Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 662: Ending the game(3)

Thalien swirled the wine in his cup with the lazy elegance of a man who’d never known real fear—or at least had learned to dance with it. He lifted it toward Cretio in an unreturned toast, holding the gesture long enough that the absence of reply became its own kind of silence.

For all his youth and foolishness, everyone who knew Thalien agreed on one thing: the boy moved through life with the sort of unflappable levity that made you wonder whether his soul had been stitched from the wind itself.

Even now, surrounded by stone walls that groaned under the weight of a siege, his grin seemed to defy the very idea of despair.

But his drinking companion did not share in that rebellion. Cretio sat motionless, arms crossed, eyes locked onto the younger man with a stare that had worn down steel and silenced braver voices. His cup remained untouched.

Thalien gave a small huff, dropping his arm and placing the wine on the table with theatrical disappointment. "Bloody hells," he muttered, "I’d find a better drinking partner among the horses in the stables. At least they’d nod along when I speak."

He leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head like a man watching clouds instead of counting arrows. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Is this truly the gratitude one gets for bringing the fine wine to a man crumbling beneath his own worries? You should taste it, my lord. I swear it’s the most beautiful thing you’ll ever drink—short of the tears of your enemies, of course."

"I have no time for stupid games, nor to wash my tongue with wine " Cretio said, voice cutting like frostbite. "I was interrupted in the middle of work."

Thalien’s brows arched in mock surprise, his gaze wandering the chamber as if expecting to find scribes or armored lords hidden behind the curtains.

"Of course," he said with a chuckle, "I imagine the shouts that echoed through the halls were part of a rather spirited debate with your knights and vassals. Where are they, by the way? Hiding under your desk? Tell them to come out—we’ve wine enough for everyone, though we clearly lack on the cups.

I hope they don’t mind sharing"

"I have heard no solutions from you," Cretio growled. "Only rambling and witless banter."

"Gods, how dull you are," Thalien sighed, flinging his arms outward as if casting off a heavy cloak. "You brood as if it were a second job. This is what war has done to you—made you into stone when you should still be flesh and laughter."

He leaned forward now, resting his elbows on the table, the candlelight catching the mischief in his eyes.

"Look at me," he said, gesturing toward his chest. "I’ve been handed a pitiful hand in life—born the youngest, ignored in peace, pitied in war. And yet, do I frown? No. Because every slight, every bruise to my pride, is dulled by the sweet perfume of a good wine and the even sweeter joy of not giving a damn."

He raised his cup again, but this time not to drink. He simply let it hover in the air like a secret waiting to be spoken.

"Speaking of sweet things, there’s a saying—truth is the antidote to the finest poisons. Wine numbs, but truth sobers. So allow me to offer you the purest, most unfiltered truth I can give."

His grin faltered, just slightly, replaced by something more akin to sincerity—if still laced with that mocking charm.

"I believe the words that rider spoke today were not lies."

The chamber fell still at that, the wine in Thalien’s cup ceasing its swirl, the candle flames flickering as if the room itself held its breath.

Cretio rose from his seat like a man lifting the weight of a crumbling fortress on his shoulders. His hand, heavy with age and weariness, slammed against the armrest with a dull thud.

"Are you a damned fool," he barked, voice trembling with fatigue and fury, "to even entertain the words that spill from an enemy’s mouth as though they were truth carved in stone?"

Thalien, still lounging with the same lazy grace of a cat sunbathing in winter light, merely lifted his brow .

"Oh, my dear lord," he replied, his voice honeyed with amusement. "You cannot simply dismiss every word that comes from a man you dislike as false.There aren’t so many liars in this world.

That’s how fools govern and tyrants sleep at night."

He took a sip, then pointed at the air with the cup as if drawing lines of thought across the room.

"I prefer to form my own opinions with what little scraps the world throws at me. I ask myself—what do I see, what do I know? Let’s speak, for instance, of the delightful bit of theatre our ’Peasant Prince’ staged last night.

Quite the scene if you ask me."

He leaned forward, the smile on his face now sharper and sweeter

"That great plume of smoke that danced across the sky like a funeral shroud spun by giants. Do you truly believe, my lord, that it was all just for jest? That our noble adversary used his precious firewood to make a pun out of your suffering? I mean—yes—it would be a fine jest. But let’s not mistake cleverness for insanity. Even I wouldn’t be capable of such narcissism."

Cretio said nothing, though his eyes narrowed, searching for some flaw in the younger man’s logic. Thalien, emboldened by the silence, pressed on.

"Let us assume—indulge me—that it was not merely madness or arrogance. Let us ask instead: did it cause us any pain? Did it bring down our walls? Spill our blood? No? So why, then? Why burn wood in such grotesque quantities? Theatrics, perhaps. But for whom?"

Thalien paused, sipping again. The pause was intentional. Measured. Then he set the goblet down with a gentle clink and leaned in closer, like a jester whispering prophecy into a king’s ear.

"You see, here’s what struck me. From within the city, the smoke is an irritation—an inconvenience. But from afar..." he trailed off, his eyes glinting as he let the thought hang.

Cretio’s own gaze widened. He stood still, lips parted, as the implication crept like cold wind up his spine.

"From afar," Thalien continued, "a man does not see a few logs burning. He sees flames. He sees plumes. He sees a black veil rising into the heavens, thick enough to choke a god. From afar, it would not look like firewood—"

"—It would look like the whole city is burning," Cretio muttered, the words slipping from his lips like treason made real.

"Exactly!" Thalien clapped once, then quickly cleared his throat, realizing the moment did not call for celebration. "Sorry. Habit."

He leaned back, kicking one boot up lazily onto the nearby footstool.

"Now, my lord, imagine you are a commander miles away. You see the sky bloom black over the horizon. You’ve received no signal, no messenger—nothing. Only the vision of a city turned to cinders."

Cretio’s hands clenched at his sides, the flesh around his knuckles going pale. He hated how cleanly the puzzle fit. Hated the way doubt gnawed at him now, whispering that perhaps, just perhaps, the Peasant Prince had outwitted them all.

"Do you truly believe... he might have turned around?" Cretio asked quietly, like a man afraid to hear the answer.’’Just like he told us?’’

Thalien’s smile faltered into something more bitter. A ghost of a grin, laced with the kind of sorrow only younger brothers and forgotten sons carried.

"My brave father?" he said, sarcasm dripping from the words like vinegar from a cracked cask. "The same man who once abandoned his vassals and fled like a dog with his tail between his legs? Yes. I think it’s entirely possible. Maybe even likely, actually piss on that, I would bet on it."

His gaze darkened as he stared into the wine cup, now half-empty.

"Two months, my lord. Two months of waiting. No banners on the horizon. No thunder of hooves. No message. Makes you think, doesn’t it?"

Cretio said nothing. But his silence was not victory—it was surrender to the creeping rot of realization.

Thalien looked up again, his voice now softer, cutting deeper because of it.

"Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps my blood father—our prince—has deserted us again. Left his people to die in a cage of stone and fire. And if that’s the case..."

He raised his glass once more

"Then I say let’s drink—not to his memory, but to ours. Before smoke and silence are all that remain."

Seeing the deepening shadow behind Lord Cretio’s eyes, Thalien couldn’t help but let out a short, dismissive snort, the kind one makes when faced with a particularly dense riddle with an obvious answer.

"Oh, come now," he said, stretching his arms as if he were waking from a long nap rather than sharing in the dread of a crumbling city, "you look as if I’ve just told you the gods themselves have forsaken us.

Though I believe that they don’t care much about what we do down here.

After all that." He said upheaving a finger up, ’’is their reign’’ , he pointed down now, ’’this one , is ours.’’

His smile flickered, half amusement and half pity. "Still, that would only be the case if you were sharing a drink with anyone but me."

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, the wine glass forgotten now on the table beside him. "I admit, the news isn’t comforting. It stings. It gnaws. But as much as it may dishearten you, what we’re dealing with isn’t the end—it’s merely a mistake. A misjudgment. A tragic little misunderstanding wrapped in smoke and the fear of absence."

His fingers tapped against the wood rhythmically, as if building up to some grand revelation.

"You see, as far as we know," he continued, voice calm, "my father—our dearly absent prince—retreated under the false belief that this city has already fallen. A conclusion he likely reached thanks to that elaborate bonfire of despair lit so generously by our enemies."

Thalien raised a brow, as though what came next were the most obvious solution ever spoken in history.

"And that, my dear lord, is quite easily resolved."

He paused. Grinned.

"All we need... is a messenger."

He let the words hang in the air like incense smoke—slowly curling toward the ceiling, deceptively elegant, utterly absurd.

Because what he had just proposed, with all the casual confidence of a man ordering supper, was to send someone through a gauntlet of death: a messenger that would somehow need to slip past not only the enemy’s outer encampments, but through double lines of fortified siegeworks, past watchful eyes trained to shoot first and ask questions never.

And as if unbothered by the danger he continued:

’’And of course that man can only be me’’