Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The world seemed to swivel on its axis, the frigid November air suddenly thick with the intoxicating ecstasy of war and the thrum of history rose up as if boiling.

King.

How long had he reached for that word in the quiet, dark corners of his ambition?He had craved it for so long , then stopped, only to finally have it ahead of him where the desire was no longer unyielding as it once was.

Perhaps that made him worthier for it?

And here it was, lying on the bed, cheeks parted , just waiting, offered by six hundred of the bravest sons Yarzat had ever produced, thrust toward him with the only price being the courage to reach out and grasp it, both kingship and its consequences.

A man could declare his rule over another man as long as he had the gut to stomach what that entailed.

Behind him, the Oizenian lords and the new masters of the South looked at one another with hollow, dark eyes. Realizing they were powerless to stop the tide closing in, and wondering only how much destruction would follow in its wake. It is in the nature of man to always fear change;to hate the moment the facts they live by are rewritten. But no matter how bitter the pill, there is nothing to be done when a gauntleted hand forces it down your throat.

Yet, Alpheo knew a crown could not be clutched simply because a few hundred soldiers clamored for it. To endure, it had to be bled from the snakes slithering behind him as well.

So he had to fish out their agreement.

”Sons of Yarzat!” Alpheo’s voice cut through the gale, amplified by the stone of the palace behind him. ”Long and hard did we fight! From the plains of Romelia to the hills of Herculia, to the blood-stained rivers of Oizen, all the world has come to know our name!”

A cheer rose up like ribbons whipped by a storm, violent and yet also joyful.

”I have been beside you through all of it, and more! You have earned everything you possess, and even more that I am ashamed to admit that I lack the capacity to gift you. And in spite of all that, you would offer me a crown? Honored I am! Joyful at the love you bear your Prince! But that is what I am, a Prince!”

Even across the distance, Alpheo saw the confusion bloom. Dark expressions clouded the faces of his legionaries; they had expected him to snatch the prize. They could not understand the delicate dance of power being performed on these steps.

”Your Grace!” the one-armed veteran shouted, his single eye wide with a frantic confusion. ”You are a conqueror! You join history alongside the legends of the Red! Accept this gift as the proclamation of your glory!The legion ask that of you!”

Two times he was asked, and two times he would deny it. ”A crown is not a light thing to wear upon one’s brow, and I do not yet feel the weight of my worthiness for it,” Alpheo replied, his voice carrying a practiced humility that felt like cold iron. ”If such an undertaking is to be made, it should not be by the Legions alone, for it would come from the people that would have me rule. In the south, there are only principalities, not kingdoms.”

But the refusal was ill-fitted for men who had come to crown a god.

”A KING!”they boomed, the sound more demand than plea. ”GIVE US OUR KING! OUR KING! OUR KING!”

The legions were a wall of storm-driven iron, their rhythmic shouting so forceful that it rattled the very windowpanes of the palace. Behind Alpheo, the lords stood unsettled, huddled together like sheep during a lightning strike, staring at the back of their Prince as if he were the only lever holding back a flood of madness.

It was a madness Alpheo had birthed, nurtured in the mud of a dozen trenches, and unleashed upon the world, a madness that now clamored to place a crown upon his brow.

It was then, the Lord of Bracum, nightmare of the Herculian campaigns, stepped forward.

”YARZAT!” he bellowed, his voice a thunderclap that challenged the very wind shutting the legionnaires up. ”A long war we have just won! Ezvania, Kakunia, Sharjaan, Oizen, and Habadia. They all marched upon our soil to force a foreign king upon our throats! They thought they could make the Prince of Habadia our master!”

He turned, his eyes wild and bright . ”We marched with our own strength and we saw every one of those bastards out of what is ours! We’ve had a bellyful of them, I dare say ! Why should a Habadian name himself king and rule over me? He is nothing to me, no more than a corpse with my axe buried in his breast!

He thought he could simply march and find us with our bellies up like whipped dogs!” He twisted his head and spat a thick glob of phlegm onto the pristine white stone. ”That is what I think of Habadia! They came with great numbers, and with great numbers they fell! A crown is warranted by strength, and strength is what the Fox has in abundancy!”

Had he his axe, Alpheo knew the Lord of Bracum would have raised it to pierce the four winds.

”Why should we not rule ourselves? Why should we not have a king who respects us, who nurtures the land we bleed for? Why should we answer to some bastard sitting on a flowered seat in a distant hall?Be that Habadia or Romelia?” He leveled and jabbed finger at Alpheo. ”There stand the only king I would ever kneel to! Habadia can go bugger himself! It is time we take matters into our own hands. Herculia has fallen to us, as has half of Oizen had. This land has grown too grand, too fierce, to be ruled by a mere prince!”

Alpheo watched the shifting ranks of the legionaries below; he could see the spark of recognition in their eyes. They knew the tide had turned and they clamored for that.

”A KING!” Bracum roared suddendly. ”A King is what we need! I say we clamor for it! KING OF YARZAT! THE ONLY KING IN THE SOUTH!”

And as he spoke those words, the wolf dropped to one knee, his armor clashing against the stone. ”That is the only king I mean to serve!The only give I mean to bleed and die for. Give us him as our king or give us nothing!”

”Same goes with me!” shouted Jarza, the giant following the lead of the wolf, his massive frame hitting the ground with the weight of a falling siege engine.

”And me!”

One by one, the legates, the iron pillars of Alpheo’s reign, bent their hard knees.

Among them, Asag turned his head to the congregation of lords behind them, poison in his eyes, daring them to remain standing.

But it was , no one else but ’prince who was not’ who stepped forward with an unsteady but defiant gait. There stood a man who had lost everything, and ye tmade his choice before the conqueror without trembling.

”All hail the King in the South!” Arnold shouted, his voice cracking with something. ”All hail Yarzat! All hail its King!”

The other lords looked at Arnold as if he were a madman. His own brother, Thalien, watched him with the same soul-deep horror their father must have felt when the gates were opened to the fall of a century-old dynasty. Was there to be king, then the princedom of Herculia would forever cease to exist.

This was the second time Arnold had laid the crown of Herculia at Alpheo’s feet, but this time, the conquered prince was smiling.

One should never fight a river, and one should never fight the will of the legions.

The choice was no longer between a prince and a king, but between the new world and oblivion. One by one, the Oizenian lords shuffled forward. Lord Cregan, ever the survivor, took the honor of being the first of his group to break.

”All hail the King of Yarzat!” Cregan cried out, his voice thin against the gale.

A heartbeat later, the others followed, their voices lacking the boom of the soldiers but carrying the weight of a settled fate as they sank to the cold, white stone, knowing very well what it was they relinquished in that act.

All they went , one by one , until it was Alpheo who stood alone at the apex, the wind whipping his cloak, looking down at a sea of bent backs and lowered heads.

Behind him his son, who too somewhere in there had bent the knee, looked up at his father with a tremor of fear, using the first of the only three times the new prince of Yarzat would have ever kneel in his whole life.

Three hundred years it had been but finally the South had found its first king.

And the first act he did was to raise his hand at the conflegation.

The legions went wild at that.

’’A KING!OUR KING!ALL HAIL THE KING IN THE SOUTH!’’

’’KING IN THE SOUTH!KING IN THE SOUTH!’’

The shouted not knowing how easily such title could change with only one word swapped.But that is the nature of men to be swallowed by the currents of other, mindless of what they were contributed to with a light mind.