Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1053: Inexplicable(1)

War.

The word felt heavy, like a stone in his pocket that grew colder with every passing hour.

Basil could not understand it, not for the love of all that was sacred. His father had always taught him to look beneath the surface of things, to dissect a problem until its skeleton was revealed, but war defied his logic. If a man killed his neighbor in an alley for his boots, it was murder, and the law demanded his life. But do it under a silken banner, amidst the thunder of drums, and suddenly that same act was valor.

It was a riddle with no answer.

He looked at the targets in the garden, those hay-stuffed puppets with charcoal faces, and saw the mockery of it all. War was a performance led by lords and princes, who gathered the common-born like harvest wheat, directing them to ride this way or that. They told their sons and knights it was "mettle" to drive a dirk into another man’s guts and strip the warm boots from his cooling feet.

Was that the simple, ugly truth? Did war exist only because people wanted to take what was not theirs? But then he remembered the stories of his father leading a campaign to defend his mother’s honor.

Perhaps it was the rulers themselves who were the problem. If there were no kings, no emperors, and no princes, would the fighting stop?The common-borns were the one that suffered most, would that mean war would end if they had power to preside over themselves?

But then he recalled Uncle Egil speaking of the wild, lawless lands where no lord claimed the soil, and from Egil’s scarred face and dark jests, it seemed war lived there too.

Was it a game? Egil always seemed to find a savage joy in the chaos, but when Basil looked at his other uncles now, their faces were etched with a weariness that looked nothing like fun.

War suddenly did not look so eager to be haved.

Basil sighed, reaching down to pluck an arrow from the small bundle nestled in the dirt. He nocked it, the wood smooth against his non-calloused fingers. He pulled back, feeling his clavicle groan under the tension of the yew. He held the draw, his breath hitching, then let it fly.

Twack.

The arrow bit deep into the hay-man’s shoulder. He was improving, faster than Jarza had expected, but it felt like a hollow victory. No one was there to see it.

The garden, once loud with the boisterous betting of the guards, was now as silent as a crypt. Everyone was too busy preparing for the end of the world.

He reached for another arrow but stopped, the shaft halfway to the string. Was war inevitable? Was it a parasitic part of the human spirit that could never be excised? Or was it a grand invention, a lie constructed of words like Honor, Valor, and Courage?

Did it make him a coward to see through the lies? To realize that the older generation simply polished these words until they shone, just to lure the younger ones into the butcher’s line with a smile and war-songs? Whenever an army crossed a plain, they left nothing but cinders and ghosts. People lost their lives, their homes, their very names.

Just a simple march was able to overturn the lives of hundreds.

He had heard the palace guards whispering in the hallways: This war is set to destroy our home.

Was he to worry then?

He hated the silence. He hated that he was being kept in the dark like a prized hound in a kennel. But mostly, he hated that he couldn’t find the logic in it.

He drew the bow again, aiming at the hay-man’s charcoal heart. "Illogical," he spat.

"What’s that?"

Basil jolted, his fingers slipping. The bowstring snapped against his forearm with a stinging crack, and the arrow sailed uselessly over the target, lost to the brush.

He spun around, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Standing in the shadow of the stone archway was his father. He looked tired but his gaze remained tender as it rested on his son.

It was always a illogical transition for Basil. How could this man, who spent his evenings discussing the care of flowers and the migration of birds, be the same "Fox" who whispered terror into the hearts of so many men?

"What is illogical, Basil?" Alpheo repeated when the boy didn’t answer.

Every time they spoke, he felt as his father possessed a wisdom that felt like an ocean, while Basil felt like a boy standing on the shore, clutching a bucket of sand. He had a thousand questions burning in his throat. He wanted to ask about the nature of evil.

He wanted to ask if they were all going to die in the smoke.

Instead, of all the questions he could have chosen, he picked the lamest.

"Why are you here?"

"I should think a Prince is welcome to go where he wishes, at least in his own house?" Alpheo teased, his voice light, though the exhaustion beneath it remained.

"N-no, I mean... why are you here?" Basil tried again, gesturing to the quiet garden.

"Not really a different question from the first," Alpheo said, stepping closer. He reached out, his hand resting gently on the boy’s hair, ruffling it with a familiar, grounding warmth. "I’m kidding. I know what you mean." He let his gaze drift to the recurve bow in his son’s grip, studying the tension of the wood. "Who taught you the draw?"

"Uncle Jarza."

Alpheo’s eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise. "Jarza? He knows the bow? Now, isn’t that a revelation. You can know a man for fifteen years, watch him break shields with a mace for half of them, and still discover his secrets too late." He shook his head, a faint smirk playing on his lips. He supposed his own prejudices from his old times, where men were either wall-breakers or distance-dealers, were harder to shake than he thought.

"Are you apt with the bow, Dad?" Basil asked, his eyes wide and curious.

"I am not even that apt with a sword, truth be told. I never even attempted the bow, though I was quite a menace with a sling." He gave his son a warm, lopsided smile.

"You’re not good with a sword?" Basil looked incredulous.

Alpheo reached out and irritably flicked the boy’s forehead. "For your information, I train with the damn thing every two days. Yet it seems that no matter the effort, I am fated to be woefully mediocre at it. Perhaps our dear Kakunian friend is right, and you will excel where I cannot."

A dark frown instantly claimed Basil’s face at the mention of the "friend." He looked as if he had just bitten into a particularly sour lemon.

"Will you ever tell me what actually happened between you two?"

The boy’s reply was a sharp, uncharacteristic spit of saliva onto the grass.

"Oh dear...mother would be really dissapointed.

Still, It seems I am cursed to never have that curiosity satisfied," Alpheo muttered, clearing his throat. "Anyway, I was told you have been brooding around the palace like a beaten dog so i thouoght that-"

The accusation gave Basil pause. "I was not brooding..."

Alpheo simply shrugged "I went searching for my heir and found him in a corner of the garden, training his archery... while brooding."

"I was not!" Basil repeated, his voice rising with a sharp, adolescent heat.

Alpheo chuckled, his eyes moving to the hay-puppet. He noted the arrow buried deep in the burlap chest. "So, are you going to tell me the reason for all this broo—for all this furrowing of the brow?"

"Hardly any better..."

"Still, a father is in need of a reason."

In response, Basil nocked an arrow. He drew it back, pressing the string toward his chest with every ounce of strength his small frame could muster. He held it, trembling, before whispering two words so low they were nearly lost to the snap of the release.

"I’m bored."

"You’re bored?" Alpheo asked, watching the arrow fly true.

"I know it sounds childish," Basil muttered, his shoulders sagging.

"I suppose being bored is better than being lost?" The Prince jested, though his smile was thin. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Basil’s cheeks went a shade of red that rivaled a ripe tomato. "It’s more... I feel useless. Everyone is moving. Everyone has a purpose. The Hounds are riding, the Legions are marching, and I am here shooting at hay."

"Well," Alpheo said softly, "I am sure Whitey would find it to his liking to have a long walk in the woods. You could take the hound out."

"Not like that!" Basil snapped, turning fully to face his father. "I want to be actually useful. To the Crown. To you."

Alpheo’s smile faded. He looked at his thirteen-year-old son, really looked at him, seeing the desperate hunger for relevance that haunts every boy on the cusp of manhood.

"You want to be useful?" He asked in a tone that lacked its fatherly warmth. "And what aid do you think a thirteen-year-old boy can give? Do you think the Oizenians, Kakunians, Habadians and whoever else want to take a swing at us, that they will stop their charge because a Prince’s son asks them nicely?"

Basil opened his mouth to protest ’’Ratto was a year older than me when you gave him a saddle and sent him to Egil."

’’Is that what you want,then?" He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing the boy. "Is that what you truly crave? To feel the weight of war? To feel the heat of the cinders and the smell of the dying?Thousands will be forced to suffer for it, and you wish for that?

The nerve of you.’’