Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1009: Old acquaitances(2)

Will they, however, be enough?

The question made nest and devoured at Jarza’s spirit like a wolf at a winter-starved bone. He stood motionless, silhouetted against the dying sun on the West, whereit plummeted behind the broken peaks as if fleeing the coming dark. The light was the color of bruised plums and cooling blood.

A thousand enemies paced ther borders, and their shields were already cracked.

Jarza knew the matter of their doom: if they faltered, they would be hunted; if they failed, they would be unmade; and if they were destroyed, every stone they had laid and every life they had forged would be ground into the dust of a forgotten age.

Pushed away from the fog they had just crossed, to once more be among the blinds.

He bit the inside of his cheek, but the sting of flesh offered no sanctuary from the cold dread in his mind. The whole world was set against them. They stood without a hand to hold in the dark, and his Prince was scraping the very dregs of the barrel to find the strength to endure. Could they truly hope to succeed against a tide that sought to swallow the very memory of them?

"Jarza...?"

The voice was distant, a faint echo from a world he had momentarily left behind. When the Legate’s senses finally rushed back, he found his knuckles white, his hand clamped like a vice around the hilt of his sword as if he were already drawing it to face the enemy’s host.

His hands uncletched.

Valerian was watching him. The warm, nostalgic light of their reunion had vanished from the Governor’s eyes, replaced by a sharp, unsettling clarity.

"You will have to send more batches, Valen," Jarza said, his voice sounding like the grinding of heavy stones in the deep places of the earth. He did not turn to face his friend; he kept his eyes on the darkening horizon.

"Do I?" Valerian asked, his brow furrowing. "Four hundred is already a heavy burden for the stores. Can the Prince truly sustain more? To feed them, clothe them, and house them for three years? The Voghondai were noble enough to heed our laws, but these others... I do not know how sensible it is to invite more wolves into the fold, especially when there is no enemy yet for them to bite. To bring them here now is to court a riot when the bellies go empty.’’ Something made light inside the governor’s mind ’’ Jarza... is there something you haven’t told me?"

It was not an accusation, nor was it the stuttering of a suspicious man. It was a leveled, neutral stare that gave out nothing.

Jarza was torn. Part of him knew the protocols of statecraft: a servant should not be burdened with the anxieties of the throne, lest the fear trickle down and poison the foundation. But another part of him, the part that was weary, the part that was a man and not a monument, ached for a confidant. If Valerian understood the sheer, desperate necessity of these warriors, perhaps he would find a way to wring the mountains dry of every abled hand.

He looked at Valerian, then back at the line of savages being branded with ink and soon to be clothed in iron. He made his decision. He would pull back the veil and let the Governor see the fire that was coming to consume them all.Perhapse that would make him more set on this work?

"A storm is brewing on the horizon," Jarza said, his voice a low rasp. He did not turn from the setting sun, which now bled a violent crimson across the peaks. "Our enemies have stopped their petty squabbling. They are banding together, weaving a coalition of many thrones with one singular, murderous intent: to lay waste to Yarzat and salt the earth where we stood. If they catch us in their grip, they will not just defeat us; they will deny any sign of our work."

Valerian’s brow darted up, his weathered face hardening like cooling lava. "How many?"

"We yet not know and perhaps it is better that way," Jarza replied. "But it is more than we have, and more than we can hope to muster upon any field. We are outmatched in bone, in horse, and in steel."

Valerian looked toward the line of wild mountain-folk, the realization dawning in his eyes like a slow, cold sunrise. "So this is the truth of it. This is why we are scouring the hills for these savages. The Prince means to arm them like the Voghondai? To build a wall of mountain iron to meet our enemy’s charge?"

Jarza shook his head slowly, his eyes dark with the weight that even that would not be enough "No, Valen. That is not the Prince’s design. He knows as well as I do that if we meet them in the open, we are merely choosing the site of our own burial. We have no hope in a war of lines and standards. If we are to win, we must wage a different type of warfare, one these people are apt at"

He gestured toward the tribesmen being manhandled by the clerks. "These people... they have made their living for centuries by thwarting the invasions of the Sultans. They know how to haunt a forest, how to bleed a supply convoy dry, and how to starve a superior foe until he cannot lift his own shield. They are the masters of the ambush. I was sent here under the guise of setting old wrongs to right, but that was a mummer’s play. This was the aim from the very first step. We are here to recruit that expertise..."

"I see," Valerian muttered. He turned back to the various tribesmen, the Valakii, the Mashka, the Chorsi, and viewed them with a new, somber reverence. They were no longer just loud, starving mouths; they were the pieces of glass the Prince intended to shove down the coalition’s throat to bleed them out. "Truly, it seems the whole world has become our enemy."

"Has it ever been any different for men like us?" Jarza asked, finally turning to meet the Governor’s gaze. His eyes were hard as obsidian, reflecting a will that had been forged in the fires of a cause not yet lost. "If we have no friends upon the horizon, then it simply means we must be more clever than any of our foes. We must be more stalwart than any of their swords. If they have the numbers, we shall have the malice. If they have the mountains, we shall have the will that moves them. We shall be firmer than the very stone of this land, Valen, for if we break, there is nothing left but the dark to take us.

I understand now, with the experience of age and the knowledge of what my friend shared with me, that what our prince is building is not simply a state with him at the top.

He is the light that shall shine the path forward, and our enemies mean to put that light out." He set his eyes away from Galen perhaps realising now, that the war he would be fighting in would be yet the most important cause of his life.

Now he could see why the gods had sent Alpheo his way.

-----------------------

"Shahab?"

The room was enshroud in shadows, the vastness of its corners held at bay only by the flickering, amber tongues of a few candles soon to burn.

"Yes, Alpheo?"

He remained seated in the gloom, his face a landscape of deep-etched lines and silvered hair, waiting for the Prince to emerge from his silent contemplation.

"It seems our labor was not for naught," Alpheo murmured. He stepped into the meager circle of light, his face pale and focused. He extended a hand, offering a small, crumpled slip of paper that bore the jagged, hurried script of a man who had written it while the world was ending.

Shahab took the missive. He held it close to the candle flame, his eyes narrowed as he traced the ink.

"I hope," Shahab said, finally setting the paper down upon the oak table with a trembling hand, "that the gambit you are contemplating possesses the strength to hold. We are placing the hope of a princedom on it."

"Choice is a luxury our enemy burned long ago," Alpheo replied. He did not look at the elder. His gaze was fixed on the far wall, though his eyes saw through the stone toward what was to come.

It was a future he did not wish for.

He raised his hand, his fingertips tracing the edge of the linen bandage wrapped tightly across the far left of his forehead. The touch was absentminded, the gesture of a man checking for a wound that refused to heal.

"I suppose," Shahab whispered, his voice thick with a sudden, chilling realization, "that we must now prepare the very best?He is a man of flimsy tastes after all..."

Alpheo reached out and reclaimed the message Lucius sent him. He stared at the ink one last time.

He is coming.

"Indeed, you suppose well..."