Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 928: From the other side(4)

"Letters from your daughter? One would think the distance between you and her was an ocean rather than a stretch of land. It has been a month since ink last travelled to her name," Mavius observed, leaning forward as if gravity itself drew his attention down the steep rings of stone, where rotting corpses lay like cast-off grain beneath the looming shadow of the first wall.

It was reassuring to know they weren’t his men.

The sun caught them in patches, gray flesh, split armor, broken spears.

Lord Landoff stood behind him, a figure of composed confidence, hands folded neatly as if attendance at the balcony was a leisure rather than a vigil. "The news remains unchanged, Your Imperial Majesty," he answered with a tone that masked concern beneath practiced calm, "your wife gathers troops in your name, though mustering men is an art of patience rather than speed. It is not harvest, where crops can simply be taken up once the field turns gold, it requires time, thankfully, that is something we are not yet starved of and is fighting with us.

The assaults the boy keeps sending are bold in posture but brittle in execution. His men bleed themselves against our walls as if they wish to feed the stone with their marrow, and though I find respect for courage, courage without wit is no more than slaughter by choice.

A month of such waste and there will be no force left to press us. The loss they suffer with each day will undo their ambition without us lifting anything more than a shield. If the pattern does not change, I would wager reinforcements may arrive only to find victory already made beneath their feet."

A sound like breath pressing through iron carried from behind the Imperator’s mask, not quite laughter, not quite derision, but something heavy that fell between. "I do not doubt our ability to hold these walls, nor do I lose rest over the thought of winter’s siege. The cold will treat them harsher than steel ever could. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Yet the fate of this stronghold is not decided by spears thrown against it, but by discord born within. I once feared the usurper at the gate, but now I find myself fearing the men who stand at my back. Every night the torches flicker and I wonder which of them if any will burn for me still."

Landoff’s gaze sharpened, not shocked, but attentive, as one who recognizes truth spoken aloud long after it should have been.

"Betrayal seeds itself in silence. Had I been heeded sooner, perhaps we would harvest wheat instead of weeds."

The metal mask turned, like an old knight’s helm scrutinizing battlefield archers. "And yet, here we stand among the weeds. You warned me of the shaman, told me his magic would buy us victory only to demand a heavier price afterward. I dismissed caution, for when hope shines in the night men will reach for it even if it burns their hand.

I believed triumph worth any stain, but now those stains gather into shapes. I see distrust in the eyes of men sworn to me, and though the walls hold strong, I fear loyalty fractures like thin ice beneath a restless river.

If we do not take precaustions, I fear we may fall in cold water"

"You fear they will turn on you?"

"All rulers should dread their allies more than their foes," the Imperator answered, "and now I must dread mine more than ever. We stand wounded from field and spirit both.

My brother lays his siege beyond these gates, and that peasant, gods curse him, has become the spine that held the banners upright when they should have shattered in two.

I once dismissed him as a rustic upstart born of turnip soil and desperate luck, but I cannot deny him any longer. I am tired of hearing how the nobles speak of him, you’d think he was the Red come again.Is he not our ancestor?Why they dare put his name on a peasant?

Still I am not blind to the truth, his men may have very well been the legions of old.

His men fought like wolves. They held the line as if the earth itself rose beneath them, and though we ground their front ranks into mulch, the rest did not break, not even when shock should have snapped them like dry reeds. You were right to warn me of him as well, dear father."

He rested gloved hands on the parapet, fingers tightening as though he held the entire south beneath his grip.

As if it were not still just ambition.

"When I march again," he continued, "I will march wisely this time. The south will not fall by force alone, but by division that splinters it like drought through clay. I have spent nights listening, learning and I now see clearly that the only reason Yarzat’s enemies have not yet torn him apart was fear of my brother’s intervention.

They probably waited with tense hearth this war, watching which brother would rule and whetever they would have the chance to wet their blade.

Once my brother is removed and the river of succession runs clear through me, they will leap at the chance to gut the Peasant Prince themselves. I will not need to lift a sword to see him undone.

I will send them word myself and see those blades drawn where I bid them draw," the Imperator said, voice low behind iron that glinted in the light. "Let the wolves of the south tear into one another while we move against the Usurper’s seat, and when next my banners sweep across the lowlands of the Core, the Peasant Prince will find not a single roof under which to rest his crownless head, nor a shadow generous enough to shelter his name.If only I knew of that before this campaign..."

His gaze, unseen yet heavy as a mailed hand, turned to Lord Landoff, the breath from the mask sounding like wind forced through a cracked helm. "Send word to your daughter. Bid her hasten. You know how many spies we have already dragged from cellars and kitchens and prayer rooms, and you of all men understand how swiftly treason breeds when walls seem unbreakable and victory tastes assured.

How long before one of our lords thinks to edge his hand toward the Usurper in secret? Perhaps he already has. I must fill the gatehouses and the tower rooms with men I trust before some fool with a title opens a postern in the night. Tell your daughter, tell my wife, to come faster. I will not have this fortress crumble by courtesy of my own sworn banners."

Lord Landoff exhaled through his nose in a slow and weary sound, the wrinkles at his eyes deepening like trenches carved by old winters. "She does what she can already, my son. The raising of soldiers is no flick of quill or snap of whip, and a march from the southeast in rain-fed mud is no ride across tidy fields.It requires time.

Your worries are seeded well, yet I believe the harvest of this week’s events speaks plainly of how this siege shall bend. Fear not betrayal among us, not yet.

My nephew proves himself as dutiful as any hound at heel, and the lords’ retinues lie under watchful eye by day and by torched night. You remember well it was vigilance such as this that won us the Fingers eight years gone. The same steel holds us now, and it has not dulled."

Mavius remained at the parapet, the wind a cold tongue licking armor and iron. He looked down upon the dead again, those broken shapes like discarded puppets sprawled over shattered ladders and splintered shields. He remembered that night long ago, the wine and music and unreal brightness in his chest when he believed himself crowned by providence. A child’s hope, ripe and foolish, believing victory permanent, believing destiny to be a staircase rather than a cliff.

How strangely the world now tasted. Bitter where once sweet. Sharp where once soft. Life, it seemed, enjoyed poisoning its own fruit.

"I do not disagree with you," he said at last, the words filled with strange unease, "yet something gnaws me like frostbite beneath the nail. That damn peasant bastard has grown too silent. There is no trace of his legions in any of these witless assaults, no banners bearing the black and white stripes, no disciplined lines cutting through the chaos.

I have watched, and I have counted, and what hangs below our walls now are levies and farmers and men borrowed from half-strangled villages, not the core of Yarzat’s host.That is the true force we have learned to be on guard against.

Even the fools in the fields must sense the waste of life in these ladder attacks. Standing armies are gold bled into steel and gruel, and he is not wasteful unless purpose demands it. So why does he allow this charade to continue? Does he not wish the walls to be his?

Why let his own allies die grinding themselves against stone? Winter creeps closer every dawn, and they have not hauled a single proper tower to our gates, nor shaped engines enough to scratch this curtain."

He turned, and his posture cracked like ice struck by hammer.

"Which is precisely what claws at my rest. The Dog must see through this. He must know these charges achieve nothing but graveyards. Yet he acts only through ghost shadows and silence. It is one thing to spot the wolf pacing beyond the yard, but it is another thing to hear its growl behind the door. I feel him thinking. Something is up I tell you.

At the battle he outfoxed me, that wretch. He dragged donkeys and pack beasts in screaming herds through my cavalry, and twelve thousand horses shied like yearlings at the stench and madness. I could not reign them, I could not order them, and my soldiers fled as if haunted by devils in braying skins. He humiliated me before spear and sun alike. I will be mocked in halls for seasons if I do not grind that shame into triumph. I will drown his memory in my glory. I must."

His hands gripped the stone .

Landoff opened his mouth to answer, voice ready with calm and practiced soothing, prepared to swear that not even the Fox of the South could shift a rock such as this one, that walls and winter made traitors tame and enemies toothless.

The ground gave its first groan before he could shape the comfort.

A tremor rolled beneath the fortress like some ancient beast rousing from sleep, stones shuddering in their joints, dust slipping from the teeth of the battlements. Then came the sound the unmistakable howl of stone splitting and earth tearing open beneath weight that had stood for generations.

And before either man could speak again, the fortress itself answered with a roar and they all witnessed history being made.

For in the end it seemed the Fox could in fact, break that rock.