Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 628: Trial by combat(2)

The transformation in the crowd was almost laughable in its predictability. Where moments ago the air had been alive with raucous cheers and good-natured jeering, now a heavy silence pressed down upon the arena like a burial shroud.

The same nobles who had been howling with laughter as runners face-planted in the sand now sat in stiff-backed solemnity, their faces carefully arranged into expressions of grave stoicism.

Alpheo watched them from the royal pavilion, his fingers steepled before his lips to hide the curl of his mouth.

How quickly they shifted masks - from revelers to pious spectators, as if they weren’t all secretly salivating at the prospect of violence.

He could see it in the white-knuckled grips on the railings, in the way eyes darted hungrily toward the closed gates where the combatants waited, in the barely suppressed tremors of excitement running through the crowd like a current at the notion that high noble’s blood would be spilt.

Animals, he thought, the lot of them. Dressing up their bloodlust in the finery of justice and calling it holy.

The hypocrisy was almost impressive.

All in the name of divine judgment, as if the gods had nothing better to do than preside over their petty squabbles. As if victory ever went to the righteous rather than simply the stronger.

A muscle twitched in Alpheo’s jaw. He knew better than most how hollow such notions were. They called him "Yarzat’s Reckoner," the "Little Fox" - titles born from his battle prowess and cunning, when one did not want to insult his low blood with titles like the Mud Prince or the Peasant Prince.

To him, conflict was simply a tool - like a blacksmith’s hammer or a scribe’s quill. Something to be used with precision when needed, then set aside without nostalgia when its purpose was served.

In an ideal world, he would never have drawn his sword at all, of course, but that was if he was given a kingdom at birth, as, after all, the only thing bigger than the man’s curiosity was his ambition for power, riches, and victories.

He could have spent his days wandering the palace gardens with a book in hand, feeding songbirds from his palm, which was something that he often did when he had no task to attend.

Few knew that version of him - the man who could lose hours discussing trivialities , they only knew him as the one who could break armies and who could apparently shit silver from nothing, given how much of it he threw around.

Asag was one of the rare exceptions. He never mocked his intellectual wanderings, as Egil and sometimes Jarza would do.

He could of course not be a companion for those talks, given the man’s unfortunate upbringing, yet just his company was reassuring for Alpheo.

But such luxuries were fleeting. The world he was in - the world he was shaping for his son - demanded a different sort of man. One who could wield fear as precisely as a surgeon’s blade. One who understood that sometimes, peace had to be carved from the flesh of enemies.

A sudden fanfare shattered his thoughts.

Around him, the crowd’s feigned solemnity cracked - a collective intake of breath, the rustle of fine silks as spectators shifted forward, the barely suppressed whispers racing through the stands.

Alpheo schooled his features into regal indifference, though his stomach turned a bit at the thought of Robert’s son’s death.

Alpheo despised those who broke their words.

In a world steeped in lies, betrayals, and half-truths whispered behind brocade curtains, a man’s word—when given freely—ought to mean something.

And so, for all his political maneuvering, he aimed to keep his promise to the one man who had died to deliver him victory.

Which meant, of course, he now had to tilt the scales in favor of the boy Robert had left behind.

Fortunately, Alpheo was no stranger to playing puppeteer.

Even more fortunate: Lord Gregor, his opponent, was a man with more aches than sense. A grizzled wall of meat with knees that creaked like old siege gates and joints locked in a silent war against time. Years of campaign wounds had turned the man into a shrine of pain—and like any priest of suffering, he relied on his sacraments. Chief among them: opium.

Not the pipe, of course—it was still not a thing .

No, Lord Gregor took his relief in the form of crushed poppy paste dissolved into hot herbal concoctions, handed to him in silver-gilded goblets by trembling servants who knew better than to comment on how much was too much.

Funny thing about opium: it didn’t just dull pain—it dulled everything. Give a man just enough and he could swing a sword with a bit less wincing. Give him a little more, and he’d be slow on the draw, dazed between breath and blade. Just enough more than that, and the only thing he’d be cutting was the tension in the air before toppling like a felled ox.

Funnier still was that Lord Gregor—despite his noble bearing and fire-breathing threats—was a miser.

He kept his coffers close and his trust even closer. Which meant his private physician, a man with years of unpaid loyalty and a growing contempt for his employer, was all too eager to entertain a prince’s discreet offer—especially when that offer jingled with enough coin to buy not only a new house but the land beneath it.

Alpheo didn’t even have to threaten him . A single veiled courier. A sealed scroll. A pouch heavy with coin. That was all it took for the good doctor to understand what was being asked of him.

Of course, none of it was certain. The dose had to be subtle, lest anyone in the crowd suspect something was amiss. If Gregor stumbled too soon, the nobles would cry foul. If he fought too well, Talek might still die. It was a careful dance between chance and chemistry.

So, while Alpheo pulled strings as subtly as any spider laying her web, he knew one truth remained: Talek would still have to fight. He would still have to bleed. And maybe, if fortune leaned in his favor, he would survive long enough to earn his father’s vengeance.

And if not?

Well... Alpheo had done his part. Kept his promise and as those foolish people down to him said , ’Let the gods judge the rest.’

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Silence reigned in the royal arena—a deep, unnatural hush that settled over the crowd like fog before a storm. The air itself seemed to hold its breath as the two combatants stepped into the sacred grounds, their boots crunching softly against the carefully laid sand.

Gregor stood like a mountain, all steel and menace. His armor was a masterpiece of brutality, forged in the forges of older wars and crusted with the echoes of men he had crushed. Plates of steel wrapped nearly every inch of him, save for the unarmored gaps at his joints and beneath his armpits—as the mutellargy techonology had still not reached that point in armor making. He looked less like a man and more like a walking battering ram, his breath hissing softly behind the slits of his helmet.

Opposite him stood Talek.

His armor was leaner, the kind worn by captains of the White Army—not full plate, but a hybrid of hardened steel over mail, its polished surface catching sunlight in gleams like trembling courage.

His warhammer hung heavy in his grip, a cruel head of steel balanced on a thick shaft of oiled ashwood. It was not a graceful weapon, nor forgiving. It would not dance or parry—it would end things. If it struck true even once, the fight could turn. But Talek would only get so many chances. Maybe one.

Yet before either man could draw blood, before a single weapon was raised to feed the arena’s hunger, tradition demanded its due.

A priest stepped forward—old, bent, and moving like the very idea of movement offended him. His robes of gold and ivory hung off his withered frame like banners on a collapsing fortress. Every step he took across the sand seemed a miracle in slow motion.

This was no accident.

Alpheo had personally selected the man—Father Barun. Not just for his seniority, which brought ceremonial gravitas, but because the man was famously, gloriously slow.

Every blessing he gave was a sermon. Every gesture a gentle crawl toward conclusion. And Alpheo needed time—time for the concoction laced into Gregor’s morning brew to take root, creep through his bloodstream, and dim his sense

Alpheo needed time; it was just that simple.

The crowd, though reverent, began to shift restlessly as Father Barun began the rites. First came the invocation of the gods, each name drawn out like a dirge. Then came the symbolic anointing—holy oils daubed carefully on the brow, chest, and hands of each man. Gregor’s eyes twitched beneath his helm. Talek stood utterly still, jaw clenched.

Finally, the old priest raised his voice, quavering but still powerful, to speak the sacred words: "May the gods grant victory to the just and judgment to the guilty."

And so the sacred trial could finally start.

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