Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 975: Anew(3)
"Hey, Alph," a soft voice whispered against the Prince’s ear. Jasmine leaned in, her hand shielding her mouth as she watched the spectacle of Jarza and Asag nearly climbing over the table to throttle one another. "You know... shouldn’t you do something? This is the military, your own ’stick,’ as you call it. It feels like something that warrants a bit of royal attention.You know before your officers goes from two to one."
Alpheo considered her words for a moment, suppressing a smile. He realized she had never actually witnessed a high-level military council among his inner circle. To her, they usually looked like a solid, disciplined bundle of hay; she hadn’t yet learned that the hay was often on fire.
Truth be told, Alpheo found the day’s friction fascinating. Earlier, his legates had bandied together with the ferocity of a wolf pack to fight against Jasmine and Shahab’s court budget. The court’s expenses were substantial, sponsoring musicians, poets, and philosophers was the price of prestige in the modern world. In exchange for room, board, and a modest stipend, these men of art sang the praises of their patron, weaving their patron prestige and renown.
Alpheo felt a strange, historical vertigo thinking about it.
He remembered reading of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the man who had pacified Northern Italy by convincing its princes to fight with art instead of steel. Of course, a cynic could argue that by softening the warrior spirit, Lorenzo had paved the way for centuries of French and Spanish boots on Italian soil.
Alpheo didn’t care much for the art himself, in the middle of war preparations, a sonnet felt like a useless expense.
But Jasmine held the crown of Yarzat, and dismissing her desires wasn’t something wise if he were the one preaching unity of state. Thus, the court received its pittance, much to the dismay of the "iron and stone" factions of the council.
Now, with the common enemy defeated and the budget shared, the military faction had fractured into petty squabbles. It was almost endearing. Still, his wife had a point.
"All right!Settle down!" Alpheo shouted, the sound of his hands clapping together echoing like a pistol shot in the stone chamber.
The two barking dogs shut their mouths instantly.
"I believe this has gone on quite long enough," Alpheo said, his voice dropping into that quiet, dangerous chill that demanded total attention.
"Alph, come on! Tell him he’s being unreasonable!" Asag said, pointing a trembling finger at Jarza.
"No, it’s the other way around!" Jarza spat back, though he was already losing his momentum.
"For the record," Alpheo interrupted, "let it be known that I am deeply displeased with both of you."
The transformation was immediate. Both legates slumped, wearing the identical, hangdog expressions of puppies who had just been caught chewing the furniture.
"Tell me," Alpheo continued, "which part of that disgraceful display resembled the calm, organized discourse I have preached to you since the day we first took off?"
"Probably... the start?" Jarza answered, his voice small as he shuffled back into his seat.
"I’d say none of it. What would have happened in five minutes if I hadn’t intervened? Am I to worry that two of my finest men will answer one another in steel whenever their words fail to find common ground? Is that the standard of the Yarzat military now?"
"Oh, come on, Alph," Jarza muttered, rubbing his neck. "You know us. We’d never draw on each other over something so mundane as that."
Alpheo caught the look on Jasmine’s face. Her eyes were wide, her expression clearly signaling that to any outside observer, it had not looked mundane at all. It looked like a blood feud in the making.
"Mind where you repeat this behavior," Alpheo admonished, his eyes narrowing. "A foreign eye would see this and report that the Prince’s inner circle is at each other’s throats. In the game of power, the behavior shown in public is often more vital than the truth of the private heart."
Asag looked around the room, his brow furrowing as if to suggest that this was a private setting.
"Everyone in the hallway probably heard your shouting match," Alpheo replied, eyeing the heavy oak doors. "Imagine if a maid, whose purse is filled by a foreign prince, was lingering just outside? By tomorrow morning, the Prince of Habadia would hear that the Fox’s generals are mutinying over silver. You are not just soldiers; you are the image of the state. If the image is cracked, the state is perceived as broken.And if it is broken it is perceived as weak, this is the last thing we need in our turbulent time."
He leaned over the table, his shadow stretching long under the candlelight.
Alpheo knew, with the cold certainty of a man who left nothing to chance, that a spy lurking behind the drapes was a near-impossibility. His paranoia regarding private security was legendary, so much so it would have made Ivan the Terrible look like a trusting fellow.
Every maid, cook, and stable-hand was more than just an employee; their backgrounds were dissected, their lineages verified, and their families essentially held in a gilded custody.
In other courts, "maids" were often the daughters of low-level nobles, ambitious girls who were essentially pre-packaged informants for whoever held their father’s mortgage. In Yarzat, Alpheo had severed those strings by taking in strays from the city.
He regularly ran "sting" operations, sending his own men to offer bribes to his staff in exchange to spy on one person or the other; those who took the bait were "taken care of" with terrifying efficiency. In time people knew of this attempts, so next time a person came with such a thing, who dared to accept it?
But as Alpheo turned his mind back to the ledgers, a different kind of chil, one that no amount of security could guard against, settled in his marrow.
He began to crunch the cold, hard numbers. The Crown’s liquid revenue stood at 203,000 silverii.Which was five times the revenue of a normal princedom.
Of that however Alpheo now saw very little in his hands.
105,000 for troop salaries and maintenance, 6,000 for garrisons, 28,000 for the navy, and 8,000 set aside for Pontus to finalize the bastion fort.
That left a functional yearly budget of 58,000 silverii.
Once he subtracted the 15,000 for the emergency sovereign reserve, he was left with 43,000 to be carved up between the three hungry mouths of his council. He had planned to allot 35% to the military for equipment and morale-boosting martial games, 25% to Pontus for civilian infrastructure like roads and mills, and the remaining 40% to Jasmine for the delicate, high-stakes theater of the court.
The latter of which Alpheo never would his hands in. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦
As the math solidified in his mind, Alpheo felt a bead of sweat prickle at his hairline. 150,000 silverii out of 203,000 were being swallowed by the god of war.
Nearly 75% of the state’s entire lifeblood was being pumped into iron, leather, and blood. This was even more the Roman Empire paid!
Was Yarzat Prussia? He realized, with a grim clarity, that he was walking a razor’s edge. He wasn’t running a Nazi-style economy, which was little more than a simple Ponzi scheme, a war machine that required constant, fresh conquests just to keep the gears from seizing, but he was dangerously close to the limit.
His economy was "in the green," but only just. He vowed then and there that military spending would never again increase until his revenue tripled the expense he planned to add. If he didn’t diversify the soul of Yarzat, the weight of his own swords would eventually crush the ground beneath them, perhaps not with him but with his son. It was bound to happen if he didn’t do something about it.
But the future was a ghost; the shouting men in front of him were the reality. He looked at the 15,050 silverii and the three legates waiting for their portion.
"This ends now," Alpheo said, his voice a flat, final decree. "Next year, you will not come to this table with nothing but loud voices and vague grievances. Each of you will bring a meticulous ledger of your expenditures, every scrap of leather, every barrel of oil, and every broken spearhead. I will see exactly where the silver goes before I decide who deserves more of it."
He paused, looking at his three legates. "But for today, the cut will be divided as follows: the base budget is equal, but Jarza’s allocation will be twenty-five percent higher than the rest."
Asag’s jaw tightened for a fleeting second, but he quickly smoothed his features. The math sat well enough with him. He gave a nod of satisfaction.
Jarza, however, looked as though he were swallowing a hot coal. His chest heaved as he prepared to launch a counter-assault.
Before he could he met Alpheo’s gaze, saw the lack of patience there, and choked back his words. He sat back, the wood of his chair groaning under his begrudging silence. It was a lost battle already.
Edric, on the other hand, let out a long, audible sigh of relief that was nearly a whistle. He didn’t care about the percentages or the petty hierarchies of the legates; he was simply overjoyed that the noise had stopped and the meeting was drawing to a close.
Beside him, Rykio remained a ghost at the table. Since the Crown directly handled him the reins of Egil’s unit, he had no personal hand in the riders’ overhead, leaving him disconnected from the bickering. He simply stared at the table, wondering if the money he received would be enough.
Alpheo let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to rattle his very bones. He looked at his circle of friends and generals, realizing with a sinking feeling that this was not a one-time ordeal.
He could only hope that by the time the snows fell again and the next accounting was due, they would have learned to fight with pens as effectively as they did with swords.
Still with that, he turned to Shahab, informing him that there was something that he had to tell him after the meeting.
A really imporntant thing.
