Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

He was here.

He could not believe it, and yet the truth of it was sprinting down the meadow in the frantic, unpolished stride of a winded scout, ahead of his very own eyes. Every last defensive layer of Alpheo’s cynical mind,every desperate wish that his visions had been nothing more than the fevered, dying delusions of a soldier bleeding out in the mud, came crashing down in a single, terrifying instant.

Should he have been happy? Should he have felt a sense of dark satisfaction that the four-year-old itch of his curiosity was finally about to be scratched? Or should he be in utter, cold dismay? For now, without a single shadow of a doubt, the King had to believe. He had to accept that he had not simply hallucinated in the red waters of the Ford.

Some god was real. And, cursed as he was, he had something to do with it.

By the time the truth fully caught up to him, the sun was dropping behind the dense treeline of the King’s forest, bleeding across the horizon and turning the winter sky into a ruin of bruised red and creeping black.

Alpheo’s heart drummed a wild, frantic rhythm against his ribcage, sounding like a war-drummer beating a frantic charge. All around him in the meadow, curious stares from the resting exiles began to trickle in his direction. In the high air, a solitary bird screeched and soared; somewhere to his right, Jarza was speaking, but the Legate’s voice might as well have been a mile underwater. All the King could hear was the rushing of his own blood and a high, mocking ringing in his ears.

It was not long before Ghalrim, Asag’s second-in-command, materialized from the shadows of the path, a man trailing slowly, nervously behind him.

Alpheo’s gaze locked onto the stranger long before Ghalrim could close the distance to present him. But there was no need for formal introductions.

”Egil?”

The whisper escaped Alpheo’s lips before he could stop it.

Too late, he realized the voice was his own, thin and cracked. But as the man drew closer into the flickering light of the hearth-fires, Alpheo saw his error. The man was not Egil.

As much as Alpheo’s bleeding soul wished for a miracle, his brother’s ashes had long since been buried in the cold, hard dirt of the battlefield, scattered according to the ancient, solemn tradition of the Uthahia. He would never come back. That, after all, was the unyielding meaning of death.

It was the boundary that once crossed could never come back to.It was definite. it was eternal.It was levelling.

He gazed at the ghost of his past.

Looking more closely, the subtle differences began to resolve themselves. Egil’s brows had been bushier, far more prominent and wild than this man’s. And while this stranger’s nose was broken, it humped sharply in the middle; Egil’s nose had been twisted violently to the left, never have setting straight.

But his eyes... those gray, piercing eyes were what had led Alpheo astray. They were the exact shape of his brother-in-arms’ gaze.

The stranger endured the King’s crushing, silent stare for as long as he could before growing painfully self-conscious of where he stood. Only a month ago, this man had likely been breaking his back in some lord’s northern field or serving a wealthy master in a bustling imperial city. Now, he was standing in the grass before a King and his iron-jawed legates,hard, scarred men who had spent their lives absorbing the shock of war.

Once his brother had been part of that company.

Slowly, the man sank to the grass, kneeling on both knees.

That was wrong, too, Alpheo thought.

Egil would have never knelt for any lord or crown. Except, perhaps, if he were to suck a cunt, in which case he would have gone to his knees gladly and laughed about it afterward.

Egil had always been dreadfully open about his conquests, whether they were won with the steel in his hand or the one between his thighs.He always wondered whetever that was just his odd quirk, or it was a thing of his tribe.

Perhaps soon he would know.He had a lot of thing to ask.

”Enkilae...” Alpheo spoke, the name heavy on his tongue. ”Is that your name?”

The man’s shoulders jumped in surprise at the sound of his name. They were narrow, carrying the exact same sloping frame Egil had possessed, though Enkilae was a fraction taller than his brother had been. His hair was the same pale blond, but it was shot through with heavy streaks of gray and hung much longer than Egil had ever tolerated for himself and his presumed shame and dishonor.

At first, Alpheo could only see how remarkably close they were. Now, he could see all the ways they were different.

”It is,my lord” Enkilae replied. His voice was deeper, lacking the levity of tone of the older brother.

None of the guards or legates bothered to correct his lack of courtly address. One look around the circle of officers proved what Alpheo already knew: they were all thoroughly shaken by the sudden manifestation of a dead man’s blood.

”And your brother...” Alpheo said, his voice steadying. ”I suppose he was named Egil.”

”It has been nearly three decades since I last laid eyes on him,” Enkilae said, his tone remarkably even, though his fingers nervously plucked at the grass. ”And I don’t suspect I shall see him anytime soon in this life. But yes... that was his name.”

Alpheo would have expected more emotion from the man, a tear, a tremble, a crack in his bearing knowing his last kin was dead. But he supposed thirty years of slavery in the northern wastes had a way of chipping away at a man’s heart. Time, after all, was the great eraser of all things that were soft.

”Then you would happen to know how he came by that name?” Alpheo pressed quietly.

Enkilae looked up, his blue eyes finally meeting the King’s.Just as blue as his were....

”I do. I was only a small boy, but I was there when it was given to him. I am the eldest after all.

Our mother’s favorite ewe came trotting into the tent, sniffing at the small, howling bundle she had wrapped my brother in. ’Egil,’ she had declared then and there with a laugh.” A faint, dry smile touched Enkilae’s lips.Though it died quickly ”It is a shepherd’s name,given to a sheep and then a child. My lord.”

”You can call me Alpheo,” the King said, the tension finally leaving his shoulders as he let out a breath. ”You are indeed who you say you are. I... I must offer you my condolences. Your brother was a great man. He died a warrior’s death, defending my life and saving the kingdom thorough a great act of bravey.”

Perhaps some part of the northern ice in Enkilae’s chest finally cracked, because his narrow shoulders suddenly gave a sharp, involuntary shake.Only one.

Alpheo looked away, staring into the darkening woods, wondering how long it would take this man to settle his own grief. He feared that process for Enkilae, because he feared it for himself.

He knew the cruel, lingering nature of loss. He knew what it was to go about your day in perfect peace, only for a sudden smell of sour wine or the thunderous, neighing gallop of a horse to rip the scab clean off your soul.

Oh, yes. He is dead.

That scared him more than any blade ever could.The thought he could forget him.To never feel that hole in his heart ever again.

For a long, agonizing time, Enkilae did not speak. The silence returned to the clearing, heavy and absolute. Alpheo did not press him; he simply gave the man the quiet space he needed to breathe.

Beneath his calm exterior, the King’s mind was a tempest. There were a thousand things he wanted to ask this man. He wanted to know about their childhood, about the lost traditions of the Uthahia, about the boy Egil had been before he who he was as he fought at Alpheo’s side.

But looking down at the trembling man before him, the reality of the situation grounded itself in the dirt like the heavy, crushing blow of a mace: this was Egil’s brother. The same blood, the same legacy, sitting in the grass of a foreign kingdom.

”He will be remembered,” Enkilae spoke at last, his voice strained and thick with a trouble he could barely contain. ”My brother... he will be sung of and remembered by his tribe, then. Egil the Savior. He will be recalled like that until the worms take us all.”

The man paused, his gray eyes shining in the fading light. ”We are in a deep debt of gratitude for his memory,.. as we are to you.”

There was something subtly wrong in the way he spoke the words, the way he spoke them slowly. But Alpheo could hardly blame him. It was a staggering, almost impossible reality to process.

To learn that the brother you had not seen or heard from in thirty years had become the sworn companion and trusted right hand of a foreign king and that his final, dying wish had successfully delivered you and hundreds of your surviving kinsmen from the agony of imperial chains. If Alpheo were in Enkilae’s boots, he too would be entirely numb, lost in a sea of shock and disbelief.

The King softened his stance. ”Get up, Enkilae,” he said gently, motioning with his hand. ”A brother of Egil does not crawl in the dirt before me.Your brother’s knee were as stiff as stone.” He gave a smile.

Egil’s brother did not reciprocate.

He hesitated for a heartbeat before slowly rising to his feet, dusting the dry grass from his worn trousers. Though his frame was narrow , blame to the hunger and starvation, he stood with a quiet resilience that Alpheo respected.

”You are Egil’s blood,” Alpheo continued, his voice carrying the absolute weight of a royal promise. ”And that means you are now under my personal care. Both you, and every soul of the Uthahia who walked through my gates today. For the time being, I want you to take up comfortable lodgings within the keep at court. The servants will see you washed, clothed, and fed. You will stay there until the proper preparations are finalized for your people. You have marched far enough, but now you are at home.”

Enkilae bowed his head, his shoulders dropping as a fraction of the tension finally left his body. ”I... I thank you for your immense kindness, King Alpheo. My people will not forget this.We shall henceforth be king’s men, from today till the end of times.Whenever that may be.”