Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

”I am here for words,” Sorza replied, his voice tightening. ”I sent word for a parlay, not a duel.”

He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to look away. He might have held a glimmer of hope before the gates opened, but the sight of the enemy ranks had snuffed it out. His own men were dispirited, half-starved, and wearing mail that was more rust and holes than protection. The host outside his walls, by contrast, looked as though they would gladly take a sprint through all five hells just for a warm-up.

Had his principality not been crawling with traitors, he might have stood a chance at holding until winter. The bastards at the Bastion had held their ground; why couldn’t he? But that choice had galloped away like a horse on fire the moment he saw his vassals’ banners dancing in the enemy’s wind.

Words were his only path to survival.

”I never took you for such a pacifist,” a voice drawled. It wasn’t the Prince, but his Legate, the man Sorza knew all too well. ”I’m sure the trenches at the Bastion, overflowing with your dead, would be agape in surprise to hear you now. Had you possessed such a spirit then, perhaps their ashes wouldn’t be feeding the grass of our fields. Perhaps you’d like us to send you to them, so you can offer your excuses in person?”

”I prefer the comfort of my home to the heat of the pyre,” Sorza snapped.

”While they enjoy the comfort of their graves.Fitting, I’d say. Truly, you are a man must be dying to serve.” The Legate smiled, the scar on his head pulling taut against his brow. No matter how many times Sorza looked at it, the sight remained unsettling.

How could a woman look at it and suffer his weight under darkness above her?

Beside them, Father Ols shifted uncomfortably, the Star of the Five swaying as he wiggled in his saddle, clearly irked by the talk of hells and graves. Sorza felt the parlay slipping into a taunting match and tried to wrench the conversation back to the point.

”I repeat: I am seeking peace now, not war—”

”I gave you the chance for peace long ago,” Alpheo interrupted, his voice cutting through the air like a winter frost. ”I would have gladly lived in it. I had no quarrel with you. As I recall, you chose war.You chose the dagger, didn’t you?’’

Could he go back, he’d kiss that bloody feather when it was offered.

’’What complaint have you now that the game you started has turned against you? You do not get to cry foul just because the odds have shifted. You never sought peace; if you had, you wouldn’t have been so eager to spit on our treaties. You had the Prince of Habadia at your back, and that gave you a heavy stone to throw.” Alpheo made a theatrical show of looking around at the empty horizon. ”Where is he now that I am at your gates?”

Must me make me say it?

He refused to give him the satisfaction of that.

”History is a tapestry of wars,” Sorza attempted, his tone pleading. ”And peace always follows. Why should our conflict be any different?”

”Aye,” the Prince agreed, though his expression remained iron. ”Peace follows, but only after the dues have been paid in full, or when both sides have grown weary of the butcher’s bill. Surely you see the problem here. Yes? Neither of those things has happened yet.”

And yet, Alpheo was here, speaking instead of slaughtering. He wanted something. Sorza racked his brain, desperately trying to recall the terms offered before the iron met the bone at the Ford.

”Lord Vasten?” Sorza blurted out, the name catching in his throat. ”Isn’t he the one you want?” He struggled to remember the exact price. Was it his head? His hands? At this point, Sorza would have given the man up piece by piece if it bought him a moment’s reprieve. ”I will give him to you. His arms, his hands, even his tongue, he is yours to do with as you please.”

He was dishearted to see that none of them look pleased at that notion.

”He may keep all three, for all the good they would do him now,he has thousands upon thousands of likewise listeners if he would bother just speak. ” Merelao answered, his voice flowing as easily as a river. He leaned forward in his saddle, his expression bored as half the time it was joyous in this war. ”I found his end as disappointing as I find your beginning, though he was at least marginally more entertaining. To his credit, he had the decency to drop dead when I arrived with blade in hand. It was a brief affair, barely two exchanges of steel before he found his place in the dirt alongside many other. But at the very least, he fought.Not well, nor nobly, nor bravely for he cried in the end. But he fought, that none can deny.”

Merelao’s cool blue eyes settled on the Prince of Oizen, unblinking. ”I searched the field for you, you know. I was quite eager to see if your skill with a sword matched your skill with an insult.I was most angry when we last met.But I was likewise twice that when I saw your banner flutter away.Though I grant you it did not hold a candle to the rage of the Fox”

Sorza’s loathing for the Kakunian flickered like a dying candle. ”I was not in the mud, I fear. That is not where a prince of the South belongs.”

”Indeed,” Merelao agreed, the word rolling off his tongue ”A prince should be upon his horse, though I shall not deny it was a most illuminating experience to feel the earth beneath my boots as the common footmen do.Pretty entertaining too , at that.’’ he made the sound of a laugh’’ But let us spare ourselves further shame. Even had I laid a crimson carpet across the field for you, you would not have walked it for it was I or him”he nudged a head to the monster ’’...that was waiting for you.’’

The Kakunian’s gaze sharpened, his voice becoming a soft, ”Prince Rabbit.Rabbit Prince. That ought to be your style. For as soon as the scent of a true foe reached your nostrils, you vanished into the tall grass. I recall you speaking quite passionately of blood, station, and peers before the battle. You spoke of how I had sullied myself by allying with dogs. I find myself wondering, where did you tuck those noble notions when you wheeled your horse about and deserted your men to their graves? Were they hidden away in your pouch, alongside your courage?”

Sorza’s face flushed a deep crimson, his golden sun-crest bobbing as he spoke. ’’ A prince is the soul of his people. If the soul is snuffed out, the body rots.”

”The body is already rotting, your people are starving, your nobles are deserting. You’d have easier time finding an angel in hell then to find any of your subject praying for you, or even saying your name without spitting or puking” Alpheo replied.His eyes as calm as they were ice.

Sorza felt as if he were staring at his own death.He misliked being displayed his own station.

”Your people?Your principality? It’s rotting in the ditches of the Ford, and it’s rotting in the villages burned to the ground.”

”I am here to end that!To make peace!” Sorza shouted, his desperation finally breaking through ”All I wish for now is to evade a slaughter. Is there no mercy to be found in your Yarzat blood? Can we not spare the hundreds of yours and mine that will die?”

’’Hundreds?’’ Alpheo let out a short, dry sound that might have been a laugh if there were any humor in it. ”It is thousands. It will not end with the soldiers. You really wish to evade a slaughter?’’

Sorza nodded.

’’Then you are two weeks too late for that, Prince. The fishes in the river have grown fat on the meat of your knights, and the rats and crows of the Ford still offer their thanks for the feast you provided them.Had you got a look at the field of your own making, you would’t say such words easily.”

The Prince of Yarzat leaned forward, the silver falcon on his cloak glinting like a bird of prey. ”Do not veil yourself in silk intent. You do not care for the thousands behind those walls. All you wish to avoid is death, a singular one. Not plural. Singular. Yours.”

Sorza opened his mouth to protest, but Alpheo cut him down with a look.

”You are not noble, Sorza. You are not kind, and you are most certainly not a victim of circumstance” Alpheo spat at the prince’s steed’s hooves

’’This.’’ He raised his hand and waved them around ’’This! It is your making. Not mine. You sowed so much death with your own hands. You planted the seeds, watered them in the mis-matched ambition and courage the snakes of Ezvania, kakunia, Sharjaans and Habadias put in you.

And now you finally behold the scythe. Do not cry that you are not getting strawberry when planting onions.’’

Sorza said nothing. For what could he say?

”Do you really not understand yet? You are not even a snake. A snake has venom; a snake has a strike. You are merely a worm that slithered through a boot that tried to squash it. You felt the leather pass over you and, by some miracle of the mud, you survived. Now you stand here, imagining yourself a dragon because you managed to crawl away while better men died.You are not hero. You are not a victim. You....you are just you. For a long time I thought of what I would do to your person when the chance arose. You who called death upon my home. You who would have caused my life work to come crashing down. You who had had put an end to my life and that of my family.

I was filled with rage. But now?I cannot even seem to care. Only reason I am here it’s for that. I don’t even see you as an enemy. You are just a pebble.You are of little interest.

Of course I’ll still kill you. I’ll cut you up in pieces and laugh about it afterwards to anyone who will hear.This is after all the fight you chose.”