Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1054: Inexplicable(2)

"It isn’t the first time people have cursed my nerves," Basil said, squaring his shoulders and rising to his full height. He barely reached the Prince’s neck.

There were times Alpheo admired the boy for the raw, unpolished courage he himself had lacked at that age, but this was not one of those moments.

"If it weren’t for my nerves, I wouldn’t have dared enter your work-room that day," Basil challenged, his eyes locked onto his father’s.

Alpheo fell silent. He had to concede that much. The boy had a spine of Yarzat oak, even if his arms were still made of soft willow.

"Visiting a man who has had a cup too many is one thing, Basil," Alpheo said, his tone flat and iron-hard, brooking no room for defiance. "Raising hell to join a war you have no part in is quite another."

"But Ratto—"

"Ratto.Ratto. Ratto. Is that all you can say?" Alpheo interrupted, his voice cutting like a razor, " Ratto was a boy I plucked from the gutters. I assigned him to Egil so he could learn the ropes of survival in the mud. He is a young man who will soon hold a command I have carved out for him. You and he are entirely different cases. He was a ’nobody’ I raised to serve the state. You are my son. You are the heir to everything I have built. Do not make his life your benchmark."

Alpheo stepped closer, his presence suffocating. "I have seen Ratto harvest soldiers with an axe and run men down with javelins until the fields were red. I have barely seen you skewer a piece of meat with a fork without looking for a napkin. You have no place on a battlefield, not while you still have the scent of the nursery on you."

Basil bristled, his face reddening with a mixture of shame and anger. He couldn’t argue with the facts, he lacked the means. He was a boy with a bow he could barely pull, while Ratto was a wolf with a blade.

"I may lack the means," Basil whispered, "but I do have the reason. This is my war, too!"

Alpheo let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. "Your war? Now that is a queer thought. Pray tell, why would that be?"

"Because the home they intend to burn is mine too" Basil said, repeating the words that had been haunting his sleep.

The Prince’s face went still. The gentle mask of the father slipped away. He didn’t smile. He turned his head slightly, glancing back at the three Royal Guards standing at attention near the archway.

"From whose mouth did you hear these lies?" Alpheo asked, his voice dangerously soft.

"I heard it around the barracks," Basil said honestly, though he felt a sudden chill. "I didn’t see the man’s face in the dark."

"Mh, mh..." Alpheo hummed, the sound vibrating with disbelief. "And did this ’faceless man’ happen to answer to the name of Rodry, by any chance?"

Basil’s heart sank. He looked down at the dirt, realizing he had walked into a trap. "Why? Is there truth in it? Are we going to lose everything?"

"There is as much truth in it as there would be if they were not set against me," Alpheo said, his tone shifting back to something more reassuring, though no less intense. He dropped the inquisitorial edge. "It is not the first time men have looked at what is mine and thought they could take it. If only they had learned the lessons of their predecessors, they wouldn’t have made such a costly mistake."

"How can you be so sure?" Basil asked, looking up. "The whole world seemed to be coming for us."

"Because I have yet to find a man able to defeat me. I have a very long list of men who have tried. The list of those who succeeded remains blank, and it will remain so until I draw my last breath. You should trust in the record."

Had he been the boy of a year ago, Basil would have heeded those words and felt at peace. But he saw the way his father’s fingers twitched . He knew, with a sudden, sinking clarity, that this was a boast meant to mask the cold truth.

His father did not know how this war would end.

"Why are we fighting this war?" Basil asked, his voice small, trying his best to stop the fear from oozing into his words. "Why are so many against us?"

He was terrified. He knew the numbers. Four Great Princes were converging on Yarzat, fueled by a hatred for a "peasant" who had dared to outplay them. To them, Alpheo was a lowborn infection that needed to be cauterized. They had their reasons, too,the late Prince of Oizen had died by Yarzat steel, and they used that blood to justify their greed, arguing that the laws of nobility didn’t apply to a man born in a gutter.

"Is it because of who you were?" Basil whispered. "Because you aren’t like them?"

Alpheo made no move to answer immediately. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the hay-man, studying the two arrows buried in its chest as if they were the only two certainties in a crumbling world.

"Just as it is with many things in life, Basil, it is never so simple as one cause birthing one effect. Usually, it is a conglomeration of sins," Alpheo said, his voice dropping into the clinical tone he used for strategy. "If I had to pinpoint the central gear in this machine, it would be the Prince of Habadia. He is the architect.

He secured the Kakunians by promising to suppress the legitimate heir to their throne, and he used the Oizenian vendetta against us as the perfect pretense for blood. The Ezvanians simply followed like the dogs they are. But at the base of it all, the soil in which these schemes grow, there is indeed a natural disgust toward my station. They cannot stand that a man they view as mud has dared to wear a mantle of silk"

"But why?" Basil asked, his voice cracking with the strain of understanding. "Why is the Habadian so obsessed with us? Why can’t he just mind his own borders?"

"Because we are the linchpin, Basil. We are the ’monster’ he needs to weave his web. He points at us to frighten the other princes into his embrace, making himself the leader of a league they would never have joined in times of peace."

"But why go through all this... why the war?"

"Because he means for that league to last. He has no territorial ambition; we share no borders, and he doesn’t want our dirt. No, what he wants is far more durable. Far more lasting.

I can see it all...he will sit upon a humble throne crafted by this war, joining the hands of the other princes and naming himself the Shepherd of the South. And they will abide.Prostrating themselves to him.

As long as his manicured and clean hands hold the silk leash around their necks, they will bow, like the obedient dogs they are. They will tell themselves it was their own idea, for it is much easier for a nobleman to stomach a stronger master than to accept a lowborn peer."

Alpheo turned then, and the tenderness in his eyes vanished, replaced by a cold, incandescent fury that seemed to radiate from his very bones.

"But he will not succeed," Alpheo hissed, the words coming out like a curse. "The Sun of Oizen will not shine over my halls. The Bull of Kakunia will find no pasture here. They will all die. I will turn this land into a graveyard for their ambitions before I let them touch a single stone of this house."

Basil looked up at his father, his breath hitching in his chest. The man standing before him looked capable of rending the world apart, yet beneath the shadow of the Great Fox, Basil felt the cold wind of reality. He looked into his father’s eyes, searching for the man who grew flowers, the man who had tucked him in as a child, and asked a single question.

"Father... tell me. From father to son. No princes, no crowns. Just the truth." He swallowed hard. "Will you be all right? Will we be all right?"

The silence that followed was suffocating. The wind died down, and the distant sounds of the city seemed to fade away. Alpheo stared at his son for what felt like an eternity, his jaw tight, his expression unreadable.

Finally, he spoke, his voice steady and soft. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

"I will, Basil. We will."

Basil looked at him, his face contorted.

He had asked him one thing, and one thing only.

He looked at the man he loved more than anyone else in the world, and slowly, his fingers uncurled from the grip of the bow. The weapon clattered to the floor, landing in the dirt between them.

"You’re lying," Basil whispered, "You’re lying to me."