Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1002: Clear road(2)

"So, the pavillion is officially crowded," Rykio noted, his eyes fixed on the map as if he could see the actual soldiers moving across the vellum. "Habadia has secured Kakunia. Which other vipers must we pull from the nest? How many princes will we truly find across the field with this one?"

"Oizen and Ezvanias are certainties," Alpheo replied, his hand sweeping north of the Habadian border with a chilling finality. "One is the one to gain most with their intervations of course, and Ezvanias follows wherever Habadia go. As for Agania and Reshania, the water is murkier. Rezvania is too far removed from Nibadur’s immediate reach; they have little to gain from a campaign that would see them send an army across the south. And Agania..." A cynical smile touched Alpheo’s lips. "Prince Veken has enough on his plate with the Latvians. Those wolves are always pacing the border, looking for any chance to give Agania a thorough pounding."

"Heh," Edric snickered, "Pounding."

Alpheo didn’t even blink at the childishness.

"He won’t risk sending a real detachment south while an enemy is breathing down his neck. At least, that is what logic dictates. But logic is a frail shield. We have far too little intelligence that far north." He tapped the edge of the map, his eyes narrowing. "In the future, we will have to court the Latvians. It would serve us well to have friends who can create a loud, bloody ruckus on Agania’s border while we deal with the one in the south."

"And what of Sharjaan?" Rykio asked suddenly, his voice sharp with the anxiety of a man who knew the southern passes too well. "Do we know anything of their intent?"

"Very little, and nothing at all," Shahab answered in the Prince’s stead. He leaned back, his lips curling into a sneer as if he’d just bitten into a bitter lemon. "We sent a diplomatic party to Shaza to see if an alliance, or at the very least, a formal pact of non-aggression, could be hammered out."

"I assume the reception was cheerless?" Rykio pressed.

"Yes,you assume well" Shahab said. "An alliance was laughed out of the room, as expected. But as for the non-aggression pact? The bastard refused to put a single drop of ink to paper. He simply gave a ’princely promise’ that he would endeavor to respect the existing treaties. A promise written in the wind, meant to be forgotten the moment he sees an opening."

"Then we expect the worst?" 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"We have no other choice," Alpheo said, his eyes snapping away from the border to a cluster of jagged peaks on the map. "They’ll make a run for the steel mines. It’s the only prize Shaza values more than his own skin. At the very least, it means they won’t be coordinating their strikes with Habadia."

"Why do you say that?" Asag asked, skeptical. "Nibadur would gladly hand over the mines if it meant Shaza’s armies were at our backs, providing the bodies he needs to break us."

"Because I have looked into Shaza’s eyes myself," Alpheo said, his voice dropping into a cold, dark register. "The man is as greedy as he is paranoid. He won’t trust Nibadur’s word, and he certainly won’t trust Nibadur’s steel to hand over a resource that lucrative once the war is won. Shaza will accept the offer, yes, but he will move independently.

He will want to seize the mines with his own hands so he never has to negotiate for them later. It is a greed that works in our favor, if only slightly. I’ll increase the garrison at Malshut, but it will be a skeleton guard compared to what we need."

Things truthfully did not appear green for them,the reports were a litany of closed doors and sharpening blades. They had no allies. They had no buffer. More than half the players in the South were aligning against them, drawn together by the gravity of Nibadur’s ambition and the scent of Yarzat’s blood.

"Fuck this shit!" Rykio’s voice exploded cutting through the somber atmosphere. He leaned toward the table, his shadow looming against the maps. "They are attempting to stitch together a leviathan! Four different princedoms, four different chains of command, and a logistical nightmare that would make the gods weep!"

He thrust a finger violently at the map, stabbing first at Oizen and then dragging it across the expanse to Habadia. "Look at the distance! I refuse to believe each prince will manage his own belly. There is too much road, too many broken axles, and too many starving mouths to maintain an effective timeline. If they want to move a unified host of that magnitude, they have no choice: they must stockpile. They must move their mountain of grain and iron into forward hubs. Close enough to keep them fed, but not close enough for us to reach out and touch them.Which means they will be putting it into Kakunia."

Alpheo’s eyes narrowed into slits. He watched the Commander of the Hounds reach the same brutal conclusion he had been nursing in the quiet hours of the night. The enemy’s strength,their sheer, overwhelming numbers, was also their greatest vulnerability. A giant is easily tripped if he has no ground to stand on.

Rykio spun around, his gaze frantic, scanning the faces of the council. "We all know the math of the blade! We cannot face them in the open field and expect anything but a slaughter. Numbers have a quality of their own, and Nibadur has the quantity to bury us in corpses. So, we deny them the chance to fight!"

He slammed his palms onto the wood, leaning toward Alpheo until they were inches apart. "You said we know the road they will take? You know the path they’ve chosen through Kakunia? Splendid! Let us see how their legions like marching through a furnace! Set the Hounds loose. Give us Kakunia. We will turn every golden field into a blackened scar. We will slaughter the herds until the rivers run red. We will put every village to the torch from the border to the capital."

Rykio’s face was twisted in a manic, predatory grin. "We won’t waste steel on the peasants. No, we want them to run! We will turn them into a tide of starving vagabonds, thousands of desperate, hollow-eyed ghosts fleeing our fires and descending upon the lands that are safe from our fires. Let us bring to them the plagues of famine and the madness of rebellion!

We shall see how much peace the Great Alliance has when they try to move their precious carts through a land filled with nothing but ash and bone!Let us do to them what we did to Herculia, we all saw how effective it had been!"

"That is enough, Rykio."

The room went deathly silent. Alpheo stood slowly, his presence expanding to fill the vacuum Rykio’s rage had created. " We cannot send an army into Kakunia without a formal provocation. To do so now would be to hand Nibadur exactly what he needs: a moral justification. You would unite every wavering prince who is currently sitting on the fence. You would turn us into the monsters they claim we are before our bastion at Megioduroli is even finished. We are not ready for a war on all fronts."

"We won’t need the bastion if we do this!" Rykio roared back, refusing to yield. "Who cares if the ’fucking rock’ isn’t finished? Nibadur won’t have an army to march against it! He’ll be too busy trying to stop his own allies from deserting as their supplies vanish into smoke! If Kakunia is a wasteland, his campaign dies in the mud before it even sees our borders!"

Alpheo didn’t move. He simply stared at Rykio and shook his head.

Rykio opened his mouth to surge back into the fray, his face flushed with the heat of a man who saw a death sentence written in the silence of his peers. But as he met Alpheo’s gaze, as cold and immovable as a glacier, the fire left him. He collapsed back into his seat, the heavy wood groaning under his weight.

"So that is it?" Rykio asked, his voice a bitter rasp of defeat. "Would you have us sit here, counting the days and polishing our parade armor, while the enemy digs our collective grave with a smile? Would you have the Hounds wait until the first torch is thrown into our own barns?"

"I did not say that," Alpheo replied.

"I doubt that," Rykio muttered, looking at the grain of the table as if searching for a way out. "Action is the only thing these princes understand. Waiting is a coward’s luxury."

"You were on the correct road, Rykio, but you galloped past the destination," Alpheo said, stepping toward the center of the table. He leaned over the map of Kakunia, his shadow elongating until it swallowed the principality whole. "You are right, Kakunia is the lung of this alliance. It is where the breath of four armies will be drawn. It will be the warehouse of the South, the singular hub where every bag of grain and every cart must pass to reach the Ozenian front. If we wish to survive, we must indeed do our work there."

Rykio lifted his head, a spark of renewed interest flickering behind his eyes. He saw that his points hadn’t been discarded "Then why wait? If we wait for Nibadur to signal the advance, it will be far too late to set the fires."

"On the contrary," Alpheo whispered, his voice smooth and dangerous. "Waiting makes the harvest richer. If we burn Kakunia now, we merely delay Nibadur. We force him to reroute, to adapt, he will surely find another way.... That brings us nothing but a stay of execution. What I am searching for is not a delay. I want to shatter their thrust by severing the heels that carry them."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Rykio asked, his brow furrowed.

"By unleashing the greatest fear that men of every age have nurtured in the dark of their civilizations,no matter the golden age, a shroud that always encompassed all days and all nights," He looked around the room, bringing that old smile that his friends remembered him to have had when he planned to break through the Romelian camp with some half-starved slaves.

’’And that’s?’’

"Civil war"

He tapped the Kakunian capital.

Rykio’s expression furrowed and then eased, looking up at the prince with a satisfied purr. "Now I recognize you once again my captain; we missed you dearly.’’