Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king
Chapter 1228: One’s Own choices(5)
With the peripheral scraps brushed aside, it was time to address the first of the two elephants looming over the field. Alpheo intended to reinstate the very casus belli that had set the South aflame.
"The Regalia Ordinum," Alpheo said, the words rolling off his tongue like a vintage wine. The taste was made all the sweeter by the brief, ugly scowl that twitched across the Crownless Prince’s face. "The caravans bearing my falcon shall, now and forevermore, travel unbothered through your lands. No toll, no tax, no nothing of that. If they sell their wares within your borders, you shall levy no more than a tenth of the product’s price. Take more, even a copper more, and the trumpets of war shall sound again. I recall you never had the displeasure of hearing it, would you like a taste?’’
Perhaps this term would sow the seeds of a future conflict, but Alpheo intended for his state to be far too formidable to oppose by then.
Still, this war had revealed the weakness of his rule. he would need far more ally after this was over. The Kakunians wouldn’t suffice for that.But that was for after, now there was a boot to be polished.
The Oizenians had lost; they had tried to smash his trade with borrowed strength and failed, and now the vanquished would learn the weight of the victor’s boot once more.
He hoped this war served as a lesson both for them and himself. After the "Princes’ Peace," Alpheo had thought it wise to hunker down and focus on his internal reforms. This war had shattered that illusion. It was time to play a longer game on a much grander scale.And use the time between one war and another to strenthen his foundations.
Sorza looked as though he were about to protest. "That—" he began.
"—That can be done," Menna finished, her voice a cold snap that silenced her eldest son instantly. She spared Sorza a chilling gaze that likely withered any further argument in his throat. "The caravans bearing your banner shall pass unmolested, and the taxes shall be exactly as we have concorded".
"That," Alpheo said, leaning back slightly in his saddle, "will do".
They had swallowed the pill more readily than he had anticipated. Sorza looked eager to simply survive the day, while his mother seemed to take the rein of the work.
She was clearly the sharper mind in the family; had Sorza inherited a modicum of her wit, the fields of the Ford might still be green instead of red and grey.
There was a saying about apples and trees,but it was bound to be an exception to the rule, clearly.
But with the trade rights settled, the true trouble began. There could be no lasting peace without the shedding of land. Alpheo had marched too far and paid too much in blood to return home without expanding his borders. He needed soil to cultivate, herds to graze, and subjects to bleed for taxes and spears. More importantly, he needed a border he could actually defend.
This war had exposed the terrifying fragility of his position, all of his borders were plains easy to move carts around allowing an army easy passage through and true, after simply dealing with some border castle.
That could not do.
Only the Bastion and Megioduroli, the seat of Lord Damaris and his Black Stag, had stood between the League’s host and Alpheo’s capital.
But stags were prey, and Damaris was more snake than horned deer; the man would have opened his gates and thrown a feast for an invader before he ever risked a siege.For if it came to that the war was all and lost.
What would have happened if Asag had failed at the Bastion? Would he be the one on his knees, begging the Prince of Habadia for a scrap of mercy? Would he be watching the orchards and wineries he had spent years of efforts turn to ash and drift away by the wind?Everything he worked crashing down around him?
Still, what was the use of thinking of road not taken?
"Would it be me in your place today, had the Bastion fallen, Your Grace?" Alpheo asked, almost absentmindedly.
"What?" Sorza stammered, looking confused.
Alpheo didn’t bother to repeat himself.That was no matter. "Land. Let us speak of that,"
Their faces soured at the mention of territory, but Alpheo knew they would turn a much paler shade once they heard exactly what he intended to take. There was only one border that would serve him, one that could be truly defended, one that transformed a vulnerable principality that he was leading in something that could yet be defended if attacked as it had just been.
As if nature was to abide by his wishes, it had provided him with the perfect markers. Was that not a sign from the gods? He had always struggled with the gods but even they seemed to be steering his hand.
Build our paradise, Alph.
He tried to bury that dream, yet it always resurfaced, cold and persistent. Was he descending into madness, or was he mad to believe such a vision could be realized? He felt his gut go hollow at the memory of what he had seen in that vision.
Those hateful eyes still chilled him to the core.
He struggled to find his sense even now, though deep in the dregs of his soul he already knew it would be nothing pleasing to behold.
He would have gladly drowned that hollowness and headache in wine,even now it still called him closer, but he had sworn an oath to his son, and that was something he meant to keep.
Instead, his enemies would be the one drowning, swallowed by the beautiful rivers that nature had carved out just for Alpheo to claim. Or so he believed.
"All the lands between the Allendino and the Zauern shall be mine. Now. Tomorrow. Forevermore," Alpheo declared. "Every farmhouse, every hill, every scrap of mountain. It is mine."
Their faces went white, then pale, then a mottled red, before settling back into a sickly waxen hue, perhaps finally realised that it was useless to rage against it.
He was the overflowing river, and they were simply the flower on the banks.
An heartbeat later they truly registered what lay behind them and what they would lose: the high, proud walls of Oizen rising against the gray cracks in the sky. He wasn’t finished.
"Every lord within those bounds will have a choice: swear fealty to me or follow you into the cold," Alpheo continued, his voice as flat as a gravestone. "I shall allow you to keep three-quarters of whatever gold remains in your vaults, along with the finery of the palace, the forks, the plates, the cups. I imagine you’ll need them to furnish whatever hovel you find to replace this."
"Oizen is our home," Sorza ground out through clenched teeth.
The prince still didn’t believe it. Alpheo looked at him with something bordering on pity. Did they truly think he would retreat for a few chests of coin and a handful of border castles? He was standing at their very gates; the war was over, and they had lost.
"Was," Alpheo corrected. "Use the past tense, Prince. It will be my home soon."
Perhaps he would make it a summer retreat, Alpheo mused, before remembering he already had such a place in Herculia. Instead, it would be the perfect seat for Basil once the boy came of age.
The heir to the throne required a proper seat of power, even if Alpheo preferred to keep his son close. The French had their Dauphin, the English their Prince of Wales; why should the Lordship of Oizen not be the title for the Yarzat heir? Basil had complained of the confusion surrounding his status, being called ’Little Prince’ one day and ’Ser’ the next. This would provide the clarity the boy say he lacked.
"You’ll find a new home, I am sure," Alpheo said, leaning forward.
Wasn’t that the very skill of cockroach and rats?
"And if not, Hell is always open for new residents. It is quite easy to secure a room there, just... keep doing exactly what you are doing , push me and my legions a bit more, and you’ll have thousands of people hailing you there."
Sorza’s hand flew to the pommel of his sword, a reflexive, suicidal twitch. Merelao’s soft chuckle rippled through the air, and the Kakunian shifted his weight, looking like a cat watching a mouse consider a foolish leap.Perhaps he was just waiting or hoping for that.
Still, if possible Alpheo preferred things not to come to red. This was a parlay and if he could save himself form a bloody siege then he would take it.
"You cannot mean to take the capital," Menna whispered, the audacity that had carried her from a minor house to the principality finally showing a hairline fracture. "You would displace an entire house that has ruled over these lands for a century and an half? You would leave us with nothing but the clothes on our backs and a bag of stolen forks?"
I wouldn’t be leaving you even with that, if I could.
"I am leaving you your lives, Lady Menna.I’ll grant you the gold, but the city shall be mine. In my experience, breathing is a far more useful asset than a drafty palace," Alpheo replied. "The South has many things and many princes, ’too many’ the Habadian Prince would say for he had tried to cut one short, and it seems now that Oizen is in the market for a new one."
(Look into comments for map of the requested land.)