Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 926: From the other side(2)

With the hides of the command-tent flapping behind him like restless wings, Alpheo entered the council of war. Jarza followed closely, and with the giant’s shadow cast over him, Alpheo appeared like a sapling grown beside an ancient oak.

Normally, he would have brought the others. They would have stood behind him like wolves. But tonight he came with only Jarza.

He could read the air,hot iron under thin water. One wrong phrase and the whole tent would hiss and spit. The others, bold and prone to head-on collision, would only rattle sabers. Jarza, sharper in silence than any of them in speech, was the man he needed for a room ready to boil without throwing wood into the fire, especially since he could serve as the water to put down fires.

The other may have been useful in a head-on clash of wills or steel, but they would have no qualms about setting up in ire if anything went against them or him.

While Alpheo would have no qualms about clashing, he would prefer not to be the one to initiate it.

The soundtrack behind the meeting was not the murmur of nobles or the walking of servants, but the distant chorus of agony. Men dying , prayers dissolving into screams. The smell of blood, seeped through the tent even though the battle was... actually, just ending, hundreds of meters from them.

They could have waited until the wounded were tended to, until the battlefield cooled from red to brown. They did not. That alone told Alpheo what he needed: someone here wanted urgency to break the board.

He took a seat, eyes sliding to Mesha, not to show deference but to observe and catch a spark of motive in the regent’s unreadable profile. Alpheo doubted any sudden disaster had forced this meeting. If crisis had struck, the tent would be loud with orders, not whispers.

Nah, he realised, this shit was about politics.

"With the arrival of his grace of Yarzat, we are all present," Mesha declared with ceremonial indifference, "and we may begin."

The first voice broke like an arrow in dry wood.

"Your Imperial Majesty with all due respect...we are going nowhere. Casualties mount, yet we have gained nothing."

So, impatience. Predictable. But was it was simply that?

"We have been before these walls a week and bled for it," another joined, wringing the air with nervous hands. "Winter rots our heels. Frost will come, and with it, fever, famine, dead men in tents. We must reconsider about our presence here."

A third piled on, bitterness sharpened into complaint.

"This siege was folly from the start. We lacked time, lacked preparation—"

Alpheo did not speak. He let the flood pour itself out and merely listened, eyes sweeping the tent like reaper during harvest. He counted them, those whose gaze trembled, those whose eyes gleamed with escape disguised as strategy.

There were many. More than he wished. He did not hide the scrutiny; the very act of looking, calm and unlowered, was a declaration. Politics did not always need words.

Some lords noticed his gaze and shifted uncomfortably, like boys caught stealing fruit. Their grimaces revealed their faction more clearly than speech. Yet even those bold enough to meet his stare seemed to shrink once they realized Mesha remained silent, and by doing so, allowed each lord to reveal his hand, including the Prince.

And once those eyes inevitably turned to Alpheo, weighing him as factor or obstacle, found a man who had the ear of the Imperator and more than a quarter of the army stregth.

The veneer of strength cracked.

Alpheo expected discontent, but he had misread its origin. Some among them did not simply wish caution. They wished retreat.

When the babbling became tiresome, he rose. Slowly.

"Foolishness," he said, not shouted but delivered with a weight that settled into every rib in the tent. "You speak foolishness, and worse, you speak forgetting." His gaze traveled across them like a huntsman sighting prey. "You should have learned your lesson six years ago, when you first repulsed the Bastard’s invasion. When you left him space to breathe again. As long as those walls stand, so does the threat behind them. Every man here sleeps under a sword edge.

Now is the moment most ripe. Not yesterday, not in spring, not at some imagined future of perfect readiness. Now, while their dead still steam upon the stones. We purchased advantage with blood on the field. Shall we now squander that price because winter pricks our toes?"He looked around the tent for someone to make his point. For a moment none did.

He had thought it over, but he done it so wrong.

"Do you even understand the meaning of beneficial?"The voice cut through the tent like a rusted saw.

Alpheo turned and found the speaker: Lord Virnius of Dubrina. A man soft in jowl and loud in opinion, one of the quiet conspirators. Had circumstances been different, Alpheo might have spat at his boots and thought it courtesy. Today, however, he chose the cleaner weapon, words.

"I never claimed the conditions were comfortable," Alpheo answered evenly, "only that they are the most advantageous we will ever see. And still you speak as though winter waits to swallow us whole. You fear it like a child fears the dark."

Virnius bristled, color rising to his cheeks."And I would pay gold to see if that boldness remains when camp-fever begins to reap men like harvest wheat. Pride is a beautiful thing,especially when it blinds the proud."

The insult struck with surprising venom, far more than one would expect toward a man who had delivered them victory only weeks prior. Jarza did not take it quietly. He rose like a mountain waking, chair legs grinding against the ground, his glare turning bone to water. Virnius shrank instinctively, shoulders pressing into the back of his seat as though distance could save him.

"Lord Virnius."

Mesha’s voice sliced through the rising heat as he stood probably before the giant could break the lord’s arm. "You forget yourself. This is not how you address the man who bought you the very breath you waste on complaint. Choose your words with care or you may find yourself speaking them outside."

Virnius swallowed, face blanching from red to ash. Pride wrestled with fear behind his eyes, but fear, as it so often does, won. He forced himself into a shallow bow toward Alpheo and muttered an apology fit only for the dirt beneath his feet.

It satisfied Mesha. It did not satisfy Jarza, whose stare remained locked upon Virnius like a drawn bow without need of arrow. The lord tried not to notice. He failed.

Alpheo, watching the room, understood well enough. The nobles’ resentment grew like mold in damp cloth, quiet, ugly, inevitable. Many still ground their teeth over the contract the Imperator had signed with him regarding the completion of the Magna Strata.

Half the cost borne by the crown, half by Alpheo’s coffers, but repayment was secured through new taxes levied upon them. Their purses bled, and thus their hearts soured. No one loves the foreigner who reaches into their treasury, even if he does so to pave their empire into glory.

Still he cared not.

What was hatred to a man who didn’t give two shits about them? As long as Romelia crowned the right ruler, one favorable to his cause, their malice was just a fart in the wind.

He needed coin, not love.

"It is difficult for me to picture the plague breaking us," Alpheo said at last, the calm returning like steel cooled in water. "My men, as I am certain you all know, have not taken illness on campaign in years."

"Yes," Virnius conceded with forced civility, "we are all endlessly familiar with how well your troops are tended. Bathed like priests and scrubbed in your fine soaps. Unfortunately, most of us cannot afford such luxuries for ours. Your methods are effective, certainly, but the price of your products is, how shall I put it, beyond the reach of common soldiers or our care for them."

Eyes turned toward him then, many hungry, others bitter, none neutral. Greed shimmered in the silence. If there was one thing Alpheo possessed more than talent or victories, it was wealth, wealth rumored to be as deep as it was liquid, though he knew the truth of his coffers to be a far leaner beast.

Still, appearances ruled the game.

"If that is the concern," Alpheo replied, "then it can easily be remedied. I will have enough reserves with some sacrifice to supply soap to the entire army through winter. We are allies; loans among allies are as secure as castle walls. Repayment can stretch ten years if need be. Plague benefits no man. It is in all our interest that the camp remains clean and living."

"Ah," another lord interjected, voice smooth as spoiled cream, "but if it is in everyone’s interest, should it not be in yours as well? Should a prince not give freely for the good of the host? Or has commerce swallowed nobility whole? One begins to wonder whether you fight for honor or for your ledger."

Had Asag been here, steel would already sing in the air. Edric would have overturned the table. And Egil....gods he would have smiled, drawn his blade with courtesy, and asked the lord which ear he wished to lose first. Fate had placed none of them at Alpheo’s side tonight.

Only Jarza.

And unfortunately for the council, Jarza had never learned the art of swallowing anger.

The insult had not been hurled at him, but loyalty rarely asks permission before it strikes.