Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 743

Chapter 743: Asking for a favor(1)

Honestly, this was the best road Arnold could have taken.

The thought of asking a loan from his own vassals was laughable, worse than laughable, suicidal. What kind of lord went to his sworn men, cap in hand, begging coin? Word would spread before the ink dried on the ledger, and whatever respect they held for him would vanish by morning.

After all, would a boss ask for money from his employer?

Approaching a fellow lord was no better. They’d swarm like gulls to a carcass, interest rates sharp enough to bleed him dry, if they didn’t simply refuse outright.

But the prince? That was different. Asking one’s overlord for aid carried far less stain than groveling before equals or underlings.

Alpheo had just finished gutting a princedom; the spoils of conquest were surely heavy in his coffers. And then there were the whispers—, onnections with the Romelian court, trade flowing in from across the sea. If anyone could part with a sum to allow Arnold to bribe the High Priest, it was him.

Or at least, that was the tale Arnold kept repeating to himself as he made his way toward the prince’s pavilion, Thalien at his side.

The truth was less noble: he was daunted, no, terrified, by the prospect of standing before Alpheo and asking for mercy after the one he just showed him. The prince’s reputation preceded him, and it was not the kind that warmed a man’s courage.

“Ease yourself,” Thalien murmured suddenly, catching the stiff, awkward way his brother moved, shoulders drawn tight like a man walking to the gallows. “Nothing happened the first time we greeted His Grace, and with me beside you, there’s a much greater chance he’ll hear you out.”

He offered a quick, disarming smile. “He’s not the heartless spirit of war and cruelty you make him out to be. I mean, he is good at both, but he doesn’t inspire enjoyment from them.”

Arnold gave a small nod, though his stomach remained a knot. Thalien was right about one thing, when they had first arrived at camp, Alpheo had been more than cordial. But that had been mere ceremony, a polite exchange of words before the prince moved on to other matters ignoring them completely.

Back then, Arnold had kept his tongue still, too shameless to press for favors on the very day of their arrival. Now, seven days had passed.

And now, he decided, the moment had come.

He must have walked farther than he’d realized, because by the time his mind returned from its circling thoughts, his boots were already crunching on the well-packed earth of the prince’s quarter.

It was impossible to mistake where he was, the colors gave it away before the banners did. Black and white stripes marked everything here, from the tent flaps to the pennants snapping in the breeze, even down to the sashes at the soldiers’ waists and the wools worn as the last garment on their chests.

Arnold had seen them before,at Stiltum, where they carved through his father’s host as though threshing wheat, or at least so he was told as he had been detained in his tent for his attempt to salvage a lost battle. Up close, their discipline was not in formation but in bearing. No man slouched. Even idling.

The gear alone was enough to make any lord’s treasurer weep. Each man bore a full suit of war: chainmail draped like silver water beneath polished breastplates, helmets with reinforced nasal guards, articulated greaves and knee cops that gleamed in the afternoon sun.

At their sides hung one-handed weapons, shuch as axes, maces, hammers. Some carried long ash-wood shafts banded at the end in steel resembling an axe on one side and the small horn of a pickaxe on the other.

Arnold had seen lords bankrupt themselves to outfit a single dozen of knights . Here, every man, over a thousand of them, looked as though he’d stepped straight from the retinue of some great lord of the old Empire. The sheer expense boggled the mind.

How much had the prince spent for this? The thought gnawed at Arnold.

But the truth, of course, was different, less miracle, more cunning.

Most of this steel had come through the prince’s quiet arrangement with the Imperial Regent of Romelia. Month by month, the prince sent barrels of cider and bricks of fine soap across the border, and in return the Regent’s smithies sent back the tools of war: thirty breastplates, fifty suits of chainmail and helmets, twenty-five glaives.

Time and patience had done the rest. Year by year, shipment by shipment, the armories filled until every man in the household guard stood dressed for battle like a knight of fortune. Whatever gaps remained, Alpheo had closed the old-fashioned way, by stripping them from the corpses of armies that had dared to stand against him and buying the rest at a discounted price with the Achean family.

“Noticed anything new?” Thalien’s voice cut through Arnold’s thoughts, lips curved in that knowing, needling smile he’d worn when he was a child.

Arnold threw him a glance but said nothing, instead letting his eyes drift across the camp. Rows of pavilions. Cookfires smoking. Lines of tethered horses flicking their tails. Nothing struck him as different, until Thalien tipped his chin upward.

“Look at the standards,” his brother suggested.

Arnold followed the hint, scanning higher. At first, nothing, just the ripple of fabric in the breeze, black and white stripes swaying like the rest. But then he noticed it. New colors. New shapes. He didn’t remember them having those before.

“His Grace has been making reforms,” Thalien explained, seeing the question forming in Arnold’s eyes. “One of them was giving each legion its own… personality.” He chuckled, as though the idea itself was a jest. “They’ve all been given heralds. The First Legion, see that?A silver fish leaping from water. The Third has a mountain. Egil’s riders? A black dog. Suits him well enough, though I’d have bet on a horse.” He grinned faintly, gaze still lifted to the banners dancing overhead. “And apparently, each has earned a nickname, too.”

Arnold frowned. “Didn’t His Grace raise another legion recently?”

“Aye,” Thalien said, voice dropping to a note of curiosity. “But theirs is just the old banner. Black and white. No symbol. No name. You could ask him why, if you’re feeling brave.”

“I’ll pass,” Arnold muttered, pushing forward again.

The standards gave way to taller pavilions as they neared the prince’s quarters. The air felt… quieter here, though no less tense, guards this time the royal’s one , stood at the periphery, their halberd grounded but eyes sharp.

The largest tent was unmistakable, its heavy fabric striped like a war-banner, the crest of the royal house stitched in silver thread above the entrance. Two sentries stepped aside as the brothers approached, their silence permission enough to enter.

Suddenly, the tent’s heavy flap shifted, and a man stepped out.

Not just a man, a giant.

Arnold had seen warriors of every breed, but this one seemed carved by the Gods for the sole purpose of making other men feel small. A head and a half taller than most, shoulders like siege gates, his frame was packed with the kind of muscle you didn’t get from idleness. His skin was dark as tilled earth after rain, slick with sweat that gleamed in the late light.

A leopard skin hung from one shoulder, draped across his chest, the golden rosettes vivid against him. In one hand he held a helm tucked under his arm, leaving his head bare for the wind to toy with.

Gods, what sort of men did he surround himself with?

“Lord Jarza,” Thalien greeted smoothly, a quicksilver smile on his lips. “Always a pleasure. Compliments on the new attire, it truly brings out your….eyes?”

“Little Lord,” Jarza replied, the words bitten off like he was chewing gristle. His jaw flexed, and Arnold had the distinct sense it took every ounce of restraint not to spit on the ground at his brother’s feet.

Clearly, Jarza did not count Thalien among his favored company.

“And what brings you here?”

“We would like to see His Grace,” Thalien answered, using Alpheo’s formal title

Jarza gave him a slow once-over, as though weighing the legitimacy of his request, then rumbled, “You can go in, if you’ve got important business.It isn’t like the prince is doing much…”

The remark drew the faintest flicker of surprise from Thalien, but he inclined his head in thanks. With a motion for Arnold to follow, he stepped past the towering man. Arnold gave Jarza a short nod of acknowledgment before slipping in behind his brother.

And then both brother realised why he had been so helpful.

For the turn of heads and the sharp swivel of the prince’s gaze, cold , direct, and irritated was more than proof enough of that.

Jarza reeeally did not count Thalien among his favored company.