Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Where the king lays stone, the gods go weeping.

He had heard the old saying often enough in his youth that the cadence of it had lodged itself somewhere behind his teeth, surfacing unbidden on long roads and longer nights. Back when he had first taken Owen as his squire, when the both of them were still green as spring wheat and glowing with that naive glee that only the untried ever truly possess, they had ridden down along the Magna Strata asking after its meaning of every soul they passed.

All they had ever received in return were hearty laughs, or else dry dismissals that it had been years beyond counting since anyone had sighted a weeping tree, delivered in the tone men reserve for children asking after the stars. Owen had shared the same quiet puzzlement that plagued his knight, and had put it to him one evening by the fire in that plain, earnest way of his.

How could a tree weep, ser? It has no eyes for it.

Perhaps it was merely a local jest, Vilon had reasoned back then, some old country wit gone stale with the passing of the years, the sort of thing that made men laugh in one village and mean nothing at all in the next. Even to his own ears the answer had rung hollow and thin as a cracked bell, but it had served well enough to let a man sleep.

A single step onto the fringe of the forest , months after they first heard that sentence, was enough to strip the last innocence from that old conclusion, and to leave it lying naked and dead in the mud behind them.

The answer stood waiting directly ahead of them in the pale, indifferent light of morning. Dozens upon dozens of men had been pinned to the thick trunks of trees, long iron spikes driven clean through their palms and through the high arches of their feet, the heads of the spikes hammered flush against flesh so that no man might work himself free by thrashing.

They were all still alive.

Screams and hoarse pleas and the ragged, hitching weeping of men long past the point of shame were the chorus that greeted the small band as they rode toward the edge of the forward camp. For every man who wept and cried out for mercy, there were three who begged only for a quick end, and a few who had gone past begging altogether and simply hung there with their mouths open, breathing, waiting.

Wet dark trails of blood tracked down the pale bark like sap risen from some wound in the world itself, gathering in slow pools among the roots below, where the earth had turned black and soft with the drinking of it. On some of the bodies the ravens had already begun their patient work, hopping shoulder to shoulder with the familiarity of guests who had arrived early and meant to stay. They did not startle at the passing of horses. They had learned there was no need for none would deprive them of the meal.

”Keep your head down, Owen,” Vilon muttered beneath his breath, striving with everything he had to hold his own gaze fixed rigidly upon the road ahead and the narrow stretch of mud between Chestnut’s ears. ”Do not look at them. Not one.”

”Yes, ser,” Owen whimpered, obeying on the instant.

Yet Vilon could feel the deep trembling terror radiating from the boy beside him the way a man feels heat from a forge, and he found he could not shut it out. The squire’s face had gone pale as scraped bone, his lips pressed thin and bloodless, whether in silent prayer to the Bringer of Mercy or simply to dam back a flood of helpless tears, Vilon could not have said. He did not ask. There are questions a man has no right to put to a boy, and that morning he could think of a dozen of them.

He had no warm words of comfort left to offer the lad this time, no easy jest to sand the edges off the world. For some things were not be jested about.

The road rolled on beneath them and the trees went thinning as the forest gave way, yet the crucified men and their terrible chorus did not thin with it. They lined the way like mile markers, like banners, like the King’s own signature written down the length of the road in a hand no man could pretend not to read.

For now that was his road.

It was only as they neared the heavy timber gatehouse of the main camp that the wailing was gradually drowned beneath the thunderous, blessedly familiar rhythms of a host at war. The rhythmic clinking of iron plate being carried and cursed at and hammered back into shape, the sharp braying of pack mules, the roaring of officers at men who deserved it and men who did not, the hiss of the water barrel and the ceaseless creak of wagon axles.

Captain Saron reined in his mount at the perimeter, exchanging a few low, gruff words with the guard posted at the palisade, gesturing back toward Vilon and Owen with a leather-clad thumb. The guard, an actual legionnaire this time, his surcoat bearing the black-and-white colors all knew as the best of Yarzat , nodded once, turned, and bellowed over his shoulder for the postern to be cleared.

A heartbeat later, the heavy oak gates groaned open, swinging wide enough to swallow the returning Hounds and their companions.

The world that had spawned the long mayhem of Vilon’s life opened up before him like the recurring thread of a dream he long thought buried. It felt as though centuries had passed since he had first marched south alongside the Valorous Bull, back when he had struck a quiet friendship with a gentle giant over two sloshing buckets of riverwater. And now, here he stood, a battered soul searching for repentance from his past sins, having accidentally rendered grand service to a conqueror whose name he barely knew.

Inside, the camp was a sea of iron, mud, and smoke.

Centuries-old trees had been ruthlessly felled to clear wide avenues through the brush, their stumps serving as tethering posts for lines of snorting warhorses. Hundreds milled through the staging lanes, not all leggionaires, as he noticed from the heavy armored man of light brown skin.

Vilon caught some polishing iron gorgets with greasy rags, others huddled over blacksmith hearths where anvil sparks showered into the grey air like falling stars. Cohorts of halberdier moved in tight, disciplined blocks, their long shafts bristling above their iron caps like a moving forest of steel, their boots striking the hard-packed earth , they continued through the road till they rolled out of the camp.

Off in the staging squares, armorers with the aid of other men were hoisting mail armor to the horses, very similar to the one Vilon wore, which was now riddled with hole in some points, some of the horses lamely let the men do their work, others did not give it so easy.

’’Easy girl, easy’’ One of the man muttered petting the beast’s roaring chest in soothing pattern and whispering in her ears. A moment later the beast had calmed down enough to get her neck through the armor.

Some foots deeper an armor did not have the same luck , the horse lashing out in a flurry of hooves and bites. The man dropped to the ground just as one hoove cut the air right where he had been a moment ago. He scurried away as a band of four men held the beast down with ropes.

A voice cut through the iron din from somewhere off to his right.

”...and mind you keep that stallion’s reins short, or the mules will have a bite out of his mane before you’ve finished blinking. You’d be surprised how hard the bastards bite, and they pack quite the punch besides. Mandy the Handy learned that lesson with his own fingers, and now he’s got a name that fits him about as well as a glove with three empty holes in it.”

Vilon’s head lagged behind the words, his mind painfully slow to reconnect itself with the physical world. He blinked against the harsh grey smoke rolling off a hundred cookfires and turned stiffly in his saddle, every movement dragging a hot wire through his side, to find Saron looking up at him from his mount. The captain’s lone dark eye was fixed on him steady as a nail, and a crooked, yellowed grin split the thicket of his beard as he gestured toward a towering command pavilion draped in stark black and white canvas, looming pale above the cavalry lines like a thundercloud that had gotten lost and settled for a field.

”Didn’t hear a bloody word I just said, did you, ser?” Saron barked, with a rough chuckle that sounded like gravel going down a chute, slapping his leather gloved hand against his thigh with a sharp crack. ”Wake up! You’re in the belly of the beast now. Welcome to the legions.”

Vilon gathered himself as best he could, shifting his weight to ease the throb that had taken up residence beneath his ribs and shown no sign of paying rent. ”Quite,” he managed, his voice coming out raspy as a file on rust. ”Overwhelming.”

Saron spluttered with booming laughter, loud enough that two passing spearmen turned to look and thought better of it. ”You’ll get used to the noise inside of a few hours! Unfortunately, much as I’d like to walk you about and show you what’s what, I’ve duty to tend to. Walk the lines as you please, nobody should give you trouble. My men and I are off to report to our legate. We’ve been dallying about far too long already, and legates are not a patient breed.”

He gathered his reins in one fist and leaned out of the saddle.

”If anyone tries to fuss or pick a fight, tell them you’re riding with Saron of the Hounds. My name carries a bit of weight around these tents, and they’ll let you pass easy enough. If the one breaking your balls happens to be Mars, which he’ll make sure you know inside of two breaths because the bastard can’t help himself, tell the bitch I said to go check his own airy arse for his silverii, because he won’t be getting a copper shit out of me until the Weaver herself comes down to collect it.

And if he still won’t let you by after that, you have my leave to punch the dick square in the face. I’ll deal with the consequences after. Do not fear on that account. I’ve a long and glorious history of dealing with consequences.”

The captain gave a sharp tug on his reins, and his mount swung its head about.

”Now off you go. And perhaps you ought to go hunting for that physician you’ve been groaning about in the saddle all the way from that bloody creek. You’ve made a sound like a barn door in a gale for three days running, ser, and I’ve grown fond of it, but your squire hasn’t.So off to the white tent for you.”

With a final roaring laugh he dug his heels in and tore off into the camp’s main thoroughfare, scattering a knot of porters who cursed him with the easy familiarity of men who had cursed him before. Selm and Mariol followed close behind, offering Vilon and Owen a brief silent nod apiece before the crowd closed over them like water over a dropped stone, leaving knight and squire standing alone in a world that seemed poised to swallow them whole and pick its teeth afterward.

Yet whatever horrors lay ahead, at least they still had one another. That much, Vilon told himself, would never change.

Or so he thought.

”Ser Vilon,” Owen began, his voice buzzing with a sudden surge of excitement that had come from nowhere at all, the way it always did with him. ”Back during the war, when we were pinned down behind the Bastion, I made friends with some of the men who carried those long iron spears.” He leaned forward in his saddle, pointing a small finger toward a cohort gathering their kit near the armourer’s forge, where the hammers rang on regardless of everything. ”I think those might be their banners, ser! I’m near certain of it. And they look as though they’re about to roll out of the camp. I’d truly like to go over and see if I can spot any of them. It would be so good to see them anew. It was moons ago I made friends with them, and there was one called Rott who wished to marry the crofter’s daughter. Perhaps he did it, ser! Perhaps he’s married now and everything!”

Vilon offered a weary, affectionate nod, one corner of his mouth twitching into something close enough to a smile to pass for one in poor light. He did not think he could manage that walk himself. Not today. He needed help, and he needed it soon, and there was no sense in pretending otherwise any longer.

”Go on then, lad,” he said softly, waving a hand toward the moving cohort. ”Go see your friends. But keep to the main lanes and do not go wandering off down any of the side ones. Meet me back at the central square when the sun strikes midday. In the meantime I’ll go and see if I can find a physician who won’t bleed me to death for the privilege, and maybe wring something out of him for the pain.” He pressed a hand flat against his side and let out a slow breath through his teeth. ”It’s hurting fierce, this.”

”Thank you, ser! Midday at the square!” Owen squeaked, already wheeling about and running off toward that bristling forest of iron halberds as though it were a cake set out on a table with his own name iced across the top of it.

Vilon watched him go a moment longer than he needed to, then turned his horse deeper into the camp.

Saron had said something about a white tent.