Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 227

Chapter 227: Enemy to enemy Chapter 227: Enemy to enemy The lord of Arduronaven , Vroghios, stood atop the battered stone walls of his city , his gaze fixed on the Yarzat encampment sprawling across the southern fields.

His weathered face was set in a grim expression as he took in the enemy camp below, clusters of white tents and wooden fortifications spread like a rash over the countryside, resembling a small fortification of his own,with ditches around the permiter and wooden-built wall protecting those insides, and worse yet, there were four more of that.

It was afternoon, and the relentless bombardment that had pounded his walls each morning and evening had finally ceased just a few hours before.

The eerie silence that followed weighed heavily, a calm that seemed to press upon the defenders as much as the day’s pounding had.

Dust and rubble still clung to the crevices of the stonework where the stones had struck, leaving the walls scarred but standing.

Vroghios squinted against the low, slanting sun, his mind racing about nay possible action that he could take against them.

Yarzat’s forces had entrenched themselves with unnerving patience, and while the southern camp loomed closest, he knew they’d stretched out around all sides of the city.

There was no easy path and doing a sortie would have no help given how fortified the camps were .

And yet they still did not even bother to fill the ditch and prepare ladders or battering rams, are they trying to starve us out?

Lechlian will come before we even get low on supplies, perhapse that is what they want?A battle against his forces?

The lack of action from Alpheo’s forces gnawed at Vroghios’s nerves as he stood on the wall, his eyes fixed on the stillness of the enemy camp.

Though Yarzat’s forces had surrounded the city from all sides, they hadn’t made a single attempt to storm it.

Instead, they simply pounded the walls with onagers at intervals each day, waiting them out while wearing them down .

His sleeping chamber was at the far end of the city so he had no trouble sleeping, but for the soldiers that was another matter altogether, as during the night some of the projectiles would fall inside and bypass the wall, with the screaming of women and children waking them up.

Originally, Vroghios had thought Arduronaven’s stores ample enough to last eight months if they rationed carefully.

But that calculation had been before the swarm of refugees flooded through the gates.

With the thousansd of added mouths to feed, those provisions had dwindled alarmingly, now barely enough to stretch across three months, five with strict rationing .

And yet, for all the strain they placed on his stores, those same refugees gave him something precious: manpower.

He’d ordered everything remotely metal to be delivered to the city’s smiths, creating a haphazard arsenal from whatever they could gather.

Scrap iron, old tools, even household objects had been reforged into crude weapons.

They crafted daggers, spearheads, and fashioned jagged nails into makeshift maces, battered onto sticks to create brutal, if rudimentary, clubs.

No iron or scrap metal had gone unused, and he took comfort in knowing his soldiers were now armed with something, however rough, even if they looked nothing like a trained army.

All told, he had raised a garrison of nine hundred soldiers-made up from his raiding veterans, the fresh young volunteers, and as many able-bodied refugees able to wield a weapon.

Against any assault, he believed he could hold these walls, at least for now, even if the supplies ran thinner with every passing day.

Help after all was coming.

With nothing to do in front of a siege, the turncloak lord let his thoughts run wild, especially on what brought him to this situation.  Regret gnawed at him,constantly.

In a moment of ambition, he had turned his back on Yarzat, rebelling against Arkawatt’s rule and once defeated throwing his lot in with Lechlian.

But that decision had cost him dearly.

Now, he was nothing more than a puppet under Lechlian’s thumb, forced to shoulder crippling taxes that drained his lands, compelled to send his two eldest sons as hostages to a foreign court, their lives bargaining chips in a game he no longer controlled.

As he thought of his sons and the burdens forced upon him, Vroghios couldn’t help but wonder if all this misery had been worth it.

Had he stayed put in Yarzat, he might have retained his family and his autonomy.

Instead, here he was, surrounded by enemies on all sides, his once-proud fief at the mercy of foreign powers.

He took the bet and promptly failed miserably.

Vroghios thought bitterly of the turn of events since he had first rebelled against the crown twelve years ago.

News of Arkawatt’s death had come like a distant tremor, quickly followed by the rise of his daughter, and then-the most infuriating insult-her common-born husband, Alpheo.

When he was still Arkwatt’s vassals , he had thought of betrothing his firstborn to her, now knowing that Arkawatt died without a male heir made him realize how good of an opportunity he lost, as his house could have succeeded Veloni-isha.Of course at the time joining hands with Arkawatt was a bad idea, especially given how ambitious and yet weak he was.  And now, within a mere half an year of his ascent, Alpheo had taken up the crown’s long-forgotten grudge and mobilized an entire expedition to drag him back to Yarzat, to answer for his rebellion.

The rumors of Alpheo’s exploits had reached Vroghios’ ears as well.

They spoke of a ruthless campaigner who had crushed Lord Ormund and taken Confluendi within a month’s time, some even suggesting he had slaughtered Ormund’s family.

Whether the stories of Alpheo’s cunning and ferocity were true or not, Vroghios could not say.

But in the weeks since the siege began, he realized something.

He was an arrogant piece of shit.

He had tried again and again to negotiate, even just to see the face of the man now so determined to destroy him.

Yet every time he had sent out a flag of truce, it was sent back untouched.

His attempts to reach out were met with an unyielding silence, as though his very existence was beneath notice.

Vroghios’ fingers tightened on the cold stone of the battlements.

He knew that Alpheo’s army was just waiting, watching-refusing him even the dignity of a parlay, while he himself was just a low-born mercenary that luckily found a high-born whore to open her legs to him.

Vroghios felt no shame in bending the knee if it meant keeping his life and keeping his land .

He’d done it twice already, first to Yarzat and then to Lechlian, surrendering his loyalty and even his sons to the Herculian court as hostages.He didn’t understand why people found that hard, it was much easier than see their holdings burn.

In truth, his original plan for the parlay had been simple: meet with the enemy general, gauge his demeanor and ambitions, and look for an opportunity to negotiate a possible return back into the fold, obviously only if they came victorious against the relieve force marching towards them.After all, what good would it do to throw their lot before the results were out?

Perhaps if Yarzat’s forces somehow managed a significant victory, the victorious general could offer peace to the defeated prince -exchange his hostages as terms of the truce-and let the city slip quietly back into the fold.

But with each rebuffed attempt at a truce, that plan withered.

Alpheo’s refusal to meet had made it clear there would be no chance to negotiate, no moment to see his opponent’s eyes or weigh his intentions.

Now Vroghios was left only with the grim reality of a siege that would not end until one side was crushed, and if he was the defeated one, his head would be on a pike; of that, he was now sure, as the entirety of the expedition had been to bring his head back into Yarzat.

Now, Vroghios’s only remaining hope lay with Lechlian’s forces.

If they could break through Alpheo’s army, there might yet be a way out of this doomed rebellion.

He turned from the wall, eyes drifting over the shattered remnants of his city, the wreckage left by the relentless barrage.

Stones and splintered beams littered the ground, homes, and stables gutted by the projectiles that had rained down on them.

Even some of the horses lay dead or wounded in the rubble, the lord’s hearth bleeding a little from the loss of such valuable beasts.

Yet he couldn’t do anything except to curse the boy in his mind, as after all leading a sortie in these conditions was a sure way to lose precious soldiers that he didn’t have the equipment to replace.

He felt the weight of the siege pressing in more with each passing day, even while they passed the day doing nothing but observing the enemy do anything except preparing an assault .

How much longer would it be until aid arrived-and would he still have a city at the end of it?