The candle’s flames danced along the edges of the scarred oak table, their flickering light struggling against the dark.

The warmth of the long-awaited reunion was slowly being shoved aside, replaced by the cold iron business of a war they hadn’t started, but were damn well going to finish.

The invaders had been promised a princedom and a prince’s bent neck ; instead, they had found a graveyard. The only leave they would be granted now was the silence of the earth, a bill Yarzat intended to collect in full, coin by bloody coin.

As the wine circulated, the men who had spent three months staring at the same four grey walls were finally fed the truth of the world outside. They were told of the Pig Prince and the capture of his favorite bastard; they heard of the night-stalkers who left ears and scalps as "gifts" at the edge of the League’s camps whenever the moon went dark.

They heard how hunger had gnawed at the enemy’s gut, and how every desperate forage had been met by Yarzat steel until the invaders were effectively being fed to the crows.

The tale grew grander as Alpheo spoke of Jarza’s thunderous ride into the Oizenian heartland burning the main camp that held the food that was to be sent to the frontline.Sending to oblivion a force double their sides. Before burning every village they came across.

Then came word of Merelao, the "Rebel Prince" of Kakunia, whose timely insurrection had severed the main artery of the enemy’s grain supply.

It was a carpet of stories , woven from a dozen different threads. So many independent plans, so many distant gamble, it was as surprising that they had all converged into a single victory as it was to find a virgin in a hillside brothel.

"Ah!" The Lord of Bracum slammed his cup down, the wood groaning under his strength. Of all the tales, the one of the Kakunian rebellion seemed to tickle his black and red heart the most. "A rebellion in the West, a siege in the South, and now a hunt for what remains! Damn my old bones, and damn all your fathers for not seeding you sooner!"

Xanthios let out a heavy, satisfied sigh that smelled of deer fat and sour grapes. "Thirty-six winters I’ve led the men of Bracum. The first eighteen were dull as a rusted hoe, but these last eighteen? Excitement enough to burst a man’s chest! This last one?Above them all.

A lunatic rises against his uncle in the West while we fend off an army triple our size and have the gall to go and snatch the leftovers!"

He leaned back, his eyes glazed with the nostalgic fire of a killer. "Had I been twenty... gods, I could fight like a demon when youth was my bride. I could fuck all night and kill all day." He paused, casting a wary glance at the others "Never tell Caelum about that. A boy shouldn’t hear of his father’s conquests in the bed, to a son, a father should only ever have known his mother. But were I twenty again! That’s what you needed, my Lords. Now all you can make do with is an old man who wishes for nothing more than to die with his fingers wrapped around a hilt. Poor you, and poor me!"

"I think the ’poor’ belongs to the enemy, my Lord," Edric replied, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I wonder how many widows have been made by your hand alone during this siege."

"Not enough!" Xanthios barked, his white beard bristling. "Not enough if the cunts still have the gall to stand on our soil. There will be more, won’t there?"

"Of course there is more," the Prince answered, leaning back and casually picking at his teeth with a splintered chicken bone. "As soon as we are at full strength, we march. I have already sent word to my ’dear friends’ across the borders. They are all coming here for a long-awaited reunion, and they aren’t coming empty-handed. They bring their steel to set against the last that remains"

Alpheo’s eyes glinted as the candlelight bathed his features. "We shall drink, we shall eat, and we shall embrace like brothers, and then we shall do our favorite bit: we shall put the rest to the sword.

They have stayed hidden for too long. It is about time they bathed in the light of a burning camp."

He chuckled, a dry "No doubt Sorza will be relieved to have them off his doorstep. Great harm has been done to him, after all.

One scorched their last chance at a warm meal, the other gutted their numbers by fishing a terrified bastard out of a muddy river.

They bet man-for-man they could break us, and now they scamper away, bloodied and bruised. They’ll remember this campaign until the worms take them, and they won’t get a second chance to repeat it. They should have finished me when I was cornered; but alas for them that window has slammed shut. This campaign we stayed on the defensive, this one I plan to being on attack."

Alpheo’s expression shifted, the bravado cooling down. "Most of the Princes have scurried back to their own lands, but two remain on our soil, and with them, the spies I’ve planted among their ranks. The Prince of Habadia, however, has proven his word is about as substantial as the smoke off roasted meat. He’s pulled his banners, but he left behind as many ’volunteers’ as he could muster, alongside those fool-hardy knights they hooked with tall tales of promised lands and easy glory."

"Habadia must be fond of playing both sides of the coin," Edric replied, wiping a stray drop of wine from his chin with the back of a scarred hand. "Let them stay,I say. Let them huddle in their tents and dream of the manors they’ll never own. There is enough earth in Yarzat to bury every last one of them, and I’ll personally see to it that the holes are dug deep."

"True as that may be," Alpheo said, his voice dropping into a somber register, "those knights are a thorn in our side. My scouts report between five and seven hundred of them, all mounted, all fresh. In the open field, we have no hope against such a hammer. The bulk of our strength is on foot; we couldn’t spare the fodder or the coin for a proper cavalry screen in this kind of war. It is a mounting trouble."

Xanthios leaned back, his snowy beard twitching as he weighed the tactical reality. He had spent his life in a saddle, as was the birthright of the high-born, and he knew the terror of the gallop.

"Aye," Xanthios rumbled. "Apart from your disciplined Legions, if a common levy is faced with a wall of thundering horse, his heart will break long before the lance finds his breastplate. It’s the sound of the earth shaking that undoes a man as I have notice."

"Could we not draw them into the high country?" Asag suggested, his hand tracing an invisible ridge on the wooden table. "These lands are riddled with hills. A horse is a clumsy beast on a steep incline.We could bear their charge easy enough while we skewer them with stones and javelins. Rykio’s riders could easily run circles around them..."

"We’ve humiliated Sorza once already," the Prince countered. "Apurvio is on everyone’s mind, still fresh. He won’t be baited into something so easy as rocks. He’ll want a clean field to make use of what he has. My latest reports place his host near the flats of Diroli, so we need to find a way to call him our way..."

"And what are they doing there? Counting their toes?" Edric asked, his lip curling in a sneer.

The Prince shrugged. "Mulling about and wasting food. Or perhaps considering a march toward the Malshut mines to link up with the host of Shaaza, Sorza may feel a bit lonely alone."

"They’ll fall to quarreling the moment they see the each other ,they both want the mine" Asag offered with a dry chuckle.

"Only if they take them," Alpheo reminded him, his eyes locking onto each of the men in turn. "I want Sorza to give me a proper battle, not a series of letters exchanged with that portly traitor in Sharjaan. But he won’t commit his pride if we show him a front that makes his best weapon, his cavalry, useless.Still he must wish for battle too, his store of food should not be so deep to give him great choice on the matter"

"And yet, if we meet him on the plains, our lines will be routed before the sun hits its zenith," Edric reminded him, as if Alpheo didn’t already feel the weight of that truth.

"Which brings us to the heart of it," the Prince said, picking up a small chicken bone and snapping it between his teeth with a sharp crack. He spat the fragments onto his plate with a look of distaste. "We need to beguile the Oizenian into a fight, yet not appear so desperate that he smells the trap.’’ He thought about it some more before shaking his head’’ Bah! Thinking on it here, with the wine still warm in our bellies, will do us no good. There is no map and no mind for strategy in this table tonight."

He pushed his chair back, the wood groaning against the stone floor. "We should spend the remains of this night in celebration. We’ve had our fill of war for three months; let us not invite it to the table while the deer is still hot. Tonight, we drink to the living. ’’ He picked a cup of orange juice.

’’Tomorrow, we may muse all we wish about how to kill!’’