Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

These had been good days. Strange, violent, and soaked in blood, but undeniably good.

Despite the whistling near-misses with the grave, the hidden betrayal, and the hollow claw of insecurity that had followed him for leagues, Vilon could not remember the last time his heart felt this light.

He was no longer a ghost drifting through the freezing sleet of the high road. For the first time since he had pulled his father’s stained woolen cloak and notched iron blade from the old man’s stiffening corpse, he felt like a true knight. Not merely because he wore mail and carried steel, but because of what he had carved out with it.

He may have not sworn oaths, but he meant to keep them.

He leaned back into the thick, cushioned chair that deigned to seat his bruised arse, letting out a breath as a servant tipped a heavy pitcher over his goblet. He took a long draft, expecting the sharp, bitter bite of cheap camp sour-rot, only to frown as a crisp, honeyed sweetness burst across his tongue.

He pulled the cup back, squinting through the haze.

The drink was not red. It was a pale, glowing amber. Liquid gold.

”It’s cider,” Saron muttered from his left, leaning heavily against the trestle table. A rich, boozy cloud of fermented apples accompanied every word.

Unlike Vilon, this was clearly not the Hound captain’s first cup of the evening. The iron armor had been entirely stripped away, replaced by soft, flowing tunics. Vilon and Owen were draped in fine, dyed silks, unexpected gifts delivered by a surly legion quartermaster who had tossed the bundle onto their cots. He told him they did not deserve him, and the quartermaster spat on the ground.

”The Legate wants you wearing this at the high table,” the quartermaster had grunted. ”If you don’t like the color, you can sell it, burn it, or wipe your arse with it once the feast is done. But you’ll wear it tonight.”

It felt like madness to drape fine silk over a pair of battered vagabonds, but with only one threadbare pair of breeches between them, neither knight nor squire was about to complain.

”Pure Yarzat Ambrosia,” Saron continued, tapping the rim of Vilon’s cup with his own dented goblet. ”You’re sitting elbow-to-elbow with the iron fist of the King’s host, Ser Vilon. A certain measure of splendor is demanded of the men who broke the Vulture.”

As Vilon had asked it was done. Mariol was known to all as the man who had slaid the Vulture, a small monument on the site of the battle would be built,with details of the battle and the soldier who slew him.

It was a lie. And yet somehow something in Vilon’s gut told it was also right.And it wasn’t as if the rest of them were being treated dishonorably.

The pavilion was thick with blue woodsmoke, roasting fat, and the heavenly scent of fresh-baked hearth loaves. Banners bearing the black falcon of Yarzat and the proud crests of the cohorts hung draped against the heavy canvas.

Farther down the long benches, a decurio, naked save for his breeches and the crested bronze helm perched crookedly on his head, was bellowing a raucous, slurred rendition of Dirty Alice, barely heard over the thunderous clatter of pewter trenchers, pounding fists, and half a hundred roaring arguments.

It was the second hour of the victory feast, and the relief in the room was palpable enough to cut with a dagger and pierce with a fork. The Vulture was dead, his nest was ash, and nearly a thousand men were suddenly realizing they would live to march home.

Vilon took another slow sip of the Ambrosia. The sweet, crisp bite was followed by a blooming furnace in his belly, wrapping around his ribs and guts like a warm blanket. He finally understood why southern lords paid out their teeth for casks of Yarzat cider.

He glanced down the bench at Owen. The lad was slouched sideways against the oak table, a wide, foolish grin plastered across his bruised face, his heavy eyelids fluttering shut.He had a bandage over his nose. Luckily it had not been broken in the fighting, though the rest of his face did not bore as well, with half of it , as a brute’s squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf of brow.

Not like he was much better, he tried his best not to touch it, but it hurt and it itched, madly at that.It must have looked similar to Owen’s

”He should probably take some water,” Vilon muttered softly, watching the boy sway.

Selm, sitting opposite them with a slab of roasted boar balanced on the point of his dagger, let out a booming laugh. ”Leave the boy be! A squire doesn’t get many chances to drown his wits in pure gold out on the road. No harm in letting him touch the clouds for one night. Look across the aisle, he’s in royal company.”

Selm gestured with his blade toward the high table at the head of the pavilion.

Vilon had to blink twice through the smoky air to believe it. There sat Lord Edric and Lord Rykio, practically drowning themselves in heavy flagons of vintage wine. Edric in particular was a sight to behold, his head thrown back, bellowing with laughter, a wide, radiant grin splitting his scarred face. Every other time Vilon had laid eyes on the Legate, the man had worn a scowl dark enough to curdle milk.

”He’s the wildest drunk in the entire southern army,” Saron noted, leaning in.

Vilon stared at the Hound captain, then jerked a thumb toward the high dais. ”Him? The Legate of the Fourth?”

”Aye. Don’t let that sour, thunder-faced bastard you met at the stockade fool you. In peacetime, Edric is all songs, bad japes, and spilled ale. Twice that in war even , you can basically feel the giddiness come out his skin. But these past moons... the air was rotten, and the circumstances were black as pitch. Did nobody ever tell you what happened to the Fourth at the onset of this mess?”

Vilon shook his head, leaning forward over his cup.

Saron shifted closer, his single good eye narrowing as his voice dropped beneath the din of the drums. ”They were the ones who took the Vulture’s opening blow. Posted at the southern river camp. Defenses were lax, peace had made the boys soft, and nobody knew what kind of rabid dog had slipped the leash.”

The Hound ran a tongue over his lips, his mouth pulling into a tight, hard line. ”The bastard struck in the dead of night. Traitors inside the palisade dropped the heavy bars, and the outlaws swept through like grease on a fire. The entire camp was put to the torch, and not one of them had surrendered. They all died in combat. With steel on their hands and duty on the line’’

Saron’s hand tightened around the stem of his goblet until the pewter creaked. ”When our scouts finally stumbled upon the compound three days later... they found the prisoners. Desecrated. Dangling from the timber walls by their own entrails, left to rot in the sun.”

He took a slow, heavy swallow of cider, his jaw tight. ”It was the sort of butchery we dealt out at the Great Bastion, aye, we did that with the whoresons who came to our walls.

We only repaid that debt after the besieged started slinging plague-corpses over our walls.You strike me cheek, I plug out your eye, that’s our thing.Edric buried twenty of his own boys with his bare hands, and every last one of them was butchered like swine. He had a heavier bone to pick with Ratio than any man breathing in this realm.”

A grim, wolfish smile returned to the captain’s scarred lips as he raised his cup toward the roaring Legate.

”And yesterday,” Saron whispered, leaning in to clink his cup sharply against Vilon’s, ”the debt was paid in full. By none other than a pack of Hounds, a green boy, a battered hedge knight, and a squire with twice my heavy stone between his legs. If that isn’t the meat of a proper tavern song, I don’t know what is.”

”You don’t hear many good songs?” Vilon asked dryly.

The question caught Saron completely flat-footed. The Hound captain merely gaped for a second, his mouth opening and closing like a landed carp. He looked as if he wanted to bite back with some venomous retort, thought better of it, and pivoted with a loud snort.

”Tomorrow at dawn, the pack moves out,” Saron said, wiping cider foam from his beard. ”Me, Selm, and young GreenRider. Since our blades carved up the carrion, the Legate has tasked us with parading the beast across Oizen. We ride from hamlet to fort, showing the bits to the four winds so every petty thief and bitter lord knows what becomes of traitors.” He licked his chapped lips with morbid glee, flashing a bloody, yellow-toothed grin. ”I drew the prize, too. I get the torso.”

Vilon froze, his cup pausing halfway to his mouth, staring in quiet horror.

”There was talk of parting you out a souvenir as well,” Saron continued casually, taking a massive swig. ”An arm, maybe, or a leg strapped across your saddlecloth. But wiser heads talked them down. You aren’t wearing the black stripe of the cohorts, after all. If some skittish town watch caught a lone hedge knight riding down the King’s road with a salted calf-muscle dangling behind him, they’d string you from the nearest oak before you could mutter a defense. That’d be a bloody awkward tale to explain at the gates.”

”That was for the best, I think,” Vilon muttered, deeply grateful that the prospect of carrying a severed limb through the countryside had died on the table it was thrusted on.

”Aye, you can thank your stars,” Saron chuckled. ”Edric was dead set on it, mind you, insisted the man who broke the man, deserved his piece of the pig. But our boss talked him right out of it.”

”Then I owe Lord Rykio my eternal thanks,” Vilon said with genuine relief, shuddering at what poor Owen would have had to wrap in salt.

”Well,” Saron said, raising his dented goblet and gesturing toward the high table, ”it seems you won’t have to wait long to give them.”

Vilon followed the line of the cup. Lord Edric, red-faced, beaming, and swaying slightly in his gilded chair, was looking straight down the pavilion aisle. The Legate of the Fourth caught Vilon’s eye, his grin widening into something fierce and joyous, and waved a hand in a sweeping gesture, beckoning the hedge knight to come forward.