Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 857

Chapter 857: Clash of wills(1)

He sat at the highest chair of the oak table, its legs planted firm on the stony floor of the chamber, the same chamber where only a week ago the Crown and the lords had argued themselves hoarse over the matter of the royal announcement.

Now the Prince of Yarzat had brought them something more than words, finally he was proud toa announce the written form of his proposal for the mass admission of noble sons into the officer corps of the White Army.

It was not a task for faint shoulders. He was forced to balance between poles that pulled in opposite directions: his own pure stock, the pillars of Yarzat’s throne, which must not be diluted by parasites gnawing at the marrow, and the parasites themselves, lords , who demanded their own cut of flesh in exchange for what they surrendered.

Every matter was both leash and dagger.

Alpheo loathed it. Every hour of it. The thin rope he walked was stretched across a pit of barking dogs, each mangy beast convinced it deserved more meat than the last, of course he meant the nobles, as the prince absolutely adored his troops, he wanted them to grow old and die fat.

The old princes had tossed scraps at every growl the nobility made. Not him. He held no treats, only the stick.

And the dogs howled.

They had grown fat and unruly under a lax crown, raised to think growling was the same as ruling. But those days were done, as now he had means to enforce his rule.

“Your Grace, this is an abomination!” Lord Corvan thundered, fist striking the parchment before him with such force the inkpots trembled. His face bloomed red.

Alpheo’s gaze slid slow, toward Jarza, seated at his right.

To him came a flash of rage, the kind that would gladly see Corvan dragged into the courtyard and broken with a cudgel. For the briefest moment, Alpheo entertained the thought. It would feel good,. But reason cut through the indulgence like cold water.

Rationality took the rein of the man once more.

The chamber erupted further,as the lord was not the only one. One voice became three, then a dozen, lords rising from their seats like vultures startled from carrion, guffaws of disapproval rising to a din. Pages darted from side to side, whispering panicked attempts at order, but they were nothing,flies circling wolves.

This was the essence of rule.

A stone grating between the jaws of a mill, pressure from every side. His old core whispered he was too lenient. These nobles, clamoring now for commissions and glory, called him too conservative, too slow to feed them.

But at the end of the day, there was no scale but his hand. No balance but his judgment. The sword of the state was his to wield, and he alone would decide what was progress and what was decay.

“My lords!”

Alpheo’s voice rang out, not shouted but still smashing the chamber like steel sliding free of its scabbard. The sound alone was not what stilled them; it was the weight of the man behind it. A voice borrowed its power not from volume, but the air of its bearer.

For a heartbeat, silence spread like oil on water. The barking ceased, if only to hear what the hand with the stick might do.

“A week ago,” he continued, his eyes roaming the chamber, pinning men like spears, “I declared that I would open the gates of command. That your sons, your nephews, and your cousins would have their chance to earn the right to lead the legions of Yarzat. And as I swore, so I have delivered. The parchment before you is the proof of it. So I fail to see, my lords, the reason for your…. wailing.”

Of course, he knew. He knew too well. The concessions he had offered were heavy stones, heavy for him to lift, sour for them to swallow. Each one felt cheated, as what they had been given was not what they had expected.

The chamber stirred again, voices rising in a tide of complaint, one bark setting off another until the whole room was a kennel in uproar. Their grievances overlapped, snarls without coherence—greed clothed as outrage, fear disguised as principle.

Alpheo’s lip twitched in disdain. They were not men but mongrels, snapping at scraps.

Then thunder fell.

“SILENCE!”

Jarza’s voice boomed like a war-drum, his chest rumbling with the force of it. The sound filled the vaulted chamber, cracked across stone like lightning. Nobles who had risen from their seats collapsed back into them, words dying in their throats. Even Lord Damaris flinched, his fists loosening on the table.

The silence was immediate.

Jarza turned his head to the prince, as if to say: The floor is yours.

And Alpheo seized it.

“This is not the city square,” Alpheo said, his voice cold and deliberate, slicing through the murmur of voices like a knife through cloth. “There are no merchants here shouting their wares, no fishmongers bellowing for coin. Yet you posture and clamor as if you were peddlers in the mud. Each of you clearly has complaints to hurl at me. But if progress is to be made, you will treat my hall with the respect it deserves. You will not drown each other in a meaningless ruckus.”

His gaze swept over them, lingering on the worst offenders, Corvan, red in the face; Damaris, lips pressed thin with disapproval.

“For this reason,” he continued, leaning back in his chair as if daring them to resist, “you will have five minutes. Five minutes to choose one among you who will speak for the rest. Gather your grumbles to him, so he may relay them to me in a single voice.” A pause.

“In an orderly tone.”

The chamber bristled. A few lords muttered among themselves, shifting in their chairs. Others scowled, unused to being treated like unruly children. But no one dared to defy him outright.

Some had tried five years ago…..it didn’t end good.

Three of the allotted minutes passed in tense whispers and exchanged looks before a choice was made.

“Your Grace,” Lord Damaris said at last, rising from his seat with stiff dignity, bowing just enough to preserve formality.

Of course it was him. The man lived for these moments

“Lord Damaris,” Alpheo replied evenly, forcing the sourness on his tongue not to bleed into his tone. The man’s self-importance always left a bitter taste. “I was under the impression that I had promised to allow the White Army to host more officers of noble blood. And I believe I have delivered upon that promise.” He held Damaris’s gaze, his eyes hard as stone. “So may I know the reason for this… travesty?”

The lord’s jaw tightened. He had expected irritation from the prince, but not such open contempt. Still, Damaris had been chosen as the nobles’ mouthpiece, so he played the part.

“Your Grace,” he said, his tone firm, his face giving no attempt to mask his displeasure, “this is by far too little of what was promised to us. You requested that we relinquish our right to tax merchants traveling through our lands, an ancient and sacred right of our houses. We yielded it, at great cost to our coffers, because you swore that a new share of power awaited us.

We gave up flesh, and eagerly awaited the meat you swore to replace it with. But this—” He raised the parchment in the air and shook it, the sound of its crackling echoing through the chamber. “—this is not what was promised.”

A low murmur rose among the lords, emboldened by his words.

“It is what was promised, and wha—” Asag, seated at Alpheo’s right, began sharply, only to be cut short by the prince’s raised hand.

It was not the time for accusations.

“I retort your words,” Alpheo said, leaning forward now. “All that I promised was that officer positions in the White Army would be opened to you. And that—” he jabbed a finger toward the parchment—”is what I have given. Have I not?”

The silence that followed was heavy. Damaris shifted his weight, the hauteur in his face tempered by the steel in Alpheo’s stare. When he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its edge.

“Your Grace,” he said, slower now, “some of the terms… are unacceptable to us.”

Alpheo’s eyes narrowed, though he already knew what was coming. The poison at the root of their grievance had been clear from the moment he first put quill to parchment.

They would of course fight it, but it was no matter, for at the end of the day their voices were just that….wasted air.

“What terms?” he asked, his tone deceptively calm, though the whole hall could feel his voice straining to snap.

He had wanted to appear with weak patience and keep them on edge..

Damaris straightened the parchment in his hand, his lips thinning before he spoke. “We were promised officer positions in the White Army, Your Grace. And yet”—he shook the paper again, his voice rising just enough to carry across the chamber—”what is written here declares that for every ten posts, six shall be filled by those graduating from this… academia.”

The lord’s nose twitched faintly at the foreign syllables, as though the very sound offended him, .

“An academia,” he repeated, with deliberate weight, the contempt in his tone matched by the murmur of discontent rolling through the chamber. “A place where our sons are to mingle with commoners. ”He gave Alpheo a long leveled stare ” Your grace….these terms speak not of noble birth but only of graduates from this place…”