Nibadur was tall. He was handsome. And seemingly unblemished.

He did not know the soul-crushing weight of waking before the first gray light to hear the breathless reports of scouts, nor the blurred vision that came from spending half the night hunched over paper, tracing supply routes the enemy could take and preparing ambushes. His nose had never been flattened by a punch; his back had never bent under a duty that was not imagined.

His skin never hit by whip, his stomach never stung by hunger.

He hated the man from the moment he first laid eyes on him. Even if they were not enemies, even if there were no host behind Nibadur looking to undo a lifetime of labor, Alpheo would have loathed the sheer, pristine arrogance oozing out of him.

But today, the Prince of Yarzat felt the wind at his back.

"You speak and you speak," Alpheo said, his voice cutting through the morning chill like a whetted blade,his tone had something of a bored note. It succeeded in riling the Habadian prince up. "yet what you say and what I see are two different worlds. You blabber on about your proud host, about how you will march, and sack, and pillage, and have your merry way with everything I call mine. I invite you to try. Truly. For thus far, all I have seen is a man who stumbled at the very threshold and has spent three months trying to find his feet in the mud."

Nibadur stared at Alpheo, a flash of remembered irritation flickering in his eyes. He recalled the same defiant attitude from the commander at the Bastion. Are they all like this? he wondered. Is every Yarzat soul so eager to embrace a grave just to spite a man of better breeding?

"I will not sit at your threshold forever," Nibadur spat, his face twisting into something ugly as he tried to puff himself up against the cold.And despite the cold his face took a hint of red. "It is only a matter of time. And once I have burned every stone of that castle into charcoal, I shall turn my full attention to your meager resistance. What will you do then, Fox? There will be no shadows left to hide in when I set the very horizon on fire. You are powerless to stop the sun from rising, and you are powerless to stop me."

Nibadur leaned closer with his steed, his voice low and venomed. "Either you will face me in an open field and perish, or, if you are as niggardly in courage as I suspect, you will crawl back here to beg for whatever scraps of a life I deign to leave you."

Alpheo let the threats wash over him like oil on water. They were heavy, dark, and slick, but they did not penetrate. He knew the truth of the man before him: Nibadur was powerless to make true of any of his words.

He could let him make all the threats he wanted, he decided.Only fool made threats they could not make true of.

"Perhaps," Alpheo said at last, his voice impossibly calm. "Perhaps all those terrible things could happen... if you were actually in a position to execute them. Do you truly take me for such a witless fool? Do you think I have no measure of your camp? That I do not know exactly how thin the soup has become in your mess tents?"

Alpheo’s eyes narrowed, pinning the Habadian Prince in place. "Who do you think gave the order that turned your grain to ash? Whose hands do you think reached across borders to forge alliances you didn’t even know existed? I know your soldiers are starving. I know your lords are looking at the road home with more longing than they ever felt for my crown.

You enticed them here with the promise of an easy victory, a summer romp through a defenseless land.’’ An hysteric laughter rose in the prince’s throat, but he choked it down. To see the face NIbadur was making was worth all the sleep he had lost, and some more ’’ Now that defeat is anchored to your heels, I doubt they are eager to lead their men anywhere but away from you.

I know some of them already left, and I gave warm welcome enough as my guest."

He gestured vaguely toward his own small, scarred retinue. "You may have a mighty host, mightier than any I could muster in a dozen years. That is true. All man can see it. It is but plain.

But I can feed mine. My men are well-supplied, their spirits are high, and they fight for their own soil. Can the same be said of yours? Or are they merely waiting for the first snow to decide that perhaps desertion is the way to life?"

Nibadur’s face changed. The practiced, princely mask shattered, his features puckering and souring as if he had just been forced to suck on a bitter, rotten lemon. His mouth worked silently for a moment and then went calm.

For all the rage Nibadur could muster, there was not a single point where his opponent had strayed from the truth. Every word Alpheo dotted was a factual blow. Worse still, Nibadur realized with a hollow lurch in his gut that he had no plan to follow that wasn’t a repeat of the failures that had defined this entire campaign.

He had thrown wave after wave of men at those stubborn grey stones, yet the only ground they had gained was what the enemy had willingly relinquished.

It stung. It stung badly.

"You wish for peace? Very well, so do I," Nibadur said, his mouth still echoing that irritated expression of a man put on the backfoot. "Here are my terms: You will relinquish the Malshut Mines. Everything else you shall keep, including your crown of Herculia and all territorial gains made during the Princely Peace. You keep your titles, your lands, and your head. In exchange, you cease this illicit alliance with the Kakunian rebels and join a confederation that is soon to be given birth."

"A confederation?" Alpheo’s voice was flat, but his mind was racing.

He had seen it clearly now; the prince of Habadia wanted to be High King of the South.Well he could be king when he would become emperor.

Fuck him.

"Aye, or a League, if you’d prefer," Nibadur continued, warming to his own rhetoric. "Like those our fathers forged when the Romelians marched south.

If some wet rats can find common ground for a state, why can’t we Princes?We are nobler and more reasonable than bastards who make living by reaping what other sows.

We would see to each other’s protection. When one is attacked, the others raise their swords in defense. We are surrounded by predators, Your Grace.

Romelians, pirates, and now... worrying voices from the north would all be more than willing to attack us.

Tales are spreading of barbarians settling where the Kingdom of Sarleon once stood. Old stories, perhaps, but worrisome nonetheless. They speak of monsters tall as castle gates and demons nesting in that graceless land. I would sooner cast my sword against the impious and the heretic than against a common man of the South."

Alpheo had heard the rumors too, whispers of giants and monsters in the ruins of the north, and he of course dismissed them for the lies they were.They very idea of giants was dumb, one could only think about the caloric uptake needed to mantain bodies dozens of meters high as the voices made them out to be. If there were truly giants , no doubt the Romelians would have already captured some during their long history and paraded them south.

Moreover, even if they were true, Yarzat sat on the other side of the continent. The "demons" of Sarleon were a world away; the demon in the green-painted plate was five feet in front of him.

"Those are generous terms," Alpheo remarked, his eyes unblinking.

"The best you shall ever receive," Nibadur countered.

"I doubt that," Alpheo replied, his voice cold as the morning dew. "I am disinclined to trust you in any matter that puts a blade in your hand and my back to the wind. I refuse them."

If Nibadur had offered such a deal before the first drop of blood had been spilled, Alpheo might have listened. But now? Now he had the measure of them all. He had seen their hunger and their incompetence. There was no reason to trust a wolf who had already lost his teeth.

Especially after he had just taken a bite.

Nibadur’s face flushed a deep, indignant crimson at the response. He pulled back on his reins, his horse dancing nervously beneath him.

"Refuse?" Nibadur hissed, his voice trembling with a mixture of disbelief. "Have you finally taken leave of your wits? I offer you a seat at the high table and the safety of your borders, and you cast it aside trusting in the protection of what? A ruined castle and a few starving villages? Look at the horizon! My army is a forest of spears! If I give the word, they will level every wall in Yarzat until not a stone stands upon another.Even if you succeed now, we will come back! Do you truly think your ’measured’ camp and your scorched earth can stop us again next year?Or the one after?It will be war until I win."

Or until you die, but Alpheo’s didn’t say that, he just observed him.

"You are choosing a slow, agonizing death for your people over a golden peace. Is your pride so vast that you would rather rule a graveyard than share a peace?"

All of Alpheo’s disdain exhaled from his nose.

’’My pride is inconsequential right now’’ that was a lie ’’My duty compels me to set to right all of the wrong you have done. But duty can give way to hope if the wish is there.

You have given me terms, I refuse them and I offer my own’’

It was silence once again, as the two enemies took measures of each other.The man who had everything and was losing, and the one who had nothing and yet was winning.

’’This is all I demand for peace to be restored for as long you may wish for it to last.’’

The wind howled as if sharing the words the Fox mouthed

’’Quit Yarzat’’