Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 643: Hard Times(2)

Arnold had always found his relationship with Thalien to be... strange. Not strained, not hostile—but distant in a way that defied clear explanation. Unlike with the middle brother, whose ambition burned so nakedly that it chafed at every gathering, always eager to contest Arnold’s place and undercut his authority with passive jabs or political maneuvering, Thalien had never once stepped out of line.

In fact, Thalien had rarely stepped out of his own line at all.

He kept his distance. Not out of fear or reverence, but as if the whole notion of familial power dynamics simply bored him.

He maintained a curious sort of respect for Arnold’s position—not performative, not exaggerated—just enough to avoid conflict, yet never enough to invite closeness. For as long as Arnold could remember, Thalien had moved through their household like a ghost that refused to haunt. He never sought contact. He never asked for favors. He never tried to involve himself in courtly matters an attitude many worse in recent years.

More recently he had begun to appear more frequently—but never to play the political game.

No, Thalien’s newfound assertiveness had taken on a different, almost personal shape, often manifesting as provocations against their father. It had grown into something close to defiance. Repeatedly, and with increasing boldness, he confronted the old prince, goading him with arguments, interruptions, and acts of petty rebellion—if not for the sake of principle, then certainly to stir a reaction.

But Arnold knew better than to mistake it for a desperate plea for paternal affection. There was no yearning in Thalien’s defiance. No sadness. No soft, aching desire to be seen. It was resentment, sharpened with the precision of someone who had long decided that love from their father was neither needed nor worth chasing.

And in many ways, Arnold flet he had reason to feel that way.

As the third-born son, Thalien had been marked early by their father for a religious life. It was a time-worn solution—one meant to keep the peace within the family, to avoid further partitioning of lands and titles. Had he agreed, Thalien might have secured for himself a future as an archon and it would have certainly have done the family much good to have a relative in such a high position.

But to Thalien, the idea had been offensive to the core. The suggestion that his role in life should be to wear robes, chant hymns, and bow to stars had ignited a fury in him that no one in the household quite knew how to contain.

He’d fought the designation from the start. Tutors sent to educate him in the theology of the Holy Chapter were turned away within days, either humiliated by his sarcasm or scandalized by his lewdness.

He took to bedding servant girls out of sheer spite, made a game of scandalizing the court with crude jokes and public debauchery.

One time, when their father tried to force the issue by locking him in his chambers with an aging priest for three days, Thalien responded by refusing food entirely and shattering every dish they attempted to pass through the door. When they finally opened it, the priest had emerged pale as he hadn’t eated in days , shaken, and convinced that Thalien was either mad or possessed.

The whole matter might have escalated further, had the war against Yarzat not intervened. As their lands descended into conflict and chaos, their father’s attention turned elsewhere. His efforts to mold Thalien into a priest abruptly ceased, the urgency of the battlefield eclipsing the ambitions of the chapel. Thalien, as if sensing the opportunity, quietly slipped the noose and never looked back.

He had, since then, remained something of a wild card within the family—unclaimed by church or court. A man adrift in the middle ground of aristocracy, too smart to be dismissed, too volatile to be trusted, and too stubborn to be shaped. Yet now, as he entered the throne room with boots still caked in dust and the same flicker of disbelief that Arnold had worn upon seeing their father’s condition, Arnold could not help but feel that—whatever else Thalien was—he, too, understood the magnitude of what had been lost.

Thalien’s eyes—dark, sharp, and utterly unblinking—swept across the nearly empty chamber, absorbing every crack in the stone, every bit of dust that had gone undisturbed. And then they landed on the man slouched across the throne as if the weight of it had finally broken his spine.

Lechlian.

His father.

His mouth curled in disbelief.

Then, without shifting his posture, his eyes flicked once to Arnold, meeting his gaze with something close to shared understanding—but colder, more scornful—and then turned back to the throne.

His voice rang out, bold and sharp, each word like a stone thrown into glass.

"Is what I’m seeing truly happening?"he said, loud and clear, the echo bouncing off the high walls of the old court. "The great and proud Prince Lechlian—hollowed out by a peasant’s blade? So humbled that he now flees the jewel of his realm like a whipped dog?"

It struck like a challenge hurled from the floor of a battlefield.

And Lechlian moved.

Not with the sluggishness of the husk he had become, but with the sudden, vicious snap of something wounded too long. The distance between him and his son vanished in a blink, and before any reaction could form, his hand swung through the air and cracked loudly across Thalien’s face.

–TWACK–

The sound was sharp and absolute.

Lechlian stood now over his youngest son, shoulders heaving, eyes ablaze, his frame shaking with the return of fury long buried under weeks of shame and resignation.

Thalien didn’t flinch. He merely smiled, faintly. A drop of blood formed at the corner of his lip.

–TWACK. TWACK.–

Two more slaps followed, brutal and unrestrained. With the third, Thalien staggered and dropped to one knee, his cheeks red and swelling from the force, his dark hair hanging over his face like a curtain.

He looked up, grinning with blood in his teeth.

"It’s been a while since I felt your hand, Father,"he said, voice hoarse but steady. "Good to know there’s still something inside you. Even if it’s just anger, rotting under the shame of your failures."

Something snapped.

Lechlian’s foot lashed out and drove straight into his son’s ribs.

Thalien crumpled sideways, coughing as air fled his lungs. The silence that followed was heavier than stone.

Arnold stood still, his fists clenched. Watching.

Lechlian stood over Thalien’s curled body, chest rising and falling like a beast trying to remember how to breathe. His lips trembled with unsaid curses, his eyes filled not with guilt, but with pure, naked rage.

It was certainly an image: a once-mighty prince reduced to kicking his own son in a silent, crumbling throne room.

And in Thalien’s twisted grin, there was something cruelly triumphant—like a man who had reached down his own throat and dragged out the worst of his father..

"Father, I believe you should stop," Arnold finally said, voice low but firm, stepping slightly forward to place himself between the two.

The storm in his father’s eyes faltered, then slowly subsided into a familiar tiredness, as if the fire that had sparked so briefly had already burned itself out.

Lechlian took a step back, his breath ragged, and without another word, turned from his crumpled son and returned to the throne with the same sagging gait he had worn since the war’s tide turned against them.

Arnold’s gaze dropped to Thalien, who was still hunched on the floor, coughing dryly into his sleeve. There was no gratitude in Thalien’s eyes as he slowly stood—only the faint trace of a smirk beneath his bloodied lips. With one hand, he wiped away the crimson trail smeared across his chin, staining the sleeve of his vest without a second thought.

"Have I angered the gods so deeply," Lechlian muttered bitterly as he collapsed once more into his throne, "that I should be cursed with sons who reject my every command? My eldest contradicts me at every turn, and my youngest... would be more at ease among beasts than men."

He let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to drag the last of his breath with it.

"It could have been worse, Father," Thalien replied, his voice slightly hoarse but no less glib, "The gods might have cursed you with sons slow of mind. You should count yourself fortunate."

Lechlian’s jaw tensed, his eyes narrowing to slits. "I would have gladly taken a goat as a son, if it meant sparing me from the monstrosity born of my own blood."

Thalien only shrugged, the faint ghost of a smile playing across his bruised face. "Well, I doubt a goat would’ve bothered to point out the mistake you’re making."

Lechlian’s head snapped up. "And what mistake is that?" he asked sharply, his voice laced with warning thinking perhapse of beating his son once again.

"That by sending Lord Cretio to defend a doomed city, all you accomplish is alienating one of the few strong lords still loyal to this crown. You’d be offering him up like a lamb, and I doubt he’d be eager to march to his death to buy you time."

Arnold narrowed his eyes. "You were listening to us?"

Thalien turned to his brother and grinned, a mischievous spark in his eyes. "It’s not my fault that your shouting carries through every corridor of the palace, dear brother. I simply had the misfortune of being within earshot."

He turned his gaze back to his father. "As I was saying, Lord Cretio won’t obey that order. Not as it stands. He’ll refuse it—and with good reason. He’ll see it as a death sentence. And after all, why should he throw his life away when even his prince has already given up the city?"

Lechlian scowled, eyes narrowing further. "Then what would you suggest, boy? That we beg him?"

"No," Thalien said, his smile fading. "You give him a reason to believe it’s not a lost cause. You give him someone to fight alongside. Someone who’ll stand on the walls with him. Someone who carries the blood of the royal house in his veins."

The room went still.

Thalien stepped forward, not bothering to hide the pain in his posture, but letting the conviction in his voice carry the weight instead.

"I will stay," he said. "Let me be the one to declare before the court, before the realm, that the royal family a will not abandon his capital. That I will stand with his people, to the last man if needed. That will bind Lord Cretio to the cause more tightly than any threat or promise. He will not allow himself to be shamed by the will of a boy—not in the eyes of his men, or his daughter the next princess of this beautiful princedom of ours....would he dare to refuse when I did not?"

Lechlian stared at him in silence, but there was suspicion brewing behind the old man’s eyes. "Why?" he asked, voice low and cold. "You, who’ve done nothing but spit on my name and drag our house into scandal.You would have whored yourself just to spite me, so why would you do this? Out of loyalty? Out of sudden duty?"

Thalien’s smile slipped. For the first time in the conversation, he looked serious.

"No," he said. "Let’s not pretend, Father. I’ve never been the son you wanted. I never bent the knee to your vision, never wore the cloth you pressed into my hands, never chanted the prayers you had forced into my ears. You always said I was made for nothing but rebellion."

His hands clenched at his sides. "So let’s not pretend this is some selfless gesture. It isn’t. I’m offering you something. Something you want—something this crumbling state needs. And in return, I want something back."

Lechlian’s eyes narrowed.

"I want your word," Thalien said. "I want your promise, before Arnold and the gods if you like, that if I take up this burden—if I ride with Lord Cretio and stand on the walls of this dying city—you will release me from the life you planned for me. No monasteries. No Archon’s robes. No holy chains."

He stepped closer, voice quiet now, almost reverent in its clarity. "Let me fight for the city, and when this is over—whether I live or die—you will let me be my own man."

Arnold stepped forward again, jaw tight, fists clenched at his sides.

"Father," he said, his voice low and firm, but brimming with urgency, "this is madness. You cannot send Lord Cretio to hold the city. He’s not just a capable commander—he is our strongest supporter. Our most steadfast ally. He’s one of the few voices still standing between this crown and complete collapse."

He took a breath, trying to steady the fire building in his chest.

"You send him into a siege like this and you will lose him. Either to a sword or to the chains of a surrender he never wished to make. And if that happens, we don’t just lose this city —we lose the heart of the nobility still loyal to us."

Lechlian said nothing. His gaunt form remained draped on the throne like a shadow clinging to stone. He didn’t even meet Arnold’s gaze. His sunken eyes, pale and gleaming beneath a brow too thin to be noble anymore, were locked squarely on Thalien.

"Do you mean it?" he asked at last, his voice hoarse but suddenly heavy with clarity. "You will stay here, in the capital. Fight. Bleed. Die, if need be?"

Thalien’s eyes, dark and defiant, sparked with an almost feral joy. The smirk returned to his face—but it was not the taunt of a child. It was the crooked smile of someone who had just bet everything he owned on a single card.

"Yes," he said, slowly, as if savoring each word."I—will—stay.I meant every word on my mother soul"

Lechlian exhaled as if something long held in had finally escaped. "Then it is done."

There was no ceremony to it. No royal gesture. Just three words spoken like a seal snapping shut on a tomb.

Arnold turned to stare at his father, disbelief curling through his stomach like bile. His jaw fell slightly open, and for a moment, he couldn’t speak—his thoughts tripping over themselves in horrified silence.

And yet he knew, there and then.

They were truly undone.

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