Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 616: Shame and Humiliation(4)

Dozens of faces were tight with tension—eyes squinted, jaws locked, bodies trembling in that very specific, very human way. One boy further down the line had both fists balled and pressed against his thighs, his face the color of spoiled milk.

It would’ve been funny—if it weren’t happening to him too.

Merza stared at that sliver of sun, willing it to rise faster.

It didn’t.

His entire focus had narrowed down to a single goal: don’t piss yourself.

Every minute stretched into ten. Every breeze felt like an insult. His jaw was locked, breath shallow, and both heels were pressing deep into the dirt in a desperate attempt to ground himself. His bladder screamed louder than any of the scarred men patrolling the lines. He could feel every drop sloshing inside him, as if his insides had become a cruelly overfilled wineskin.

Then—just as he thought he could maybe, possibly hold on a little longer—he heard the sharp scrape of boots on gravel stop right in front of him.

A heavy presence loomed close.

Merza looked up, only to meet the hard eyes of one of the examiners, a brute of a man with a crooked nose , which had clearly been broken before, and a beard that looked like it had been forged from iron wire.

"Why are you squirming like a worm on hot ash?" the man barked, glaring at him with thinly veiled disgust.

Merza flinched, then stammered, "I... I gotta pee, sir."

The examiner’s brow lifted just slightly, then he gave a short, sharp huff through his nose—almost like a laugh, but with none of the humor. He leaned in close enough that Merza could smell the faint scent of old tobacco on his breath.

"It’s still night, boy," he growled, gesturing to the lingering twilight. "Ain’t nobody gonna see you piss."

For the briefest of moments, Merza’s hope ignited—was this permission?

"But..." the man straightened up, voice growing cruel again, "You’ve got orders. We don’t move a muscle until that sun is up. "

"I can’t hold it," Merza blurted, his voice cracking slightly with the pressure and panic.

"Too bad," the examiner snapped without missing a beat. "Orders are orders. Hold it in—or wear it."

And just like that, he turned on his heel and marched down the line, immediately shouting at another poor soul who had started bouncing on his toes in an all-too-familiar rhythm.

Merza could only stare after him, dumbfounded, lips parted, a slight whimper of despair caught in his throat.

His tilted his head back slowly, as though afraid even that small motion might trigger the final collapse of his control. His eyes locked onto the dark sky above—still painted in deep hues of indigo and purple, the stars dimming but stubbornly refusing to vanish. The faintest rim of orange clung to the horizon, but the sun itself remained hidden, unmoving, uncaring.

The examiner hadn’t lied. The sun was not up yet.

And it wasn’t coming fast enough.

Merza’s legs trembled—not from exhaustion or fear—but from sheer, pitiful desperation.

He tried to breathe through it, slow and steady, pretending the pain didn’t exist.

He whispered to himself, "Just a little longer..."

But his body wasn’t listening anymore.

The pressure built, mounting into something unbearable, a hot iron press at the pit of his belly. His knees buckled slightly and he locked them straight again with a grunt. A single bead of sweat rolled down his temple. His teeth were clenched so hard his jaw ached.

"I can ’t move," Merza thought, eyes wide. "He said not to move... not to step away... not to break formation. But he didn’t say I couldn’t..."

And then it happened.

He felt it start with a horrifying warmth, like someone had poured a hot cup of broth between his thighs. It came with a strange, traitorous sense of relief—so intense and sudden it nearly made him dizzy. A quiet hiss filled the silent morning as the dam finally burst.

The liquid heat ran down the inside of his trousers, soaking the rough fabric in waves. It streamed down his legs, tickling as it went, and pooled inside his boots.

He stared ahead, face frozen, breath shallow as if ashamed.

The world felt utterly still around him, save for the spreading warmth that betrayed every ounce of dignity he had left. He dared not look down, but he didn’t need to. He could feel it all: the stickiness, the smell beginning to rise, the sting of humiliation licking up the back of his neck like fire.

But he had not moved.

He was still standing, just as ordered.

He was sure he wasn’t the only one. The air was too heavy, too pungent, too still.

But no one spoke.

No one dared.

A few more minutes passed—or what felt like minutes. Time had stopped meaning anything useful. Merza’s body still trembled, now not with desperation but with the aftermath of release, like the calm after a storm that had left everything sodden and heavy.

And then it began.

The silence broke with the sound of hurried footsteps slapping against the hard dirt. One boy from the far left line suddenly broke rank, sprinting out toward a dark corner near a low wall. Then another followed, then two more—gripping their crotches as they half-ran, half-hobbled away from the lines. You could see it in their faces: their pride still clung to them like armor. They refused to suffer the shame of pissing themselves in front of everyone. If they were going to relieve themselves, they would do it standing up like men, away from the humiliation.

Of course in doing so meant relinquishing their chance at passing.

The examiners didn’t shout. Didn’t raise their voices. They merely watched, eyes narrowing, and then looked back to the rest of the line.

One paused next to another boy still squirming in silence, legs locked, face pale and twisted in agony.

"Well?" the examiner said, prodding him lightly with a baton. "Let it go, lad. There’s no dignity in a soldier’s piss. Orders are orders."

And that was it. No ceremony, no ridicule. Just a quiet, biting truth: hold your ground, or get out of the line.

Some boys, faces flushed with shame but too terrified of disobeying, let go right then and there. The lines grew damper, the air fouler. Small puddles collected at their feet like offerings of submission to a cruel god.

Others tried to hold on, white-knuckled, until their bodies gave out with a tremble and a whimper.

For what felt like hours, the line stood. The horizon began to turn gold, then pale orange, light creeping over the edges of the land like a slow tide of fire. The sun finally peeked through, and with its rise came a quiet end to the ordeal.

And then came the count

From the five hundred recruits that had lined up when the ordeal began, only four hundred remained. A hundred had broken rank—some to relieve themselves, some simply running off into the dark, unable to bear the humiliation or the sheer discomfort.

Merza stood, boots soaked and spirit scraped raw, and dared to glance sideways. Around him were boys just like him—shivering, humiliated, but still standing.

They had followed the order.

--------------------

’’What is the use of this, ser?’’ Edric’s assistant asked, a bit disgusted by the amount of recruits who pissed themselves, as even at that distance the smell reached his nostrils.

Edric turned his head slowly toward the assistant, his expression hard but not angry—more like a man explaining the obvious to someone who should’ve known better.

"The smell, the mess, the shame—it’s all part of the point," he said gruffly unbothered by the smell, his eyes returning to the shivering line of recruits standing in their soaked trousers beneath the morning sun. "You look at that and see filth. I see beginnings."

The assistant looked at him, brow furrowed, clearly unconvinced. Edric sighed, shifting his stance slightly before continuing in a lower, more deliberate tone.

"You want to make a soldier? Then you break a man down to the clay he’s made of. You scrape off the varnish he’s painted on himself his whole life—manners, pride, fear of looking foolish. You take his shame, and you grind it under your boot until he realizes there’s no room for it in the field. A man ashamed to look weak is a man who’ll hesitate. And hesitation on the battlefield gets him and his brothers killed."

He jabbed a finger toward the rows of boys. "That lot out there? They’re learning. Right now. That their comfort means nothing. That following orders matters more than their dignity. That the mission, the unit, the goal—those things come first. Always."

The assistant glanced back at the rows, watching a boy tremble as the wet pooled around his boots. Edric continued, his voice like gravel in the wind.

"We break resistance to discomfort, to emotion, to pride. If they can’t handle standing still and pissing themselves in front of their peers because someone told them to, how do you expect them to march for days with blisters on their feet and arrows flying over their heads? How do you expect them to hold the line when the man next to them loses half his face?"

He crossed his arms, his gaze turning distant for a moment.

"You temper steel with fire. You forge discipline with discomfort. And once that’s done, once they’ve learned that pain and shame are just passing weather, we’ll build them back up. Into something better."

Then he turned to the assistant, voice flat and final.

"So if the smell bothers you, I suggest you stand farther back. But don’t question the process again. You wanted to know what makes our soldiers different from the rest? This is where it starts.These are the bricks that shall hold the foundations for the prince’s ambition"

Edric gave one last long glance at the line of trembling, piss-soaked recruits, their faces a mixture of exhaustion, embarrassment, and quiet resolve. He exhaled through his nose

"This part," he muttered, half to himself, half to the assistant, "this was the steepest climb. From here on, it’s downhill."

The assistant blinked, clearly not understanding.

"I don’t mean easier," Edric clarified, glancing sideways. "I mean now we can finally move. No more wasting time separating lean meat from fat. No more rooting out the ones who cry at the idea of being ordered around or break from a little cold and piss. Everyone who stood their ground this morning? That’s raw ore worth smelting. That’s proper material."

He gestured toward the field with a nod. "They’ve proven they’ll hold the line, even when their pride’s in the dirt and their guts are twisting. You can train a man like that. You can build on that."

The assistant looked at the line again with new eyes—less disgust, more consideration.

"We’ll still lose some," Edric added after a pause, "but not for lack of heart. Injuries, accidents, maybe one or two just won’t keep up. But the next stage—this is the work I actually enjoy. Drilling, marching, shaping them into a single mind with a hundred hands. The breaking’s done."

He turned fully to the assistant now, voice quieter, but firmer.

"From today, they stop being commoners and start becoming soldiers. Bit by bit, bruise by bruise. They’ll eat together, bleed together, sleep side by side. And in time, they’ll fight for each other without thinking. ."

He narrowed his eyes as a scarred examiner barked an order and the line snapped straighter than it had all morning.

"We don’t need champions," Edric said. "We need cohesion. Discipline. Men who obey in the face of fear, who march when their bodies scream, and who fight not for glory, but for the man to their left."

Then he smirked—just slightly.

"They don’t know it yet, but the hardest part’s behind them. Now they truly have a chance at succeeding both at this and at life."

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