Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 566

Chapter 566: Taste of mud
None of them had ever imagined this.

The rebel lords had expected to ride through fire and smoke into glory, to drink victory from gold cups while the fields still smoldered behind them.

Instead, they had fled like shadows at dusk—thieves in the night, their banners torn, their triumph crumbling before it had ever begun. What was supposed to be their night of glory had turned into a shameful retreat beneath the sneering moonlight, their once-proud host dissolving before their eyes.

Now, they waited in the city of Agripisio.

For what only the gods knew.

It was an old city, proud in its past, but its walls felt like a cage for the men within who were only awaiting the blade’s descent . The air inside the hall where they had gathered was thick with failure, the silence broken only by the occasional scrape of boots or the wet cough of a wounded man. No toasts. No laughter. Only the faint scent of ash

Among them sat Lord Eurenis, his once-gleaming breastplate now cast aside and stained with dirt and blood. A thick bandage wound around his shoulder, the white linen already darkening with a slow, crimson bloom. The arrow that had struck him during the initial clash had torn through flesh and pride in equal measure. He had been leading the left flank then, banners raised high. The arrow found him before the enemy did—a cruel and mocking gift from a battle they barely got to fight, along with another one on his leg. which happened in the same circumstances as the first

Now he sat in a carved chair too stiff to lean on, one arm limp at his side, the other gripping a goblet he hadn’t touched. His face was a tight mask of pain, though whether from the wounds or the disgrace, none could say.

Around him, the other lords muttered, eyes flickering toward one another with suspicion, blame, and the dawning realization that their war had not just failed—it had collapsed. And in its ruins, they now waited, not as commanders of a revolution… but as men cornered by fate.

The weight of defeat pressed on their shoulders like armor made of lead. There was nothing left to say, because deep down, they all knew: they had lost everything.

Not just a battle, but the war.

Their armies had been broken in a single night, their banners scattered, their soldiers dead or fled. Their leverage—gone. With no force left to put on the field, they had nothing to place on the table but words, and even those had lost their edge.

Lord Lysander, eyes rimmed with fatigue, finally broke the silence.

“What do we do now?”

Eurenis, still pale from blood loss and gripping his bandaged shoulder like it held together more than just flesh, let out a slow breath.

“We beg the prince for peace. Is there any other road to take?”

His voice lacked any pride, but carried the dead weight of realism. There was no use pretending otherwise.

A few seats down, Lord Niektas said nothing.

He didn’t have to. His face told the whole story. He was already playing the scenes in his mind—riding back to his fief, watching the gates close behind him, telling himself it could be held, maybe for a month, maybe two. But he knew the truth. The prince would come. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a week.

There was no grand last stand, no heroic retreat. Only the creeping dread of siege, or the humiliation of bad terms wrapped in gold seals.

A bitter peace would be coming, or at least they hoped

Because it was either that—or to burn.

As far as they knew, Lord Gregor and the accursed priest Elyos were either dead or in chains. No rider had come bearing better news—only silence, which in times like these, was rarely kind. And with their disappearance, so too vanished a good portion of their strength . Elyos especially had been the linchpin of their funding, the one who whispered to the temples, who collected their silver not for the lords themselves, but for his own sacred cause. The wealth of the clergy had flowed into his coffers like water into a basin—and now the basin was shattered.

Even if, by some miracle, those funds still existed somewhere under the priest’s control, what could they do with it now? Perhaps they could scrape together enough to hire a few bands of mercenaries,. But how many would answer a call from a cause already drowned in defeat? And how quickly? Weeks? Months? They had days. At best.

The room was again thick with silence when Lord Eurenis finally snapped. With a cry of frustration, he slammed his bandaged fist onto the table. The impact made the half-filled goblets jump, the pewter pitcher shudder, and a startled servant in the corner flinch.

“All of this,” he growled, voice a venomous rasp, “because of that damn priest. That zealot. He forced us in this hopeless situation!”

He stood, breath heaving, anger washing over the dull pain in his shoulder, blaming a person as if not recognizing that he who moved the accused bore the same guilt.

“Even with all the odds in our favor—we outnumbered them, gods be damned!—we were shattered like green recruits! And now what are we left with?” His gaze swept across the grim faces of the others. “Nothing but broken banners and hollow titles. We’re not lords now—we’re scavengers, hoping to gather what little might remain when the war’s done with us.”

No one dared speak. No one dared argue.

Because every word of it was true.

Lord Niketas, who had remained silent for much of the discussion, finally broke the stillness. His voice was calm, but there was an edge of weariness to it, like a man who had already begun mourning the inevitable.

“There’s no use in cursing the priest now,” he said, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “He’s captured, and if he’s not already dead, he will wish he were soon enough.”

A few heads turned toward him, but none interrupted.

“We may yet be spared,” he continued. “Stripped, yes—of lands, titles, coin, and pride. We’ll be left with the rod, no doubt. But not the axe. I wager the prince would rather see us humiliated than martyred. After all, I don’t think he would like wasting half his reign besieging each of our cities.Which would most certainly happen if he believed the axe to be our end.”

Hearing that, Lord Eurenis shifted in his seat, his jaw tightening as a sharp bolt of pain ran through his bandaged shoulder. He winced, breath hissing through clenched teeth, before managing to speak through the discomfort.

“So… we truly have nothing to offer?” he asked, his voice laced with bitter disbelief. “No cards, no leverage? Just exposing our necks while telling him that swinging the axe will chip the blade?”

Lord Lysander, seated to his right, gave a tired nod. “There’s the coin,” he said. “What we received from the temple. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

Eurenis scoffed, adjusting his posture to ease the sting in his shoulder. “That coin was given to us by the priest. It’s his lead through which we followed into this mess. For all we know, The prince will take it over to when they breach our walls. Always if the priest did not already lead him to the golden pot to save his skin or maybe to stop the torture.”

A silence followed, dense and heavy.

Then Niketas spoke, arms resting on the table like weights pinning down his thoughts. “What if we hide it?”

The others looked at him.

“The silver,” he said, “bury it. Seal it somewhere only we know. And when we do come to terms—if we’re still alive to do so—we offer its location in exchange for leniency.”

There was a beat. A slow, grim nod from Lysander. Eurenis raised an eyebrow, intrigued despite himself.

“Of course,” Niketas added with a dark note in his tone, “that all hinges on whether the prince doesn’t simply take our castles by force, take us alive and torture the truth from us.”

A chill passed through the room, and the lords exchanged wary glances. None of them said it aloud, but the name lingered between their thoughts: Alpheo.

He wasn’t a man prone to sentiment. If anything, he relished in the art of pressure. Diplomacy, yes. But only after the fear was planted like a dagger between your ribs.

“Is there… anything else?” Eurenis asked, voice low, almost hoarse. “Anything we can offer? Any reason for him not to put all our heads on pikes?”

There was a pause before Niketas answered. He didn’t look up. His fingers drummed once on the tabletop, then stopped.

“…Our daughters,” he said plainly. “They may be of use.”

The words hung in the air like a blade caught mid-swing. It took a moment for them to fully land, and when they did, it wasn’t with shock—but with a silence more telling than outrage.

No one protested. No one stood. Because no one could deny it anymore.

It was over.

They were no longer lords with swords in hand, but men seated before the judgment of a victor who had no need to listen. A bull was charging toward them, and all they had left were the red silks of their own bloodlines to wave in front of him, hoping it might calm the beast or at least buy them time.

Niketas finally met their eyes, his face grim, unsmiling. “Some perhaps will catch the prince’s eye, of course, I do not know how much that will leash his wrath.

From what we know, he doesn’t have any mistresses, and he has been at war for nearly three months; we may make use of that in some way. I believe I speak for everyone when I say that right now saving our skin is more important than saving our face.”