Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1051: All that is under the eye.

They descended like the heralder of the apocalypse, one hundred riders with the setting sun at their backs, casting shadows that seemed to scythe through the village before the steel even touched it. They were the harbingers of cinders, turning everything under the sky into a blackened wasteland.

What they could not carry, they committed to the flame. The granaries, swollen with the gold of a successful autumn, roared into pillars of orange heat. The fields, some ripe and heavy-headed for harvest, others still green, were reduced to grey drifts of ash. Any beast was left for the earth to drink; they opened the throats of cattle and sheep alike, leaving a banquet of cooling flesh for the ravens and the worms. By the time the moon rose, the land was a barren womb. No food would be grown here for a year.

"Come on now, there’s no snake in the dirt! Move!" A rider shouted, his voice cracking like a whip. He spurred his horse forward, using the sole of his boot to shove a man who had lingered too long in the smoke. "Is it you who is insolent, or just your feet? Tell me which I should cut off first."

The man stumbled from the blow but quickly regained his footing, standing as still as a grave marker. The wind-blown ash began to nest in the side of his head, white flecks mixing with the deep coal-black of his hair like chalk dust on a dark sea. He didn’t look at the rider; he looked at the inferno.

"That’s my house," the man said, his voice eerily flat. He pointed a finger toward a cabin where the roof was currently collapsing into a fountain of sparks.

"Unless you have a sudden desire to sleep on cinders, I’d suggest you use the past tense. It was your house," the rider muttered, his blonde hair fraying in the hot gale. "You and the rest of these wretches have lost everything but your lives. But you still have a chance to see a new world built. I’d suggest you don’t squander the breath you have left."

"I suppose I should count myself lucky for the opportunity," the man whispered. He took one final, soul-crushing look at the life he had known and finally turned his back on the ruins.

As they moved, a sudden wet thud echoed through the yard. Both men turned. A few yards away, a Yarzat hound had just beheaded an old man with a single swing of a broadaxe. The head tumbled across the dirt like a dropped melon, the eyes still wide and glistening with a terror that hadn’t yet registered death.

"I thought you said we’d lose everything except our lives," the man noted, his voice hollow.

The blonde rider didn’t blink. Years ago, such a sight would have made him retch. He had been a boy taken off the streets of Yarzat by the rough kindness of a mercenary, a martial man with nothing but a quickwit.Who would have thought that mercenary to have become a prince? Even queerer he wondered what he had seen in him when he was just a street-rat. He had placed Ratto under the tutelage of Egil, and then Rykio.

He had been forged there, the man he was now, learning the parts of war that minstrels were too ashamed to put into song.

"He wouldn’t have made the long march," Ratto said, his voice sounding ten years older than his face. "If you want someone to blame, point your finger at your own Prince. He’s the one who invited the fire when he called for war. We’re just the ones delivering the bill."

It was a queer thought. From a starving rat in the gutters of the capital to a soon to be commander.

Alpheo had spoken to him months ago about a new unit for the legions. An heavy mounted unit that would replace the golden steeds, and he apparently wanted him at his head. He still wondered why....

They rode on, leaving the village to the silence of the dead.

There, sitting atop a weathered wooden stump amidst a field of swaying, unburnt grass, sat a lone man. He was casually paring an apple with a small silver knife, bringing a crisp slice to his mouth with the poise of a noble at a garden party.

The man on the stump didn’t look up, but he spoke as the horses’ hooves crunched on the gravel.

They were known by many names. The common Yarzat folk, huddled in the warmth of the taverns, hailed them as the Crown’s Hounds; the enemies who felt their teeth called them the Yarzat Dogs. To Ratto, the distinction mattered little. Whether hound or dog, both possessed the same instinct: they bit hard, and they did not let go until the bone was dry.

Egil was the one who had truly loved the theater of it. He had commissioned a helm forged into the likeness of a snarling mastiff, a grotesque iron visage that now sat in the grass like a hollow skull.

But the helm now belonged to Rykio, his successor, who sat beside it with a knife in hand.

"You’re late," Rykio said, the sharp crunch of an apple punctuating the heavy silence. He sliced a thin, translucent crescent and offered it to Ratto. The young commander didn’t eat it; instead, he took the fruit and fed it to his horse, watching the beast’s large teeth grind the sweetness away.He seemed to like it well enough.

Ratto gave him a pat after the treat.

Meanwhile Rykio made a slow, theatrical show of looking around at the horizon, where the smoke of Ratto’s work was only just beginning to smudge the stars. "Doesn’t seem like you’ve been idle, though."

"They are having fun," Ratto replied, "Though I suppose you’ve noticed I don’t usually partake in the sport."

A cold wind whipped through the crossroads, carrying the scent of charred pine and iron. Ratto didn’t shy away from carnage, he had been raised in its shadow ever since the Prince took him from the gutters, but he found no joy in the frantic, clumsy cruelty that his men indulged in. To him, it was a chore; to them, it was a holiday.

"Aye," Rykio muttered, a lecherous, and somehow knowing smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Fearing someone will go rat you out to your dear damsel if you find a bit of sport in a villager’s leg? Afraid she won’t look at you the same if words reach her?Ah....to be young again."

Ratto’s expression didn’t flicker, but his voice turned sharp. "I’d say you ought to wear a rat on your head instead of a hound, Rykio. You’ve got the nose for the gutter.Did not make you to be so into gossip."

The jab only seemed to amuse the new commander more. "Come now, boy. Nothing wrong with a bit of heart, but you’ve spent too much time breathing the Prince’s air. Your eyes wander too close to a sight that isn’t yours."

"You... think it a mistake?" Ratto’s horse shifted uneasily, sensing the sudden spike in its master’s nerves.

"The Prince knows well enough," Rykio said, his smile fading into something smaller, almost sad. "I cannot say if his silence is approval or if he just sees it as the flickering embers of youth. But remember, Ratto, standing beside the Prince, often makes a man forget that an exception to the rule does not make a new rule. The world is still a cage, and we are still the animals inside it.Only because Alpheo managed to get out of his, doesn’t mean it will be the same for the rest of us. For the love I bore you, I do hope this doesn’t end with you getting gilded.That’d be a waste of a fine man..."

Rykio’s eyes finally drifted past Ratto whose leg jolted a bit, settling on the third figure "And who ought this to be?" Rykio asked, the knife suddenly steady in his hand, pointed directly at the stranger.

"I would have him serve as our guide through the valley," Ratto said.

Rykio’s gaze sharpened, the playful malice replaced by the cold calculation of a leader. "You know the way through the thickets, stranger?"

"I know every goat path and dry creek around here," the man replied

"And what would you have for the service of your neck?" Rykio pushed.

"Some silverii would be fine. If that is not possible..." The man paused, looking at the burning skyline. "My life is a prize enough to keep."

Rykio grunted, folding his knife with a metallic click. "Very well. I suppose we can spare a few coins from the loot. It’s a cheap price for a shortcut."

"Not like we aren’t reaping much of lives," Ratto commented. He turned his head back toward the village they had just left, where the sound of women’s screams shrilled in the air.

"I know the sound of a question when it’s rotting in a man’s throat. What is it? Wondering why we’ve turned so merciful all of a sudden?"

Ratto made no move to answer, though his eyes drifted significantly toward the guide. At that, Rykio let out a dry, rasping chuckle.

"I believe it would be a bit difficult for him to be a spy."

Ratto exhaled conceding the point. "I know the strategy well enough, we made effective use of it against Herculia. But I would have thought the Prince would be more interested in bleeding the borders dry before moving inward. Why send us all the way down to Malshut?Not like the army is going to pass over here..."

"He spoke of laying waste toward the capital," Rykio said, his tone turning professional. He wiped the silver blade of his knife on his thigh. "The reason why he would have us out here, so deep into the belly of the beast instead of guarding the gates, escapes me... perhaps I’ll ask him for a lecture when we return. But for now?" He stood up, the grass rustling beneath his heavy boots. "We just ought to obey."

Ratto didn’t respond immediately, he was used by the prince when he was a boy to analyze everthing that came to him. It was a sound advice one he still made use of as of now.Sometimes he missed how close he was to him during battles and sieges.

Now he was fighting in them.

Rykio noticed the silence and gave Ratto a playful, heavy shove with the toe of his boot.

"You may think about grand strategy all you want when you finally get that command of your own. For now, you stand behind me. If you’ve got nothing better to do than brood, go rally the men. We need to be on the road for the next target before the anyone bearing the Sun finds the bodies."

The twenty-one-year-old commander reached down, casually scraping a smudge of dried gore off the steel greave on his leg. "Is that worry I hear, Rykio? Sad to see me go off on my own soon?"

"I’d be sadder to see the fungus under my ballsack go away," Rykio snapped. "As for a pampered brat without a single decent scar to his name? Good riddance, I’d say."

Ratto let out a short laugh. "I assure you, plenty of people have been swinging at me as of late. My unblemished skin doesn’t come from a lack of trying on their part, I can tell you that. I’m just faster and better armed than them.Most that tries once doesn’t get another before they go to the worms."

"Luck is a fickle mistress, you ought to learn that," Rykio muttered "The Romelians finally got a piece of me at the Eagle’s battle. Perhaps this war is your time to pay the toll."

"I suppose I ought to touch iron, then," Ratto said, tapping the hilt of his sword. He looked at the snarling iron helm on the grass. "Though you should do the same... I’d say that hound would look better on me anyway. Perhaps this is the time?"

"In your dreams, cub," Rykio muttered, a genuine smile flashing briefly before he donned the heavy mastiff helm. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Now, off with you. Rally the others," the iron hound growled, his voice muffled by the visor. "From here to Oizen is a long, bloody way, and the night is half-spent."