Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 844

Chapter 844: Giving a finger to take an hand(2)

The word academia rolled awkwardly from Jasmine’s lips, her brow furrowed.

”What’s that?”

Alpheo did not answer at once. Instead, his gaze slid to Jarza and Asag, men who had once asked the same question with the same puzzled look. His expression softened into a smile. “Which of you would like the honor of explaining?”

The two exchanged a strange look. In the end, Asag gave a reluctant tilt of his head, assuming the task.

He cleared his throat, shifting in his seat like a boy called upon in class. “Well…we haven’t been explained much. Basically, it’d be a place where tutors teach you how to be an officer?” He glanced at Alpheo, waiting for confirmation.

It did not wait long. He was not wrong. But he was far from the mark.

“Not wrong,” Alpheo admitted, “though so laughably understated I can hardly recognize the shape of it. You’ve missed the weight of it entirely. This is not some finishing tutoring for war.”

Egil leaned back in his chair. “A place to teach them how to be officers,” he sneered. “At the end of the day, they’ll barely be what we already have, likely worse, for lack of experience. But at least they’ll know how to read. Perhaps they’ll gather the men and recite fables by firelight at the end of a long march.”

Jarza shot him a glare. “You are untenable when you’re like this. Stop being a cunt.”

Egil only shrugged, smugness carved into every line of his face. “I’ll try,” he muttered, though his tone promised no such thing.

None of them had grasped it yet, the true shape of what he meant. Their minds were still in the realm of schools and books, of tutors with sticks and parchments of strategy. They thought in shallow terms, while Alpheo was reaching for something deeper, harsher.

So he leaned forward, folding his hands,his gaze resting on each of them in turn. “There is a misunderstanding here,” he began, “You believe this academy will have some tutor explaining tactics, some pedant who had never held a sword lecturing on the philosophy of war.” He let the silence stretch, then narrowed his eyes. “Yes?”

A few hesitant nods answered him, that was after all how nobles were taught by tutors.

“Well,” Alpheo said, voice cutting clean as a blade, “it is not.”

He let the quiet after them linger, as though the absence of sound itself was part of the lesson. And then he began.

He had not built his army with slogans and chants, nor with empty drills. His soldiers were not molded by gentle hands. They were carved from pain. Hardened by hunger. Tempered in thirst. Their bodies had been pushed past breaking, their wills stretched until they either shattered.

This was not cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

The greatest lessons were not the lashes that struck a back or the hunger that gnawed a belly. They were the moments when a soldier had the chance to stop, to quit, to surrender to weakness and chose not to for the honor of wearing the black and white tabard. Every man had been given that choice. Every man who remained had chosen defiance.

That was the marrow of the White Army’s strength.

So when he looked upon the academy he wanted to build, he did not see a simple school.

“When I have soldiers forged in the bowel of all hels, how can I allow them to be led by men of lesser caliber? How can I ask them to bleed under officers who have not themselves been broken and reforged? Extraordinary soldiers demand extraordinary leaders.

That academy will not be a place of learning,”He continued, “It will be a place of breaking. A dehumanizing affair. I believe that of the cadets who enter, much less than half will endure. The rest will fall away, shattered, unworthy of the burden. But those who remain…” His eyes gleamed, alight with a dangerous conviction. “They will be the pinnacle of what I’ll create. The finest of the fine.”

That was his intent: to create icons that could cement the national identity he sought to create.

He would give them social privileges that even nobles did not have, so that they could earn their envy, which would on his own way, encourage their sons to achieve such a position.

Those details, he knew, however, were still in the womb of an idea. Symbols, privileges, and the architecture of their myth could be refined in time. For now, the academy would serve as the forge.

The rest would follow.

He drew breath to slow the excitement that wanted to turn his voice into a fever. Then he steered the council back to the ledger of men.

“Those chosen from the ranks,” he said, “will not be left to chance when a post opens. They will be on a priority roster for promotion. More than that, each man we mark will earn the right to send his son to the academy.

That will be his ticket to influence when he cannot be there to seize it himself. Give a man a future for his bloodline and he will accept a short wound today.”

Shahab’s hand rose, slow and careful. The old man’s face folded with worry. “Are you sure that is wise?” he asked. His voice carried the weight of a generation’s way of doing things incompatible with the newest one Alpheo was trying to build.

“You propose to place sons of nobles and sons of common men on the same bench and the same rack.

That will anger many of them already.

From the looks from what you are saying , it will be even worse than the training of the Black Stripes. I saw that and it was no easy affair.

I believe that will not pass without heat or fire from the noble’s family.

I know of the game and humiliation each soldier is put through to raise and wear your banner; I dare not think of what you will do on that Academia of yours.”

“It is a risk,” Alpheo admitted, soft as smoke, as if it were an afterthought. “But not a fatal one. We after all held the reins to make it pass.”

He laid out the plan like a blade laid on the table. “We will demand a signed covenant from the parents, an acknowledgment by which the house grants the crown full discretion over its son’s education and service. No exceptions. No behind-the-scenes deals. The contract will be public. If they protest while others sign it too, it will turns the family into a scandal.

Especially if the crown does the example”

Those drew looks of confusion from the others, they did not realised what Alpheo meant and so he ignored that.

For now, that did not matter yet, one day it would, but not this.

“Once the academia exists, we will do the work to elevate the best into figures of honors as much as possible.

Insignia, privileges, lands, stipends, and precedence at court. The office will be honored. The test will be proof. We will remove the whisper of insult by making the trial the highest badge of merit that the family will put their sons voluntarily. When a noble’s son stands before the city with the academy’s mark on his breast, he will be honored as the best”

Alpheo let that sit for a second.

“If they rage,” he said finally, “they will rage at a thing that gives their sons a chance of glory. Pride will soften to compulsion. Some of them will be commoners, which will push the nobles to do no worse than them.

Politics with pride will make the rest of them comply.”

Silence settled and for once, no one hurried to fill it. Even Egil held his tongue. He had seen enough of the White Army’s crucibles to know that if Alpheo claimed the academy would be worse, then it would be worse, and perhaps that was precisely what would make it work.

Ruthlessness had its own logic, one he could not easily dismiss.

Jasmine broke the stillness with a soft, almost incredulous laugh. “Well… you really have thought this through, haven’t you?”

Alpheo inclined his head, lips twitching in something close to a smile, though he was certain she would not smile if she knew their boy would have to get through that too.

“I have.”

It was Asag who leaned forward next, his voice more curious than doubtful. “And when, then? When do you believe such a place could be raised?I am eager to see the results of it.”

Alpheo’s gaze drifted toward the tall windows, beyond them the pale sky streaked with thin clouds. “Two years, perhaps three. Nothing ordinary will suffice.

It cannot be just a barracks or a hall, it must be an edifice that crushes vanity, a structure that makes even the nobility feel small when they pass beneath its gates.” His eyes returned to them, alight with a rare fervor. “When you build something meant to last generations, you build it without compromise. I intend to give all of myself to this.”

He eyed Pontus, who immediately understood the severity of the project he would throw his back on.

A ripple passed through Alpheo, then when the engineer smiled and nodded, a faint shiver of excitement he did not entirely manage to suppress. In his mind, he already saw the future that might emerge from such a forge.

For he knew , that from those halls, heroes would walk. Not the brittle icons of song and courtly verse, but living pillars to bear the weight of his nation’s identity.

Perfect icons for his future propaganda.

And as the vision flared in him not without a dangerous thrill, for he would make the Achilles of his age.

He could not stay still with the excitement.