Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1069: Hidden away(1)

It was raining,the water rhythmically drummed against the canopy above. In the height of early August, the sky should have been a scorched vault of blue, yet here the clouds hung low and bruised, weeping down onto the forest floor.

Alpheo took a bite of salted jerky, the meat tough and stubborn against his teeth, though not as tough as the salted beef they would eat once the jerky was all eaten up.

He leaned his back against the rough bark of an ancient oak, using the thick foliage as roof against the rain.

Once more, he was alone with the woods. In the first months after he had secured his freedom, he had developed a ritual of making camp only in the deepest thickets, sleeping with one eye open and a blade in his hand. Looking back, many of those precautions had been the fruit of a young man’s paranoia; no reprisal had come for him then, though in his defense how could he know that the War Emperor would meet his hand in Arlania?

A surprising , but nonetheless pleasing consequence to be sure. But still unexpected...

But that was a lifetime ago. He was no longer a runaway slave fleeing a master; he was a Prince in charge of a realm, and the architect of a war that would decide the fate of his state.

He was the result of an equation he had started fifteen years ago, a single domino tipped in a wooden cell above the hot sands that had led, inevitably, to this rain-slicked forest.

He could not face the thought of food,his current circumstances making his stomach closed as if he had swallowed glass, and yet he ate and chewed.

Indeed he chewed slowly, the elasticity of the meat giving way under his molars. He ate mechanically, using the simple act of mastication to ground himself.

It wasn’t like he wasn hungry, he just needed distractions.

His scouts had brought the news hours ago: the League had arrived. Twelve thousand men were currently uncoiling like a great, sluggish serpent before the gates of the Bastion, beginning the slow work of a siege.

It was a hollow, heavy feeling, knowing his home was under the shadow of the enemy’s spear, but he could not afford the luxury of tension. If he, the "Fox," showed even a flicker of doubt, the men around him would smell it like blood in the water.

It was upsetting, in a way, to lack total control over the chess pieces. By the very nature of his strategy, he had been forced to dispatch autonomous forces across the province, trusting his commanders to act without his direct oversight. It was a gamble of faith. Yet, he took a cold comfort in the men he had chosen. Asag, Xanthios, Edric, Jarza, they were not just soldiers; they were extensions of his own will. They would make the right decisions when the steel met the bone.

Of that he held no doubt.

He looked around at the damp, shivering undergrowth. He had truly believed that once he wore a crown and slept in a palace of marble, his days of hiding in the dirt and the dark would be over.

How ironic life was; the higher he climbed, the more he found himself returning to the mud from which he had crawled.

His current detachment was small, hardly more than a legion, and certainly not the most "important" force in the grand scheme of his maneuvers. But they were the closest. They were the hidden knife held against the League’s jugular. It was only sound that he, the commanding mind, should hold the position of greatest risk.

The rain intensified, turning the forest floor into a mire. Alpheo swallowed the last of the jerky and adjusted the cloak over his shoulders.

Through the veil of mist and the persistent August rain, Alpheo heard the approach of the Fourth Legion long before they emerged into the clearing. It wasn’t a silent march; there was the rhythmic clank of heavy infantry and the low, rumbling laughter of men who had tasted blood and found it sweet.

By week’s end they would have many more occasion to partake in it.

Along with the Legate came some auxiliaries Lucius had left to use as guide.

They appeared less like soldiers returning from a skirmish and more like hunters returning from a bountiful kill.

"Your Grace," Edric said, his voice bright with a relief he didn’t bother to hide. He stepped into the shelter of the trees, his short brown hair plastered damply against his forehead. Alpheo’s eyes immediately went to Edric’s breastplate, there was a fresh, shallow dent near the ribs and a smear of darkening red across the gorget.

The Prince felt a flare of internal irritation. Edric was a Legate, not a common front-line brawler; his proximity to the actual fighting was closer than Alpheo preferred for his senior commanders. Yet, Alpheo suppressed the rebuke. He needed the man’s fire as much as he needed his tactical mind.

"I see you took care of the nuisance," Alpheo said, his voice flat as he looked past Edric to the column of soldiers. They were mocking a line of bedraggled prisoners, prodding them along with the blunted ends of pilum.

He realised at once how stupid of a notion that was.

"Any losses?" Alpheo asked.

"A few wounded, none to the grave," Edric replied, triumph glowing in his eyes, as his smile split his cheeks. "It was an easy enough slaughter. It seems our conspicuous absence emboldened the enemy. A few of their lords sent their lieutenants out on raid, thinking the countryside was a larder waiting to be plucked. They grew bolder with every mile, especially when they found the villages deserted. They thought the peasants had fled in terror; they never suspected the peasants were us."

Edric wiped a spray of rainwater from his eyes. "They were overextended, disorganized, and far too busy arguing over who would claim the flock of sheep. The moment we struck their flanks from the houses we’d hollowed out, they shattered like cheap whores. We cut the main roads, trapped them in the valley, and made a harvest of them. We killed some, but we took most as prisoners.They had no stomach for a fight.... bit disappointed for that...."

"A bit too many for my liking," the prince said, the cold math of war already working in his mind. "Any highborn in the lot?"

"Just some knights. No lords, unfortunately. The great masters are still hiding behind their twelve thousand."

"Good enough. See what you can extract from the knights. I want to know the inner workings of that camp.’’He held no doubt that with time the league’s cohesion would fragment, he would after all play a hand in that, but he needed to know as much as he could.’’Report everything you get out of them" Alpheo’s voice turned to ice. "When you have what we need, slit their throats. Every one of them. The knights and the commoners alike. Then bury the bodies. I want no trail, and I want no mouths to feed."

The grin slid off Edric’s face, replaced by a sudden grimace. He blinked, looking at Alpheo with a strange gaze in his eyes.

"Any problem, Edric?"

"I... I didn’t expect you to be so callous," Edric admitted, his voice lowering so the men wouldn’t hear. "You’ve always spared the highborn. ’’ He suddendly remembered Aracina,’’When they surrendered...’’

"Yes," Alpheo replied, his gaze drifting toward the gray horizon, his mind flashing to a certain blonde-haired man who would have been proud of his choice.

"I did. But that was before. Then, I foolishly believed I could play by their rules. I thought if I acted the part of the noble prince, they might at least stomach my existence. I was proven wrong. They don’t want a peer; they want a corpse. I will not afford them a courtesy they intend to deny me. Nevermore."

Edric stood silent for a long moment, then nodded stiffly. He turned to his second-in-command, relaying the orders. Soon, the prisoners were being led deeper into the dark, wet woods. Before long, the rhythmic patter of the rain was punctuated by thin, distant screams and the desperate cries of men , then by nightfall they had their information.

"First blood to the Ardita," Alpheo commented absentmindedly, reaching into his pouch and offering Edric a strip of the tough jerky. "How does it feel?"

Edric accepted the meat, his eyes following the last of the prisoners into the brush. "As if I was just laid," he grunted, the adrenaline of the fight finally beginning to settle into a weary satisfaction. He took a seat on a folding stool that Dorian, Alpheo’s squire and cousin to the heir of Bracum, had quickly placed for the Legate.

Edric chewed the jerky, the salt bringing a sharp tang to his tongue. "So," he asked, looking at the Prince. "We’ve bloodied their nose. What now? Do we hit the supply lines next?"

Alpheo watched a drop of rain roll down the edge of his blade. "No. They got those well defended enough. Don’t want to give them any more reason to leave more troops behind so early in the fighting.

We wait for the other pieces on the board to move. Nibadur thinks he’s the player and I am the prize. I want him to keep thinking that until the moment he realizes he’s stepped into a room with no doors."

"You hold a great deal of trust in that ally of yours. We are speaking about him, yes?" Edric said, swallowing the last of the meat before tucking the remainder of the strip into his pouch for later. He leaned back, his armor clanking softly against the stool.

"Is that what it looked like to you?" Alpheo turned his eyes toward the Legate, his expression unreadable behind the veil of falling rain. "I was merely entertaining the man. To be honest, I hold the barest shred of hope for him. I fed him every lie he was hungry enough to swallow; I have no expectations beyond the specific, violent role I’ve cast him in."

"Oh," Edric said, caught off guard. He blinked, the damp hair plastered to his forehead making him look younger than his rank suggested. "I thought you held him in high regard. You seemed so... relieved when he’d accepted the alliance."

"He is a madman and a lunatic. That is what he is.

And madmen are easy to pilot if you know which ghosts haunt them," Alpheo replied, his voice dropping into that cold, analytical tone that always made his captains sit a little straighter. "I fed him what he wanted to hear. I played to his delusions of grandeur and his fever dreams of a throne. I even concocted a few choice ploys to convince him that his own uncle was sharpening a blade for his back. He is a distraction, a bright, loud object I intend to throw to draw the League’s eyes away from the real knife."

’’You are of the mind he will fail?’’

’’Not to the role I gave him, but to the one he gave to himself?’’ he chuckled ’’Without a shred of doubt...he has an inflated view of his worth.’’

He leaned his head back against the oak, the rough bark catching on his hood. "The man is too in love with his own myth to realize that to achieve any of his ambitions, he first has to survive the storm that’s coming. He’s already counting his gold before he’s even sharpened his sword.He will find it rusty when he needs it, and so his dream will end...with a bloody kiss from the end of a sword."

"You don’t think he has it in him?I thought he was a good enough warrior..."

"I have countered dozens of men like him. They all burn brightly for a moment and then leave nothing but ash," Alpheo said. "A bit more useful than simple wood for the fire...He will likely fail as the others did. But... if by some miracle he does not, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to lend him a helping hand. A useful puppet is a useful puppet, after all. But for now? For now, we have enough on our plate without worrying about the soul of that crazy bastard."

After that, silence returned to the clearing, save for the muffled sounds of the Fourth Legion settling into their damp tent and the distant, dying echoes of the interrogations deeper in the woods.

Through all of that , the prince looked down at the dark, saturated earth near his boots, where a pale, slick worm had begun to coil its way out of the mud, driven to the surface by the relentless rain. It twisted blindly, searching for solid ground in a world that had suddenly turned to mire. Alpheo watched it for a long time, that small, powerless, disgusting and fragile thing trying to navigate a landscape that was falling apart around it.

He hated that he was starting to see himself in that bug.