Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Alpheo’s heart hammered against his ribs, pumping a double-measured pulse of adrenaline through his veins as he stepped into the biting Oizenian wind. There, laid out before him, was the terrible machinery of his ambition: the army that had laid half the South low, the force that stood as Yarzat’s only hope and the most waking nightmare of his enemy.

An exhilarated chill, sharper than the November frost, swept through him as he beheld the host. Rank upon rank they stood, encased in the grey plate that had blossomed red across dozens of battlefields. They were fully armored and bristling with steel, looking less like men who had spent the night feasting on victory and more like a legion poised to start a second war before the first had even cooled.

I told them to be ready at a moment’s notice, Alpheo reflected, his gaze sweeping over the grey squares dominating the main artery of his new city. Did they even feast? The answer came swiftly as a soldier in the third rank lurched forward, puking a liquid lunch onto the cobbles with a miserable splash. Clearly, the wine had flowed as freely as the blood.

Behind him, he could hear the hesitant, ringing footsteps of the lords. The newcomers, those who had seen these sharks tear through the tuna of their own lines less than a month ago, let out audible gasps.

Low whispers hissed and followed among the Oizenian nobility. It was a beautiful, unsettling sound to hear ; fear was a nest that would hold the hands of the weakest among them, that was good Alpheo wanted them to remember this sight whenever they thought of Yarzat.

Yet, a pang of grief creased Alpheo’s chest as he calculated the gaps in the ranks. Where a thousand should have stood, barely six hundred remained to hold the road to the palace. It is no great thing to die, especially for a soldier, for whom the blade always looms high, held back by a thread over a flickering candle. He had felt that blade at his own throat in the mud of the Ford, and for the first time, he felt truly kin to his creations. He was not deaf to the whispers following the battle, nor the way the men now looked at him: not just as a paymaster, but as a survivor.

A single legionnaire stepped out from the first rank of the twelve squares, stealing the remaining breath from the lords behind the Prince. He was a man of standard iron, scarred grey plate over a black and white surcoat, his visor raised to reveal a face carved by ten years of service. He was unremarkable, save for the heavy, empty air where his left arm should have been. He was one of the many who would soon receive an honorary discharge, trading his pike for a pension and the quiet life of a maimed veteran.

This would be the last time he looked upon his Prince.

The man stood silent for a heartbeat, glancing at the world of iron he was about to leave behind. But he was no boy weeping for his home. He puffed his chest, burying the man and letting the iron out, the same iron that had served until the body finally faulted.

The veteran raised his remaining fist and battered it against his breastplate. The hollow, metallic thud echoed across the open air, a thunderclap that stilled every sound between the legions, the lords, and the Prince.

”Fifteen years!” he roared, his voice a gravelly avalanche that seemed to rise from the very earth of Yarzat. It was a voice forged in the relentless pounding of iron on iron, unyielding and raw, the sound of a soul that had known only the weight of a breastplate and the length of a sword. ”Fifteen years the Legions have stood as your shadow, Your Grace! We stood when the rebels sought to usurp the rights of Her Grace, the Princess. We stood against the Herculeians, the Oizenians, and the Romelians alike. We have painted this land in our own blood to defend it against the unified might of half a dozen thrones!”.

He stepped forward, the grey plate of his armor clinking with the mail beneath. ”Never have we faltered! Never have we nursed fear in our hearts! Never have we shown our backs to the enemy, and never did we reproach you when the order came to spill our lives like wine! In these fifteen years, we have fought, killed, and died in the name of Yarzat. We have witnessed with our own eyes the rule we fought to establish and the world we were building with our own sacrifices.”

The veteran scanned the ranks of his brothers, then looked up at the lords trembling on the palace steps as if daring anyone to deny his words. ”We have gazed upon these changes and found them good. I say now, for every man standing in this grey line, that we have been blessed more than most, for no man has ever seen so much change in so little a time!

Many of us recall when the Oizenians came with torches to burn our fields and take our children. Then you came to us with good laws and better steel, with a dream and the iron will to see it done! You turned us from slaves into the rulers of the very men who once plundered us!”

Behind Alpheo, the Oizenian lords shifted uncomfortably; he could hear the wet coughs of the nervous and the sharp sniffs of the offended.

They were silenced instantly by the sound of six hundred fists crashing against six hundred breastplates in perfect, terrifying unison.

THUD-THUD. THUD-THUD. THUD-THUD.

”We conquered Herculia and the heart of Ozenia! We seized the great cities to bring trade and prosperity to the people of Yarzat!” the veteran shouted, his voice cracking with the sheer force of his conviction as the wind howled through the cobbled streets. ”So I ask this of you! I ask it of my brothers behind me! I ask it of the lords and knights above us! And I ask it of the Prince to whom we gave our blood, our honors, and our youth, the man who gave us a world that was actually worth fighting and dying for!”.

He raised his one remaining fist to the dark, churning sky. ”When has any prince given so much? When has any lord fought so hard for those he ruled? When has a sovereign been so generous as to share his riches, or so brave as to share our pain? When has a man not born to a throne looked at the common soldier and seen not a tool, but a son?”

The answer did not come from a single throat, but from the collective chest of the army.

”NEVER BEFORE!”

The legions boomed, a tidal wave of sound so absolute that the earth beneath the palace steps seemed to shudder. Alpheo felt the vibration in the soles of his boots, the primal roar bulling over the wind itself.

The soldier turned his gaze directly to Alpheo, the intensity of his eyes enough to make a lesser man flinch.But not the prince.

”You have been the architect of our glory and the shield against our ruin. You have stood where the arrows fell thickest and where the hope of others withered. So I ask the world: who is more worthy to wear the weight of what we ask?”

He stood silent, the vacuum of his pause drawing the breath from every lord and lady on the terrace. Alpheo stepped forward, his cloak snapping like a whip in the gale.

”And what is it that you ask, son of Yarzat?” Alpheo’s voice was clear as it came. Cleared than it had ever been.

”Nothing that you cannot give us Prince of Iron!” the veteran roared back. ”Nothing that you are not worthy to keep!”

As one, the ranks shifted, shields crashing against breastplates with a rhythmic, metallic violence. The wind howled through the colonnades, and somewhere in the deep darkness of the palace, a lingering instinct whispered to the prince that this was not the way he ought to take.

That it was too soon, too much small-thought.

But the dice had already been cast.

”Your Grace! My brothers! All of Yarzat, be it the old soil or the new!” the man shouted, his voice reaching a fever pitch. ”Hear us, for we are in crisis! To the East, the greedy hands of princes grow ever heavier, plotting to bring fire to our hearths. To the South, the Prince of Sharjaan, betrayer as he is, invaded our lands, clamoring to bite at our heels while we bled for him and share the fruits of our work at his table. To the North, Kakunia is embroiled in a civil war where the greedy hands of Habadia clash against our ally to steal a birthright!”

At the mention of the North, Merelao shifted, his blonde hair whipped by the wind as he turned a piercing, unreadable stare toward Alpheo. The man understood what was happening.

”THIS. IS. UNACCEPTABLE!” the veteran screamed.

The legionaries behind him caught the word, throwing it back at the palace like a volley of stones.

”UNACCEPTABLE!” ”UNACCEPTABLE!” ”UNACCEPTABLE!”

”Surrounded by enemies who attack us and our allies day and night!” the one-armed man continued, his voice cutting through the fading echoes. ”Our lands ravaged by men who seek what is not theirs with wicked delight! We, the Legions, we, Yarzat, call for more! Give us a man of humble beginnings !Give us a man our army will follow!’’

He took a final, lung-bursting breath, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis as he let the legion’s wishes known.

”GIVE US A KING!”

The word hit the palace like a battering ram. The Oizenian lords paled, reaching for railings as if the world were literally shaking.

”KING!” the legions boomed in a rhythmic, deafening chant. ”KING! KING! GIVE US OUR KING!GIVE US ALPHEO!”