Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 927: From the other side(3)

The one who had spoken against him was young, soft-cheeked, untested in war or labor or anything in life where his father’s name was not a ready-made shield. He wore silk as it were a god-made armor and thought it served him just as well.

He did not think that for long.

The very moment Jarza moved to be exact.

One moment he sat still as a carved idol; the next his foot was on the table, wood groaning beneath his weight. More than a hundred kilograms of muscle and scar loomed over the trembling lord,shoulders like hewn oak, arms thick as siege-timbers, hands large and ready as an eagle’s talon reaching for a rabbit foolish enough to stray from its burrow.

The young noble squealed, there was no kinder nor nobler word to describe that sound.

A high, sharp sound like a field mouse caught between cat and wall. For a moment it seemed Jarza would make paste of him, staining the table with lillies of red.

Guards surged forward, blades not drawn as they knew what the giant’s master did for their Emperor and what still he is willing to give.

They doubted and then slowed.

Another heartbeat and Jarza would have had the boy by the neck, skull crushed into the very cup he had been sipping so leisurely until all that pride his blood had given him oozed out of his skull.

That future died the instant Alpheo’s fingers brushed the giant’s cloak.

Just a touch. Light as moth-wing.

Jarza froze. And without protest, he lowered himself back into his chair. His eyes, however, never left the young lord for the remaining of the meeting. They watched him with the patient malice of a jaguar studying a housecat, deciding when to kill and when to simply let fear do the lessoning.

Silence settled in the tent like smoke.

Alpheo rose into it.

"Your Imperial Majesty," he began, voice courteous as if the previous event had never happened "I do not object to you bringing untrained strays into your councils. It is the nature of theirs to gather around a throne." His gaze dipped toward the quivering noble. "However, I would ask that you keep some on a shorter leash. As you see, my companions value my honor more fiercely than I do myself. They have cut through enemy ranks as easily as men slice pastry to get to me more than once. They especially love to kill men who think death is beyond them."

He let that truth breathe.

"I would not doubt their willingness to kill a man over an insult, real or imagined, toward me. Politeness may save us all much unpleasantness...and funerals."

Mesha inclined his head and looked at the others. "His grace is a friend of Romelia. Any insult to his name, is an isult to me. The warning will be heeded."

Jarza remained stone-still all the while, watching the young lord with the focus of a predator memorizing weakness. The boy could not bear the stare. He looked down, hands shaking beneath the tablecloth.

Satisfied the room’s voice was finally his, Alpheo continued.

"Allow me to answer some of the doubts raised in this tent. What peace do you imagine will greet us if we retreat now?" His tone sharpened "You would simply push today’s threat into tomorrow’s shadow. And shadows grow. Next time the Masked Bastard rises, he may not stumble as he did against us here. Either we take the Fingers now, or we face a war later far more cruel, far more costly that the one of today."

No tremor touched his voice. Doubt did not stain a single syllable. He spoke as one delivering the weather, certain, inevitable, unbending.

"You speak of men dying as though it were surprising. It is war. Did you expect milk and biscuits just because you won a battle?I have some honey if you find this far too foul for your tastes.... If this siege had no cost, it would be playacting, not conquest." His eyes swept over those gathered, stripping excuses bare. "Our assaults may seem wasteful to those who see only the stones ahead of them, on a tactical level it is wrong indeed, but strategy is not lived in a single moment. While these attacks batter their gates, our engineers carve at their foundations. Two walls stand before us. Soon the first will fall. And when it does, the defenders will realize, too late if you ask me, that the real siege was beneath their feet."

Some whispered. Some sweated. Some simply glared, realizing the man they hoped to corner had instead cornered them.

Alpheo finished with quiet conviction, each word dropping like a hammer on anvil.

"Trust the plan your sovereign has endorsed. Trust that progress is not always loud. Let the enemy believe we bleed ourselves dry. When their walls crumble, when our banners pour through like a river loosed, they will learn what folly was it not to look beneath the dirt."

The tent held its breath. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

War was not won in comfort. That was the truth Alpheo tried to teach them

"It is easy for you to say such things," Virnius murmured, voice thin and resentful in the heated air of the tent. "When it is not your men who freeze. When it is not your tents that leak. When your soldiers treat themselves with soaps and warm linens while ours rot in the mud. Winter will kill more than enemy arrows ever could."

Many heads nodded. The first stone was thrown. They would throw more.

"And what then?" Alpheo asked, his expression an unmoving mask. "You propose that my soldiers should be fed into those walls next?"

"It is renowned that no company fights like yours," Virnius pressed, emboldened by the glances of others. "With your Black Stripes forming the spear-head we could break the first ring within a week. The second wall could be left to miners and ditchers. We all remember the day the Pretender hurled the last of his strength into our flank, and how your men carved through them like reapers in thick grain. With you leading the assault, we would—"

It was Egil. It was not me.

Alpheo cut him off before the lie grew legs.

"—achieve exactly what we intend. Bloody failure. Wasteful death. A spectacle of loss to lull their confidence tenfold. The assaults are not meant to succeed. They will not succeed. That is by design." His tone deepened like cold iron cooling in water. "And I will not bleed my company dry for a wall in a land not my own.I care about my men, more than you do for yours it seems."

Virnius leaned forward, swallowing bravado with wine-bitter breath. "Winter will drown us in corpses. More will die of season than siege. We need every advantage."

Alpheo could see the trap clearly, the slow tightening coil of politics, the attempt to drive him into their pit by dressing recklessness as necessity. He smiled to that, finding the attempt cute.

"I know the game you play, Virnius. I know every rule." His fingers drummed once on the table, a soft rhythm like distant thunder. "We will siege beyond winter. My coffers will endure. I can send wool thick enough to wrap the camp like fur, if that is your complaint. I can send soap, too, to keep plague away, and request you pay me in the long term, though those who mock trade should not expect to benefit freely from it. It will hurt my coffers, but I am willing to do it for everyone’s good" His gaze slid to the lord who moments earlier challenged his honor. "Goodwill has cost me more than coin already. Yet still I give. Yet still you ask.Where will the line finally be drawn?"

He breathed, unhurried.

"Cold, I can fight. Plague, I can starve. Impatience however?" He let the word linger. "I can’t do shit for that.Deal with it yourself.’’

Virnius’ jaw tensed, and as if he had forgotten he was a prince, he still asked. "Then have your men dig faster."

"They dig every night until their hands blister and split," Alpheo replied. "Daylight exposes the earth. Where would we hide the spoil? In our boots? In the mouths of slaves?Perhapse in some loudmouth? The defenders would see. They would collapse our tunnels before week’s end. You ask for miracles when the method is already working."

Virnius opened his mouth again, of course he did, but Alpheo’s voice overtook his like floodwater swallowing a stream.

"I have considered every angle, every risk.You have not,my lord, you simply waste air. There is no faster path. We are days from breaching their belly.

Do not ruin victory because your patience is measured in meals and not months." His eyes hardened, the first true cold of winter settling in them. "I have bled more for this cause than any man here.Do not doubt my intent to bring the castle down.

More men are dead under my banner than any name willing to do the final sacrifice in this tent.Men I CARED.’’ He took a moment for himself after that.

’’And for what? Because many of you bent the knee to the Pretender like children trading loyalty for sweetbread. Others may ignore it for courtesy. I do not, I detest you.

I say plainly for all those of dull minds.

I will see these walls fall, and I will see them fall on my terms."

He stood. Jarza rose behind him.

"You think I owe you something? You are wrong. I have no debt here. No land. No birthright. Only obligation paid in blood and bone." He swept the room with a stare that made several look away. "If my aid offends, I can march home by sunrise. I have already broken the Pretender’s army. That alone repaid the favor I owed your crown tenfold."

He turned to Mesha, and where anger lived in his voice for others, respect strained, bruised, but real, softened it.

"Your Imperial Majesty," he said with a bow that was formal but not servile, "I withdraw to my quarters. If you wish to speak strategy, speak to me privately, where reason may breathe without suffocation. I have gained nothing here today but insult. I hope you recognise that, and see yourself it doesn’t happen again.

I have been asked to give beyond what any sane man would. Were I less determined to honor what I owe you, I would already be on the road south, warm in halls where men listen when I speak."

He straightened, cloak shifting like black waters behind him.

"My counsel is given. My duty stands. My patience, however, is not infinite. The wall will fall, heed my word and mind yourself."

A final nod as he left.

Letting all remember that they needed him more than he needed them.