Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1001: Clear road(1)

The morning sun broke over the palace with a clarity that seemed to scour the shadows from the very stone. The dark mantle that had enshrouded the royal residence for weeks evaporated like a bad dream at the first light of dawn.

With it went the hushed whispers of the Prince’s malaise, the rumors of his drinking, and the fear that the crown was slipping from a trembling hand.

Alpheo had emerged like a new man. The sickly pallor was gone, replaced by a lean, hungry energy. He was the Prince of old, meticulous in his labor, yet capable of trudging through the royal gardens with his children, appreciating the bloom of a rose or the call of a starling as if seeing them for the first time.

The prince’s close friends , who had spent the last fortnight walking with a shroud over their minds, mirrored their captain’s vigor. The fear of facing the coming storm without a pilot had vanished, replaced by a firmer spine and a sharper focus. The pillars of the princedom were reinforced; the Captain was back at the helm.

But in the game they were playing , sunshine is a fleeting luxury, and the clouds gathering on the horizon always forebode times of rain.

And inside the War Room, the peace of the garden was a world away.

"There! Lay it there!" Alpheo barked, his finger stabbing at a rare patch of empty wood on a desk smothered in decades of strategic intelligence. "Open the Ozenian survey... and get this useless shit out of my sight!"

With a violent sweep of his hand, he cleared a path. A detailed map of the mountain pass between Pardanum and Epietoli, the singular, narrow artery connecting Kakunia to Northern Herculia, fluttered to the floor like a wounded bird.

"Alph! You cannot simply dismiss this!" Asag roared, lunging to retrieve the map. He slammed it back onto the table, pinning it down with a heavy stone. "This is not rubbish! It is the most logical route for a flanking maneuver!"

"It is an unlikely one, we spoke about this already." Alpheo countered, his eyes darting across the topography. "They would never dare an expedition through the Pardanum heights. If the blow comes, it comes through the Ozenian gates. It is the only path wide enough to accommodate that fucking ego of his."

"Why not the north?" Asag pressed, his face flushed with the heat of the argument. He jabbed a finger at the Herculian border. "They could rouse a rebellion in the time it takes us to march. If a foreign army appears on those peaks, the provinces we conquered will catch fire like hay with a spark! Do you think the Herculians have lost their teeth just because they’ve been quiet? A foreign host combined with an internal uprising? That now is a blow!You can’t dismiss this."

"It is too far from the jugular," Alpheo said, his voice dropping. He waved a dismissive hand at his Legate’s anxieties. "They would have to besiege Herculia city to consolidate the region, wasting months of momentum. Our grip on the north is forged well enough with trade and steel; it is not as fickle as you fear. No, Nibadur won’t attack there, even if the piece of meat is juicy enough"

Alpheo leaned over the map, his shadow stretching across the contested lands.

"He doesn’t want a border war. He wants the heart. He seeks a singular, catastrophic strike against Yarzat itself to bring the entire house down in one night. He knows that anything but a lightning campaign is a death sentence for his coalition. He cannot keep a dozen squabbling princes bogged down in a long winter war, they hate each other more than they hate us.It is surprising that he had managed to get it in a picture.Who would said years ago that the South could be united in anything?

He must win quickly, or he will be eaten by his own allies. He’s coming for us, Asag. Directly. Brutally. And he’s coming soon."

The Legate of the Fourth leaned into the flickering candlelight, his eyes reflecting the ink lines of the maps. "And this blow? How do you think will be made?"

"Directly for the throat," Alpheo replied, his voice devoid of doubt. His finger traced a line across the map, skipping over the Ozenian border directly toward Yarzat. "He will ignore the periphery. Look at the infrastructure here, paved roads, established supply hubs, a network of granaries that could feed a locust swarm of soldiers.

He won’t fear for his supply lines because he’ll be marching through a safe garden.Of course it won’t be enough to feed a large army for months, but what is imporant is that it will be safe enough.

Contrast that with Asag’s ’mountain liberation’ in Herculia. One narrow pass? A handful of partisans with torches and boulders could starve them in a week. Nibadur isn’t a gambler; he’s a butcher who wants a clean cut."

He tapped a small blur on the parchment. "The only thing standing in his path is Megioduroli. Lord Damaris’s fief. And let’s be honest, the lord has the spine of a jellyfish and the loyalty of a stray dog. He won’t offer resistance; he’ll offer a key to the gates."

Alpheo’s hand moved to a strip of land separating the capital from the Ozenian frontier. "I’ve known this was the anvil since the day I ended the last war. It’s why I poured tens of thousands of silverii into that fortification. That ’fucking rock,’ will be the only reason we won’t be already sworning ourself to the Habadian Tower in a month when the army starts rolling."

"I hope you’re right," Asag muttered, exhaling a cloud of frustration as he rolled up his rejected map. "Because you wasted a king’s ransom on that fortress. If they bypass it, we’ve bought the most expensive tomb in the history . This is madness."

"Aye," Edric chimed in, his voice a low, somber growl. "It’s a fucking nightmare."

"We knew it was coming," Alpheo said, though inwardly he felt the cold prickle of apprehension.

Nibadur had moved with a terrifying diplomatic speed, weaving a web of alliances that even Alpheo hadn’t predicted would stretch so far. The prize was Kakunia; if Nibadur secured that alliance, he didn’t just have a road, he had a spear pointed at Yarzat’s heart.

He had to stop him....

"Say..." A voice cut through the room.

All went silent as all eyes turned to Shahab. The elder statesman looked up, his gaze moving slowly from man to man. "The catalyst here is the Prince’s bastard, isn’t he? He is the glue. He is the bridge between Habadia and Kakunia. If that link is severed... doesn’t the alliance shatter?"

"What are you whispering about?" Asag asked, narrowing his eyes.

"A dagger in the dark," Shahab replied coolly. "The Habadian Prince has betrothed his daughter to the bastard boy of Kakunia? If the boy dies, the contract dies. No marriage, no blood-tie, no alliance. Problem solved for the price of one hired blade."

Alpheo let out a weary and tired sigh. "Not feasible. Our reach isn’t long enough. My cells in that region are eyes and ears, not hands. They are observers, not executioners. I’ve concentrated our killers in Ozenia, and even there, they struggle.

The ’fat fucker’ of Kakunia might call him a bastard, but he’s groomed the boy to be his heir. The security around him is a wall of steel. Besides, an assassination rarely kills an idea. It just makes a martyr.And this is really posturing more than anything, I fear..."

"I don’t know," Shahab countered, his voice persistent. "Royal bloodlines are the golden currency of a royal intentions... They aren’t just posturing."

"Everything is posturing until the blood starts flowing," Alpheo snapped, balancing his hands on the edge of the table. "Think about the mechanics of the lie. Nibadur tells the world he has a tie to the Kakunian royal house and viceversa, which signals to every wavering lord in Kakunia that the prince and his bastard now have the muscle to take the throne. He doesn’t care about the boy’s legitimacy; he cares about the optics. And in exchange, he gets his military road. He gets a corridor through Kakunian territory to move his legions without worrying about a knife in his back."

He leaned back. "Even if we kill the boy, what changes? Nibadur will just find another relative to betroth. He’ll find a cousin, a niece, or he’ll marry the ’fat fuck’ of Kakunia himself if it gets him that road to us. "

Shahab let out a long, defeated breath. He slumped into his seat, the weight of his years suddenly visible in the slump of his shoulders. He raised a trembling hand, running it slowly through his shock of snow-white hair as if trying to massage away the headache. The room felt smaller then, the air thick with the realization that the time for clever tricks had passed.

Except it had not...after all there was a reason Alpheo was nicknamed as a certain animal.