Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The whole tavern had gone dead silent as the story unfolded to its end. Not even the buzzing of a fly could be heard traveling through the gloom. Here and there, only the faint clinking of a pewter utensil or the quiet slurp of a man sipping his ale barely broke the air. The locals sat as still as the green moss creeping up the damp stone wall, or the sprits of wild grass sprouting through the gaps between the floorboards.

”A blind hag trading grand prophecies for a handful of sour plums!” someone shouted from the dark. ”Shame you didn’t give her two, ser, or she might have foretold you’d be sitting in our muck tonight!”

The spell broke, and the whole bloody room burst into roars of laughter.

That was the first spark, shouted by some half-soaked drunkard who thought himself a genius. And once the first nail was hammered into the coffin, the rest of the tavern was quick to drive theirs home.

”Deny your sword to princes and kings? Bah!” boasted a burly farmhand wearing a frayed hay-hat, leaning over a bowl of cold pea porridge. ”Who are you holding it out for then, the Emperor himself? Come back and hire me as your shoe-polisher once that’s done, you’ll need someone to scrape off all the utter bullshit you walked through today!”

’’I would have gladly taken the fuck instead’’ Roared another.

More laughed buzzed out.

Vilon sat quietly, listening to the chorus of jeers. He wondered for a beat how he ought to feel, being branded a teller of tall tales before a room full of strangers. He thought he would have been furious, but in truth, he couldn’t bring himself to care half a runny nose about what a tavern full of provincial peasants thought. His dark eyes flicked over to Owen. The boy was staring at him with wide, solemn eyes, his jaw set, thoroughly convinced of every single word.

That is enough for me, he decided.

”Come now, leave the knight be!” declared a loud voice from the far end of the room, accompanied by the heavy thud of a fist on timber. ”That was a damn fine story if nothing else! I’ll pay for the yellow bastard’s wine myself just for the entertainment!”

”You, my magnificent friend,” the yellow-skinned drunk said, pointing a trembling, grease-stained finger across the room, ”are a prince among men!”

”And you, my friend,” the man shot back, to another round of chuckles, ”should really reconsider your life choices. You look forty years of age, yet you sleep in the dirt with your mule and have neither wife, nor hearth, nor a single thing worth to your name, everything you have you spend here!”

A wave of thunderous laughter bloomed through the taproom. Even the butt of the joke laughed right along with them, his head rolling back as if he were entirely oblivious to his own public humiliation.

”Trust me, my good partners!” the drunk declared, dramatically clutching his heart as the tavern mistress slammed a fresh wooden mug down before him. ”I consider every single choice I have ever made each night before I lay my head in the straw!” He took a massive, heroic gulp of the red wine,which had been filled by the stout woman, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and bellowed, ”And every single night, I arrive at the exact same magnificent conclusion! I am the wisest man in all the world for I know how ignorant I am!And for that I am wiser than most!

There isn’t a single thing I would have done differently! The whole world is my hall, and my mule is both my loving wife and my dutiful son!”

He swept his arms wide as he made his grand proclamation, his filthy brown cloak swishing around his shins like the rolling waves of a stormy sea. This time, even the sour-faced tavern woman cracked a crooked, toothless grin and let out a raspy cackle.

”So...” a shrill, boyish voice piped up, cutting through the lingering giggles. ”Did we win the room, then?”

Owen sat up straight, his hands planted on the edge of the table.

With another slow, appreciative sip of his wine, the drunk man looked at the squire, and then turned his yellowed gaze up to Vilon.

”Your story was wildly entertaining, ser. That much is beyond doubt,” he said, his smile widening until it exposed a horrifying row of crooked, pale-yellow teeth. ”You may certainly have my bed for the night... though I fear your little tale doesn’t quite beat mine.”

Owen’s face fell. ”How do we know you aren’t lying about having a better story?”

A collective groan echoed across the entire tavern.

”Oi, lad!” barked the farmhand in the hay-hat, throwing his hands up in despair. ”Couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut and take the damn bed—”

”Now, now! Since a dear, sweet boy asks so nicely for it,” the drunk man interrupted, his eyes gleaming with a sudden, dangerous mischief as he raised his cup, ”how can a gentleman refuse to bless him with true entertainment?”

More groans rose from the tables as the villagers settled back into their benches, bracing themselves for a story they heard no doubt dozens of times.

”There was a boy who was stupid,” the drunk man said, taking a long, deliberate sip from his wooden cup as if gathering the courage to go on. ”Stupid than most. He asked all kinds of foolish questions about things that people far smarter than him already knew,or cared not a single whit for.” He let out a wet, raspy chuckle. ”Why the hell would a kid ask why the sky is blue, am I right? Everyone knows that’s just the way the gods made it, so why bother wondering about the cause behind it?”

The room had gone quiet again, save for the rhythmic scraping of the tavern mistress’s rag against a pewter bowl.

”His mama was the only one in the whole province who knew the truth,” the man continued, his yellowed eyes staring off into the dark rafters. ”She knew that a man is only truly stupid when he stops asking questions. So time marched on, as it always does, and the foolish boy grew up, continuing right along with his silly life.

He got himself bitten by every manner of foul insect you can name, just to see what they did. He tasted every root, leaf, and berry he could pluck from the bushes. For some, he discovered a delightful palate; for others, he got a violent ache in his tummy that kept him in shitting black water for three days straight. But he kept at it. He wanted to know all there was to know in this wide, strange world, because he believed he was stupid, and so he had to learn everything he possibly could.”

The drunk leaned forward, resting both greasy elbows on the stained timber, his raspy voice dropping an octave.

”Then came the bad year. One morning, the thunder of hooves shook the dirt road, and men of steel on great warhorses rolled into the village. They unfurled a scroll and declared that by order of the prince, the hamlet had to yield five strong men for every ten houses to march off to war. Well, the villagers panicked, hid their sons, and gave nothing. So the soldiers rode in, swords drawn, and began grabbing whoever they could lay their iron gauntlets upon until they made their count.”

He took another slow gulp of wine, his throat working heavily.

”They grabbed a child, you see. A sweet, gentle kid who was loved by every breathing soul in the village. He was small, soft-spoken, and terrified out of his wits.

They would have dragged him off to gods-know-where to do gods-know-what, and he would have surely died in the mud before the moon turned. But then... the stupid boy stepped out from the crowd.”

The drunk man offered a sad, yellowed grin that didn’t reach his bloodshot eyes.

”The stupid boy volunteered to go in the child’s stead!

The gentle boy’s family wept with joy and showered him with blessings. The village elders apologized to the brave young man for letting him take the burden, praising his great sacrifice. But his mama... his mama just sat on her knees in the dust and wept bitter tears.

She was not the only one crying, for all the mamas of the taken boys wept for their sons that morning. But she was the only one who knew the truth about her boy. Her stupid boy. Her wrong boy.Her most ignorant boy of all”

He tapped his temple with a filthy index finger, looking straight at Owen.

”She knew he wasn’t being brave. She knew her stupid boy didn’t give a damn about the life he saved. She wept because she knew... he just wanted to know what war tasted like.”

The drunk licked his dry, cracked lips, the pale yellow of his eyes glittering in the amber glow of the hearthfire. ”And oh, he got to taste it. He drank it down to the dregs.

”The march was long, brutal, and endless. It wasn’t long before the stupid boy saw his very first dead man. He was just another farmhand, smarter than most, perhaps, but not smart enough. He had carried a rusted kitchen knife he’d stolen from his mother’s table.” He looked Vilon up and down, offering a crooked, hollow smile. ”Said he wanted to be a knight’s squire, that one. He never made squire, and he never got the chance to draw that knife. He collapsed on the dusty road beside a dozen others, his breath simply giving out.

Looking back, he was the lucky one.

Before the boy and the other even reached the front, the soles of our boots rotted off into the mud. Bloody flux tore through the ranks like a scythe, and flesh began rotting off living bones, men fell down during the march and never got up.

That stupid boy learned a great deal on that road.

He learned how a man looks when he shits his very soul out through his bowels until he’s nothing but grey skin and bone. He learned the sound a woman makes when she’s dragged into the dark by men wearing iron and the sound of a life torn away while breath the corpse still draw. He learned the specific, creaking groan of a heavy oak branch as a rope stretches tight beneath a man’s weight, and the harrowing, shrill wailing that echoes out of a burning farmhouse when the doors are barred from the outside.He learned that when a body rot, it isn’t just the skin that smell, but the stomach, the liver, the lungs.

And then, at long last, he finally arrived at the war itself.

Just in time for a grand, bloody clash of steel. He watched a iron mace cave in the skull of the very last boy from his village. He saw the proud lord who had dragged them all from their homes get cut down like wheat by some other lord whose name he would forever be stupid of.

The stupid boy turned around in the chaos and realized there was no one left he knew.Of all he came about in the march, there was no-one left.

He was standing knee-deep in red mud, surrounded by strangers, swinging a crude spear at men he had never met. He didn’t know why he was fighting. He didn’t even know what province he was bleeding in. For all the things he had learned, he realized he still knew nothing at all.

But he learned the sound of iron-clad warhorses thundering in a charge, he discovered it vibrated right through a man’s ribs before it crushes him. He learned the terrible tearing sound steel makes when it shears through muscle, and the wet crack of splitting bone. He learned the horrific, almost human scream a warhorse makes when it impales itself on a wooden pike... and he learned the sound noble knights make when they lie in the muck, weeping and begging for mercy.”

The man let out a raspy, humorless chuckle that ended in a dry cough.

”Turns out, a noble knight begging for his life makes the exact same sound as a peasant boy when he shits himself in terror.

When the heavy cavalry charged down the muddy slope, the boy couldn’t even tell which side was his own anymore. Banner or banner, red or blue, it was all just iron and teeth, death and demise. Stupid and foolish.Ignorant of all.

There was still a great deal left to learn, to be sure... but the stupid boy decided he was finally content with his education. So he unclasped his fingers, let his spear fall into the mud, and simply turned around and walked away.

He didn’t know the way home, so he just kept walking. Down, down, down through the south. Eventually, rumors of the conflict began to drift past him on the road. The lords and the bards called it the War of the Bloody Penny.

The boy had never seen a single copper penny for all his trouble, but he could certainly attest that it was a war, and it had been bloody beyond measure.That at least he was not stupid of.

He walked for months, learning the darkest truths of all. He learned what a monster a man becomes when his belly has been empty for a week. He learned that there is no line a human being will not cross,no cruelty too vast, no flesh too sacred, when starvation takes hold.He became smart of things he would have prayed to be stupid of.

And then, in the middle of that wasteland, he found a mule.”

The drunk man’s eyes softened slightly, a strange, quiet tenderness washing over his yellowed, battered face.

”He learned a lot from that beast. Learned that a mule is very much like a man, stubborn, smart, and capable of a quiet, unshakable loyalty. It became his only friend in a world of ghosts. They traveled the long roads together, sleeping pressed against one another for warmth in the freezing ditches, sharing whatever dry crusts or wild roots they could forage.

Years later, he finally made his way back to his home village. Or, at least... what was left of it. A few charred foundations, black ash, and wild weeds. He never found his mother. He searched the ruins, asked the crows, but he never saw her face again. It was then that he learnt despair”

The drunk man took a final, deep gulp of his sour wine, wiping his beard with the back of a hand that trembled faintly.

”And he of course learnt that wine could sooth his fear for a few hours.It was sweet and it was sour, and it made him sleep.

He was born a stupid boy, you see. But on that day, among the ashes, he became truly stupid with that damn wine in hand... because he finally stopped asking questions, and he stopped searching for more things to know.”