludge in his hand. It was rare to hear the man speak without a string of creative profanities trailing behind, but the morning was too thick with respect for his usual vulgarities.

Rodry wiped his mouth, the salt of the ale stinging a cut on his lip. ”Nay,” he grunted, the word heavy. ”He was a great man. I never knew a soul so dutiful, yet so eager to find a smile in the dark. He was a knight of the Prince and a true monster with that hammer of his.” He looked into the depths of his cup. ”We’ll never know how many bastards he crushed under that steel, but I’d bet my balls the number was high.”

The battle at the Bastion had been a chaotic blur. One cannot count the individual raindrops in a hurricane and so no one saw the end of the brave soul of the Badfoot.

Once the second charge broke their lines, the world had turned into a slurry of mud and screaming iron. They had lost sight of the Prince in the fray; for a terrifying hour, they believed the crown was lost to the mud. They had fanned out, desperate and blind in search of him.

Rodry wondered if that desperate search was the reason Ser Tham had perished. Perhaps searching for a prince he had missed the blade that claimed him.

”His hammer was as red as a winter dawn when I found him,” Ser Miro spoke up. His arm hung uselessly in a blood-stained sling, and his eyes carried a hollow, haunted look. Miro blamed himself; he had left Tham’s body in the muck unable to carry it and by the time they returned for the body, countless boots had trampled the man’s face into the earth. ”To Tham. To Badfoot. His service has ended, and we carry the weight of his cloak.”

”To Tham. To Badfoot,” the others echoed, their voices a somber chorus. ”His service has ended, and we carry the weight of his cloak.”

They smashed their wooden cups against the table and drank to the memory of the fallen.

This was the fifth time today they had mourned a brother in white. In the Order, these men were the only kin they were allowed to know. They shared the same bread, the same steel, and eventually, the same dirt.

Rodry let the brown, water-like liquid burn its way down. It was salty and sour, a wretched brew. Xoffo the Oaf always insisted that a pinch of salt made the ale taste better, but Rodry knew better. You could pour honey on a pile of shit, but it wouldn’t make it cake.

”You’re an Azanian,,” Xoffo would often be reminded with a toothless grin whenever he spoke of ale-making. ”And Azanians don’t know the first thing about proper ale.”

Every time, Xoffo would wave a massive, calloused hand dismissively. ”Azanians, Arlanians, Romelians, Northerners... it makes no matter now, lad. We are all Yarzats now.”

That may be, Rodry thought, staring at the dregs of his cup, but his ale is still shit. And every time he told Xoffo as much, the big man would just laugh and pour him another....and always wrestle that pinch of damn salt.

In the end, they were his family. The only kin allowed once a man donned and decided to keep the White.

Whatever strange alchemy had sparked the idea in Prince Alpheo’s mind, he was the one who had decreed they wear the white cloak. It was a beautiful idea in his mind no doubt, as he was smiling when he gave it, but it was also a practical nightmare in the field; the garment grew dusty and gray the moment they stepped into the world, but when the Prince spoke, men listened.

Alpheo was a man of strangeness, yet Rodry knew that greatness and oddity often shared the same bed. To be truly great, one had to be different from the common herd.

Rodry still remembered the day the offer was made and the sacrifices it demanded. Vrosk had been the first to accept, and he seemed born for the celibacy of the office; he had never been known to frequent a whore or whisper to a lover. For years, the brothers had joked that Vrosk preferred the company of men, but he had denied it with such flat honesty they finally believed him.

The rules were clear: any of them could renounce the position to start a family, but they could not have both. Of course, they were still men, and bastards had a way of springing up like weeds in a spring rain. If a knight chose to care for his blood, he had to give away the cloth, if they don’t the crown will take care of the babe in some way or the other. Ten years had passed since that decree, and yet not one of them had traded the white cloak for a father’s life.

All men must serve, and the service was not without its perks. You would never grow rich and could never marry, but you walked the road with honor. Taverns rarely asked for coin, and even the brothels, though such visits were kept in the shadows, often saw the white cloak as a blessing. There was a persistent rumor that someone was planning a house of masks where a man could indulge in anonymity; if true, it would soon become the favorite haunt of the White.

Ser Tham would have loved such a place. He was a voracious lover of the fairer sex, as were Jonny and Ronny, though Ronny was a man of more... expansive tastes, preferring a wider spread of variety, loving all and preferring none.

But they were gone now, reduced to dust and shadow until someone saw fit to speak their names.

As they drank, the talk turned to the war as it often did with man wearing steel..

”I am no prince, that much we all know,” Meloy said, his usual preamble for an opinion. He had long brown hair that draped over his neck, and from behind, he might have passed for a woman if not for the immense, ox-like width of his shoulders. ”But this? This is foolishness. We are betting far too much on the silence of the air and the patience of our enemies. I understand Duresa; it’s one city with a lord who isn’t worth the spit to curse him. And Aragustaven? It’s ruled by a woman holding a babe’s throne, and women are soft and rarely have a stomach for the butchery of war.I am no prince but I can understand that. But Sevariorarii too? That is three cities too many.”

It was a surprisingly sharp thought, but because it came from Meloy, the table treated it as a joke.

”Aye, that may be. But you are no prince,” Xoffo helpfully reminded him with a toothy grin

”Aye, and we all know that,” Shit-Mouth added, his restraint from cursing reaching a miraculous second minute.

”I know that!” Meloy snapped, his face reddening as he saw his strategic brilliance brushed aside.

Rodry sighed, looking into his ale. The plan was half-madness; he suspected the Prince was spending too much time listening to his Kakunian ally if he thought they could hold so much at once. But the Prince was the Prince.

”We understand the worry, Meloy,” Rodry said, his voice steady. ”But our dear monarch has a habit of making mad plans work. This isn’t the first time he’s asked us to dance on a precipice, remember the invasion of Malshut?Ain’t no much different from that. This land is ravaged and weary; the lords have lost their taste for blood. Besides, it’s not as if our backs are bare. We have the Mountain behind us, and the Wolf is ahead of the enemy.”

”Aye, but they have few men and too many wounded,” Meloy grumbled, brown droplets of ale clinging to his red beard.

”Their names alone will do the work of a thousand swords,” Rodry replied. ”I doubt many have the heart to test the Wolf or the Mountain after what happened at the Ford and the Bastion both”

”Seems like meeting so many princes has turned our Longspear into Longmind,” Xoffo chuckled, his belly shaking under his stained tunic, he was off duty so no armor for him today.

He said it with a wide, easy grin, but Rodry felt no urge to mirror it. To Rodry, none of the two experience were anything worth speaking about with a smile, though they made for a great tale with drinks.

He opened his mouth to deliver the story once more, but the words were stolen by a sudden shadow falling across the entrance of the great tent. He wore armor with mail and plate, he was also bearing the sigil of the black bird stitched across his chest with no white cloke donned

The man moved gave a quick greeting to the knights before leaning down to whisper a few hurried words into the knight’s ear, immediately souring the meager joy Rodry had managed to salvage with his brothers.

The table went silent as the messenger retreated. Shit-Mouth, looking at the grim set of Rodry’s jaw, finally ask what everyone was wondering. ”What is it?’’

Rodry looked at his brothers, his voice flat and hard as he broke ShitMouth clean streak.

”Nothing much but my favorite little monster. It’s the Prince’s fucking son.”