Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1013: New plans(3)

He wore white the day his whole world perished.

He had been a young man of nineteen, draped in the pristine white of a night tunic, his thighs bare to the biting air, a young prince who had looked in the mirror and seen a conqueror, only to have the glass shattered by the hand of a monster.

He had always viewed his father as an ocean: a vast, unyielding force that could engulf any obstacle. Sorza had spent his youth measuring his own worth against that tide, and even now, seven winters later, he felt like a man standing on a dry shore, hopelessly lacking.

The Great Expedition.

They had marched when Yarzat was supposed to be a dying beast, bleeding from internal rebellions and hammered by Herculia from the north. It was meant to be a harvest of laurels. Instead, it was a slaughter in the mire.

What could a man do against such reckless force?Two crowns and a rebel host against one. A normal man would have caved; that had been their mistake since the start.

They had misunderstood that monster’s worth.

Even through the warmth of the palace, Sorza could still feel the phantom cold of that day stinging his skin. He could feel the abrasive rub of the horse’s saddle against his bare legs and the desperate, frantic pressure of his feet against the stirrups as they rode for their lives.

Danger was at their heels.

He closed his eyes and the screams returned, shrill, wet, and indistinguishable, it was dark, so he could not see how close the enemy was, but just by the sound alone, it seemed as if they were breathing just behind his neck.

Lords in colorful heralds and common guardsmen fell into the muck with the same pathetic finality. Javelins, thrown with the inhuman precision of Yarzat’s devils, hissed through the air to skewer men from behind. He had seen steel nail his friends to the earth, perforating rib cages and lungs as if they were made of parchment.

He hadn’t looked back at the falling bodies, but he had heard the howls. Those damned, rhythmic howls of the Yarzat pursuers, growing louder, closer, promising a darkness that no sun could dispel. It was a hunt: the wolves on one side, the sheep on the other, and the sheep were losing.

They had taken his father that night. The ocean had been drained. They had butchered the Captain of the Guard, a man whose he always respected but never saw again, not even his corpse, for the Yarzat bastards cared nothing for the pedigree of the meat they carved; they common-pyred all the bodies they couldn’t recognize.

The sharp crack of a servant carving a roasted pig snapped Sorza back to the present. The sound was too much like the snapping of a human femur. He recalled the way a javelin had whistled right above his ear, nailing one of his guards, Marus, onto the shoulder and causing him to fall onto the dirt, a resounding crack hearable even through the howls as he fell first with his hip.

Eerily similar to the sound of the chicken leg breaking to his right.

The laughter resumed around him, loud and hollow. The feast was in full swing, launched in honor of his guests, who were bringing him good tidings.

He turned his gaze toward the man seated at his right hand.

"I hope, Esteemed envoy, that you find the vintage and the hearth of Oizen to your liking," Sorza began, his voice steady, though it lacked the true warmth of a man at ease, the man gave him the creeps after all. He gestured to the sprawling feast before them. "My father always said that Habadian palates were the most refined in the world. I should be devastated if my kitchens failed to meet the standard of the Great Palace."

Zayneth offered a slow, measured incline of his head.

"The hospitality of Oizen is as legendary as its resilience, Prince Sorza,we are awed by how hard your people are, as even though bleak times they always rise again" Zayneth replied, his voice a smooth, low-timbered chime. "The wine is exceptional, it has a certain... iron finish that I find most appropriate for the climate of our current affairs."

Sorza felt the subtext. He forced a thin smile, lifting his own goblet. "Iron is a flavor we have grown quite accustomed to in these parts. It is a harsh teacher, but a thorough one."

"Indeed," Zayneth murmured, his fingers tracing the rim of his chalice as he gave an equally false smile.

To look upon them now, one would hardly guess that these two men had parted ways amidst the bitter wreckage of a failure.

During the Great Conference, Sorza had been fed a steady diet of Habadian promises. He had been assured that Habadia would stand as his shield, ensuring he retained the Malshut mines, the iron-veined heart of his economy.

But those promises had withered in the shadow of a certain boy-emperor. The young monarch’s unexpected presence had acted as a cold iron weight, stilling every threat Zayneth tried to level. When the dust settled, Sorza had been forced to sign a treaty that wasn’t just a defeat; it was a humiliation that had left his prestige tattered in the eyes of his own vassals.

For Zayneth, the feeling was not so much hatred as it was a cold, clinical annoyance. Habadia had poured gold and influence into Oizen’s defense, only to watch Sorza lose an unlosable war.

To be fair, no strategist had expected the Fox of Yarzat to gamble his entire army on a supplyless sprint through the mud, or better yet the water, but Alpheo had rolled the dice, and they had come up sixes.

And the rest was history...

"How does the current peace bode with your lords, Your Grace?" Zayneth asked, his voice smoother than his boots.

"Hardly well," Sorza sneered, the words tasting like copper. "They sit in their halls and watch the Yarzat caravans pass by like fat sheep, yet they are forbidden to shear them. Not every wagon carries the herald of that peasant prince, but every single one of value does. The lords are losing a fortune in untaxed coin, and they do not blame the Fox, they blame the hand that signed that slap on their face. My hand."

His expression curdled into something ugly. "The border houses are growing bold in their defiance. They refuse to pay their royal tribute, citing their ’grievous losses’ under the treaty. The bastards are starving my court, and I cannot move against them without giving Alpheo arrow for his bows to shoot at my own house."

Not that my treasury could afford that...

He of course, didn’t say the last part aloud.

It was humiliating enough to beg for aid from the Habadians; he would not offer up the full extent of his weakness for Zayneth to dissect.

He tilted his goblet, the wine dark as a fresh bruise, and regarded the Habadian with a weary, cynical gaze. He had not forgotten how quickly the Habadian Tower had lowered its gaze when Mesha walked into the conference room two winters ago. He gave the envoy a weary expression "But you know that already, don’t you? You didn’t come here to discuss the weather or my domestic squabbles."

Zayneth’s smile in a harmless way, clearly hinting that he wanted the prince to say it.

"We truly understand your plight, Your Grace," Zayneth purred, leaning forward into the golden light. "And my prince is deeply sympathetic to your cause."

"How sympathetic?"

"Extremely sympathetic," A voice that was not Zayneth’s replied.

The Prince of Oizen turned toward the source, his eyes narrowing. There, seated at the edge of the Habadian envoy, was a boy who looked to be barely fourteen summers old. He was currently occupied with a piece of roasted chicken, speaking with a terrifyingly casual nonchalance even as he tore into the meat.

"In fact," the boy continued, tossing a bone onto his silver plate with a dull clack, "you could say we view your plight as if it were a knife held to our own throats. And we did not come across the sands merely to offer condolences, Your Grace. We are here to offer a solution for that plight of ours."

Sorza stiffened, his hand tightening around the stem of his wine chalice. He felt the weight of his own crown pressing heavily into his brow. He looked at the youth, and then turned his gaze back to Zayneth.

"And who might this be?" Sorza asked, his voice dripping with icy disdain, wondering if the habadians had grown so arrogant as to let a child speak so in front of a prince. "Who is this child who presumes to speak of kingdom-ending plights without even the courtesy of an introduction?"

The boy did not look insulted. Instead, he reached for a silk handkerchief and began to meticulously cleanse his lips. He gave no mind to the snap of Sorza’s question, waiting until the silence in the hall became unbearable before a certain man begun to speak in his stead

"Of course. My deepest apologies for the late introduction, Your Grace," He gestured with a graceful wave of his hand toward the boy at his side, who was now watching Sorza .

"May I present to the noble Prince of Oizen my ward and student: Soria." Zayneth paused, letting the prince understand that the boy was his successor, before adding something that most would believe should have been among the first thing to say.

"Eldest son of His Grace of Habadia’’