Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

As he swerved toward the left lane, oil-slipping past a pair of cutpurses who thought themselves discrete behind the flap of a greasy tent, Vilon found Owen exactly as he had hoped to find him: entirely ready to get out of this damned cursed place.

”Ser!” Owen called out, his eyes instantly lighting up with the frantic relief of a boy who had spent the last hour on high alert.

With one hand casually resting behind his thigh and the other tightly gripping Chestnut’s leather reins, the square-jawed boy proved he had delivered precisely what he had been bidden to do,protect their property. The left part of his hip, where the heavy pouch of coin hung, was firmly pressed against the dense flank of the warhorse, utterly preventing anyone from the swarming, desperate crowd from getting a clean slash at his purse strings.

Vilon had to give it to his squire; the lad was far smarter than he had been at that age, which, in truth, was barely four years ago.

”I trust there was no trouble while I was dealing with the clerk?” the knight asked, adjusting his leather swordbelt to keep his wool tunic pinned tight against his hip while his eyes actively scanned the immediate brush of the crowd.

”I felt a few stray fingers brushing my hips, ser. And I was approached by four dock-tailed bastards claiming I’d stolen Chestnut from their master’s cart,” Owen reported, his tone a mix of youthful pride and lingering adrenaline.

’’What did you tell them?’’

”Very liitle.I beat two of them bloody with a stick, ser. But Chestnut is untouched, and the coins are safely with me.”

”With a stick?”

And indeed, a stick it was. As Owen shifted away from the horse, a thick, knotty length of cured ash wood appeared from behind the back of his legs. Vilon could see a fresh smear of dark red drying near the heavy end of the wood.

He ignored that.

”Where in all hells did you even find that?”

”I found it on the high road three days back, ser,” Owen said, entirely defensive. ”It was a nice stick. Stout. Balanced.Like a sword.’’

’’But you already had one?’’

’’Not of wood ser.And the guard with the kettle-helm at the gatehouse only said we couldn’t draw steel. He didn’t say a damn thing about wood. I killed no one, ser, I swear it. The fellow was bloody about the nose and ears, certainly, but he walked away on his own two feet. Was... was that wrong?”

”No,” Vilon said, a genuine smile cracking through his grim veneer. ”You did well, lad.As well as one can do in this place”

Owen grinned back, but as Vilon looked around, he noticed that a small pocket of empty space had naturally formed around the boy and the horse. The surrounding refugees were giving the stout squire and the massive, ears-pinned destrier a very wide berth.

”So...” Vilon mused, eyebrow raised. ”You simply thrashed everyone who tried to drift within an arm’s reach of the silver?”

”Not all of them, ser.” Owen’s smile slid off his face, replaced by a sudden, downcast expression that made him look far younger than his years. ”Some of the older bastards... they made use of the children, ser. Sending tiny, shivering girls to beg or pull at my cloak while their hands went low for the strings. That... that was not right. Not at all.I gave them some food though, ser.”

Ah, gods bless him and his heart.

He reached out, his gauntleted hand gripping the back of the boy’s neck, and gently planted his forehead against Owen’s. ”You have a good heart on you, boy. Never let this muck choke it out. We’ll get ourselves off from this wretched place soon enough.”

That seemed to at least relieve the squire, as it did Vilon himself. He thoroughly misliked this sprawling hive of misery. The violence, the suffocating dirt, the raw desperation, it soured whatever fragile good mood the knight had managed to preserve since morning.

More than that, Vilon could feel an unfamiliar, creeping panic tightening in his throat. He was getting spooked simply by being among so many souls.

It was a strange sort of fear. Not even in the absolute madness of pitched battle had he ever felt so thoroughly squashed, hemmed, and suffocated by other people. He had been pressed tight at the crossing of the Ford; he had stumbled over slick entrails and fallen into the red mud alike, keeping his shield high and striking left and right without any grand aim, cutting down men and parrying desperate blows for the better part of three hours. And then, once the winter sky had turned a bruised red and soon a black void, he had looked out over the whole field, a landscape littered with broken armor and weeping, dying men.

But there, on the field, it was simple. It was iron against iron, life against death.

Here, every single one of these thousands of humans, each carrying their own private dreams, their ruined lives, and their broken spirits, had been systematically cast aside and crushed by the gears of the war long before Vilon’s sword had ever crashed against an Oizenian shield. There were likely far more people who had died of starvation in the ditches just to bring about that grand battle at the Ford than had ever fallen to a legionary’s pilum.

It was a maddening, hollow realization if a man spent even a single moment thinking about the math of it. The prince had lost his gamble, the king had taken his crown, and these were the small, broken pieces left scattered on the board.

No matter the game, the smallfolk always paid the price.

It was so maddening to think about, that VIlon simply decided not to.Or at least tried to.

”So... did you do what you set out to do, ser?” Owen asked, his voice cutting cleanly through the thick, suffocating knot of Vilon’s thoughts.

The knight blinked, shaking the ghosts of the Ford from his eyes, and offered a grim nod. He tried to brush the lingering unease aside, but the bitter taste of it remained stubborn on his tongue.

”We got our provisions,” Vilon murmured, adjusting his grip on the leather of his scabbard. ”But it was a extortionate sum, and the quality is wretched. We’ve had the misfortune of hunting for travel rations in the middle of a famine, lad. So I don’t want hear no complain about food.There might not be blood sausage in it, but we won’t starve.

We depart the moment Chestnut is turned toward the road. The sooner we reach Scidna, the sooner we will be behind stone walls we can trust. I mistrust this place down to its very soil.”

On that final point, Vilon received absolutely no argument from his squire.

The two began their retreat, turning their backs on the gallows and the boiling cauldrons of blood pudding. Moving through the central artery of the camp was like trying to wade upstream through a river of thick, freezing mud. Vilon led the way, his broad shoulders doing the heavy lifting as he actively pressed, shoved, and elbowed a path through the dense, shuffling press of refugees to clear enough space for Chestnut to pass without trampling a child. Owen kept his head low, his stick ready, and his hip glued to the silver.

As they finally neared the outer palisade, where the air was marginally clearer, Vilon caught sight of a familiar rickety wagon. It was the very caravan company they had spent the last grueling week guarding along the southern highway. The merchant was currently sweating through his fine velvet as his drivers furiously unloaded the heavy crates of barley and grain, anxious to secure their receipt and flee.

And peering down from the driver’s bench of that very wagon was the absolute last person Vilon wanted to trade words with.

As if their last conversation had not been bad enough.

Rosh sat with his boots resting lazily on the buckboard, a half-eaten core of a winter apple in his hand. He looked down at the armored knight and the disgruntled squire, his crooked smile spreading across his weathered face.

”Well now,” Rosh called out over the din of the market lane, tossing the apple core over his shoulder into the mud. ”Is this a proper farewell I see before me, Ser Vilon?”

Vilon stopped, resting his gauntleted hand on his flank. ”It is,” Vilon replied, his voice a model of cold, professional respect. ”Our deal with the merchant is concluded, and our path takes us deeper into the south. Safe roads to you, Rosh.”

Rosh let out a dry, gravelly chuckle, leaning his elbows on his knees. ”I must admit, I’m going to miss you lot. You were remarkably fine company for a pair of travellers. Though the boy here was always a touch too sour for my tastes.”

Owen’s jaw tightened, his knuckles whitening around his stout ash stick. He looked around the immediate vicinity of the wagon, his brow furrowing as he noticed a distinct absence.

”Where is your other company?” Owen asked sharply, his voice laced with judgmental youth. If there was one thing VIlon had to teach him, was to moderate his language, he was too rowdy.

Rosh broke into a loud, unvarnished laugh at that, shaking his head until his grease-stained hood slipped back. ”Ah, the little bird has eyes after all! Truth be told, squire... I wonder about that myself.”

He leaned back, looking out over the sprawling, chaotic grid of tents with a strange, unreadable expression. ”Perhaps she’ll crawl back into my blankets by nightfall, or perhaps she’s finally decided to find herself a proper life that doesn’t involve spreading her thighs for copper. After all, the crown is putting a great deal of effort into taming the wild land and repairing the fishing nets out by the river. I’m certain a clever girl like her could find something useful to do with her hands.Opportunies are many and can be found anywhere, even beneath the mud.”

Rosh turned his gray eyes back to the two travelers. ”Besides, she’s most certainly in a better position to start anew than most of the miserable wretches in this ditch. Not after all the good silver she managed to pluck out of my hands this past week.Still, she was a good lay all in all.I do not cry the money as bad spent.”

He tilted his head, his yellowed eyes from all the drinking narrowing as he looked down at the pair from his perch on the buckboard. As he worked his mouth, his tongue slid thoughtfully through the dark, missing gap of his front tooth, searching for a stray bit of apple skin. There must have been something stuck there, for he sucked at it with a wet, clicking sound before finally spitting it out through his cracked lips.

”A bit of free advice for you if you’ll take it, ser,” Rosh said, his tone dropping the mocking edge, replaced by a quiet, gritty gravity. ”Make quick on the road and move as fast as your great beast can carry you. I fear the bandits in these parts have come to be more restless than before.

With the legions choking the main highways, the crows in the hills are starving. They’ve turned to attacking passerby far fiercer than ever before, and they don’t care if you’re wearing a lord’s livery or rags. You two, with that fine stallion and a purse that makes the boy walk sideways? You’d make a worthwhile yield for them.”

Owen bristled instantly, stepping forward with his ash stick raised a fraction. ”I am not scared of some desperate hedge-thieves!”

Rosh looked at the boy, his crooked smile returning, sharp and pitying. ”Then I suppose you’ll die braver than most, little bird. And certainly not sharper, though that is hardly your fault.Bit of advice keep your iron out not a wooden stick.”

He twisted his torso away from the fuming squire, dismissing him entirely, and locked his gray eyes onto Vilon for his final words.

”Keep your wits about you, friend,” Rosh said, and for a fleeting moment, his voice was surprisingly gentle, the tone of an old veteran who had seen too many young men go into the dirt. ”And keep a shorter leash on your squire. He is a peg too willful for the places you’ll be riding through. I wish you good luck on the high road.

Remember be quick and trust no one, for the people you may ride on the day will have no qualms about gutting you at night. Gods know I would have done well to know that in my youth, I faced my own betrayal you could say, from close families at that.’’ HIs face went sad for a moment ’’ I ask you, ser Vilon, Is there anything more wretched than to be betrayed by blood?”

’’I am saddened to hear that’’ Vilon replied honestly.

’’Saddened, eh?You are a good knight, then.Most people wouldn’t give half a shit about it.’’ He muttered as pulled his grease-stained hood back over his head, shielding his face from the rising wind. A sad smile in his face as he gave his last. ”Look after yourself, Ser Vilon. I’d be saddened to pass by the road and see your corpse rotting around.This land is wretched, and you’ll need all the advice you can take.

If you ask me, I’d say it’s even accursed.’’