Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 835

Chapter 835: Might of words(2)

With the oath rolling from the prince’s lips, a strange air of unsuresness settled over the chamber.

His voice still seemed to hang there, like incense leaving the lords to breathe it in whether they wished or not.

Normally, such assurances wouldn’t have been worth to wipe their arse wiht It, every man present knew Alpheo had reason to lie, and every reason to gild the truth.

But he had sworn. And her was the crux of the problem.

Everyone knew It was shit, but who had the gall to admit that even when it got in their mouth?

To contradict it outright would make one call the crown a liar. And so the words held, not because they were trusted, but because no one dared to trample them.

Still, silence could not reign forever. Simeone had to give

“Your Grace,” Damaris began carefully deciding to take that first step, while also cursing his peers for their lack of spine.

Still , who had he to blame but himself? He had jumped ship and received the two and seven with its sailors.

“None here would dare cast doubt on your words. Yet, I believe some of your leal lords still harbor… reservations about them . Not of the truth, of course, but of the weight of what it entails, that may have not been wholly understood”

We speak not only of coin, but of rights,that have held since the earliest manuscripts that call this lands Yarzat. Their fears are…”

“Baseless,” Alpheo cut in, his voice drier than the whips of his youth. His interruption was neither raised nor loud, but absolute, allowing no seam for Damaris to wriggle through.

“I tell you again, such fears are without ground. Still, As I said this is a negotiation. And what is a negotiation, if not agreeing on the price of a ware?” His eyes swept the chamber, “I have promised you gold and glory for that ware of yours. And gold and glory I shall provide.”

Damaris, to his credit, did not flinch, though his voice grew tighter. “Your Grace… forgive my bluntness, but are we to understand this as payment? You mean to buy our rights?”

Alpheo leaned forward, his elbows resting lightly on the table, and smiled in the way a dog might before it gnawed at a bone given by its master.

“Come now, Lord Damaris. You and I both know such a clause is impractical. If the sum is too low, you will bray at insult. Too high, and the crown will stagger beneath the weight. Lump sums are foul game, give It some time and one of us will come to resent what he got out of the deal.” He spread his hands as though laying out a simple truth for all.

“What use is a banquet today, when tomorrow’s stomach growls empty? It is better, is it not, for a pig to be placed in a pen, fed feed day by day, than roasted on the table all at once?”

The matter of payment was the thorn at the heart of all this. He knew it. They knew it. And if the lords thought the crown’s treasury swelled fat from its new charters, they were deluding themselves. What flowed in, flowed out twice as fast. The coffers were more sieve than chest.

The sewers alone were a bottomless maw, devouring silverii as though the stone itself demanded tribute. The army drank coin like wine, the roads were rivers paved with money, the iron furnaces were insatiable, and the navy’s appetite rivaled them all.

Compared to that, beggary would almost be mercy.

A lump sum, then, was not only impossible,it was folly.

He had of course weighed alternatives. One was to share the gains from the Crown’s Charter, at least for the first few years, parceling out a portion of the spoils like a miser scattering crumbs. But such a measure would leave him dissatisfied for getting nothing and the lords insulted, too little to sate all of them.

No, the only true path was to redirect the burden. To let the crown itself swallow some of the losses from the lord, to shoulder a portion of the weight until the balance shifted. That meant the crown had to concede something.

“Before I dictate the matter of payment,” Alpheo said, letting his gaze sweep across the hall, “I would like to ask you something. Tell me, in these past three years,has your income from trade increased compared to ten years ago?”

There was hesitation at first, nobles glancing at one another as though to see who would answer. But soon most nodded, some even with the faintest trace of pride. Of course it had Yarzat had become and hot spot for merchants.

“As I am sure you have noticed,” Alpheo continued, voice smooth as poured wine, “the main road between Corgendaue and Yarzat has been thick with caravans and merchants. You have also, no doubt, noticed how reports of banditry along that road have gone quiet these past years. I would wager you have heard the same is true of the crownlands at large. Some even say a man can walk from Villegio to Yarzat alone and not cross paths with a single sword not held by a black and white.”

He leaned forward, his hand tapping lightly against the wooden dome on his chair’s armrest. “Do you know why this is so?”

He didn’t wait for their murmured answers. He didn’t need to. They all knew.

It was the White Army. Nearly fifteen hundred men, raised and maintained at all times. An army not scattered to slumber in castles, nor called only in times of war, but kept ready, hounds unleashed upon every den of thieves until no den remained.

The task had once seemed endless, but now their hunts bore little fruit, not from idleness, but because the bandits were gone.

The had been simply far too succesfull.

Root and stem, torn out.

“And yet,” Alpheo went on, his tone tightening, “leave the crownlands, wander your own dominions, and what do you find? The same infestations that plagued your fathers and their fathers before them. Highwaymen, blackmailers, village-raiders,parasites, forever bleeding your fields and caravans dry.

How much coin do you pour each year into keeping garrisons on alert, into sending patrols that more often than not return empty-handed? And when they return, what happens? The bandits creep out again, strike again, and the cycle repeats.”

Dissilusionment took hold of his guest, they didn’t like that is was true, but the truth was dry for all, they spent quite a lot on garrisons yearly.

Alpheo pressed further upon that. “Banditry is not your only ailment. Let us speak of your roads. How many of them collapse into mud when winter comes, thick enough to swallow a wagon wheel whole? How many of your merchants curse as their mules knee-deep through filth? How many do you think choose instead to bypass those miserable paths and take the crown’s road, the great stone-and-clay way that runs straight to the capital, where patrols ride in sight and no outlaw dares show his face?

Do you know how much coin you lost when those caravans decided to instead take the crown’s road instead of yours, even extending the travel if necessary?”

He allowed himself a smile that held no small amount of pride.

“And tell me, do you imagine such a road was laid in a single year? Do you think it sprang forth from one purse of silverii? No, my lords.

That road exists because of a continuous payment that I have poured into its keeping that however with time will surely return all investments.

Year after year, stone upon stone, coin upon coin. That is why the merchants flock to it. That is why your incomes have grown from trade, but only in a small part because your roads are more than a quarter of the year inaccessible for carts…”

That road had cost him dearly. Tens of thousands of silverii poured into its veins, half a decade of toil, and the sweat of men who had labored until their hands bled.

It would have been impossible for a “small-time prince,” had Romelia not aided him in his hour of need and offered quite the deal for the stone mines present on their domain, which really would have nearly doubled the amount of budged he would have been forced to pay.

Of course, the road was not over, as in five years he had manage to complete a bit more than half of it, pointing the fingers at the many wars he had been forced to fight and spend in that decade. Still with a yearly budget of 10,000 silverii ,small progresses were being made..

But aid from Romelia had not come for free. Alpheo had been forced to increase the volume of products shipped across their border and sweeten the deal further by giving them a decade-long discount on princely tariffs a privilege that the Imperial family than soldi to some noble houses.

A bitter concession at the time,but worth every coin sacrificed. For in the end, the Magna Strata stood.

A ribbon of stone and clay that tied Corgendaue to Yarzat, broad enough for two wagons abreast, smooth enough that even in winter a caravan might roll without sinking into mire.

It was his triumph, his monument.

A masterpiece he knew would outlast him, spoken of long after his bones had rotted.

And now, here in this chamber, he wielded it as his club.

“I am more than committed to extending the same fortune to you,” he said, voice carrying the confidence of a man who had already reshaped his world. “I am willing to send some units into your lands, at your permission, of course, to patrol your roads, to hunt down the lairs of bandits, to scour your hills clean. If, in the process, your fields are harmed or your villages touched, the crown will reimburse you.

Should you wish the army gone, it will march out at once. But imagine, my lords, imagine a world where those vermin no longer gnawed at your caravans or bled your villages. Every coin you lose to them now would instead fatten your coffers. In one year alone I assure you will have great returns…”

He let the promise hang in the air, then pressed harder. “And more than that, imagine if the stone roads you have seen in the crownlands stretched through your domains as well. Imagine merchants choosing your gates, your markets, because the way was smooth, guarded, and sure. What would that mean for your incomes?When merchants come to me , after all more than once they make detours to buy grains and other products along the way to sell it to the capital…”

Alpheo leaned back, allowing himself a wide smile as he saw the subtle shifts in their faces, the faint narrowing of lips as if trying not to look too eager , still… what Alpheo was telling them made sense in their ears.

Above all, being of course the amount of silver they paid to garrison castles and organise patrols.