Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 875

Capítulo 875: Augustine halls(1)

The sun rode high over the southeastern hills, the first ragged line of Romelia’s defences, burning the grass pale where great men had once lain.

Time did strange things to men and to nations.

Nine years ago they had crept across these same slopes as nothing more than a ragged edge of hired blades: no banners, thin coin purses, and a single furious hope.

Until that moment their future was dark as all they knew was the chains they wore, and when they finally tasted freedom, one could only imagine how much hope they had.

How happy were they then?

That very same ground now felt different beneath their boots.

Where hunger had once hollowed them, something like pride filled their chests. Nearly a decade had congealed into this march.

Alpheo felt it like a pressure at the base of his skull, the weight of what they had become and what it cost to keep it that way.

He could feel it in the men behind him: thirteen hundred helmets in a measured tide, the slow, satisfying drum of thousands of boots followed by one and an half more. The white of their standards cut like a promise across the plain, announcing to all the arrival of the fox.

“The legions are back in Romelia,” was a jest that passed through the soldiers near campfires during that march.

Where the old empire had gone to feudal pieces, Yarzat had gone the opposite way: standardization and discipline.

The White Army was of course the exception of the ear, and only a man like Alpheo could have carried that price.

Yet, for all the swagger and banners, Alpheo felt a sourness under the taste of the ideological triumph of his men. He envied them their innocence, the way their eyes shone with the bright certainty of men who measure themselves by lists of victories.

The soldiers counted scars, not rumors. They woke to the simple math of bread and blood, not the complicated calculus of politics and debts

They did not know the dogs snapping at their heels.

Soon, he thought, it would not only be Yarzat boots that would march over their home.

The optimism that had followed the annexation of Herculia five years prior felt thinner now, like a cloak that had been soaked through and hung out to dry on the sun only to discover to be mold-ridden. Ambition was a good thing up to a point; beyond it, ambition became a map of graves.

He hoped he would not have to bury any of his friends for that.Ever.

Jarza rode closer, heels nudging the flank of his mount.

Time had laid lines across the big man’s face, deep scores that no armor could hide. He’d always been a mountain of a man; now that mountain carried the weight of years, the undefeatable enemy. Alpheo watched him approach and felt a prick of pity and kinship. They had both run for their lives once; now the running was different, running to secure what they had fought for, to not leave a mess for sons who might not be as lucky as them.

“We march toward Romelia’s august halls to dine under chandeliers that have seen three centuries of dust,” Jarza said, a half-laugh in his voice as he pulled his horse beside Alpheo.

Had he prepared that on the moment?He doubted he could use such fine language…

Unbeknowst of his friends thought he looked at the horizon. “What an honor.”

Alpheo let the sunlight flash across the steel at his belt and answered, tone flat.He was not in the mood for sentimentality.

“We are not marching for chandeliers. We are marching to prop up the skeleton of an empire, no time for nostalgia. Culture is for those who have the leisure to taste it.All you can taste is the rotten spoil of a state close to death.”

Jarza’s mouth twitched. “You used to carry more of a jest on your tongue, Alph.Once you would have made poetry of a rock.”

“Working every day to avoid dying,” Alpheo said, watching a thin line of camp smoke coloring the air near the city, “does little for a man’s laughter.” He glanced down at a cluster of member of the Primogenia, “The day I bring Nibadur’s head back on a plate, maybe the world will look like flowers and birds again.”

“When has it ever been like that?”

Alpheo’s grin was almost a scoff. “When we were young and the chains of the throne were a story we vowed to mock. Now we became those that held our chains.” He watched a standard ripple far off, a white slash against black . “Now we help raise the throne we once spat on. Strange how things tie up in knots.”

”It went pretty easy, didn’t it?Think was yesterday we starved on that sand.”

“If anything, life’s a scrap,” Alpheo said, envying the man’s humor. “I’ll teach him that, my son. If he’s to take my reins, he needs the right head on his shoulders.”

“What kind?” Jarza barked, voice like a kicked barn door.

“The innovative one,you know considering that half the things we did were unheard of” Alpheo said. “I’m laying down the bones of a different state, bricks that inevitably make old men curse. He’s got to run that road, not listen to the frogs croaking comfort in his ear. Those men will poison him.”

Jarza spat into the dust. “Shit’s mad.I don’t envy him”

“He’ll have silk and honey and biscuits as I do my job,” Alpheo replied. “But comfort’s got a price. Most of the time the bill’s paid in blood.He will have to learn that if he does not want to pay that price”

Jarza gave a short laugh, hard as flint. “That mantle won’t fit everyone’s arse.He’d got lot to cover…”

“A son who spends his life trying to be me? He’s already lost then,” Alpheo said flat. “If he aims to be my shadow, he’s beaten before the first horse’s hoof hits the dirt.A man should strive to get over his father’s shadow not nurture in it.”

“Your bloody expectations are insane,” Jarza stated , visibly perplexed “Still, better insane than a coward. Should be happy your son is not that, at least.”

A quiet sat on them for a bit. Then Alpheo asked realing they were talking only of his “How’s your boy, anyway?Happy to be father again?”

“Healthy, annoying, and stubborn as a mule,” Jarza replied , though the corner of his mouth cracked. “Torghan’s at our place more than his sister. Kid’s got a soft spot for the nephew. Keeps poking at him like he’s trying to wake the lad up.”

Alpheo smiled as he watched behind him. Seeing the Voghondai boys shoulders behind his units pleased him; he’d rather eat with them than hear sermons calling for their heads.

Especially since now one of his nephew was half Voghondai.

“And those old pious bastards?” Jarza muttered. “They’re gonna bitch, aren’t they?”

“They’ll yap,” Alpheo said. “There’ll always be some sermon-hungry priest telling the anxious wealthy to look for scapegoats. I fought a rebellion to keep those dogs under me, no way I am gonna waste them for some sermons.”

Jarza grinned, showing the long yellow teeth of an older man who’d seen too many wars, especially in the last decade.

“Nice bit of work, aye?” he said, jerking his chin toward the ridge.” Seven stone keeps squatted on the hills, each a squat crown with a mote of water cutting it off from its neighbor, little islands of defense sticking out of the green. “Mad thing to try and take head-on, wouldn’t it?”

Alpheo followed his gesture, eyes narrowing at the neat geometry of towers and ditch. It took barely two seconds to destroy the paper tiger”It’s a stallion without hooves,” he said. “Romelia wears jewels while starving.

They don’t have the coin to keep the ramparts whole, let alone the men to man them. If an army lays siege to the capital, this line will not be the thing that saves them. When it fells and the rest fall back, the invader’s horses will punish them for the arrogance. The city already got two set of walls, no use in having a badly manned third. Perhaps at the height of their power it was more than a sensible choice to have that.I suppose not even forty thousands could have taken the city then, now?I think even I could take it.

Not that it would a walk into the park,of course.

I think that Gratios was besieged by his elder for three months here during their civil war. Who knew that the weakest of the three would take advantage of the moment to burn the victor’s supple, and win the civil war.”

”How ironic that the War-Emperor won his throne by just waiting.You wouldn’t expect that from a man with such fame”

”I suppose not.” Alpheo said at last before silence returned once more.

They rode down the slope together,the smell of the city approaching their nostrils as they got closer and closer to the crown they were to help survive.

The steady drum of boots set under feet like a constant tide all unaware of the great price they would pay in these lands.

A Romelian guide fell into step at the front of the column.

“Here,” the guide said, “this green between the hill-castles and the city is as good as any. Room for tents, water near the brook. The city feeds from these fields; we hope we won’t hear trouble coming from here.It is a good place to let the army rest, Your Grace. His Imperial Majesty believes you would prefer to make your own camp?”

Alpheo nodded and signaled. The working echelon moved forward first, rolling heavily through the trampled grass.

It took barely two minutes before they started working on the encampment, digging ditches and building the tents. As for Alpheo and the rest? They made their way toward the eternal city they were looking to save.

None took it against their host about campaing the army outside, after all, only a fool would invite a foreign army, even allies, inside a capital.