Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 617: The crown blessed union(1)

Nothing elevates a ruler more surely than victory.

And Alpheo stood as living proof.

A man of no birthright—he had clawed his way up through the ladder through the sheer amount of body of those that had opposed him.

He had married into royalty—a scandal, at the time. The union was mocked by the highborn, a whispered joke passed around gilded halls. Mixing royal blood with that of a common swine? Unthinkable.

So for the first years, the current ruling house of Yarzat was treated as a joke by local nobles and outsiders.

But that was two years, three campaigns, and half a dozen battles ago.

Now? No one laughed.

The same nobles who once turned their noses up now bowed their heads, kissed his ring, and sent their finest wine to his table. Those who had mocked him either bent the knee or were buried with their pride.

The prince of Herculia, whose petty insult had once tried to stain Alpheo’s name, now slumbered under watchful eyes, well aware that one day soon, the man he mocked would come again with fire and steel—and this time, he’d bring the knife to the feast.

Power spoke loudest when wrapped in banners and soaked in blood.

Even now, as one of the prince’s most favored men took a savage for a wife—a woman from a heretical tribe, no less—not a single noble dared to object.

They came dressed in their finest silks, bearing gifts and blessings, smiling through their teeth. Every lordling knew that to insult the savage bride was to risk insulting the man who stood closest to the prince’s ear—and the point of his sword. The same man who once ate stale bread in the mud now commanded feasts in marble halls.

Alpheo still remembered his first celebration clearly.

He had been just a mercenary then, clad in plain armor, standing awkwardly at the edge of a banquet in honor of Jasmine’s father. A nothing. A hired sword.

But fate, for once, had smiled on him. The old prince had no sons—only daughters. And Alpheo? Alpheo had eyes that saw opportunity like a hawk sees a hare.

A few months later, it was he who sat the throne.

Now, he was no longer a swine

He was the man that foreign realms feared, that nobles with a long ancient history now bowed to.

Leisurely sipping from his silver-gilded cup, he let the warm, spiced wine coat his tongue before turning his gaze across the riotous celebration unfolding in the grand chamber. He had demanded spectacle—and spectacle he had received.

The hall was alive with music and madness: vibrant silks cascaded from the wall, torches flickered like restless spirits, and a dozen musicians tooted and strummed in a chaotic harmony that somehow worked. Trays of food paraded past, stacked high with fire-roasted lamb, figs glazed in honey, and delicate pastries shaped like birds mid-flight.

But the real storm swirled at the center of the hall, where the prince’s favorite indulgence—the mummers—were hard at work.

Painted in violent clashing colors, their eyes rimmed with black soot and mouths exaggerated by red greasepaint, the mummers had already done a round of slapstick—fake duels, pratfalls, and a screaming chicken chase that ended with a dwarf in a knight helmet getting pelted with apples. But now, the star act took the stage.

A wiry man in shimmering purple tights leapt forward with a manic grin and produced a curved dagger nearly as long as his arm. With theatrical flair, he tilted his head back—and slowly, impossibly, began swallowing the blade. The crowd gasped, some flinched, others leaned in as the hilt disappeared down his throat.

With a small smile upon witnessing the trick, Alpheo turned his head toward the ostensible star of the feast—the groom himself—only to find the man slouched in his seat, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed, clearly having overindulged.

No doubt the handiwork of both Laedio and Egil, who had taken it upon themselves—likely in a spirited competition—to ensure that the poor man’s cup never once touched the table empty. Their efforts had, predictably, resulted in him being halfway to unconsciousness, nodding along to music he could no longer hear.

The other half of the bridal pair, the bride, had left her seat entirely. Alpheo’s brow rose with mild curiosity as he noticed her across the hall, engaged in what appeared to be a surprisingly animated exchange with his wife.

He didn’t know how fluent Torghan’s sister was in the southern tongue, but from the Jasmine’s surpising laughter and the bride’s composed smiles, she was managing well enough.

Speaking of Torghan—the newly minted brother-in-law of Jarza—he had not fared any better with his drink. The young chieftain was now entirely collapsed over the banquet table, snoring softly into a platter of roast onions. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath, unmoving, a defeated warrior felled not by sword, but by spirits, which he clearly had no tolerance for, probably for the fact that the only source of wine came from the Azanian merchants, which meant that they were too costly even for Torghan’s father to acquire.

Thinking about his father , Alpheo smirked and leaned back in his chair, eyes drifting toward the towering windows where the night bled slowly into darkness. By now, Varaky was no doubt deep in war , leading his own private conflict against his rival clan.

But for now, the prince had other concerns.

Despite the music, the laughter, the scent of spice and wine, Alpheo’s thoughts slipped to a colder place: the other continent, across the sea. That bitter, broken land where apparently for him, hope rarely bloomed,since it was where most of his envoys had met their end.

He had recently received word that the diplomatic expeditions he had sanctioned to other tribal regions had ended in blood. Slaughtered, looted, or simply vanished without a trace. Steel and gifts had not opened those doors. It seemed the deeper he ventured into the lands of the tribes, the thicker the fog of suspicion and isolation grew.

"Seems we hit the jackpot with the Chorsi " Alpheo muttered under his breath, taking a sip of wine.

Who would’ve thought that of all the savage tribes dotting the hills and mountains, it would be Torghan’s people, half-starved, and scraping the bones of winter—who’d be the ones willing to listen? Perhaps it wasn’t their openness, but their desperation.

When your stores are empty and your goats are dying, even the Devil might look like a good guest if he brought salt.

Torghan’s father, Alpheo thought, might truly be the exception. A shrewd man who saw a storm coming and decided it was better to build a bridge than a wall.

That made Varaku more than a trading partner. He was a lynchpin. A key.

If played correctly, Alpheo could use his conflict to weave his influence through the mountain tribes without ever needing to march an army into their lands. Occupation was out of the question. Too costly. Too far. And most importantly—too little to gain. No grain. No grand cities. But there were silver mines tucked away in those unforgiving hills. Enough to mint coins, fund trades, and fill coffers.

His plan was simple—on paper.

Help Torghan crush his rivals and grow fat with victories. Word would spread like wildfire that the Voghondai now wielded steel, and that their weapons came from a great fortress in the south—Salthold.

Once the others heard that these strange southerners brought salt, steel, and silk—well, Alpheo hoped that greed would do what words could not. Even the most zealous xenophobe could be tamed by temptation.

And if fortune favored him, in a few winters’ time, trade routes would stretch across those mountains, silver would flow into Salthold, and every chieftain still clinging to isolation would realize they had been left behind.

Indeed. After all, when the Portuguese first introduced gunpowder to Japan in the 16th century—carried in aboard their ships like some strange thunder from the West—they didn’t merely bring a new weapon. They brought innovation.

The Japanese soon didn’t hesitate to adopt the new technology. Within a generation, the arquebus was being forged domestically, improved upon, and turned inward—fueling the brutal Sengoku wars with louder, bloodier results.

That single foreign spark cut a small, hole into Japan’s isolationist armor. Not large enough to invite a flood, but just wide enough for trade to trickle through—guns, silk, Christianity. For a time, the Portuguese profited handsomely from that wound in the wall, as European goods and Jesuit missions found harbor in select ports like Nagasaki.

But history rarely leaves doors ajar.

Come the 19th century, it wasn’t cautious merchants who came knocking—it would be Commodore Matthew Perry, and the Americans didn’t knock. They brought steamships, black smoke, and booming guns. They sailed straight into Edo Bay and demanded entry, shattering centuries of the Japanese sekoku with the blunt force of naval supremacy. They didn’t slip through cracks; they kicked the entire wall down.

Where the Portuguese had whispered through a keyhole, the Americans smashed open the gate and set up camp of what would become a Westernized Asian nation.

Still, that was not Japan, and Alpheo was surely not that commodore yet.

He drank again, slowly this time.

Around him, the mummers juggled apples with fire and danced with geese on their heads. Nobles toasted, laughed, and slurred their alliances into one another’s ears.

But his eyes stayed fixed on the map in his mind.

Of what will once become Greater Yarzat with him as its king and his colonies flowing silver into his coffers.

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