Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 361

Chapter 361: Ending a liability(3) Chapter 361: Ending a liability(3) By the following morning, the rebel camp was a grim and silent wasteland.

Bodies lay strewn across the ground, some tangled in unnatural positions, others half-buried beneath javelins.

The air was thick with the stench of death, mingling with the acrid smoke that still lingered from the fires of the previous night.

Soldiers moved methodically through the camp, clearing away the remnants of their bloody work and fun of last night .

They dragged lifeless corpses , be it females or males forms toward hastily chosen mass graves, tossing them into unceremonious heaps.

Now and then, a rider would grumble, their voices carrying faintly in the still morning air.

The repetitive, grim task weighed on them, and their boredom showed in their languid movements and irritated glances.

This was after all the work of footmen, not of mounted men.

Egil, perched atop his horse, watched his men with a keen eye.

He understood their frustration; he felt it himself.

Ordinarily, he would have ordered them to leave the aftermath behind, bound for the capital with the spoils of victory and the echoes of their triumph in tow.

Yet this time, the circumstances were different.

Alpheo’s orders had been explicit, leaving no room for deviation.

The rebellion had been quashed, but the task was not yet complete.

Egil knew that what came next would demand patience, focus, and a steady hand.

Still, as he surveyed the carnage, even he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of restlessness.

The thrill of last night had faded, leaving behind only the monotony of obligation and the heavy weight of the work yet to come.

Bloody hell,we should have kept some fools alive to do this job, this is boring,Egil thought as he laid out a yawn, having people dig their own grave that would have been ironic…

 This wasn’t the kind of work he relished; he was a commander, not a gravedigger.

Yet Alpheo’s orders had been crystal clear-every last body was to be burned.

“Make sure the bodies are dealt with properly,” Alpheo had said, his tone leaving no room for argument as he found himself repeating the question with that voice of his.

“We can’t risk sickness spreading through the surrounding lands, we just conquered Arudonaven we don’t need any ,yaba yaba yaba ” His mind hurt to just remember it , who cared if some farmers were to die?By the end another one would sprout to take its place…the only thing that never ended were those willing to work the land.

At first, Egil had scoffed at the prince’s insistence on such measures, not just this in particular , but every precaution he took with the soldiers, such as forcing them to bathe during campaigns in rivers at least once a week , or to wash their hands with soap before every meal.

How Alpheo seemed to know so much about disease , and how to fight against them was a mystery Egil neither cared to solve nor trust.

For a good while, he’d dismissed it as unnecessary caution-until the siege of Confluendi, and later Arduronaven.

He couldn’t deny the results.

In both campaigns, where other armies might have succumbed to the creeping specter of plague, Alpheo’s men remained healthy, or so Jarza implied many times over to the others, as in fact he was the only one of the group that had partecipated in sieges before, hence they had to take his words by heart.

What had initially felt like needless micromanagement became a point of grudging respect, even for him who didn’t give a shit about being clean.

Whatever strange wisdom guided Alpheo’s precautions, they worked.

The absence of epidemics had saved countless lives during those sieges, much even to Egil’s surprise who when he was younger, saw how some of his tribesmen fell vvictimto sicknesses such as yellow fever or the red pox.

Of course, in hostile territory, the calculus changed.

If the dead belonged to their enemies, they were left to rot; their putrid stench and rotting corpses were someone else’s problem.

But when Alpheo intended to annex the land, prisoners from the battle were forced to deal with the bodies.

Now, standing amidst the chaos of their latest victory, Egil sighed deeply, watching the pyres begin to blaze.

He had learned to follow Alpheo’s orders without question, even if it meant spending hours dealing with the aftermath of a slaughter.

As the first flames licked the edges of the makeshift pyres, Egil gave a final glance at the rising smoke.

The acrid smell of burning flesh and wood began to permeate the air, a scent he had grown too familiar with over the years.

“That’s done,” he muttered to himself , as if he had been the one doing the menial task, before tugging the reins to turn his horse around.

The animal snorted softly, eager to leave the grim scene behind.

Egil straightened in the saddle, brushing ash from his sleeve as he spurred his mount toward the camp.

The pyres roared behind him, their glow growing brighter as the fire consumed the remains of last night’s work.

Egil didn’t look back again.

The task was distasteful, but it was no longer his concern.

He had other matters to attend to-people waiting for him in his tent, which he planned to use to relieve himself of boredom, as last night’s works was less fun than he had anticipated.

——————- Marcus and Lucius walked through the camp, their boots kicking up small clouds of dust as they stepped between scattered tents and tethered horses.

The camp itself was strangely unguarded; there were no defensive walls, no sharpened stakes planted in the earth, nor even ditches dug as a token barrier.

The sight unsettled Lucius.

 Did they believe themselves so deep within friendly territory that no enemy would dare approach?

Or was it a deliberate decision born of their nature as cavalry?

Their strength lay in their speed after all , the ability to pack up and vanish across the plains before any pursuer could close the distance.

Perhaps, Lucius thought grimly, they simply had no use for fortifications.

After all, walls are of little value to men who lived and fought on horseback, that is the job of footmen to entrench their position .

That morning, as the sun began to rise over the remnants of the rebel camp, Lucius and Marcus had walked among the aftermath of the massacre.

Bodies lay scattered across the ground, face down in the dirt, bloodied and broken.Of course they weren’t there for fun  Occasionally, the two would kick over a corpse with the heel of his boot, briefly scanning the lifeless face before moving on.

They were looking for one man-Inor.

The search dragged on, the stench of death thick in the morning air.

It was nearly an hour later, near the edge of the slaughter, when they finally found him.

Inor lay crumpled on the ground, a deep gash across his throat that had bled into the dirt below.

His eyes stared lifelessly at the sky, as though he had spent his final moments watching the stars fade into dawn.

Just a few meters away from Inor’s body, Lucius spotted something small and still.

He recognized it: a boy, no older than six or seven, lying motionless beside his father.

It was Inor’s son, the same child Lucius had seen clinging to his father when the rebellion still had a shred of hope, not the first nor the last that had fallen last night.

Still the mission had been accomplished, there were no more witnesses that could rat out their prince’s participation in the rebellion, which meant that they were now safe.

Currently, the pair walked silently, flanked on either side by some men that clearly saw their work as a chore that they forced to do.

The men paid little attention to them, their faces unreadable beneath helmets and shadowed by the flickering light of a dying day.

Marcus and Lucius exchanged a glance but said nothing, their footsteps crunching softly against the dirt as they were guided toward a large, weathered tent at the center of the camp.

As they reached the entrance, one of the guards pulled back the flap, gesturing for them to enter.

The smell of leather, sweat, and faintly of ash greeted them.

Inside, they saw the man they had expected: the same commander who had led the charge the night before.

Egil was lounging on an animal pelt-a wolf, judging by the coarse, gray fur-spread across the floor of the tent.

His relaxed posture and the faint smirk playing on his lips seemed entirely out of place given the brutality of the prior night’s events.

Egil’s eyes flicked up lazily as they entered.

His expression shifted into one of faint amusement as he recognized them.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, brushing a few errant strands of hair from his forehead.

“About time,” he muttered, his voice low and rough, like gravel scraping against iron.

His words carried a mix of annoyance and expectation, as though he had been waiting far longer than he liked.

With a practiced ease, Egil crossed the tent and seated himself at a small table in the center of the space.

Three chairs, clearly mismatched and hastily arranged, surrounded the table, and its uneven legs wobbled slightly as Egil leaned forward, resting his arms on the surface.

It was obvious that the setup had been thrown together temporarily, likely to accommodate this particular meeting.

Egil gestured toward the other chairs with a casual wave, a silent invitation-or command-for them to sit.

His gaze lingered on Lucius and Marcus, sharp and measuring, as though sizing them up in a way that made the air feel heavier, as at the end of the day the man in front of them was a member of the nobility.