Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

He had never come to know Mariol half so well as he might have wished.

Yet Vilon had never needed years in a man’s shadow to make out his true shape. In the handful of hard days they had shared upon the road, Mariol had proved a creature of easy moods and quicker warmth, the sort who could turn a cold miserable evening into something a man might almost remember fondly. It was his sharp tongued japes, his cheeky inappropriate hands where a man has no business putting his hands, and above all that wide irrepressible grin, that had gradually thawed Vilon’s guard without ever asking his leave to do it.

For a little while there Vilon had even managed to forget what Mariol was, and what bloody banner he had ridden beneath before this one. Perhaps he simply lacked the stomach to weigh another man down with the anchor of his past sins when the man was laughing beside him. A wiser knight might have found something profound in that, some clever lesson about how easily a monster wears a gentle face, or how evil laughs loudest over broken bread and pours out the wine after.

But Vilon had never been overly clever. He was a tall, thick headed hedge knight with mud on his boots and mud in his thinking, and he had made his peace with both.

And who was he to sit in judgement over another man’s dark deeds while carrying a full vault of his own? Mariol, at the very least, was braver than he had ever been. Mariol wore his sins openly, like a cloak, for the whole world to look upon and make of what it would. Vilon kept his buried deep and prayed nightly that they might rot down there in the dark and be forgotten by everyone, himself first of all.

There had been a rare spark in that Hound, a wild bright vitality that made Vilon wish he had known the man years ago, back when he himself was a lonely boy trailing after a bitter master who taught him that life rewards only cruelty and greed, that betrayal is a kind of strength and treachery merely cleverness by another name.

When death came for Mariol at last, the Hound did not whimper and did not beg. He met it straight backed, as a warrior ought.

The long hunting knife bit deep, driving in twice above the hip where the mail parted and left a hand’s width of nothing.

Mariol flinched, his chest heaving outward as the momentum of his swinging axe died in the air and took his balance with it. He spun on his heel and his knees gave out beneath him in the same breath. Crimson seeped out through his armour, and inside it, Vilon knew, he was bleeding a great deal worse than what showed.

His hand axe tumbled into the rotting leaves and was forgotten by everyone, its owner included.

Vilon was the only man who saw it happen. The others were locked fast in the blinding ebb and surge of their own duels, and so he alone was granted the empty honour of bearing witness to Mariol’s last breath.

Across the Hound’s dying face Vilon saw no terror at all. He saw no regret, no weeping for unpardonable sins, no sudden desperate bargaining with gods long ignored. Only a cold hollow acceptance, as though this had been an appointment kept rather than a surprise.

Mariol never once looked up to see Vilon’s frantic limping charge. Perhaps, had he seen it, he might have smiled. It is no sour thing to die with a smile on a man’s lips, and Mariol had earned one.

But he did not turn.

The last sight the Hound ever claimed in this world was the Vulture Lord stepping forward with a heavy longsword gripped in two hands, and driving the steel straight down through his throat.

That was how Mariol died. Clutching at his own neck. Drowning in the hot red foam bubbling up over his lips.

Vilon saw every part of it and never broke his stride, not once. He had come too late to grant salvation. But by the Five Gods and all their silences, he had not come too late to deliver retribution.

A dry pine branch snapped beneath his boot like a crack of thunder in that clearing.

Both murderers whipped their heads about. Vilon was already upon them, longsword extended, back leg set deep beneath him for a lunge that had a lifetime of anger loaded into it.

He caught the knife man first. The rogue wore no iron worth the name, and Vilon’s blade punched through leather and rib with the terrible ease of a sword sliding home into a well oiled scabbard. The soft resistance of meat and sinew gave way before the thrust, and the point bit hard into the man’s spine until the shock of it rattled up Vilon’s arm and into his shoulder.

The killer turned his profile, eyes gone wide with an absolute frozen disbelief, and looked down at the cold iron standing out of his own chest as though it were some question he had not been given time enough to answer.

Vilon twisted the blade with a turn of the wrist and hauled the steel free. The man collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut through, as if the sword had been the only thing holding his skeleton upright in the first place.

Blood ran the length of Vilon’s blade, gathering at the point before it dripped down into the dirt.

Bright and hot and red.

His father’s sigil might have been a white rooster, but Vilon knew well enough what his own would be now. A dead vulture, and blood across its wings, for red was his colour.

Red would be his colour until he breathed his last, for that is the colour of a life given over to violence, and there is no washing it out.

Vilon took the fragile second of respite to scan the surrounding gloom. The men who had been scrambling down the shale were nowhere to be seen; perhaps they had turned tail and fled into the thicket, content to let their comrades buy their escape with blood, or perhaps they had already dissolved into the swirling skirmish nearby.

Vilon tried to master the icy fear clutching his throat, taking a long, steadying breath, but he failed. The terror remained, thick and suffocating. So he did what he had done at the creek, he stepped forward with fear pounding in his chest. It did not matter whether he acted out of selfless bravery or sheer, desperate terror. All that mattered was that he moved.

Even despite the pain.

The armored men turned to face him, stepping away from Mariol’s motionless body. He held his bloodied longsword high, studying the tall hedge knight with a cold, evaluating stare. Around them, the forest groaned with the screech of steel and the ragged whimpers of dying men.

Then, through the narrow slitted grill of his visor, the commander truly saw Vilon’s face, and froze.

It seemed Logen’s words had been true after all.

”I had hoped you would have left this wretched land behind...” a voice rasped, muffled and echoing behind the iron mask. Rosh’s voice. The Vulture Lord. ”I told you down in that camp that this soil was cursed, Vilon. I held onto the hope that you had taken the high road south. I liked you and the lad well enough.” He let out a low, dry chuckle that rattled behind the steel. ”You even made me a fine stew...”

Vilon spat a wad of blood and saliva into the grass. ”Had I known who was sitting at my fire, I would have seasoned it with poison.”

The iron mask tilted upward slightly. Vilon had the sickening feeling the man was smiling beneath the plate.

”My name is not Rosh,” he corrected softly, a cold pride lacing his words.Deep forgotten in the canopy and the trees ”It is Ratio. Rightful Lord Ratio of Grass Hall. Son of the late Lord Ormund.

That seat was my birthright, and conspirators have been plotting to strip it , my own blood betrayed me, an usurper sit upon my chair and rule upon my land, bending the knees to dogs. And the cunt sitting on the Yarzat throne denied me of it once more.

Why are you here, Vilon? Why ride beneath the banners of Yarzat? Do you have any notion of what those dogs have done to this realm?”

”No worse and no better than what your own wolves have reaped themselves,” Vilon spat back, his knuckles white around his hilt. He recalled the butchered bodies on the road. One way or the other the killing would need to stop, and the easier road was by dealing with them. ”I met Logen on the high road. I gave him the sharp edge of my steel and he spoke everything.”

”Logen?” Ratio went rigid, his shoulders tensing beneath his heavy pauldrons. ”So... it was him. He had been at my back since I was a boy. A deserter in the end...” The outlaw lord let out a bitter, hollow sigh, as if defeated by the notion ”Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Rats always know when the ship is taking water.” He looked around at the battle,he shook his head and resumed his stance.

”He died like a dog in the mud,” Vilon said, taking a slow, measured step to the side, his shield lifted to guard his flank, putting the back of the lord to the rest of the fighters. He would not be taken as Mariol. His boots stepped on his blood. ”Just as you will.”

’’Noble enough to play executioner, eh?So much as to ally with bloody conquerors?Your blade is dirtied by innocent blood then...’’

’’That may be’’Vilon admitted, the cold wind nipping at his face as he locked his gaze onto the dark slitted visor. But he had also saved lives with that blade. ’’My iron is filthy. But today, it is going through your throat all the same.”

’’Then come, Ser. My house was stripped for me. I am an outlaw and my army is in tatter! A warrior’s death is all that I can hope for now. Gift me the Warrior’s blade if you can or else I’ll give to you what I await for myself!’’ And as he said that he charged.

Vilon could fault him for many sins. But not for a lack of courage.

He met him on his own two feet.