Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 957: Throw of a dice(1)

"I would say that a week at most, and we shall receive word of the Fingers’ final fall," Lord Landoff said in a meek, thin tone. His index and middle fingers twirled the end of his left mustache, curling and uncurling the hair like a nervous pig’s tail.

"Is this the depth of trust an uncle has for his noble nephew?" Lord Corbray asked, his voice dripping with polished venom. He found it impossible to resist landing another jab at his rival.

Mavius internally sighed.

It was an unwelcome sight for any monarch to see his inner circle fragment into bickering factions while the enemy hammered at the gates, yet it was a ruler’s oldest, unwritten rule: if your subordinates are busy sharpening their tongues against each other, they are too preoccupied to sharpen their steel against you.

Landoff desperately wanted to change the subject. The air in the room felt heavy with the weight of his own treachery; he had, after all, betrayed his own blood to save his skin.

"I have already well-projected my nephew’s skill, and my trust is well-placed," Landoff defended himself, his voice rising a frantic octave. He looked toward his son-in-law for some scrap of support. "I say a week precisely because I know Willios. He will never cajole with the enemy. He will resist until the bitter end, buying us the time we need to ensure this campaign ends here, before the peasant can overturn the table by holding the pass and making another move."

’’Winter is upon us’’

’’It has been so for a week....that didn’t stop the army from still laying siege...’’

With that said Landoff moved his gaze to his son-in-law, silently wishing for aid.

The masked man sat at the head of the long table, his eyes fixed on the flickering shadows on the tent. When he was a boy, he had dreamed of being a warrior emperor, a titan of history like his father before him. And yet, he held more defeats under his belt now than victories. The last two losses soon to be etched into his soul by that damn peasant-prince who had put his nose where it didn’t belong.

He did not know if fleeing the Fingers had been the right choice, but in his gut, he knew it was the safest one. The Great Rock was on its last legs, sedition was a mounting fever within his own ranks, and the force outside was a tidal wave whose only opponent was time.

Fear is a quiet counselor, but its voice is indeed the loudest in the dark.

If the castle fell and a single one of his own lords betrayed him by holding the back gate, Mavius would have been effectively entombed within his own fortress. He didn’t need a genius to tell him what came next. The circumstances all pointed toward the block along with a chop.

With him dead, the Eastern lords would have no choice but to bend the knee to either the oldest or the youngest claimant. And given how silent Maesinius had been in recent years, they would eagerly crawl to the boy-emperor for a pardon.

Fleeing was the only choice that kept his head on his shoulders. It had to be. He told himself this until he almost believed it, even as the memory of Willios’s stoic face haunted him.

Returning to the siutation at hand, Landoff’s plea for a distraction was answered by Mavius, who was equally eager to move past the ghost of his abandoned Marshal.

"What are we to expect once the Fingers fall?" he asked, his voice flat. There was no reason to pretend the end wasn’t coming.

In the heavy silence that followed, it was Lord Corbray who spoke. "Everything we did to them, they will do unto us. Yearly raids into our granaries, the slow poison of influence as our nobles defect to the winning side, and a relentless military campaign launched from a logistical base that is effectively untouchable from our position.They will have free rein to attack us everywhere while we will have only one direction to set us against"

"How long until the Usurper makes his move?" Mavius asked. The question tasted like ash, but the question was a survival necessity.It was not use to lie to oneself

"Hard to say," Landoff ventured.

"I believe His Grace was asking me," Corbray interjected, a cold smile touching his lips but never reaching his eyes. Landoff’s face contorted in a silent snarl. "Your Majesty, I believe we have some time before our inner defenses are truly tested.

They have won a victory, yes, but it was a pyrrhic one. Their provinces are torn, their treasuries are leaking, and many of the boy’s vassals ignored the summons. The youngest will take his time to sort his household. He will grow pampered in the safety of his new prize and move with the lethargy of a well-fed snake."

Mavius scoffed, his fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the table. He knew peace was a phantom, and that their only hope for survival lay in retaking what was lost.

"You mean to tell me that our sturdiest defense is the hope that my brother will turtle back into his domain instead of venturing forward?"

"I fear so," Corbray answered without a moment’s hesitation. "Hope is a poor shield, but it is the only one we have left."

"Your Imperial Majesty, with the Fingers falling, we must bolster the defenses around the pass," Landoff tried, his voice desperate to sound useful.

"The closest castle is twenty kilometers north of it," Mavius reminded him sharply, his voice dripping with sarcasm as if he were explaining a map to a child.

Of course Landoff knew of that already.

"That is how it is, unfortunately, but it is our only defense standing between Red Rose and the Fingers," Landoff whispered, his shoulders slumping.

There was after all no reason to build a castle near the Fingers.Now that came to bite them back in the ass.

Mavius stood at that , the chair pressing against the dirt. "If we fall back on our defenses, we fail. We will not wait to be picked apart like a carcass in the sun. We will put every resource, every coin, and every man into an immediate counter-attack. We knew of this long ago, our strongest might is in the fact we can move as one, while the Core has no other road but to fight against one another to walk upon it.

We take the Fingers back before the mortar on their repairs even dries, that is the only way forward we have."

He didn’t know what he expected from this, but it certainly wasn’t that.

A weary, hollow look circulated through the tent. The lords exchanged glances that spoke of empty barracks ,exhausted peasants, and demoralised lords. The silence was an indictment enough; they all wondered if they could mount such an attack at any meaningful time.

If his strongest and staunchest supporter acted like this, what hope was there?

Mavius watched those expressions, and for the first time, a cold, parasitic doubt began to grow in the center of his chest. He saw not the faces of nobles who could pose as conquerors , but the faces of men already looking for the nearest exit.

It was a sobering thing to look at...

"The meeting is over," Mavius announced, his voice suddenly small realising it was far too soon to speak of any meaningful subject.

The canvas flap of the council tent slapped shut behind him, but the suffocating air of failure followed him into the night. Mavius walked with a brisk, jagged pace, his boots sinking into the churned earth of the encampment. The rhythmic clank-clank of his gilded armor, which once sounded like the heartbeat of a conqueror, now seemed to mock him with every staggering step.

Along the torch-lit thoroughfares of the inner camp, the clibanarii snapped to attention. Steel plates ground against steel as they bowed, a wave of silver and crimson crests dipping at his passage. Mavius barely saw them. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He felt the sudden, crushing weight of his father’s crown, which as late seemed he was not worthy to hold.

He passed a row of wounded men huddled near a dying fire; their low, guttering moans harmonized with the whistling wind, sounding like a choir of the damned. His hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, seeking the comfort of cold pommel-stone, but his fingers were trembling.

Fate was no longer his mistress; she was his executioner. Only months ago, the maps had been splashed with the color of his house. The world had been a ripe fruit waiting for his grip. Now, in a heartbeat, a flicker of fingers, the juice had turned to gall. He looked at his hands in the flickering light of a torch; they were the hands of a Imperator , yet they felt like the hands of a ghost, unable to grasp anything solid.

He reached his personal pavilion, the silk snapping violently in a sudden gust of wind. He wanted nothing more than the cold solace of a private cup and the silence of a man who had no one left to lie to.

He was alone, he had been so for a long time...

He reached out, his leather glove gripping the heavy silk of the entrance. He threw it aside with a tired flourish, his mind already calculating the hours of sleep he could steal before the sun forced him back into the reality he had been forced to. How long before they could mount an attack?They could not survive in these conditions, they needed the Fingers back.

Mavius stepped inside his home and froze.

The smell of cedar that he always liked to have around him hung heavy, and the single candle on his desk was already lit, casting a long and dark shadow against the back wall. He did not remember lighting it up.

He was not alone.