Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 546

Chapter 546: Reuniting with the crown(1)
The banners of House Bracum fluttered in the breeze, their figure cutting a proud line through the road as Lord Xanthios’ contingent finally joined the royal host. The morning sun was bright, casting golden light over the rolling field just outside the city of Florium, now a sea of tents, pavilions, fires, and soldiers moving like ants.

Lucius rode silently behind Lord Xanthios, his sharp eyes drinking in every detail. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer scale of it. The royal host—Alpheo’s pride, gathered from loyalist lords and sworn men—stretched far, rows of canvas roofs and standard-bearing poles swaying like tall grass.

He began counting, if only to busy his mind in the wait. Each cluster of tents, the size of each division, the way the soldiers moved and the fires burned—all small pieces of a larger picture.

Two thousand five hundred men, give or take, though it looked more than less.

That was his tally.

Add to that the six hundred and twenty men Lord Xanthios brought—some still weary from the march, but all hardened—and the number swelled to a respectable three thousand soldiers.

Three thousand and more.

He let the thought linger. That was no small levy. In fact, it was enough to match or even surpass what most princedoms could muster for a proper campaign, where twenty hundreds—two thousand—and change was the usual count for lords of decent wealth and influence. Alpheo had done more than rally strength.

He had conjured the very image of dominance, the sort of army that bent knees and cowed rebellion before the first sword was drawn, though for this one it seemed that the hard steel would be needed to be put down.

Lucius had never fancied himself a general—at most he was a footman. But last year , when he had pledged himself to Alpheo , he was promptly locked in a stone room with parchments, instructors, maps, and a teachers who did everything to make their subject enter his skull with the patience of a smith beating steel.

It had been a short education, but not a shallow one.

So now, as he rode behind Lord Xanthios and surveyed the vast camp that sprawled across the Florium plains like a sleeping beast, he didn’t see just glory and banners.

He saw wheat. He saw salt. He saw pigs on the hoof and barrels of dried fish.

Because three thousand men weren’t just swords and shields. They were mouths. Hungry ones. Loud, smelly, demanding ones. And every step they took was weighed in grain and silver.

Lucius had learned quickly that the beauty of a grand host was an illusion held together by logistics and luck. The moment the supply lines snapped, the glamour vanished and the men began eyeing each other like cured ham.

As such,he didn’t believe Alpheo had raised this proud, terrifying hammer of a force to keep it polished and standing for long.

He meant to strike once—and strike true. A final swing of the sword to kill the rebellion where it squirmed, to extinguish the last defiant sparks that hissed in the ashes of civil war.

Lucius was certain of that. The war, from what little he’d gleaned, had been fast and furious, a whirlwind of clashes and betrayals, of lords turning coats and heads rolling from battlements. And all of it… expensive.

In men. In food. In coin.

Which of course made the endeavor be much more awe-inspiring and yet also limiting.

As even if Alpheo, in all his brilliance, desired to press his victories onward—into the valleys of Oizen or the rich lands of Herculia—Lucius knew dreams weighed little against the cold burden of rations.

Even princes had to eat.

And armies, especially victorious ones, always ate like kings.

And so Lucius knew that a military campaign of retribution would have to wait for at least the harvest, but more probably at least the summer of next year.

Still, there was a battle to fight, a rebellion to end and a welcome to be done.

The reunion was not one of trumpets and fanfare—no, this was a more deliberate, private thing, marked not by the thundering of a host, but by the soft drum of hooves and the creak of saddles. From among the forest of tents and fluttering banners that blanketed the plains of Florium, a small band of riders detached itself from the royal camp, weaving through the ordered chaos with purpose.

At their head, unmistakable in bearing, was the Prince himself.

Lord Xanthios, mounted tall and proud on his iron-grey stallion, nudged the beast forward, trotting to meet his sovereign. Dust swirled beneath him as his company came to a halt, and in that quiet space between heartbeats, his gaze met that of Alpheo —young, radiant in posture if not expression.

Xanthios bowed low from the saddle, his head dipping with the precision of a soldier and the reverence of a sworn man.”Your Grace,” he said, voice steady despite the dust and distance they’d both crossed.

Alpheo offered a smile—brief, then fuller when his eyes drifted to the figure just behind the lord’s right flank.

“My dear lord , it is a wonderful pleasure to meet you again. And not just a lord returned,” he said, eyes flickering to the familiar curly hair of Lucius, “but one of my finer servant as well. You keep good company, Lord Xanthios, truly.”

Lucius bowed from horseback, the slight stiffness in his movement betraying more nerves than he let on, as he still wondered what the prince would have done if he had refused him that one last time.

He did not want to think about it too much…

“I trust the road was not too dull?” Alpheo continued, voice smooth like oiled silk.

The older lord chuckled. “No matter how rough the trail, Your Grace, it is always a road worth riding if it leads me back to your banner.” He tilted his head with a lopsided grin. “Though I will confess—taking a few sweets along the way does miracles for a soldier’s temperament.”

At that, Xanthios clapped his gloved hands once and from behind, another horse approached.

Its rider held a length of rope in one hand, and at the other end, stumbling and red-faced, was a man being half-dragged forward, arms bound, eyes full of venom and pain.

Lord Xanthios turned to his prince and said nothing more—because truly, there were some gifts best left unwrapped with silence and without a presentation.

Alpheo’s smile faltered—not from displeasure, but from the sheer surprised of the gift.

His eyes narrowed, and with him, the gazes of all who rode at his back did the same, each man recognizing the foul shape that had been dragged forward like a sack of rotted meat wrapped in noble cloth.

The figure tethered by rope was barely more than a man now.Sir Agolonthio, the traitor of Arduronaven.

Once polished in pride and iron, now he stood barefoot, his steps faltering on the jagged stone road leading to Florium.

His feet were torn and bloody, slick with dirt and a dozen shallow cuts.

His once-proud tunic hung in tatters, stiff with dried blood and filth, both his own. His face was a grotesque echo of its former self: one eye swollen shut, his nose bent in the wrong direction, and gaps showed where teeth had been torn from the gum, leaving his mouth looking like a crumbled ruin. His fingertips were the worst—each nail ripped clean, leaving the raw flesh underneath an angry, weeping red.

Alpheo didn’t move for a moment, didn’t blink.Only his lips curled, in the cold satisfaction of justice ripening on the vine.

From where he sat astride his white stallion, the prince let out a soft exhale, almost a laugh.

Today had been a good day.But now, with Sir Agolonthio of Arduronaven—the traitor, the worm, the lord who opened the gates to Herculia’s dogs—now crawling back into his custody and his own death?

Today had just become a great one.

Like sunlight crawling across the surface of his armr , his voice came soft, warm, almost fond like the purr of a cat

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” he said, cocking his head. “Are my eyes deceived? Is that truly the Sir I see before me? The noble, the brave, the stalwart governor of Arduronaven—that jewel of a city I had taken , which in my blinding generosity entrusted to his care?” His tone dipped, becoming silk soaked in vinegar. “The same city, if memory serves, that fell without even the half-effort it took to win it in the first place?”

Agolonthio did not answer. He couldn’t.

His mouth hung half-open, the jagged wreck of it twitching around a breath that may have once carried pride. His eyes, though—those were dead. Glassy, hollow. Like wine spilled and dried on an empty cup.

And Alpheo hated that.

He leaned slightly forward in the saddle, the light in his eyes cooling from amusement to irritation.

“No, no, that won’t do,” he murmured. “Eyes like that? Those are for the grave.”He turned, glancing back over his shoulder lazily. “Who had their fun with him already?”

Lord Xanthios raised a hand, the gesture a quiet claim. “I had him prepared for delivery, Your Grace. Nothing more.”

“Good,” he said. “Then I’m not too late for the real part.”

He turned his gaze back to the broken man in front of him.

“I’d hoped to hear your first scream with my own ears, Agolonthio. There’s something sacred about a man’s first scream, you know. It has the truth of a man  in it. But,” he gestured vaguely with a gloved hand, “even this…this sight alone…makes it worth having waited so long.”

He let the words linger, let the silence hold their weight.

“Like watching autumn finally break the spine of summer. The sky turns, the green withers, and the rot shows you everything you were too polite to say aloud, and there was so much rot in you that we shall have to clean away with your rolls of meat.”

His horse shifted slightly beneath him.Alpheo inhaled, slow and pleased.

“Yes,” he said, voice light again, “I think I’ll rather enjoy this.Of course, I would not wish for there to be any misunderstanding,” he began, “when the knife begins to carve its way through your flesh. This is not punishment for the treachery you committed. No.”

He leaned forward slightly in the saddle, as if sharing a secret between friends.

“That act—that small betrayal you bartered like coin for land and recognition—was as useless to me as your short life is now. And that, at least, is saying something.”

He paused to let it linger. His eyes moved down, studying the blood-caked feet, the missing fingernails, the shattered dignity barely hanging on like a ragged coat.

“No…the city was taken back with ease,” he said, almost as if to himself. “Barely a wound to show for it. I believe you’ve already made the acquaintance of the man who made that possible.” He smiled faintly, darkly toward Lucius. “So I won’t waste time with introductions.”

Then his voice dropped, slow and smooth and laced with quiet fire.

“What will matter, Agolonthio—what will truly haunt the final rattle of breath in your throat—is that you spat on the royal family. You turned your back to it and the one that holds it”

He straightened in the saddle.

“My wife was the one who proposed your name to govern that city. Do you understand?You made a jester of her”

Agolonthio didn’t speak—he couldn’t.But the twitch in his ruined face said enough.

“She will be sad,” Alpheo said, almost wistfully. “Yes, I fear she will weep when she hears what has become of you. But take heart.”

He smiled again—a soft thing, cruel and fatherly.

“For I’m certain the gift you shall give her soon…the memory of it…will bring her smile back in time.”

Then he turned to his left, to the looming, silent figure of Vrosk.

“Please,” he said, gentle as a feather falling, “show our guest the room he will reside in—of course until he will be cut open ahead of the whole army, slow and methodical.”

Vrosk bowed his head once and snapped the rope taut. Agolonthio stumbled, knees buckling, blood and spittle threading from his lips as he croaked out—

“Puhh…P-pleaff…! Dun…dunnn–!”

The words slurred, broken, pitiful things from a mouth missing too many teeth to form proper sound. He tried again, only to be dragged forward like a sack of flour, heels digging into the dirt, leaving behind shallow trenches that caught dust and silence.

And Alpheo?

Alpheo watched him go.And saw it.

The fear. Back in the eyes. Where it belonged.

Like an ember rekindled.Like a soul remembering it had a body, and the body was breakable.