Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 850

Chapter 850: Intervation from friends(3)

Alpheo staggered back, hand pressed against his cheek where the blow had landed. The sting was sharp, but it wasn’t pain that stunned him,it was the shock.

Nearly a decade had passed since anyone had dared raise a hand against him. He was a prince, after all. Those who struck him did not live long enough to strike again or see their hands attacked to their wrist, for that matter.

It took him a long heartbeat to even register what had happened.The sting on his cheek finally being acknowledged by his muddled mind.

His mind tried to catch up with the insult, the betrayal, the sheer audacity of it. Across from him, Egil looked just as shaken, his hand still half-raised as though he too could not believe what he had done.

As if arm had a mind of his own.

His anger had lashed out faster than thought, and now shame began to creep into his features.

But the spell broke as swiftly as it had come.

One eye for one eye and the world might go blind, but no one wanted to be the one-eyed.

Alpheo launched himself forward, tackling Egil before the man could utter a word of apology.

Seven years in Yarzat had turned him into a creature of habit, rising before dawn as the early bird he was , training while the city still slept, strengthening the body he once thought unfit for war. Swordplay was never his gift, but he had built muscle through sheer persistence, hardening himself as much as any of his reforms hardened the realm.

Egil, by contrast, had let himself wither in ways less visible. He wasn’t fat, he rode too often, drilled too much with his cavalry for that, but his strength was no longer the strength of youth. He had grown careless, dulled by drink, by indulgence, by years of living off his reputation.

So when Alpheo’s arms locked around his waist, it was no contest. With the force of a battering ram, he drove Egil to the ground. The lieutenant grunted, wind bursting from his lungs, and before he could recover, Alpheo was already on top of him.

His fists rained down like a storm. There was no elegance to it, no courtly restraint,just raw, unrestrained rage, the kind of violence born not on the battlefield but in the gutters of survival.

Egil had struck a prince. Now, that prince struck Egil.

Punch after punch crashed down on him, first the cheek, snapping his head to the side, then the other, splitting the skin above his eye, then square on the nose with a wet crack that sent blood spraying across the two.

But rage made Alpheo sloppy.

His fourth blow missed its mark, smashing knuckles-first into the hard wood. Pain flared up his arm, and in that single instant of hesitation Egil took his chance. With a guttural roar mixed with a cough, he slammed his forearm into Alpheo’s gut, knocking the air out of him, and rolled themselves over.

Now Egil was on top, his weight pressing down, fists hammering into Alpheo’s face. The prince gritted his teeth and twisted, trying to buck him off, but the ground left no room. Every strike rattled his skull, his vision swimming. He managed to jab a fist into Egil’s ribs, once, twice, but it was like striking a stone wall.

“Fucking hypocrite!” Alpheo snarled between blows, spitting blood as his knuckles scraped at Egil’s side.

“You pompous cunt!” Egil bellowed back, driving another fist into Alpheo’s jaw. “All crown and no balls!”

Alpheo’s elbow lashed upward, glancing off Egil’s cheek.”You useless sack of shit!”

“Chained to a whore wearing a leash!” Egil shot back, his spit flecking Alpheo’s face as his fist slammed down again.

The room filled with the sound of fists on flesh, ragged breathing, and curses flung around as if they were morning stars. Both men were red-faced, sweating, bloodied, their blows no longer precise,just raw with more emotion than strength.

Still, words did not soften blows. Insults cut deep, but fists cut deeper, and of the two, Alpheo was faring worse.

His nose was a ruined mess, blood pouring down in rivers that choked his breath each time he tried to inhale. Every strike from Egil sent his head snapping back or his teeth rattling, the taste of iron thick on his tongue was the only drink Alpheo could take.

At last, Alpheo abandoned his futile counterstrikes.

He brought his arms up, crossing them over his face, twisting his head left and right to blunt the damage. It spared him the worst, but not all,fists still found their way through, battering his ribs, splitting his lip, shaking his skull.

Each connection clearly reminded him, he was losing.

Through the haze of pain, his blurred eyes caught a glimmer. The silver cup, the very one he had hurled aside earlier, lay close,knocked askew in the chaos, resting just within reach.

Reason would have told him to stand, to yield, to end this before it went too far. But Alpheo had no reason left.

He was a man of pride and he was fucking losing.

The answer was simple.

He lunged for the cup and with a hoarse roar, smashed it upward into Egil’s face.

The sound was sickening,silver against bone, followed by Egil’s snarl breaking into a cry of pain. His brow split open, blood spilling down across his eye, blinding him. He reeled back, hands clutching at his face, trying in vain to wipe the red away. The more he rubbed, the worse it spread.

Alpheo seized the moment, shoving him hard and rolling away, finally gaining precious space. He staggered upright, swaying, his chest heaving, his knuckles trembling around the cup still clutched in his hand. Blood streaked across its rim, glistening under the sun

Across from him, Egil staggered to his feet too, one hand braced on the overturned table, the other grasping for anything he could use. His fingers found the carafe. He lifted it, wine sloshing dark and thick inside, and through the stream of blood pouring down his face, he stared down at his prince with murder in his eye.

They breathed heavily and continued staring daggers at each other.

Both men tasted copper on their tongues; both felt the bruise of shame blooming under the skin where anger had struck.

They had weapons in their hands and nowhere to put the weight of what they’d done. Either of them could have pushed it further, could have made this a grave for one and then followed by the other some days later.

Something had to give or someone had to die.

Still Alpheo of the two was the most wise, so he was the first to break.

He let the silver cup clatter from his fingers; it spun once on the floor and came to rest on its side. He flopped down like a man who had exhausted argument and violence both, the motion soft and stupid in the stillness. He kept his hands open in his lap as if showing he had nothing left.

Egil stayed standing, carafe in hand, face streaked with blood and sweat. For a long gestureless second Alpheo watched him.

Then to his relief, Egil’s shoulders bowed, shame flushing his cheeks the way a wound flushes red. The drunken bravado had burned out, leaving a man who could finally see what he’d done.

“This is fucked up,” Egil said at last, voice small and hoarse. “I—” He swallowed. “Hey, Alph. I’m sorry. For those things I said. I didn’t mean them.”

Alpheo said nothing for a beat. The silence was thick enough to sit on. Then he lifted his head and looked at his old lieutenant with a hardness that had nothing to do with aches or bruises. It was the cold, Egil had taken the first step, but Alpheo wouldn’t take the second.

“What is the endgame here?” Alpheo asked, pinning him with the question as if it were a lance. “What did you think would happen if you killed that boy?You take out one head and another grows in the same soil.

The second prince is worse; he’ll take the throne and pull the whole state into himself. You’d trade one enemy for another, a emperor who has every reason to be hostile and twice the strength to make it stick. Do you want that? A stronger Romelia at our throat, armies pouring south and north to carve us into nothing? Is revenge worth the ruin of the land that fed you?Worth killing the lives of those you call brothers”

For a moment Egil looked ready to argue, then the hand slacked. “I don’t know what I want,” he admitted, the words ragged. “At first the thought of fighting alongside Gratios’s spawn made me want to puke. But if I take his life, his brother will take the throne.And yet doing nothing feels wrong”

Alpheo pushed himself up on one elbow, wincing as he did so. Blood crusted at his lip. He let a bitter laugh leak out. “I don’t know your customs, the names of your gods, how your tribe buried the dead. I don’t pretend to. I don’t know the shape of your grief; I only know the shape of consequence.”

He drew breath, and when he spoke again it was with the patient cruelty of a strategist counting columns on a map. “If your grievance is Romelia as a state, if you want it to feel pain for what it did, then killing the Emperor isn’t the answer. It simplifies the problem. It gives the rest a rallying cry. It hands them a martyr and a reason to burn us.

Better to make Romelia impotent than to murder its head and let it swell stronger. We have an interest in seeing it bled slowly: keep its houses divided, make sure its borders are disputed. We back the weakest claimant; we strike the lines that feed their power; we be the poison that keeps the whole from coming together.”

He let the plan sit in the air like smoke, watching the way it reached for Egil’s face.

“We support the contender they can’t rally behind,” Alpheo continued. “We make Romelia a house of half-brothers and hollow oaths. We keep their banners from meaning anything beyond a scrap of cloth. That’s vengeance that lasts.

That’s revenge not as a single blade but as a slow rot,less dramatic, more lethal. Your tribe deserves more than a flash of blood. It deserves a future where Romelia eats itself to death and cannot reach us.”

Silence rolled in after him, heavy and listening.

He waited, the silence stretching like a wire between them.

“I don’t know if that is what I want,” Egil admitted again, raw and small.

Alpheo did not soften. There was no mercy left for dithering.

“That’s exactly the point,” he said slowly. “Only you can know that answer. No one else can hand it to you.

You are vile man and a horrible father and now a horrible friend.”

He leaned forward until the light glistened on the cut on his cheek. He held his hand on it and withdrew when he saw it still bleed.

For a moment his eyes held Egil’s too long then he looked away. “Jarza, Asag and I know what we want. We have carved our choice into the world and we stand behind it till death makes our flesh rot and skin pale.

You are the only one who can change the shape of what comes next; it is your prerogative and obligation. If you cross that bridge and join us, you will be welcome. If you turn away, there will be consequences for all of us; it will never be as it was.” He looked at him to let Egil realise he meant it, all of it. ”Never again.”

He folded his hands behind his back, the posture of a man who has counted costs and discovered he prefers the arithmetic to doubts. “Make your bed, Egil. And sleep in it. The choice is yours and yours alone. You are but your own keeper.”

With that, he walked to the door and rapped once, his knuckles sounding like a gavel and leaving some blood on the door. The sound cracked through the chamber.

“We are done here. Open the fucking door.”