Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 146

Chapter 146: A city falling on itself(1) Chapter 146: A city falling on itself(1) Three weeks had passed since the brutal execution of Thalys, and the city of Confluendi was a shadow of what it once was.

The new garrison commander, a certain Captain Gairos, had been reluctantly thrust into leadership after Thalys’ downfall.

He stood atop the battlements, his mind heavy with frustration as he surveyed the demoralized remnants of his men.

The sight of Thalys being quartered alive had shattered whatever semblance of courage the defenders once had, making them look more like dead men than alive.

That fool, Gairos thought to himself, his jaw clenched.

If he was going to risk such an idiotic move, he could have at least made sure to kill him, instead I am made to clean after his mess.

Now, Gairos was left to pick up the pieces of a broken garrison, barely holding the wall with soldiers whose minds were plagued with fear.  He realised there was nothing to clean.

The execution of Thalys had hit Elyra, the widow of the late Lord Odmund, especially hard. She had retreated into a fortress of her own mind, keeping her son, young Lord Cedric, locked away in her chambers.

Cedric, was never let outside her room and as a consequence, the time she left too was few.

Elyra’s paranoia was suffocating the city’s court.

Anyone who so much as whispered about surrender, or even hinted at negotiating terms with Alpheo’s forces, was executed on the spot.

Gairos had already seen several of his men drag away to their deaths.

With every passing day, it became clear to Gairos that the siege was unwinnable.

Supplies were high, but the man were few , with low morale and bad equipment.If the enemy army was a lion than the garrison was a starving kitten without claws..

 What had started as a mostly peaceful siege-albeit one marked by tension and fear-had now become a slow, grinding torment.

The enemy had begun their skirmishes, sending forth long, towering wooden siege structures, their bowmen taking the high ground and raining arrows down with lethal precision.

Gairos watched helplessly from the walls as Alpheo’s archers, stationed on these towering constructs, picked off his men with the high ground .

Any attempt to return fire was met with heavy losses.

His archers, already demoralized and exhausted, could not match the enemy’s superior position.

For every arrow they loosed, ten would come back from the enemy, and his men fell one by one.

In just four days they had lost 20 men and had 32 wounded, which was nearly half of all the bowmen they had.

And if the casualties from the skirmishes weren’t enough, rumors of sickness spreading through the city’s populace had reached Gairos’ ears.

The plague, whatever it was, had taken root in the tightly packed quarters of Fenthir.

People had begun to fall ill in waves, their homes quickly quarantined by Elyra’s decree.

Whole districts were locked down, with the sick and dying trapped inside their homes.

Gairos was not a loyal man, in normal situations he would not have had a second thought to leave a sinking ship.Yet when Lady Elyra gave him the position he also made sure to keep his family inside the keep, just for protection of course.

So unless he wanted to risk his family’s well-being, he had no choice but to steer the sinking ship toward a safe port.

Gairos grimaced, realizing that their chances of surviving this siege were slipping further.

If it wasn’t the arrows from the enemy’s bowmen that killed them, it would be the sickness that now crawled through the city, unseen but ever-present.

To make sure that sickness did not take hold of his men, he had ordered for no contact to be made with the common population, which also meant no more whorehouses , something that the men did not take very well.  Yet a few whips on the back made most keep their issues to themselves and forced them to relieve themselves when no one was looking.

His brow furrowed as he peered across the barren landscape between the walls and the enemy camp.

Why haven’t they attacked?

The thought gnawed at him.

If the enemy had such an advantage, why didn’t he press it?

Did the enemy commander fear his own losses in an all-out assault?

Maybe they hope hunger will break us, he thought, casting a glance at the smoke rising from the quarantined districts of Fenthir, where bodies were certainly burning .

Food supplies were far from dwindling, the villages outside the walls picked clean during the early days of the siege.

The countryside was barren now, stripped of anything that could sustain them, and the cold winds that had begun to sweep through the land signaled that winter would soon arrive.

With it, the bitter bite of frost and hunger would come too  Yet, the enemy showed no sign of discomfort, no desperation.

They simply sat in their camp, content to let time do the work for them.

Gairos couldn’t fathom it.

What Gairos couldn’t understand, standing atop the walls and puzzling over the enemy’s inaction, was that the attack had already begun a long time ago.

—————- Alpheo sat in his tent, his posture relaxed but his gaze sharp as he looked at the two kneeling men before him.

His leather chair creaked as he leaned slightly forward, studying them.

These men, their faces bruised and dirtied from the scuffle, knelt with their hands bound behind their backs, their eyes fixed on the ground.

Their breaths were shallow, still recovering from the short, violent encounter that had brought them here.

A few minutes earlier, one of Alpheo’s scouts had burst into the tent with news.

While patrolling the countryside around the city, his men had spotted a group of five walking through the barren, wind-swept lands beyond the reach of farms and settlements.

The area was lost, abandoned since the siege began-no place for wanderers.  The scout recounted that, as they rode toward the group, the men unsheathed their swords in a panicked defense, but the clash was brief and decisive.

Three of the men were felled swiftly, cut down by the scout’s riders.

These two were the survivors, dragged back to the camp for questioning, leading to the current situation.

One of the kneeling men, slightly overweight and dressed in clothes that had once been fine but were now disheveled, lifted his head cautiously.

His face glistened with sweat, and his voice trembled as he spoke.

“I…

I am a merchant, good sir,” he stammered, his eyes darting nervously between Alpheo and the guards standing at attention.

“Those men, the ones you killed, they were mercenaries-hired to protect me and my wares.” he answered when Alpheo asked about their identities.

Alpheo’s eyes narrowed,they must think me stupid….

“And where were you going?

You had almost nothing with you when my man caught you.” The merchant swallowed hard, his throat dry.

“Bandits,” he said quickly.

“I was set upon by bandits.

They stole my goods, my entire caravan…

I barely escaped with my life.

These men, they followed me after we fled.” Alpheo leaned back in his chair, a faint smirk playing on his lips.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said slowly, his tone dripping with skepticism.

“You lost everything-your goods, your caravan-and yet these mercenaries still followed you, unpaid, into the wilderness?” ”I have my purse with me sir, I still have the means to pay them, and of course I would be more than happy to bring it as a gift for your fine officers….” The merchant spoke with a fat grin and a sweaty face.

Alpheo continued as he had not heard ”And more curiously, you’re walking through a warzone, near a besieged city where an army, full of greedy men are bored out of thier mind?

You think me a fool?” The merchant opened his mouth, his face flushing, but no words came out.

He stammered incoherently, clearly caught off guard by the question.

Alpheo sighed, the sound of his exhale heavy with disappointment.

He waved his hand dismissively.

Two guards stepped forward, grabbing the man kneeling beside the fat merchant.

He tried to struggle, but the guards pressed him down with practiced ease.

One of them firmly pinned his legs to the ground, while the other produced a rough cloth, pulling it tight over the man’s face.

The fat merchant’s eyes widened in horror, his voice cracking as he stammered, “W-what are you doing?

What-what is this?I am a merchant I swear on the gods” Alpheo remained silent, his lips curling into a cold smile.

His eyes never left the scene unfolding before him.

A guard holding a bucket of water stepped closer, tilting it slowly, letting the water trickle over the cloth covering the prisoner’s face.

At first, the prisoner sputtered, his body jerking instinctively as the water soaked through the fabric.

Then the trickle became a steady pour.

The man beneath the cloth began to thrash wildly, bubbling sounds escaping his covered face as if he were drowning, the sensation of suffocation immediate and unbearable.

His body strained against the guards holding him down, muscles twitching in desperation.

The fat merchant, still kneeling beside him, watched in frozen terror.

He glanced at Alpheo, but the commander remained unmoved, still smiling faintly. “We…

we know nothing,” he muttered, barely audible at first.

“We know nothing!” He repeated the words, his voice growing louder and more frantic, the sound of his desperation filling the tent as he cowered.

The tortured man was dragged upright by the guards, coughing and spitting water onto the dirt floor of the tent, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.

His face was pale, drenched in water, and his body sagged with exhaustion.

Alpheo leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing as he spoke, his voice calm but commanding.

“Do you have the same story to tell as your companion?” The man’s eyes darted toward the fat merchant, terror etched in every line of his face.

He shook his head frantically, his lips trembling.

“N-no…

please, no more!” he begged, his voice hoarse and broken from the ordeal.

“He’s not a merchant…

he’s…

he’s an envoy, sent by the court!

And me…

I’m just a soldier-nothing more!” At that moment, the fat man, still kneeling beside him, suddenly shouted, “Shut up!

You fool, shut your mouth!” Alpheo’s eyes flicked toward the fat man, unimpressed by his outburst.

“Gag him,” he ordered, his voice smooth and unbothered.

Without hesitation, the guards shoved a rag into the fat man’s mouth, muffling his protests as he struggled to speak.

Turning back to the tortured man, Alpheo’s gaze was as sharp as steel.

“Now,” he said, his tone soft but deadly, “you’re going to tell me everything, and unless you want another round of bathing, I suggest you start talking good..” Alpheo glanced at the fat man, still gagged and struggling, his muffled protests barely audible.

Without sparing him another thought, Alpheo waved his hand dismissively.

“Take him out,” he commanded.

“Keep him under guard until I decide what to do with him.” The guards immediately seized the fat merchant, dragging him out of the tent.

His eyes bulged with panic as he tried to shout through the gag, but his voice was drowned by the sound of his feet scraping across the ground.

As the flap of the tent closed behind them, the tension in the air shifted.

Alpheo turned his attention back to the trembling man still kneeling before him.

“Now,” Alpheo said, “we can have a proper conversation.”