Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 548: How to deal with a turtle?(2)

Alpheo let his hand rest on the rim of the war table, his fingers tapping it with the rhythm of a clock ticking down to something inevitable. He leaned forward just slightly, letting his voice slip lower, heavier — no longer commanding the room with volume, but with gravity.

"Let me make something very clear," he said, drawing the eyes of every man present. "I wouldn’t feel comfortable assaulting that hill even if I had four thousand men behind me. Not even if they were all fresh, blood-hungry, and blessed by every god up there.

That position is a butcher’s slope waiting to be fed. All it takes is one man—just one—to break. One man to drop his spear, lose his nerve, scream, piss himself, run—and that’s it. The line ripples. It shatters.

You can train a soldier in a few weeks, you can drill him day and night, teach him to march and stab and shout the right words... but you need more time to reach the part of him that flees when it hears death coming."

He turned his gaze slowly, letting it drift to Jarza, then to Asag, then to Xanthios.

" Battle are won when the other side formations break. When order dies. When panic spreads like fire in dry wheat. The killing doesn’t start when armies meet... it starts when one side turns its back."

He stood fully upright now, his arms behind his back, posture straight like a blade of polished steel.

"That’s why I built the White Army the way I did."

He gestured at the room, but also at the world beyond it. At the men in the camps. At the banners that fluttered just outside.

He smiled faintly, but there was no joy in it—just the cold pride of an architect who knew the strength of the structure he’d raised.

"Our halberdiers? They weren’t just a solution to shields. They were designed for terror. They come in from the flanks, like wolves from the dark, too close to be stopped, too fast to be braced for. And those halberds—they split shields like wood, cleave helmets from heads, and open formations like a butcher opening a pig."

He snapped his fingers softly.

"One break. One scream. And the line folds."

He began to walk again, slowly circling.

"The uniforms—they aren’t for decoration. When a man sees rows of soldiers dressed alike, clean, unbroken, precise—he doesn’t see men. He sees inevitability. He sees fate walking toward him. That uniform is a whisper in the enemy’s mind before the first clash, saying: ’You can’t win.’"

Alpheo stopped behind Asag, whose bruised face twitched with an amused grin despite the crusted blood beneath his eye.

"And silence. No chants. No war cries. Just footsteps. Just the sound of movement—calculated, terrifying. Because the mind fills silence with horror. The imagination builds monsters louder than any trumpet ever could."

He stepped forward again, planting both hands on the table now, eyes hard.

"All this... everything we built... is nulled in battles like this. Where we cannot outflank, cannot outcharge, cannot climb the hill screaming like heroes in song. We will be forced to smash on their shells until our hands are bleeding and breaking"

He looked up, meeting Xanthios’ stare, then Jarza’s, then each of the others in turn.

He did not like it. Not one bit.

An uphill fight was a fool’s errand—any commander with more than a finger’s worth of brain matter knew that. Every step forward would be a wound. Every hillcrest gained would be a corpse to mourn. And though he trusted his army, loved it even—he would not bleed it dry on a rebel’s whim.

So he turned, slowly, letting his eyes sweep across the commanders gathered, waiting for inspiration to strike from the lips of someone brave enough to speak.

Jarza, ever the bold one, leaned forward

"This reminds me of that mess the Herculeians found themselves in last year," he said, voice gravel-smooth. "You remember, against the peasant uprising ? Same damned thing—rebels holed up on a hill like ticks on a dog, palisades, trenches, the works. They solved it clever. Sent the first line forward—just lightly enough to taste their blades—then pulled them back in a feigned retreat. Drew the rebels in with a bit of false hope and panic."

He smirked, tapping his knuckle on the table.

"Second line stood firm. Spears braced. The rebels rushed in, high on their own piss and momentum, and slammed right into it. Add some cavalry sweeping round the back like a pair of shears... and that was the end of the rebellion."

Some of the commanders around the table muttered approvingly, nodding along, but Alpheo only narrowed his eyes, chewing the thought like a piece of stale bread. It had texture, promise, but... it stuck in the teeth.

"I’ll grant you, Jarza," Alpheo said slowly, "it worked for them. " His voice darkened, laced with skeptical amusement. "But let’s not forget—the second line must stand still, unmoving, while their brothers turn and run screaming toward them

"Would you trust the noble’s levies to manage that? And to even attempt it, we’d need the rebels to chase the retreating line. That’s the delicate part, isn’t it? And I doubt they’ll be so eager.

They’ve got a perfect view from their perch up there. You think they’ll miss the other half of our army lounging just behind the first? They’re dug in like rats in a granary. They won’t waste a step unless they smell a true rout."

He turned back to Jarza, smile now in full bloom—sharp, foxlike.

"No, I like your idea. I do. But I do not think the enemy’s dumb enough to come galloping down the hill into our waiting arms."

With that idea shot down , it was now Asag’s turn . "They’re on their last legs," he muttered, his voice gravelly with pain. "Morale’s bleeding out from their guts, my prince."

He glanced around, then leaned forward, the ghost of a grin crawling over his cracked lips. "I’d wager there are men up there already having second thoughts, as they now realise that the horse they are riding is half dead"

He paused, letting that sink in, then tapped the hill on the map with his finger.

"We offer them pardon. If we can convince a pocket of them to defect they can crack the back of their own formation mid-battle. A little betrayal in the right moment, and their army’ll collapse like wet parchment. We use their confusion to breach the line, drive through while their backs are turned, and once inside let the soldiers have fun with them."

A murmur circled the tent, quiet and thoughtful

Alpheo, however, remained still. He didn’t speak for a long moment, just stared at the map, brows furrowed, tapping his knuckle against his lip. Then he shook his head, slowly, the way one might do when listening to an old song they wish they could still believe in.

"It’s a fine plan’’ he said softly. "But also this one encounters a problem ."

He gestured toward the map with a single finger. "For this to work, we would need to convince either one of the major magnates—the kind of lord with enough sway to drag his bannermen with him—or a whole chorus of smaller ones willing to jump together."

His voice turned razor sharp.

"The second option is a web of candles in a dry field. One coward with a conscience, or a fool with too much loyalty, and it all goes to ash. They’d rat us out the moment doubt trickled in. We wouldn’t be marching to battle—we’d be walking into a trap they laid for us, thinking it was ours."

He folded his arms.

"As for the first option—convincing a high lord? That means getting a man inside one of the most heavily guarded corners of the enemy camp, into the lord’s tent itself, and having a quiet little chat. Without being seen. Without being heard. Without a whisper of it reaching the wrong ear."

His tone dipped lower, more sardonic.

"And if, say, a man was caught skulking into such a tent? Then by sunrise, they’d be crying ’spies in the camp,’. And of course, the plan would be revealed by the captured man by then, which meant that they could take advantage of that to lure us in, or at least that would be what I would do ."

He turned to Asag, not unkindly, but with the weight of reality in his gaze.

"It’s not impossible. But the margin for error is too big and the consequences of failure too big."

After the second plan was quietly but firmly dashed against the rocks of reality, no one dared push forward with another.

Shahab, usually as sharp-tongued as he was sharp-minded, sat with arms crossed and jaw clenched, his son beside him mirroring his silence, having no plan as he did before the ambush.

Lord Xanthios, for all his experience and valor, offered only a furrowed brow and the occasional tap of fingers against the wood of the table—his mind clearly spinning, not used to such strategy being put forward,as he was the kind of straightforward general of charge first , think second.

Egil, on the other hand, seemed to take the lull as permission to resume digging something loose from between his teeth, using the corner of his pinky nail like he was whittling a stick. He looked at no one. There was no spark behind his eyes, as those of a dog waiting for the master to throw the ball, and most certain certainly no clever plan ready to tumble from his lips.

Alpheo exhaled slowly, the sigh less of exhaustion and more like a valve releasing pressure before it could snap.

"Well," he finally said, the edge of steel still laced beneath his voice. "No need to wring blood from the stone just yet."

The tent remained quiet, the sound of canvas flapping in the wind outside underscoring his words.

"We don’t need to decide now," he continued, his tone more measured. "A plan will come to us—perhaps once we’ve seen the enemy’s ground with our own eyes. Men often grow cleverer when staring at the hill they must die on."

A few weary smirks flickered across the table at that.

"In the meantime," Alpheo added, sweeping a hand across the table to gently close the map, "we make camp in front of them."

He stood fully then, straightening his shoulders. "We’ll play for time. And perhaps time will reward us with a proper idea."

And with that, the meeting began to dissolve, not in triumph nor despair—but in the tempered patience of men who understood that sometimes, no fish would be caught from the net and that all they could was try another day .