Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 847

Chapter 847: Blast furnace(2)

There was no trace of confusion in Pontus’s eyes. The man stared at the parchment as if it contained a secret only his soul had waited to see. To Alpheo, it was as if he had just placed the key to an unopened chest into Pontus’s hands, and the architect, instead of opening it to see the treasure that lay inside, puzzled over its teeth and grooves.

In short he was growing impatient.

He clutched the scroll with both hands, almost tenderly, like a relic entrusted by a warmest friend. His expression brimmed with something close to reverence, an unnatural excitement, the kind that burns in men who suddenly glimpse the edge of eternity through their craft.

Every man had his own, Alpheo knew his legend would be made from the war he led, Pontus hoped for it to be in his own craft.

“Honored to have my service employed for the third time this year, Your Grace,” Pontus said finally getting aware of the silence, beaming as his fingers traced each segment of the design, lingering on every line of ink as if they were veins of gold. “Each one more worthy than the last.”

Alpheo’s lips tugged into a tired smile. “I fear my coffers are beginning to feel the strain. For you, I am a patron bestowing honor. For my treasury, I am but a fly it cannot slap away and that continued to suck blood.”

Pontus gave a akward laughter at that before peering down at the work once more.

“Coins last months, some years if handled well. Architecture lasts centuries,” Pontus replied without looking up. He tapped the blueprint with his knuckle. “And from the look of this… the coin you throw into these foundations will be worth thrice what you leave rotting in a chest. I do not suppose a building of this magnitude is meant for vanity alone.”

Alpheo studied him for a moment. The words were light, the meaning behind far less.

Pontus was no fool lost in stone and mortar. He understood. He had read the winds of the South, the rumors carried by the win. He knew what had happened and what must come.

What he was building…was a sword.

And swords, unlike treasuries, could not be allowed to rest.

Alpheo’s nod came slow, heavy. Pontus knew the cost, and he was eager.

The South was stirring, and hesitation was death.

He was set for a war he could not fight cleanly. The numbers alone spelled doom,three to one, at the very least,they could even be worse…. Odds no general, no matter how brilliant, could hope to outmaneuver on open field.

Even if he managed to win, it would be a Pyrrhus feat. It would be ruin. A bloody nose for his enemy, and broken bones in his own hands.

A triumph that would leave Yarzat hollowed out and ripe for the next year, as all he would have taken care of were simply levies.

That meant only one path lay open: change the ground itself. Tilt the board until his enemies found themselves walking into traps they could neither see nor avoid. If he could not beat them in battle, then he would bend war itself to his design.

Dirty tricks, some would call them; of that he was sure.

But for him it would be survival, a rat could not be shamed to use his teeth when at the corner.

“May I know if this beast has a name?” Pontus asked, still drinking in the vastness of the parchment before him.

“Bastion Fort,” Alpheo replied curtly. The words came with weight, like iron dropped onto stone.

This was not just a fortress. It was the hinge upon which war itself would swing. A wall to stall the tide, a mountain of man’s making to grind down the enemy’s numbers until the war broke upon its teeth. If Yarzat were to stand, it would be because the Bastion made it so.

The enemy would look to make a quick run to the head of the state, and Alpheo would make sure that on the road there they would fall.

He was set for a war of attrition.

“Shall I assume the origins of this one are… similar to the Furnace?” Pontus asked, raising one skeptical brow, though his lips curled as though the question amused him more than it troubled him.

Alpheo gave the faintest of nods, satisfied. The man understood. If Alpheo did not explain the roots of an idea, then Pontus would not ask. It was an unspoken pact between them. The prince suspected that Pontus would not care if the design had been pulled from or bought with a devil’s bargain, so long as he could build it and carve his name into those.

It was, in truth, the perfect partnership. Alpheo had his engineer, an architect who would not pry into secrets he did not want unearthed. And Pontus had his path to immortality, his name already spreading through Yarzat and beyond, whenever men spoke of the sewers or the aqueduct of the capital of the Peasant Prince.

“I weep for the bastards who’ll dash their heads against this,” Pontus murmured, his fingers still tracing the bold lines of the fortress. Then his eyes flicked toward the prince. “May I know where you intend to plant it?”

“East of Megioduroli,” Alpheo said, his voice steady, his gaze returning to the parchment as though the blueprint itself might bloom into stone beneath his stare. That patch of earth, flat, fertile, open so close to the head of the state….was the doorway through which any invader would come. It had to be barred.

It would , no had to become the eater of armies…there was no other way.

Pontus’s brow furrowed. “That’s Lord Damaris’s land, is it not?” He had a good memory for names, especially those that popped out often

Alpheo inclined his head, confirming without a word.

“I’m surprised he allowed it,” Pontus continued slowly. “A lord’s pride is his soil. Most would sooner choke on their own tongue than let the crown build a fortress in their fields. To raise stone and bastions that’s not a courtesy. I can’t imagine Damaris bent easily.”

“He didn’t,” Alpheo admitted. His mouth curled into something halfway between a smile and a grimace. “I paid dearly. A thick slice of the cake we just won south to soften the insult. Enough to make him believe he’d won a bargain, even as I planted a nail into his heartland. But it was a price I had to yield. Without it, the east is naked as is the capital.”

Pontus let the words hang, uneasy now, the blueprint trembling slightly in his hands. “You truly think you’ll need this?”

He expected reassurance, perhaps even denial. Instead, he found only the long silence of his prince’s stare that said more than a thousand words.

Before Pontus could gather himself to apologize for his doubt, Alpheo spoke. His voice was quiet, almost weary, but certain. “It is better to have a fortress and never need it, than to need it and find only empty fields.”

Yet the look in his eyes betrayed him. He did not build this Bastion out of fancy or pride. He built it because he believed, no, he knew, the day would come when blood would darken its stones.

“Can I know the time limit for this?” Pontus asked, hands folded on the blueprint as if he could knead the schedule out of the paper. He smelled the urgency on Alpheo like iron in the air.

“Three years, worst,” Alpheo said. He did not soften it. “I want it standing by then.” He watched the architect’s face for the friction of doubt. “Is it possible?”

Pontus’s eyes flicked to the furnace’s smoke, to the line of men hauling coal outside the gate. For a moment the man looked as if he could count the stones in the wall with a single glance. “Depends on the resources you give me,” he said carefully.

Translation being: how fat is the purse.

“You will have twenty thousand this year,” Alpheo answered flatly, it was not much but the treasury was nearly empty, he could not spare more. “Make do. I do not know what we can spare the next.”

The number landed between them like a thrown coin that did not satisfy. Pontus’s smile thinned; the excitement that had lit him a moment before dimmed to something more careful.

“Your Grace…that is…” He circled for gentleness, he did not want to anger his employer. “Less than satisfactory. It will not be enough to set this in …the stones that you wish to use, from the foundations to the parapets.”

“It won’t have to be.” Alpheo’s voice had the bluntness of an ax. “Find wood, pack earth, build the bulk out of rammed soil . Use timber where stone would break the bank. Face it in stone only on the outside.Make the skeleton out of what’s cheap and keep the teeth for the parts that bite.” He tapped the drawing; his finger was a metronome. “Can you do that?”

Pontus chewed on the plan like a man tasting vinegar. “I suppose I could. It will save coin, rammed earth, timber platforms, a stone glacis where the ballistae or onoger will sit, but the lifetime will suffer. Earthen works rot. Fire can claim wood. The fort will not—” He broke off, because he saw the prince’s mouth shape the next command.

“There is no need to think long-term,” Alpheo cut in. He smiled then, a small thing that did not reach his eyes. “If the Bastion does its job, we will not need it for generations. It’s an emergency structure: hold them off until the enemy grinds and bleeds. It must be strong enough to break their first teeth. Not a cathedral, an anvil.

It has to stand strong not long.”

Pontus’s features shifted to displeasure. The architect was an artist of permanence; you did not ask an artist to throw away posterity.

Alpheo leaned in, recognising the expression. “Pontus,” he said softly, the kind of quiet that is a trap, “you hold the power to decide the next war. If this stands, men who would drown our fields will stall and die on your earth. You will have given us time. You will have given me life.”

He watched the man’s face for the flash of vanity. “Do you know what that means for you? For your name?” Alpheo’s voice went colder, sharpened. “When they tell the story of the great Army-eater who ground the invaders on his teeth, when they name the gate that refused them, men will speak of your hands. Pontus. The architect. The maker of Bastion. Folk will swear your name the way children swear to gods.”

Something ridiculous and human uncoiled on Pontus’s face, a stupid, boyish smile that lit his worn features like a coin set to the sun. He had always been hungry for a mark to carry, for a thing that would outlast a pocketbook.

He had found it with sewer and aqueduct, but it wouldn’t hurt to have it in a third…

Alpheo noted it like a hunter notes the way a stag flinches to his approach too late: bait is bait.

“Very well,” Pontus said, the smile curdling into a sudden, earnest bow. “It will be done.”