Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1007: New rules (5)

What is the meaning of this!" Korgas’s voice was a guttural roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the lodge. His nostrils flared like a winded stallion’s, and his brow became a cliff of fury, casting his eyes into deep, cavernous shadows.

"The meaning is exactly as the air has carried it to your ears, and as my tongue has shaped it for your mind," Torghan replied, his voice cool as ice in contrast to the Chieftain’s heat.

But the simplicity of the answer was an insult. The elders of the Valakii drew closer, their breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches, peering at the Yarzat party as if they were the harbingers of a dark age.

Korgas tore his gaze away from the Legate and fixed it upon Varaku. To his old peer, he leveled another accusation "Great dangers we crossed when you stood upon our borders and forced a choice upon us! You spoke of the suffocating darkness of the DuskWindai; you spoke of a new light you had beheld and begged us to share in its warmth. Little did we know that your light was a forest fire, and your promises were but ash in the wind!"

Varaku closed his eyes for a moment, a heavy, tired sigh escaping him. He looked like a man crushed between two millstones, but he remained silent, offering no shield against the onslaught.

"You promised to protect us from harm," Korgas continued, his voice cracking with the strain of his betrayal. "Yet now you ride as a hound alongside those who wish us ill. You promised to share the secret of your steel, to arm us so that we might stand as brothers. And now, these butchers who marched upon our homes relay that your word is a hollow vessel. Is there no truth left in you, Varaku? Is there no threshold of shame you are unwilling to cross for the sake of your outsider masters?"

"It was never my wish for things to be so," Varaku finally murmured. His face was a mask of impassive stone, though the awkwardness of his position clung to him.

"I suppose not!" Korgas spat. "But you came with the men who willed it! You are the hand that guides the knife! This is a monumental injustice, a stain upon the honor of every man who calls these peaks home!"

Torghan watched the outburst, then turned to Jarza. The obsidian giant had listened to the cadence of the anger without needing the words, his face a portrait of boredom. He spoke a few clipped, resonant sentences .

Torghan caught the words and threw them back at the Valakii for all to hear.

"There is a way things are done in Yarzat, Chieftain," Torghan began, his voice ringing with a new, striking iron. "When you enter a house as a guest, you do not demand that the host’s bread be cast to the dogs, not even if that bread is placed in your own hand and to be done as you wish. It is offered to satisfy your hunger, but it remains the property of the house. So it is with the wine. So it is with the bed. So it is with the very water that cleanses your brow."

He leaned forward, the firelight dancing in his pupils. "The steel is ours. It belongs to the forge, and the forge belongs to the Prince. We gifted it to the Chorsi as an act of grace, though the initial intent was trade. But let us be honest among men: look at your lands. Aside from the mangy pelts of mountain beasts, you possess nothing of value to a city built of stone. We agreed to exchange our iron for the wares of the flesh, for the captives taken from the lowlands beyond your mountains. That trade has ceased, yet the steel continued to flow to the Chorsi who gave it to you. Do you know why?"

Torghan gestured to himself, his chest heaving with a cold pride. "It was not because of your merit. It was a favor extended to the Chorsi only because of the blood I and my Voghondai have spilled on the Prince’s behalf.

We are the steel that serves the Crown; we are the brothers of your blood who have earned the Prince’s favor through a decade of slaughter. What you receive is not a right; it is a charity filtered through my service, a gift that should have been given to my father only. Kinship of blood does not vanish with distance, and even the widest sea cannot wash away the debt the Prince owes to my people’s blade. You are not worthy of basking in the gifts given to them."

"But how can we hope to defend our hearths without the bite of iron?" Korgas countered "What is the worth of an alliance that leaves us naked to our enemies? You speak of light and protection, yet you strip the very tools of survival from our hands. What point is there in being a part of your world if we cannot strike back when the wolf is at the door?"

Serafim, who had been watching the exchange with the detached gaze of a vulture, leaned toward Torghan. He whispered a few sharp, staccato words in the southern tongue, his eyes never leaving Korgas.

Torghan nodded and turned back to the Chieftain. "If defense is truly the heartbeat of your concern, then find comfort in your neighbors. The Chorsi lie close enough to catch the scent of your smoke; they shall be your shield. When the time comes to march against the DuskWindai, you shall receive steel from the armory we have bestowed upon my father, and not a single heartbeat before that. As I have hammered into your mind: the steel is not yours. It is ours.

If you truly wish to learn the art of war, send your young men to the Chorsi. There, they shall be broken and remade, trained to wield the weapons we send with the discipline they require.Of course if this is not well enough then perhaps you should send word back to your old master?Perhapse they have yet need of their old hunting dogs?"

The chieftain’s teeth made a grinding sound as Korgas did his best not to take out his weapon and made a butchery of that room, which however would most certainly lead to his tribe’s death.

"We were promised!" Korgas roared, "We were promised our own steel as the price of our fealty! We were told the alliance would arm every man of the Valakii!"

Varaku finally raised his head, his eyes cold and devoid of the warmth Korgas remembered from their youth. "Those promises were whispered in a world that no longer exists, chieftain. It perished the moment we came to these hills.

The terms were discussed before the Shadow of the Legions fell across your valley. Any pact made without the presence of the Crown, and about his belongings, is a ghost, it is void, a breath of steam in the winter air. This is the reality you must swallow: you will take what is given, and you will offer gratitude that we even deign to share our strength with you on the field of battle."

The words fell like leaden weights. Korgas looked at the few men of his guard who stood within the hut; they had seen the Chorsi warriors in the pass, clad in black-iron mail that turned the sharpest flint, carrying axes that could cleave a man from collar to crotch without dulling the edge. They had beheld armors that seemed forged in the fires of the gods, impenetrable to any spear made by the hands of mountain men.

To have seen such power, to have been promised a share in it, and then to have it dangled just out of reach like a cruel joke. They were being invited to a feast, only to be told they were the servants who would watch the masters eat.

Serafim, ever the astute predator of human desire, felt the tension in the room reach its brittle snapping point. He saw the naked hunger in the eyes of the Valakii, a lust for the iron that had turned their world upside down. He leaned over, his knee brushing Torghan’s leg, and gave a sharp, imperceptible nod. The hook was baited; it was time to cast the line.

"Of course," Torghan relayed, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial purr as if they had not shouted at each other for the last ten minutes, "if your hearts truly ache for the proud iron of Yarzat, if you find the touch of your bronze and leater beneath your dignity,there remains a path to the forge."

The atmosphere in the hut shifted instantly. The Chieftain, the elders, the wide-eyed bloodguard, every soul leaned forward.

"How?" Korgas asked, the word raspy and thin.

"By proving your blood has the same value as ours," Torghan said, gesturing to the heavy, interlocking plates of his own armor. "I have bled into the dust and harvested a thousand souls in the name of the Prince. And in return? My master has shown a generosity that knows no horizon. My tribe knows no winter of the gut; they know no famine, no sorrow, and no fear. They are fed on the fat of the land, honed by the finest masters of war, and granted soil so rich it feels like wools between the toes."

He paused, letting the vision of a paradise they had never known settle into their minds like a fever dream.

"The Prince extended that hand to my old cradle, and I see no reason why he would withhold it from yours. But the iron is not a gift for the idle. It is a reward for the brave."

Torghan stood, his shadow looming over the fire. "Pass the word among your warriors. Spread it through every hamlet and hunting camp in these peaks. Any man who crosses the sea to fight beneath the Falcon of Yarzat, who gives three years of his life to the service of Yarzat, shall be clothed in the very splendor you saw on the path today. He shall wear the black mail and steel-chest; he shall carry the stone that does not break."

He leaned over the table, his eyes burning. "And when those three years are done, he may brings that armor back to his home, and forever bask in the glory of this travels and feats. Furthermore, as a tithe of thanks for his service, the Prince shall gift a masterwork axe and a suit of chainmail to the communal armory of the Valakii for every man who set himself to the task. They shall be fed and housed by the prince, known no hunger and no dishonor except the one they may bring themselves.

You want the steel, Korgas? Then stop begging for it like a child.

Send me the lions your tribes has , and I will return them to you as iron gods that shall make sheep of your enemy.’’

’’What is it?’’ he asked as he saw the hesitation on Korgas’ eyes. ’’Are you frightened to set your warriors to a proper challenge?Or are you fearful they won’t meet the bar?’’

That pricked at the man’s ego.

’’Never’’ he growled

A stupid answer. Torghas himself was a little worried himself to meet the whole South as an enemy.

But he surely wouldn’t say that to the newest meat fodder he was bringing to his prince..