The cold wind howled across the flats, snapping the Prince’s unruly black hair to the right. He stood as dark as death, his black plate drinking in the weak morning light, his gauntlets resting inches from the hilt of his sword.

His son which stood atop his horse on the left could not believe the words that had just tumbled from his father’s lips.

Quit Yarzat? That was the price?

Hundreds of their people lay cold in the earth, their farms reduced to ash and their daughters’ screams still echoing , and his father would allow the monsters to simply... march away? Just like that?

They were starving; he had them in a corner, their bellies empty and their spirits broken. They could pick them off one by one until the grass was more red than green. Why grant them a reprieve at all?

He looked up at the Prince of Yarzat, searching for a flash of the old fire, an explanation for this sudden mercy. But Alpheo did not deign to look at his son. He kept his iron gaze fixed on the Habadian, who was currently bubbling like a man who had forgotten how to speak.

"Quit... Yarzat?"

"That is the sum of it," Alpheo said, his voice flat and final. "Withdraw your host. Every spear, every horse, every men sworn to you and Ezvania. You will return to your borders. I give you my word of honor, a thing you might find unfamiliar, that you shall receive no harm on the road home.I am sure you are missing your bed after so humiliating a war."

Nibadur’s face hardened, a flicker of suspicion dancing in his blue eyes. "Honor? My scouts reports of scalps hanging from your warriors’ belts.

My men find the ears of their brothers left at the edge of the torchlight each night and each morrow."

If only they had taken yours, Basil thought.

"And I have been told you threw the rotting carcasses of horses and plague-ridden dead over my walls," Alpheo countered. "I think we should labor under the notion that we have both sullied our honors in this mud.

If we continue to fight under the presumption that nothing is sacred, we will both live to rue the moment we decided cordiality was a luxury we couldn’t afford.There is a lot of evil in men, we are not yet ready to open that box fully.

I am offering you a bridge, Prince. I suggest you walk across it before I burn it."

"It is far too late for bridges!" Basil blurted out, the words escaping before he could catch them. The thought of those green-clad knights riding away unpunished felt too much to bear.

Nibadur’s eyes slid toward the boy, looking at him with the same detached disgust one might afford a worm found wriggling in a prized apple. "And who is this whelp that presumes to speak now? A squire? You would do well, Fox, to teach your servants the value of silence."

"He is my son and my heir, if you must know," Alpheo replied, his voice devoid of warmth as his eyes set on his son. "And he is indeed overstepping."

"Fa—"

A single, razor-sharp look from Alpheo was enough to snap Basil’s jaw shut. It wasn’t the look of a father; it was the look of a general who had just seen a flaw in his own line.

With sourness in his heart, Basil indeed closed his mouth.

Nibadur blinked, his bewilderment reaching a new peak. "You brought your heir? Here? To the center of a killing field?You have no care for your line?"

Alpheo’s gaze did not waver. "Unlike you, I do not overestimate my capabilities. I knew this place to be safe because I made it so. I wished for my son is here to see how a war ends, not just how it begins. Now, if you are quite finished daddling about my family relations, we have a parlay to conclude. I have given you my terms. ’’

"Aye, to leave your lands? Now why in the Five Hells would I do that?" Nibadur asked, his voice dripping with a forced indignation.

"If you were to look around you would have your answer," Alpheo replied.

"Difficulties," Nibadur spat, waving a gauntleted hand as if dismissing a swarm of flies. "You have listed mere difficulties. A siege is a labor of patience, not a sprint. We may yet take those grey stones, and with them, the lever I need to break your neck. Why would I throw that chance away? Why would I forfeit the dice just as they are rolling?"

"Some would say to save your men," his father replied. Basil watched his father’s eyes; they were cold, flat, and devoid of any real belief in the sentiment.

"It is their duty to serve," Nibadur countered, his lip curling. "Whether that service requires their lives is a facet of the contract, nothing more. They will not all die. If the campaign truly turns to ash, I will lead my host home in my own time.I will suffer casualties then, but what of it?You want me to tuck my tail now. Why?"

"Because you would go home unmolested," Alpheo said, leaning forward. The leather of his saddle creaked in the silence. "Is that not reason enough? If you refuse, you will bleed from a thousand cuts. Your ranks will dwindle by starvation in the light and by cold steel in the dark.

I have men in every shadow. On every road from here to Oizen, there are eyes watching for you to stumble. I have men waiting for your soldiers to lower their guards as they sip from a river. Men who move through your camp while you sleep. Men who turn your grain to soot and slit the throats of any who wander too far into the treeline."

Alpheo gave him a mocking smile.

"I may have twenty men in these woods, or I may have twenty thousand. You have no way of knowing where the hammer will fall. Perhaps they strike on the morrow. Or perhaps," Alpheo’s voice dropped to a whisper, "they are striking your rearguard this very moment. Perhaps this parley is the only thing keeping you alive."

"Lies," Nibadur barked, but Basil would have sworn on his mother’s life he saw the man flinch. The Habadian’s sworn guards shifted in their saddles, their hands instinctively tightening around the hilts of their weapons, eyes darting to the empty, swaying grass of the plain.

"Regardless," Nibadur continued, once he was certain no hidden army was about to crest the ridge, "there is little profit in your words. I cannot return to Habadia with empty hands. My offer stands, Prince of Yarzat. Rise with me, join the League, and no one would dare molest your borders again.We have many enemies already, we do not need to be so with one another too. Foolish are dogs that snaps at each other in a cage."

"And yet the very fact you stand here, treading on my soil, throws dirt on your promises. I remember many Princes putting their ink to the Princely Peace. How easily you ripped that parchment to shreds when the time came. I will have no peace except the one I have offered."

"It is not enough.’’ The prince of Habadia declared ’’ Why should I cut my throat and my campaign short while I still have the means to endure?"

"I suppose I must offer more, then," Alpheo conceded, his voice heavy with a feigned disappointment. "It was foolish of me to hope you possessed any real attachment to your men. Very well. If I must buy your retreat, I will. They say family should stand close, do they not? I have an opportunity for you to prove your devotion to your kin."

Nibadur’s face warped, his head cocking back as his brows furrowed in a sharp V of confusion. "What do you mean by that?" 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"I told you I have given a warm welcome to those who strayed too far, did I not? Your future son-in-law, the young bastard of the Bull, is currently enjoying my hospitality. It seems he stumbled in the mud of the Zauern as he tried to bypass my lines to reach home." Alpheo clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Poor boy. So close to his own hearth, and yet... now so very far."

"Lies!" Nibadur roared, the color draining from his face.

Basil knew at once his father had him.

"A thing easily proven, is it not? Send your men to the edge of the woods; I shall show them my prize. I might even offer them some honey cakes; I am sure they would like a taste of Yarzat hospitality before they leave.Whetever that comes on their on two feet or on casket that depends on how this negotiations goes..."

Basil heard the audible grinding of Nibadur’s teeth. The Habadian’s face darkened, the muscles in his neck standing out like corded pipes.

"Chivalry would demand you seek a ransom from the boy’s father," Nibadur ground out through a clenched jaw.

"I care nothing for silver or gold at the moment,you can keep it as you can keep your army" the mocking smile returned to his face. "And I am asking for a ransom from his other father, his future one.

You quit my land, your Grace. You take your host and you vanish. Do that, and I shall free the boy the moment your last soldier crosses the Zauern.Do that and he shall leave this land alive...just as you and your people will do...we’ll have no more quarrel then."