Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1012: New plans(2)

"That was too easy.... Those motherfuckers didn’t have the marrow for a real scrap. Why the fuck do you raise a banner of rebellion if you aren’t prepared to hold it until the crows come for your eyes?"

A soldier muttered the curse, rhythmically tapping his warhammer against the crest of his dented helmet. The metallic clink-clink-clink provided a steady, hollow beat to the shouts of victory.

"Am I hearing you grumbling against easy loot? The fuck is wrong with your head, Drusus?" another soldier barked, dunking his face into a barrel of scummy water to wash away the grit and gore of the day.

"Honestly, how much spoil do you think we’re prying from those wretches?" Drusus gestured vaguely toward the fields of the dead. He patted the sturdy interlocking rings of his own chainmail with a smirk of superiority. "Most of them didn’t even have proper weapon , let alone iron as armor. Their weapons are notched scrap. It wasn’t worth risking my skin for a pile of rust and rags."

"Aren’t you an ungrateful brat? The gods should smite you down where you stand! Not a scratch on you, free coin in the pocket, and you’re blabbering about—" The soldier suddenly went rigid, his hand freezing on his friend’s shoulder. He dropped to his knee with a frantic, heavy thud. "Hail, Imperator!" 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Drusus went ice-cold. He spun around, his heart leaping into his throat, only to be blinded by the most magnificent sight in the Empire. Before him stood a suit of armor that seemed forged from fallen stars, burnished steel emblazoned with a silver eagle whose wings were tipped in streaks of liquid gold. If the sheer luxury of the plate wasn’t enough, the crown-like helm framing the young man’s face announced his identity with the weight of a divine decree.

Drusus mirrored his friend, collapsing into the dirt. "Hail, Imperator!"

"At ease," Tiberius said, his voice carrying the practiced, weary grace of a man who had said those two words a thousand times that day.

His throat was starting to hurt...

His hand was growing heavy from the constant weight of his station, but in truth, the sight of sweat-streaked soldiers kneeling in the dirt was a sanctuary compared to what awaited him. The common ranks offered a crude, honest joy; they rejoiced in victory because it meant they were still breathing. They were infinitely easier to navigate than the silver-tongued sycophants who circled the halls of power like sharks in a bloody harbor.

As Tiberius moved deeper into the camp, the scent of unwashed bodies and cheap ale began to fade, replaced by the aroma of roasting meats and expensive incense. The outer areas, the realm of the common soldier, gave way to the inner sanctum of the high command.

He snapped short, curt greetings to the nobles he couldn’t afford to offend, his mask always on his face. Still he tried his best to be quick about it.

Finally, he reached the Great Tent. The massive Standard of the Eagle stood atop the main pole, its silk snapping defiantly in the wind, announcing to the world that this was the residence of the Sovereign.

The fact that someone was already inside, making themselves comfortable in his private sanctuary, was a breach of etiquette that would have seen any other man’s head on a spike. But there was no one in the East with the courage to tell the Old Emperor’s Dagger off. Tiberius certainly wouldn’t.

He took a deep, steadying breath, feeling like a stranger as he crossed the threshold of his own home. This rebellion had been a need tumor, not just to amputate the treasonous limbs of the lords who had grown bold after Mavius’s failures, but to remind the three provinces of the East exactly what kind of pillar supported Tiberius’s throne.

The rebel lords had mustered a host of six thousand. But a month of Julius’s attention had rotted that wall from the inside. A string of midnight assassinations targeting the most vocal commanders, a judicious rain of gold to bribe the wavering to return to their estates unmolested, and a series of whispered threats to the loyalists had seen that number wither to forty-five hundred. By the time the first arrow flew, the lords remaining had no stomach for the slaughter.

Through this campaign, the East had learned the true shape of the phantom they should fear. And that phantom was currently... sniffing Tiberius’s perfume?

"This really stinks," Julius muttered, holding a delicate crystal vial up to the candlelight. "Are you basing your personal scent on the aroma of horse piss?My shit would have a better flavor than this..."

"That is nutmeg essence,old man," Tiberius replied, his voice level despite the spike of adrenaline in his vein. "It is the latest fashion in Red Rose."

The old man clicked his tongue "When I was a stripling, it was only the women who made themselves sweet for the nose. A man’s only duty was to bathe in the blood of his enemies. These easterners are as pretty and meek as handmaidens. Gratios would lose his head in shame were he still breathing." He took one final, lingering sniff, reeling back in performative disgust before clattering the vial back onto the mahogany desk.

"Where the hell did you acquire this swill?"

"My wife gave it to me," Tiberius said, his eyes tracking Julius’s hands, praying the old fox wouldn’t find the false bottom in the drawer. He wasn’t so much a fool to think the only thing the old lord was getting his hand on was his perfume.

Julius’s expression softened instantly into a mask of grandfatherly warmth. "In that case, pay no mind to my rambling. Use it as if it were water, boy.Never had a sweeter smell truly." He laughed, a dry, rasping sound, and patted Tiberius’s shoulder with a wrinkled hand that felt like a bundle of dead sticks. "It warms my old bones to see you growing close enough for such intimacies. Make sure you name your firstborn after me, eh? Let there be another Julius to haunt the halls."

"I think it was merely her way of suggesting she finds my natural scent intolerable,she is nasty and seemingly gentle with her snarks, you know?" Tiberius said, a cold sweat pricking his spine under the heavy plate. He tried desperately to steer the conversation away from his domestic life and his desk.

"Bloody hell, you have the looks of a half-god, and yet you’re a lost cause when it comes to romance. But what can you do?Some men die of thirst while other dies drowning..." Julius sighed. He paced the tent, his movement graceful and silent. "Anyway, where is your rose? Isn’t it the fashion among you youngsters to tuck a lady’s favor behind the steel of your breastplate?Or did you pluck another flower before the campaign."

"I think her favor was enough," Tiberius said, "considering I woke from her bed with my throat unslit."

Julius turned, looking at his ward with a gaze that was suddenly, piercingly sharp. For a heartbeat, the "kindly grandfather" vanished, replaced by the predator who had devoured a dozen conspiracies. He looked at Tiberius as if he were a particularly slow-witted child.

"It seems you are not in the mood for pleasantries," Julius noted, his voice dropping an octave.

He got that right, Tiberius thought, the chill in the tent cold against his skin.

"Anyway," Julius continued, the warmth returning as quickly as it had fled, "with the enemy army scattered to the winds, we merely await their envoys to ’nobly’ proffer their surrender." He sighed, the sound of a man burdened by the world’s idiocy. "In another age, I would have them surrender their heads on silver platters. But these are the times we endure. We cannot afford to flash our ankles to a protracted war; the Core has already given these eastern ladies a thorough tumble. We must be surgical and quick about the rot."

He ran a hand through his shock of white hair, his face relaxing into the features of a simple, harmless old man. "I shall spend my night gathering enough filth on their lineages to ensure they never breathe a word of dissent again. Perhapse a few killer for that dam..... Oh! I nearly forgot why I summoned you!Apologies, your Imperial Majesty.I will have you accept their surrender. Do the... what is the word? The yada-yada. The pageantry you perform so well."

He patted Tiberius’s back again, but this time his hand lingered, his fingers reaching up to trail lightly across the young man’s cheek. He pinched the skin with a pearly white smile.

"Dazzle them with that pretty face of yours," Julius whispered, his eyes locked onto Tiberius’s. "Be the generous host. Make it seem as though you’ve forgotten every foul name they called you in their cups. Leave the dirt and the darkness to me. I want you to shine in the light, and only the light. I shall take care of everything else.Just as I did now..."

His hand dropped away, the phantom cold of his touch lingering on Tiberius’s skin. "You shall face them alone. I am certain you can manage the theater without botching the script. After all, I taught you everything you know. Still," he added, a playful glint dancing in his eyes that didn’t reach the frozen depths of his pupils, "be reassured that minor stumbles won’t matter in the grand design. Not many of those lords will live to see the turn of the decade."

"You speak as if you won’t be there to witness their humiliation," Tiberius replied, pointedly ignoring the casual promise in Julius’ words.

"You have the right of it, weren’t you the one who so dashingly smashed the wicked rebel lines.’’ He taunted.’’ I have labor that demands my attention. You know how the proverb goes, the wicked find no sanctuary in rest.I am certain you can take care of yourself. You underestimate your own weight, Tiberius. Arrogance was the sin that unmade your brother, but yours is a far more insidious vice: humility. And the last thing an Emperor can afford to be is humble."

Tiberius walked toward his desk, his fingers closing around the perfume vial. He focused on the glass, refusing to look at the monster standing by the exit. "And where exactly will you be while I am soothing the fragile egos of these traitors?"

"Oh... you know.Around," He shrugged.

"I thought we were partners in this endeavor, Julius. Am I still deemed unworthy of the truth?"

"Right, right. Can’t you leave an old man the simple allure of his mystery?" Julius sighed, the sound theatrical and hollow. He turned the hawk-like lines of his profile away from Tiberius. "Well, if my beloved son truly wishes to know, then I shall tell you. I am going to tend to the most egregious mistake that pillow-biter Mavius ever made. I am going to deal with the rats, or more accurately, the rat currently gorging himself off the grain of our barns."

He pulled back the tent flap, allowing a gust of the biting night air to swirl inside, fluttering the papers on the desk

"I think I am ought to bathe myself in warmer air, wouldn’t you say? I know a place that is lovely this time of year, and I hear southern air does wonders for a man’s constitution...especially one as old as I.’’