Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 816

Chapter 816: Back home(3)

The White Stallion’s hooves rang out against the stony cobbles, so noble it seemed as though the beast itself knew the eyes of the city were upon it.

Proud beast, proud rider. Behind Alpheo, fifty of the Golden Steeds followed in solemn rhythm, their lances gleaming, cloaks trimmed in white and gold. They were his royal guard, once meant for pageantry and ceremony, but in recent years, bloodied more and more in the field.

Especially since the prince already had his own squad of guards that he had picked from his old core.

Today, however, duty called them back to their original purpose: to frame their sovereign in splendor.

Alpheo’s eyes swept the streets, and with every glance came memories of what had been before. He remembered, all too vividly, the first time he had entered this city seven years ago as a mercenary. Filth in the gutters, chamber pots emptied from windows, children with ribs like cages, the air so thick with rot and waste that it made a man gag. The city had felt like a carcass then, its people like vultures gnawing what little remained, a prince so inept that he led a war on a lost cause.

But now, it was different.

The foul stench was gone. The aqueducts, his first grand project, had carried clean water through veins of marble into the very heart of the capital. A standing city watch, well-paid and trained, enforced order , ensuring that the ban on waste-tossing was no longer a suggestion but a law .

For the first time in memory, the city did not reek of human filth but of bread ovens, forge-smoke, and spices from distant ports.

Faces, too, had changed. The gaunt, hollow cheeks he had once seen on every corner were fewer now. Grain flowed steadily into Yarzat, brought by foreign merchants who traded it eagerly for soap and cider.

The merchants grew fat on profit, and Alpheo reaped something more valuable: stability. Prices of bread and barley had remained steady, even during wars, and while famine had not vanished, hunger no longer ruled the city’s bones.

The economy pulsed with life, reinvigorated by foreign trade, by artisans and masons summoned for his many public works and who made new shop in the city, by the gold and silver that passed from soldier’s hands into taverns, markets, and smithies. The streets bustled now not with beggars clinging like carrion to every passerby, but with merchants haggling, and the costant sound of hammering in the street.

And yet… begging was not gone. It never would be. But even they had been given a chance.

Alpheo’s court had devised one of its most radical policies: land for hands. Those willing to work, even vagabonds and beggars, were taken to the frontiers, mostly from the newly devastated land he usually conquered, where they set up work. True, they were not farmers, but crowd them with seasoned peasants, give them seed and tools, and in time, they learned enough to scrape the soil for harvest.

Of course, it was no gift. The land did not belong to them. It was not freedom, but tenure, a kind of temporary serfdom. The crown’s investment in seed, beasts, and food for their first year was repaid in harvest: thirty percent of their yield, year after year, until ten years passed. Then, the tithe fell to fifteen percent, back to his usual rate.

It had been four years since the policy of crownland expansion had first taken root. In that short span, the transformation had been clear to the untrained eye. The fields under direct authority of the crown , the original one before all the expansions, had grown from 800 to 1,100 acres, and when the spoils of conquest were added, the tally swelled to more than 2,700 acres of farmland under direct rule of the crown.

It pleased Alpheo to see it, of course, how could it not? The children pointing at him in wonder as he passed on horseback, their mothers tugging them back, the peasants stooping low, bowing their heads until their foreheads nearly touched the ground. It was proof that the long nights, the reforms, the wars, all of it, had borne fruit. And yet he had not come here to bask in awe, nor to savor the sweet taste of adulation. A ruler had no time for vanity. He was here for work.

His eyes shifted from the faces of his people to the site ahead, where laborers swarmed like ants over a mound. It was the location of the last of the three minor sewer works in the city, part of the grand design that would make the capital not just livable but properly clean.

After all the problem of shit-dealing was of every age….

The works themselves lay mostly underground, hidden from the sun, but the surface bustled with effort. Carpenters were sawing thick logs into beams for the supporting mining operation, the air filled with the smell of fresh-cut wood and resin.

Near them, masons prepared heavy blocks of stone, chiseling edges smooth, stacking them neatly in piles, ready to be lowered into the underbelly of the city where they would line the channels that carried away its filth.

At the mouth of the tunnel, a constant rhythm of motion carried on. Men bent under the low archways, roman ones, carrying baskets of dirt and clay on their shoulders, their faces streaked with sweat and dust. Others worked the rope-and-pulley system that had been rigged up: leather buckets filled with earth were hauled from the depths, creaking skyward before being emptied into waiting carts. From there, the refuse was transported outside the city walls, dumped into pits beyond the fields.

However, the prince’s attention was not fixed on the workers hauling dirt or the creak of pulleys, though he allowed himself a quick glance to satisfy his curiosity. His gaze instead settled on a man in a long, dust-speckled tunic, shouting orders at two others whose clean clothes marked them as architects rather than laborers.

“Sir Pontus,” Alpheo called, reining in his horse just a few paces behind the man.

The architect froze mid-word, stiffening before turning. At the sound of that voice, recognition dawned instantly. He dropped into a deep bow, his face pale with sudden formality.

“Your Grace… we were not expecting you.”

“Of course you were not,” Alpheo replied, his tone even but edged. “It was little more than a whim of mine. I had meant to speak with you, and when I was told you spend most of your time here, I thought it only right to see with my own eyes the work into which I’ve been pouring silver for the past two years. So…tell me. Anything to report?”

“Your Grace, there was no need for you to come down in person. I would have imm—”

“As I said,” Alpheo cut across him, “I wished to see it for myself. Now, I ask again, anything to report?”

Pontus was not a fool. He recognized the irritation simmering beneath the prince’s words, though he could not guess what misstep had provoked it.

Of course he was not the source, but he did not know that.

Still, he knew better than to stall further. He straightened, cleared his throat, and answered directly.

“Your Grace, the project as a whole stands near completion. This here is the last of the three minor conduits yet unfinished. The exit channel for the city’s waste has already been completed according to your request, and the burning furnaces for final disposal are likewise finished. What remains is the linking of this final artery to the main sub-terran channel, and the diversion canal from the aqueduct, which will bring a steady flow of water through all three sewers to carry the refuse away.”

He paused, then added more carefully, “The final conduits are not solid metal but perforated piping, as you instructed. The design apparently as you said allows the water to seep gradually out into the surrounding ground, diminishing its volume as it runs, so that what reaches the collection pit is dense matter rather than diluted filth. That I suppose will aid in its elimination.

There, finally the workers will gather it in storage carts and carry it to the furnaces, where it will be burned.”

The man’s voice carried a note of pride now, though he tempered it with caution. Around them, the sound of saws and chisels and the steady grunts of men hauling stone underscored the scale of the work. Pontus lifted a hand slightly, gesturing toward the tunnel where men disappeared beneath the earth, only to emerge moments later covered in dust, dragging full baskets behind them.

“The system, when finished, will be the first of its kind ” he added, unable to keep the note of satisfaction entirely from his voice.

But Alpheo felt no such pride stir within him. He wanted to, perhaps even tried to, but all he could summon was a dull impatience. Civil engineering might have been a glory in times of peace, but there were no such times.

He could not tend to peace when it was time for war.

What use was it to boast of sewers when Yarzat would soon be drowning not in filth but in enemies?

He looked at the half-dug tunnel and the sweating men like one looks at a painting they cannot afford to admire.

“How long before this is over?” Alpheo asked flatly, his eyes narrowing as if to burn the answer out of Pontus before it was even given.

Pontus hesitated, a bit downed by the lack of emotion in the voice, still smoothing his palms over his tunic nervously he replied “Your Grace… these matters depend on the soil, the stone, the weather itself. In the worst case, should we encounter great slabs of rock beneath the earth, I would estimate no longer than six months.”

Alpheo’s jaw tensed, and Pontus quickly continued, his tone careful, eager to soften the number. “But that is the most conservative estimation. If the earth yields as it has so far, if the stone proves kind and the rains do not delay us, then I would place it closer to three months. Perhaps less, if the men continue at this pace.”

That for Alpheo was…acceptable; he had other tasks to set Pontus to after all….