Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 661: Ending the game(2)

Whispers and murmurs rippled across the battlements like a contagion, faster than rot on bread, faster than fire through dry grass.

It started as a hush, a few uncertain glances traded between helmeted heads, but quickly grew louder, more fevered, like the gathering buzz of wasps disturbed in their hive.

The messenger had ridden away, but his words clung to the stones of the wall, to the ears of every man who had heard them.

Words like daggers, soft in tone but sharp in effect. They echoed not just in the air, but in the pit of every soldier’s stomach.

"Do you think... he was telling the truth?" a young guardsman, barely more than a boy, his hand still trembling against the grip of his spear, asked. His voice cracked as he spoke, uncertain whether from youth or fear. "Has the prince truly abandoned us?"

"Fool," another barked back "Don’t listen to the bile of our enemies." But even as he spoke, his eyes darted eastward—toward the road where no banners had risen, no dust cloud had been seen for weeks. His grip on his sword belt had grown tight.

"It’s been nearly two months..." someone else muttered, a voice emerging from deeper in the crowd, laced with exhaustion. "Two months and nothing—no riders, no scouts, not even a damned raven. Only smoke from the hills and the wailing of our own dying."

’’Maybe they are coming. Just... slow. Marching carefully. Gathering more men. You can’t say—"

"Then why hasn’t anyone come to tell us that?" another interrupted. A bitter note in his voice. "We’re the last defenders of the capital, not some peasant village on the fringe. Someone should’ve come. By now... someone should have come; the prince must have truly deserted us."

"You saw the look on Lord Cretio’s face," came a voice lower than the others, almost as much reverent as detached. "Even he didn’t know what to say. That messenger called our prince a coward—and Cretio didn’t deny it. Didn’t even raise his voice."

A few men tried to hush the rising tide of voices, but their hands and warnings did little to stem it. Doubt, once sown, sprouts fast and grows tall, casting long shadows over the hearts of the faithful.

Even the wind seemed to carry the words now:

Deserted.Forgotten.Alone.

They whispered down the wall’s spine like a funeral hymn, and though no one dared to speak it aloud, more than one hand drifted down to the iron clasps of their helmets, fingers twitching—not to ready for battle, but to remove them. To lay them down.

What loyalty did they owe a prince who had none for them?

The cracks were beginning to show.

Overseeing it all stood the last bastion of the capital’s defence, Lord Cretio himself, high upon the ramparts like a figure carved from the very stone.

He had not flinched during the speech of the Yarzat messenger, nor during the chorus of whispers that followed like a second voice within the walls. But now, the time for silence had passed.

"Men!" His voice boomed across the battlements like a hammer striking an anvil. It rang with all the authority of a commander who had bled for his country, of a lord who had buried friends and family to keep the gates shut. "Do not let the lies of the enemy worm into your hearts. Their words are sharpened not with truth, but with fear. Their tongue is a viper’s tongue!"

Some of the men straightened, if only out of instinct. The cadence of command still had weight, even when belief did not.

"The prince—your prince—is on his way. Even now, he rides to us. His army marches to break this siege and bring justice upon the curs of Yarzat. Would you shame yourselves now, after all you’ve endured? Would you lay down your arms just when salvation is closest?Think about your neighbors and friends buried.Would they wish for you to let the enemy win?"

He let the words hang, echoing off the scorched stones. For a brief moment, silence followed—stern, thick, like the pause before a tide rushes back.Some heads nodded. and spears tapped against the ground.

But it was a theater of loyalty—no more, no less. A wall of painted conviction, hollow behind the eyes.

For Cretio knew what the others only whispered in private.

In truth, the hearts of the men remained restless. His proclamation had stilled the surface of the water, but the storm beneath raged on. The rumors were like smoke—crushed in the hand, only to slip through the fingers and coil once more into the air.

And while no soldier dared speak their doubts aloud where an officer might hear—punishment for sedition came swiftly, and hard—they did not need to. Their silences grew louder. Their eyes wandered too often eastward, searching the distant hills where no dust rose, no banners flew.

And Cretio—old, battered Cretio could not command belief.

A man might order soldiers to march, to kill, to hold a line under fire. But he could not order them to have faith, not when that faith had been tested for sixty long, hungry, fire-ridden days without answer.

And gods help him—he, too, felt the cracks. Not openly, not visibly, but deep within. He would stare longer than needed into the eastern horizon, searching for a glint of silver or the distant thrum of hoofbeats. But nothing came. Not a whisper. Not a raven. Not a shadow.

Two months without aid—without message, without movement—turned even the firmest loyalty into a question.

And so Cretio stood alone atop the ramparts, the wind tugging at his cape like a pleading child, his soldiers behind him rehearsing belief by command, but rehearsing despair by instinct.

He was the last bastion not merely of the capital’s defence, but of its hope.

And he knew even stone could only stand for so long before the siege within cracked it open.

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"Damn that peasant fuck!" Cretio roared, slamming his gauntlet against the wooden table so hard that one of its legs cracked beneath the force.

"Was it not enough to burn our fucking homes? Was it not enough to drive our people from their shops, their cradles, their gods-damned lives?!"

He turned and paced like a caged wolf, his heavy steps echoing in the stone chamber, each word spat with venom.

"You take our grain. You torch our crops. You catapult fire at the roofs of good men’s houses—and then, then, you have the gall to parade before my walls and dare poison the last thing we have left? Our will?! Our resolve?! You dare mock us in the very heart of our ruin!"

He stopped, gripping the edge of a pillar, fingers whitening around the cold stone as his chest heaved with fury. His voice cracked now, straining from the shouting, yet he pressed on.

"And where—where in all the blackest pits of all the gods’ hells—is that coward bastard of a prince?!" he bellowed, his voice now raw. "He had ample time. Enough to march twice over from the coast and back! Enough to send word, a raven, anything! But no, not a whisper, not a sign, not a gods-damned shadow! "

He staggered back from the pillar, his strength leaving him as quickly as his anger had arrived. Like a wave breaking on a reef, it all came crashing down.

Cretio’s shoulders sagged beneath the weight of exhaustion. The fire in his voice was spent, replaced by the slow, weary rasp of a man drained beyond fury. He moved to a chair near the hearth—an old thing, lopsided and scorched at one arm—and sat down heavily, one hand over his eyes, the other still shaking.

His armor creaked as he leaned back, and for the first time in days, he allowed the fatigue to show. The deep lines beneath his eyes had grown like cracks in dry earth. His beard, once trimmed with pride, now grew ragged with neglect. The grey in his hair seemed to have spread since the siege began, as if each sunrise painted him older. Sweat and dust clung to his skin like a second cloak. The very breath he drew seemed tired of being summoned.

He stared into the cold fireplace across the room, where no flame burned. The room felt more tomb than chamber.

—Knock-knock—

The sound echoed through the stone chamber like a pebble dropped into a stagnant well, disrupting the silence that had thickened around Lord Cretio’s brooding.

He sat up with a groan, dragging his hand away from his eyes. His voice was gravelly with fatigue. "Who is it?"

The door creaked open before an answer came, revealing Thalien , framed in the doorway like a breath of fresh wind blown into a crypt. He carried a small urn cradled in one arm. His boyish face wore an easy grin, untouched by the doom gnawing at the rest of the city.

"I thought it might be a fine time to share a drink,we still did not have a chance for it " Thalien announced cheerfully, stepping in without invitation, as though the siege outside were nothing more than bad weather.

Cretio blinked at him in disbelief, squinting as if trying to see through some joke. For a heartbeat, his weary mind struggled to imagine what divine madness had made this young fool think now—now—was the time for wine and companionship.

"I have no time for wine," he said, voice clipped and sharp. "I have work to do."

Thalien didn’t flinch. Instead, he hummed, shrugging off the refusal like dust from his shoulder as he made his way toward the nearest table. "Well, I believe there’s always time for wine. Especially when it’s old, and sweet, and free."

He set the gift down with a ceremonious thud, then laid the papers beside it and produced two cups with a magician’s flourish—how he’d hidden them in that simple tunic of his, Cretio could not guess.

"And," Thalien added, pouring the dark red liquid with reverence,after cutting the strings that held the leather that tapped the urn closed. "I believe there’s always time to hear the thoughts of a man who claims to have a solution to your many... many problems."

The rich scent of aged grape filled the air, oddly comforting in its familiarity. Cretio stared at the cup sliding toward him like a trap baited with nostalgia.

"I didn’t ask for you," he grumbled, though his eyes didn’t leave the wine. "Or for company."

"Of course not," Thalien said, taking his seat opposite Cretio with the air of a guest at a summer garden. "No one ever asks for truth, either. But they always need it. It is like medicine, bad in taste, good in ail."