"He is not my kin yet," the Habadian suddenly spoke , his voice still holding onto denial. "If you seek favors for the boy’s life, you should petition his father, not me. He is betrothed to my daughter, aye, but the marriage is a distant thing unless he favors wedding an eight-year-old girl. He means nothing to me at the current moment."

Nibadur gestured sharply toward the east, toward the allies he was deserting "Go. Send your envoys there to negotiate the pup’s release. I am under no duty to see to it myself, nor will I be moved by the plight of a boy who has yet to put a ring on a Habadian finger."

Alpheo watched the Habadian Prince with the detached, weary amusement of a man watching a mediocre actor struggle through a tragic play.

Nibadur must have felt the weight of that silence, for he became more animated, his gestures wider and his speech faster, his breath blooming in frantic white clouds as he wove his lies

"Why would I sacrifice my entire campaign to save a boy who was too clumsy to avoid a ditch?" Nibadur demanded, his eyes darting.

Alpheo snorted, a short, ugly sound of derision. "Sacrifice?" he mocked. "There is no sacrifice left to make, for what sacrifice does a legless man make in denouncing dancing? I am giving you a chance to cut your losses, a chance to salvage Kakunia for that mis-begotten confederation you dream of.

But you know that. You don’t need me to point out the rot in your own floorboards; you are merely acting as if you have no care for the wood giving way beneath your feet."

"You speak as if Kakunia is lost," Nibadur countered, his chin lifting. "They face a mismatched rebellion that they are well on their way to crushing. I must compliment you on tricking that lunatic Merelao into playing his hand so early. Now he is surrounded, with a royal host marching to take his head. His end was signed the moment he cast his lot with yours. Much good his madness will do him now."

The Habadian offered a thin, sarcastic smile, as if it weren’t his own army currently boiling their boot leather for soup.

"If you do not take the deal," Alpheo said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal vibrato, "I will have no choice but to saw the boy’s head from his shoulders and send it to his father in a salt-box. Kakunia’s trouble is not a rebellion; it is a succession war. With the heir the ’Fat Prince’ backs comes dead and cold, who do you think the lords will turn to? By then, I suspect Kakunia will fall into the hands of the very lunatic you despise. Your link to the south will be severed.From heir to prince is but a flicker of the fingers, especially when the man holding the crown give no aspirations of loyalty.

Who would follow that sack of meat, to a war-made prince?Ah what a time to be alive!Sometimes nothing happen for years and sometimes years happens in days!" His laughter rolled across the plain.

A growl escaped Nibadur’s throat.

His acting was serving him less than cavalry in a breach. The boy, Latio, was his primary anchor, the golden link intended to bind the Kakunian throne to the Habadian Tower. If the boy died, the road to Oizen died with him, and Nibadur’s grand alliance would dissolve like snow come spring.

Nibadur felt the hole in his chest widening. He knew Alpheo would make good on the threat; as the Fox had said, both their honors were already lost in the mire. There was no sanctity left to stop the blade.

"If my refusal to ransom the ’Young Bull’ is the madness you claim," Nibadur hissed, "then why don’t you simply go ahead with the beheading? Cut the choice for me. Kill him. You would make me lose Kakunia, you would cut my route back, and then you could have your merry way with my retreating back. Though," he added, his voice regaining a sliver of its oily arrogance, "I am certain the Prince of Shaaza would grant me safe passage through his lands should the road north be closed."

Alpheo’s face darkened at the mention of Shaaza. The name was a fresh wound, reminding him of the betrayal that had nearly seen Yarzat strangled in the cradle.

They had clasped hands, and yet he had spat on the convenant they had made.

He did not speak, but his eyes turned to chips of obsidian, promising that Shaaza’s time would come. For now, there were closer wolves to deal with.

"I have many reasons for this offering. First among them: call me a peasant or a fox as you like, but I am still a man of flesh and blood. I have a singular, burning desire to see my sword red with the Crownless Prince’s guts.

You and your host are merely in the way of that ambition."

Alpheo shifted in his saddle, his black plate rasping. "By leading your army away, you grant me the opportunity to either gut Sorza or put the torch to everything that shines under the Oizenian sun. ’We Rule Over Ash’, that should be the motto of their house by the time the first snow melts."

That was truth.

Alpheo knew he needed to push the borders of the next war further from his own throat. His current frontier was far too close to the Yarzat heartland, a proximity that had emboldened these vultures into believing this would be a short, summer romp. He intended to disabuse them of that notion.

"Furthermore," Alpheo continued, his voice a low, gravelly hum, "it serves my interests to move the theater of our next meeting. If things stand as they are, the next time we trade steel, it shall be on Kakunian soil. You won’t hear me complaining about that. So, I would say we both gain a great deal, wouldn’t you? You receive a desperate chance to salvage Kakunia and your precious future son-in-law, and I receive the small reassurance of delaying a repetition of this year’s madness on my own doorstep."

Nibadur’s horse whinnied, sensing the sudden, sharp tension in its rider. The Habadian Prince looked at Alpheo with a mixture of loathing and dawning respect. Despite everything he was a strong opponent.

"You speak of the future as if you’ve already written it," Nibadur said, his voice tight. "You assume I will be so easily cowed by the loss of a boy and a single failed siege. You assume the other Princes will not simply rally under my tower once more.I have done it once , I can bloody well do it again."

"I assume nothing," Alpheo countered. "I merely look at the board.

How long will the lords of the south follow a ’High King’ who returns with empty wagons and a trail of dead peasants? I am offering you a way to return with a Prince in tow, a victory of diplomacy to mask the stench of a military disaster. Take the boy. Take your pride. And take your starving host out of my sight."

That was true. Nibadur thought about that for long and hard.

"I want a guarantee," the Habadian Prince demanded, his voice regaining some of its high-born friction. "A formal truce between your house and the Prince of Oizen. Sign that, and I will lead my host across the border."

Alpheo didn’t even blink. Then laughter oozed out of his lips "A truce with Sorza? I would sooner saw the boy’s head from his neck , fuck it myself and send it to his father in a bucket of brine.

That cunt hired mercenaries to put the torch to my merchants’ wares; he had his men piss upon my wife’s heraldry . You are in no position to make demands. I have already showed you courtesy enough as it is.’’

A raven above cawed as if to make the prince’s point

’’You will find no glory here, only a reeking, sticking death in a muddy trench. By the Gods above, if you remain, I shall rain fire down upon every tent in your camp until the night itself screams. I am offering you a future where you still have a good position to fight me from, and you would spurn it simply because the offer came from me?"

Nibadur’s face twisted, his fingers twitching near his reins. "You speak of a future, Fox, but you should remember this moment and my host.Accept my earlier terms, and we will have eternal peace among us, if you do not.

I will be back. I will return better prepared, with a host that does not know the meaning of hunger, and I will finish what was started now.You will not be able to pull this trick twice."

Alpheo pulled his horse’s head around, the beast snorting a plume of white mist. He looked back over his shoulder, his eyes like two pieces of cold obsidian.

No fear was held in the prince’s eyes. He was done with that, he had cowered long enough.

"Those are your words," Alpheo said, his voice dropping to a final, terminal flat. "Now hear mine. Leave this land. Take your starving wolves and your broken pride and crawl back to your tower. You are not welcome. You are a blight upon the grass of Yarzat.

Return at your own peril."

He didn’t wait for a reply. With a sharp kick, he set his horse to a trot, leaving the Habadian Prince standing alone in the center of the vast, empty plain. Basil followed, his heart hammering against his ribs, watching the crimson cloak of the enemy shrink into the distance.

The war wasn’t over, the enemy had not even accepted his terms, but the air....yet the air felt as if for the first time in months belonged to them again.