Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 642: Hard Times(1)

Things were unraveling for the ruling house of Herculia—and there was no mistaking it. Not even the most silver-tongued courtier could deny the stench of rot clinging to the once-proud halls of their governance.

The signs were plain to see, not just within the crumbling borders of the princedom, but to every foreign dignitary and rival ruler who dared to peer in.

Five years ago, Herculia had been a name spoken with respect—perhaps not fear, but certainly a measure of deference. A dominant force in the western Princeling States, their banners once flew proudly across the hills and lowlands, their soldiers marched with confidence, and their coffers sang with the sound of full grain stores and gold alike.

But history, as Arnold had bitterly learned, is not always written with patience.

It had taken only a handful of months—a war ill-planned, a battle disgracefully lost—for that power to shatter like porcelain under a hammer. The calamity had rolled in one wave after another.

First came the crushing defeat on the frontier, where their finest men had bled into the soil for a ruler that saw fit to insult a man at his own wedding.

Then came famine, its grip cold and pitiless, stripping the land of food and the people of faith. And not long after that, the peasants rose—driven to arms by starvation and rage.

Arnold had seen it all firsthand, not from the safety of a balcony or behind a war table, but from the mud and the blood of it. He had fought, each time believing—hoping—that a turning point lay just ahead.

Even after he defeated the rebels, that hope had died, slowly and pitifully.

Their final opportunity to claw back legitimacy came when his father, the Prince of Herculia himself, had managed a narrow victory—recapturing a vital city from Yarzat hands. For a moment, a heartbeat, it seemed the tide might turn.

But that illusion shattered in less than a week. The city was lost again, and with it, the last scrap of initiative they had left.

What stung most was that the loss hadn’t even been the result of a decisive battle. The Prince had simply turned back—retreated home, leaving the rebellious Yarzats lords to face their doom alone.

And doom had come for them swiftly.

Arnold couldn’t bring himself to fully blame the old man of it .

The territory between them and the rebel bastion was vast and infested with hostile forces, the so-called Peasant Prince’s shadow stretching across every field and crossroad. Marching through it without a stable supply line would have been suicide. But still... retreating had cost them more than a few troops. It had cost them face. And in politics, especially here, face was often worth more than armies.

They had known retribution would come. It was not a matter of if, but when.

And now, the when had arrived.

Only a few days past, grim news had reached the court. The Peasant Prince’s infamous hound—some warleader that the blood of horse people in him—had returned to their lands. Fires blazed across the hinterlands. Villages were found emptied or half-burned. Livestock disappeared in the night. It wasn’t just a raid—it was a herald.

They could try to stop him. But with what? Their mounted units were few, worn out by the numerous defeats. The high command was reluctant—terrified, even—to risk losing them. Without cavalry, their armies would crawl like worms across the battlefield.

But the real danger wasn’t in the burning fields or the raided granaries.

It was what it meant.

The Peasant Prince was on the move. Again.

War was coming. And this time, they would be the ones scrambling for defense. This time, they would be the underdog.

And the wolves were already at the gate.

And amidst all the ruin—the humiliation, the war drums echoing from beyond their borders, the slow collapse of order—sat the man most responsible for it all. Upon the throne of Herculia, once carved from polished oak and proudly adorned, sat Prince Lechlian.

His eyes were lowered, not in prayer or solemn contemplation, but in a hollow, defeated gaze fixed upon the cold stones beneath his feet. The royal court, now echoed with a silence that felt like mockery. The courtiers were gone. The ministers absent. Even the guards stationed near the walls stood further away than usual, as if afraid that the man’s shame might somehow be contagious.

It had emptied completely after his latest decree.

The capital was to be moved.

Relocated, as if uprooting the heart of the realm could staunch the bleeding of its limbs.

Arnold had expected to rage at the news. In years past, he would have stormed through the corridors in disbelief at such a thought. To abandon their jewel—Herculia, the proud cradle of their house, the very symbol of its glory—was madness. It was defeat.

And yet... he hadn’t raged.

Because the moment he stepped into the throne room, and laid eyes on the man slumped beneath the weight of a gilded crown that no longer gleamed, the fire in him had guttered into something colder. Not anger. Not scorn.

Pity.

Lechlian had once been a man of stature, if not strength—tall and proud in his posture, dressed with meticulous care, and known for his cool reserve that once passed for dignity. Now, he was almost unrecognizable.

His robes, though still finely made, hung looser than they should have, the fabric draping across a frame that had clearly withered.

The once full and commanding beard that he had , now turned a brittle white in many places, patches of color remaining only like forgotten memories. The weight he had carried as a ruler had long since left his body, leaving behind only the sagging lines of someone who had carried failure too long and too close.

His fingers, once adorned with signet rings and curled in calculated gesture during council, now lay limp on the arms of the throne. There was no crown atop his head—he hadn’t worn it in weeks.

Arnold watched him in silence. No part of him surged with the old fury, nor did he feel the vindication that might come from seeing a man brought low by his own weakness. There was no satisfaction to be had.

No. This wasn’t a prince, simply a ghost who hadn’t yet realized he was dead as he moved his lips around.

"Do you disapprove?" Lechlian asked suddenly, his voice breaking the silence like a stone through glass.

His eyes, once listless, now locked onto his son’s with a sharpness that had been absent for far too long. It was as if he were trying to draw out the anger he assumed still lingered in Arnold’s heart—some spark of defiance, of hatred, anything to show that the blood still burned in the veins of his heir.

But Arnold did not rage. He had long since passed that point.

"No," he said flatly, after a pause that felt like the length of a drawn sword. "I suppose not. The situation is untenable."

He looked around the throne room, hollow and half-abandoned, as if expecting the very stones to agree with him.

"The granaries are near empty. What little grain we could’ve expected to come from the nearby villages was put to the torch by that hound . If we were to stay, we’d be sealing ourselves in a tomb. No food. No hope of relief. No one left to command an army once the gates fall."

He paused, the truth weighing heavily on him. "Strategically... you’re right. Moving deeper inland might be the only way to organize a coherent defense without being crushed before we even begin."

But then came the bitterness, hidden in the quiet.

"Still, this is not just a tactical retreat. It’s a wound to the soul of our people. Abandoning the capital—it’s more than practical. It’s a signal. One we might never recover from. Who’s to say we even have enough loyal lords left to rally when we call? How many will answer once we abandon the city their fathers helped build and bled for?"

Lechlian’s shoulders slumped further, as though the weight of that thought had pressed him deeper into the throne.

"I do not intend to abandon it completely," the older man muttered, voice now once again thin and brittle. "I will leave a contingent to hold the walls. Despite its condition, the city is still hard to take. Even for that dog..."

Arnold raised an eyebrow. "You’ll garrison the city?" His voice was softer now, but tinged with suspicion. "Then who have you chosen to command?"

There was a hesitation. And in that pause, Arnold’s stomach turned with premonition.

"Lord Cretio," came the answer, spoken with the weight of finality.

The name struck Arnold like a slap.

His jaw tensed. "You would assign my father-in-law—the man who has stood by our house longer than anyone else—to defend a doomed city? You would send him to die?" The words came sharp, bitter, carrying all the restrained fury he had tried to bury.

Lechlian turned his gaze from his son, looking instead into the empty space before the throne as if hoping to find his answer etched into the stone.

"He is the only man I can trust not to betray us," he said at last. "Anyone else would surrender the moment the gates tremble, to save their own skin."

Arnold’s hands curled into fists. "So you would reward loyalty with a death sentence? Sacrifice our most stalwart ally to buy time in a city we’re too weak to hold?"

The old prince’s eyes snapped back to him, sharp and furious once more. "Careful with your tone, boy. I am still your father. And I am still the prince. You may speak such thoughts when I am cold in the ground—but not before."

Arnold bristled but held his tongue. He knew better than to push further while his father’s blood still remembered how to boil. But it didn’t stop the fire in his chest.

Lechlian’s voice softened, and his tone grew wearied again. "It must be Cretio. He’s family now. And that makes him bound by more than oaths. He cannot surrender, not without disgracing himself and you. It is the burden of blood. No other man would hold the city long enough for it to matter. And if we are to have any chance at this war, we need the enemy to waste precious time and strength here."

Arnold drew a breath, heavy and full of thorns. He knew there was still time—just a sliver, just enough to pull his father back from the brink of yet another fatal misstep. He stepped closer to the throne, his voice now calm but pleading.

"Father," he said, the word more gentle than it had been in months. "We can find someone else. There are still a few commanders with enough honor to hold the line without needing to be shackled by blood. Lord Cretio is more valuable to us alive and by our side than holding a corpse of a city. You said it yourself—this move is meant to preserve what we have left. Then why start by throwing our foundation to the wolves?How many nobles are still supporting us?"

Lechlian didn’t respond at first. His eyes, glassy with fatigue and defeat, stared off somewhere past Arnold’s shoulder, as if searching through memories or ghosts. His hand rested limply on the armrest, fingers twitching as if grasping for a scepter long since slipped from his grasp.

Arnold took another step. "Listen to reason—for once. We can preserve the illusion of defense, even without him. Station a lesser man with clear instructions, take his family hostage and force him to waste the enemy’s time. But don’t doom the last men who still believes in you."

Then, suddenly—thunder.

Arnold turned, the sound of approaching footsteps reaching his ears.

The steps were swift, sharp, and unhesitating—each one bouncing off the tall stone columns of the now-deserted throne room with a rhythmic finality that set his nerves on edge. He instinctively straightened, even before the figure emerged from the shadowed archway.

Only to reveal it to be his youngest brother—Thalien.

Unlike the image one might conjure of a proud warrior prince, Thalien was neither tall nor broad, maybe it was just for his young age of barely 14. His frame was narrow, his shoulders set in a short span beneath the creased travel cloak that clung to him. His boots were scuffed, his posture tense with movement held just in check, but what arrested Arnold most of all was the expression on his face.

That same look of restrained fury that Arnold had when he confronted his father.

This content is taken from fr(e)ewebn(o)vel.𝓬𝓸𝓶