Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 645: Dear Family(1)

It was a strange, bitter sight—one that would linger in the memory of all who witnessed it: a prince abandoning his capital while its walls still stood firm. There was no glory in it, no honor to be salvaged from the shame of departure. Whether seen through the eyes of the nobility or the rough hands of commoners, the message was the same—something was broken.

Thalien had stood atop the outer rampart of the city’s first wall, his hands resting cold on the stone as he watched the royal carriage roll out of the southern gate, gilded and solemn in the morning light. Within it sat the remnants of a fractured crown—his father, Prince Lechlian, flanked by his two elder sons.

He’d watched them go in silence, but inside, his chest was burning with contempt. The sight was grotesque. A ruler—anointed by divine rite, draped in the legacy of generations—was supposed to be a figure of strength, of dignity, of unshakable resolve. And yet all he saw was a man running from the ruin he himself had summoned.

Even the common folk, who for their entire lives had been taught to keep their eyes low and their mouths shut before the highborn, had stared with open disbelief.

Useless to say the trust the people had in their own ruler had never been so low.

What ruler deserts his own city with the enemy not yet through the gates? What man of stature flees with his household while soldiers and citizens are left behind to face the siege? There was no authority in that act—only cowardice. No divine guidance—only the scent of failure.

And Thalien, watching from his height, felt the bile rise in his throat.

If it had been him in Arnold’s place—if it were his legacy that had been dismantled brick by brick through years of shortsighted ambition and delusional pride—he would have ended it already. He would have slipped poison into his father’s cup. Or perhaps he’d have stabbed the bastard in the back and ensured the bloodline passed cleanly to stronger hands.

There was a limit to how far madness and incompetence could stretch before they became treason not against a state, but against sense itself. And yet, time and again, Lechlian had crossed that threshold, calling disaster to his door through his ceaseless scheming, gambling what little strength the realm had on plays of power he could never follow through on.

And now, in the moment of reckoning, it was not he who would bear the weight of his failures, but those he left behind—soldiers manning the walls, families hiding in cellars, and much to the surprise of many Thalien.

Even now, days after their arrival, as he watched Lord Cretio’s tall, stooped figure move beside his through the desolate marble corridors of the palace, the same thought gnawed at the edge of his mind, a bitter recognition.

Another poor fool sacrificed at the altar of Father’s failures.

A capital abandoned by its prince, now handed off to a commander far too honorable for the game he’d been thrown into.

This was now the fifth day he had taken command of the city’s defenses. The men he had marched in with now manned the walls, their armor dull with dust and sweat. Civilians were conscripted en masse—some armed, most not, something that lord Cretio was trying to resolve by putting everything made of steel to be reforged into weapons.

They dug trenches around the outer wards, piled wood into barricades, and closed off narrow alleys with carts and felled timber, to control any breach that might follow if the enemy broke through the twin walls.

And if even half the whispers about the so-called Peasant Prince were true, then the storm was indeed coming.

Down the hall, their footsteps echoed as Lord Cretio led Thalien deeper into the vacated royal wing. The old lord’s face was weary, as if the weight of his new responsibility was already dragging at his bones.

"I apologize for not having granted you more of my time, Lord Thalien," Cretio said, his tone carefully polite, a layer of fatigue clinging to his voice.

Thalien, walking with an easy grace beside him, turned his head and offered a faint smile. "There is nothing to forgive, my lord," he said without hesitation. "I am well aware that a great burden has fallen upon your shoulders. The defense of the capital lies in your hands. What sort of fool would expect you to waste precious hours to amuse a wayward son of the realm, when those same hours might better serve the survival of all within these walls?"

Cretio looked sidelong at him as they walked. He had not spent much time around the king’s youngest son—few nobles had. Thalien had always been kept far from courtly affairs, either by his own design or more likely his father’s decree. The rumors had painted him as many things: a libertine, a layabout, a disgrace to royal decorum.

But the young man walking beside him now did not seem to fit that image. He was articulate, precise, and calm.

"I imagine his grace would take great comfort in knowing his son is so devoted to the wellbeing of the realm," Cretio said, fishing for the safe path through the conversation.

Thalien gave a short laugh—dry and unbothered. "Ah, my lord, then I fear you misjudge the nature of our relationship," he said, flashing an amused glance at one of the servant girls hurrying past. She blushed beneath his gaze and scurried ahead, her tray rattling in her hands. "No good blood passes between us, I assure you. If you’ve spoken to my elder brother, I’m certain he’s told you of the many times I’ve stood defiant before our father. He had a vision for me, you see—a life robed in holy cloth.

He paused, then shrugged with theatrical ease.

"But I am a man of... warmer appetites. I find devotion to vows rather stifling. And the only stars I care for are the ones I can drink beneath."

His grin was unabashed as he adjusted the cuffs of his vest. He was dressed finely, though not pompously. There was a wildness to him, yes, but it wasn’t the careless arrogance of a drunkard son.

"You may not know it, my lord," Thalien began again "but the very reason I stand here, while the rest of my family flees, is tied directly to my father’s greatest failure with me."

Lord Cretio gave him a look of puzzled interest but said nothing, waiting for the young man to explain himself. Thalien, always perceptive to the undercurrents in a room, caught the hesitation and smiled faintly, as though enjoying some private joke at the old lord’s expense.

"You see," he continued, running a hand along the cracked marble banister beside them, "I managed, through much persistence and no shortage of familial strife, to convince my father to abandon his long-cherished dream of placing me in the priesthood. The robes, the prayers, the endless sermons—it would’ve been a lovely prison, but a prison nonetheless."

He looked up at Cretio again, that smile still lingering on his lips like smoke. "In exchange for my freedom, I agreed to become the symbol he needed—a royal son standing dutifully within the city walls, the brave last flame of royal blood lighting the darkness of a forsaken capital."

There was something unnervingly light in the way Thalien spoke, as though the stakes weren’t life and death but a courtly jest, and this entire situation merely an elaborate game of words and maneuvering.

"Of course," Thalien added, "my father feared you might refuse the order to hold the capital. So what better way to box you in than to make it so your refusal would become a political embarrassment—an abandonment of your own son-in-law’s brother, of a prince who swore to remain and defend this jewel of our realm with his life."

He paused, his eyes glinting slightly in the shifting light, before glancing back at the older man.

"And naturally, I was more than happy to comply."

Lord Cretio said nothing at first, yet clearly looked troubled. He merely walked, each footstep echoing in the long corridors of the emptied palace. In truth, he wasn’t sure how to respond. The words hung in the air, heavy with implications that unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

Why was he telling him this? Why speak so plainly about such machinations—to him, the very man they had forced onto the chessboard?

Was he really a fool then?

Cretio’s mouth opened slightly, then shut. It wasn’t merely the brazenness of what Thalien had said—it was the ease with which he said it.

Then, as if suddenly recalling that he had been posed a question, Lord Cretio gave his answer—his voice calm, his tone steady.

"Even if that were not the case," he said, "I would have marched without hesitation to the aid of the crown."

Thalien turned to him, arching a brow with a look that danced between amusement and disbelief. There was a faint flicker of a smirk tugging at the corners of his lips, and his eyes narrowed as if he were trying to determine whether the old man believed his own words.

"Oh my," Thalien said softly, the smirk blooming into a full smile. "You truly are the very epitome of loyalty, aren’t you, my lord?"

He gave a low, theatrical sigh, hands clasped behind his back as they resumed their slow walk across the marble floor of the echoing hall. "Very well. Let us not stop our little game here. Riddle me this, then—would you truly have wasted your time and your blood coming here if your daughter had not been married to my brother? To Arnold—the man who, with any luck, will wear the crown sooner than later?"

Lord Cretio did not respond. His silence was not from shame, but from restraint. There were words that no lord should exchange with a prince, even one as unconventional as this. And certainly not words that should be provoked by such uncouth questioning.

He simply looked ahead, jaw set, as if hoping that walking further would somehow put distance between him and the biting remarks. But Thalien did not let the moment pass.

He chuckled, a dry, humorless sound, and then—almost in a whisper, though no less venomous—he continued.

"You’re quiet, my lord. Wise, perhaps. But do not mistake my words for mere provocation. I know what I say. And I say it because it must be said. My father..."—he spat the word as if it left a foul taste—"...is a coward wrapped in the skin of a ruler. He is not the storm, nor even the calm before it. He is the hollow space after a house has crumbled."

He stepped away slightly, turning his gaze upward toward the high, vaulted ceiling above them, as though looking through it and into the past.

"He has always ruled from fear—fear of death, fear of irrelevance, fear of shadows that may or may not exist. And in that fear, he has squandered the strength of his lands. Every decision he has made in the last half decade has been not so wrong that in the future entire books shall be written on his stupidity . And now, with war at the gates and fire licking at the walls, he flees and calls you to fight in his place."

He paused, then looked back at Cretio, the heat in his voice cooling to something bitterly cold.

’’Do you perhapse not agree, my lord?’’

This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢