Five days later, the deed was done. The wind howled with a jagged edge, and the cold air rendered Alpheo’s face a numb mask as he watched, impassive and still, the bitter fruits of his victory.

The chill seeping into his bones reminded him of a time he would have preferred to forget. But it came nontheless, how slick and freezing beneath his plate the mud had felt, and how his body had burned with heat while he lay suspended between the world of the living and the realm of the silent.

He fought down a shiver born of the memory of his own mortality. Had that lance found its mark a mere inch to the left, it would have been his brains splattered against the interior of his helm. Instead, he had escaped with nothing more than a shallow scratch. A miracle of the Five? Or perhaps they simply weren’t finished with him?

He decided he would have a lifetime to ponder the whims of the gods; for now, he would not waste another moment musing on what might have been.

Sorza had been remarkably quick to sign the scrolls once the reality of his station had come crashing down. Under the witness of his mother, his trembling brother, and the few lords who had lacked the sense to desert, the Crownless Prince had pressed his seal into the wax, surrendering to Yarzat once more.

The terms were a slow-acting poison, far more lethal than the failed "Princes’ Peace." The Regalia Ordinum was reinstated and nearly half the territory once held by Oizen, every farm, hill, and mountain between the Allendino and the Zauern, now belonged to the Falcon.

But the sharpest blade was the realization that Oizen was finished.

This had been their final gambit, their closest reach for dominance, and they had been broken. That knowledge, Alpheo noted, seemed to burn the Prince of Oizen more than the loss of half his crown.Including the capital.

Yet, the agony of one man is the treasury of another. From the ashes of the future Oizen would never see, a new Yarzat was rising.

Was this what Napoleon felt at Austerlits? Alpheo mused as he watched the long, dismal procession of men filing out from the gates of his son’s new seat. He had resolved that the city would one day belong to Basil; a proper lordship for the heir to the principalities.

Among the final terms, Alpheo had granted safe passage to any citizen who wished to depart, though he had been iron-fisted regarding the palace. Though he did force every servant and retinue member of the House of Oizen to follow their master into the north. He would have no lingering loyalties or hidden daggers left behind in his new halls.

"As I have promised," Alpheo began, the cold air carrying his voice across the space between the two men. The new master of Oizen stood before the old, hoping, perhaps for the sake of both their souls, that this was the final time their orbits would cross. "From now on, the slate is clean. Tabula rasa. All past enmities are forgotten, buried in the mud of the Ford. We can be friend or enemy, and that only depends from what you do."

They chilly air howled between them.

Sorza’s eyes drifted toward Alpheo’s after a long, hollow silence. He looked like a man trying to swallow a mountain, still reeling from the sheer velocity of his fall. Alpheo felt a ghost of something resembling pity, though it was fleeting. Sorza had been so close; he had soared on wings of borrowed wax, a massive host at his back and the sun of the south in his eyes, only to hear the sickening crack of his own ambitions hitting the earth.

But no, Alpheo decided, he did not pity him. One pities a snail crushed by a careless boot; one only feels relief when a mosquito stops its whining. Sorza had made his own bed out of thorns and pride, so was it his fault that he woke bloodied?

"How long will this peace last?" Sorza finally asked, his voice a rasping shadow of its former self. "I do not believe for a heartbeat that this is the end. From this day on, we won’t have the strength to even whisper a protest against you." He turned his gaze northward, toward the lands where he would soon reside in a diminished exile, and further still, toward the horizon of Kakunia where war would soon linger. "I will be pinned between you and that madman. I doubt the Prince of Kakunia and his little ally will prevail forever. I pity the poor souls who will fall under Merelao’s grace. Peace cannot last. I know the taste of it, and it is already turning to ash."

"You have no reason to fear me," Alpheo countered,though he held no real interest to convince him. What he would do now was his own choice. "The real question is: how long will you allow the peace to remain? I have no further interest in your remaining lands. I have enough soil to cultivate, enough hills for my herds, and trade routes that will finally flow without your toll-collectors’ hand. These borders are perfect, fertile, rich, and protected by the very rivers that nature carved for me. I have everything I could ask of the gods.And I had asked them of it once already."

"It is human nature to want more," Sorza said, a bitter smirk touching his lips as if he learned that lesson at his own cost. "I don’t think this sudden onset of ’enough’ will last more than a few winters."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps I have seen enough blood to last a lifetime.I nearly died once, and it is more than enough. I would prefer to cultivate actual alliances now." Alpheo fixed his gaze on the man. "Which reminds me, I am more than open to fostering positive relations with your house. We need not remain enemies until the end of days."

"And I am supposed to trust the word of a man who just stole my home?"

You can trust the sun to rise or the sea to salt, for all I care, Alpheo thought, ignoring the jibe.

"I trust that the Prince of Habadia will be the first to approach you," Alpheo continued, as if he wanted to concentrate on his new ambition outside his borders, he wouldn’t want to worry about this little thorn in the image of the sun. "Perhaps in two years, perhaps three. He will come to you with a silken tongue and an offer to restore everything you have lost. He will ask you to strike at Kakunia or harass my borders while he settles his own business elsewhere. I trust that when that moment comes, Sorza, you will be wiser than you were now. We can be friend with one another, but the wish but come from both roads."

He leaned in, the phantom weight of that lance still pressing on his brow. "No matter what he offers, think back to this morning. Think of the ’boxes.’ Because there will not be a second parlay. The next time you see me in armor, I will make every syllable of my last threat a reality."

That, finally, seemed to wake Sorza from his lethargy. The despair in his eyes sharpened into a flicker of his old, stubborn fire.

"If we come to blows once more," Sorza hissed, "it will end only with the death of one of us. And it will probably be mine. You should instead worry about Habadia, you may have dealt with me, but he is still as powerful as she was now.Despite your victory you are still the weaker party of the two."

"Are we truly going to have a threat be our final words?" Alpheo asked with a dry, mirthless chuckle. ’’Do not look at what you have lost,"he then continued turning his horse away. "Look at what you still hold. If you do not cherish the remnants of your house, then the nightmare I promised will come true by your own hand, not mine. Go. Find a home that isn’t built on someone else’s trade routes.And next time a caravan with my banner comes, do not soil it in piss, more than enough already have washed that shame in blood"

’’I hope I’ll never see you again Fox’’

’’In person we won’t if you learn the only lesson that is required of you. Do not ride against me ever again.Farewell.’’

And at last with an angry gaze as last greeting the Oizenian party began to move. Closing a Chapter that had lasted for far too long.

’’I would have liked to give my last greeting to the lady. She kind of had my respect there’’ Alpheo spoke when he felt a presence behind him. He turned to make true of his suspect and indeed it was Merelao that rode up beside Alpheo, watching the retreating sun-banners with a look of boredom.

He had probably wished for the parlay to fail.

"You were almost kind to him at the end," Merelao noted, his voice graceful and light. "A non-aggression pact? Marriages? Are you truly looking to conceive peace with him?Are you losing your fire, friend?"

Oh,oh. Friend are we now?

One moment they were enemy and then suddendly they were pal, they were swinging from one end to the other as if it were a pendolum.Still it was no matter, they had another war ahead of them, they could think of what would come after later.

"Perhaps I have burnt too brightly? I’m becoming a man who wants to sleep without one eye on the door, and I fear all that worry is souring my stomach" Alpheo replied. "But tell me, cousin to Latio, nephew to Lavus, Valorous Bull and next Prince of Kakunia, do you think he’ll listen?Or will he just linger on what he has lost?"

At that Merelao laughed.

"He’s a prince of the south. They never listen. They only learn when the sword is already at their throat, and that usually is already far too late.The real question you should ask is whethever you have kept the edge on his throat for long enough for him to learn this one."

’’Somehow I think we shall soon get our answers.I was not lying there you know?I have no more reason to wage war against him, it would not be so bad to have peace lay between us’’

’’If the gods are good , are suppose that would be well’’

Still the gods were never good.

They both knew of that already.