Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1048: War never changes(3)
"Operation Titan Fall shall commence."
Alpheo’s voice did not crack, even though he knew the meaning of those words. Everyday as he stared at these maps he came back more unsure than before, he knew the strength that would be required for such a plan, the sacrifice that would be deemed necessary.
The words fell upon the room like a heavy iron portcullis, sealing away the world of peace they had known only moments before. He looked at each of his commanders in turn, men who had bled for him and with him, men who had earned their seats through grit and cold steel rather than lineage. There was no better company he could have asked for as they prepared to dive headlong into the mouth of hell.
The legates exchanged glances, their eyes widening. Alpheo had kept the specifics of this plan close in this room; to hear it named was to realize that the theoretical had finally become the inevitable.
A bit of trepidation swam around.They all knew the odds.
The Prince turned his gaze toward the window. A lone robin had perched upon the branch of an ancient nut tree, ruffling its feathers against the morning chill. It was a fragment of a quiet world, a small piece of serenity that Alpheo knew he could no longer inhabit if he failed. He tore his eyes away, fixing them back on the map of a continent about to bleed.
"We received word only hours ago," Alpheo continued, his voice hardening. "Three days past, the Crownless Prince gave his answer to our envoy. As we expected’’
And feared.
’’It is war. The heralds have been dismissed; the blades have been drawn.I would have gladly welcomed peace on our times, and yet they have shorn their scabbard and declared war."
He bit the inside of his cheek "As we speak, the Kakunians and the Habadians are likely fanning the embers of their own greed. They are raising their levies, requisitioning the autumn grain, and readying their baggage trains for the march. They think of us as nothing but ash waiting to be scattered. They will waddle onto our lands with their silk banners and their empty songs of chivalry, making jests about hunting the ’Little Fox’ of Yarzat."
His mouth twisted into a cold sneer. "They are in for a different surprise entirely."
That struck a cord. Smiles began to bloom across the faces of his commanders,sharp, hungry expressions. They each had their vices, their tempers, and their flaws, but in this moment, Alpheo loved them with a fierce, brotherly intensity.
It took proper mad bastards to laugh in the face of overwhelming odds.
"By the end of this, there are debts of blood that shall be paid in full. Starting with that craven sitting on the Oizenian throne," Asag muttered, his eyes fixed on the map where the Oizenian capital sat like a bloated spider.
"If the world is to be drowned in blood, I’d say we’re the best swimmers in the lot!" Edric barked, a short, barking laugh escaping his throat.
Alpheo allowed a somber smile to touch his lips before he shuttered it behind a mask of command.
"I will not mingle honey with this truth to make it easier for you to swallow," he said, leaning over the table until his shadow fell across the entire border. "We will be on the backfoot for the majority of this campaign. I will not lie to you: we shall be outnumbered, out-steeled, and out-resourced in every theater. Even our Legions, fine as they are, cannot hope to hold a line against ten times their number in a straight fight. To seek a glorious battle in the open field would be to commit collective suicide."
He paused, letting the weight of the disadvantage sink in. He saw no flinching, no wavering. Only the steady, rhythmic breathing of soldiers.
"We will be forced to chip them away, piece by piece, bone by bone. We will bleed them in the mountain passes and starve them in the valleys. We will be the ghost in the woods and the poison in the well. The enemy will come with pride in their chests and the arrogance of certain victory; we shall feed upon that ego by denying them the very combat they crave. We will make them chase shadows until they are too exhausted to lift their shields."
He stood straight, his gaze boring into each man. "Each of you has a role that has been calculated to the inch. I will not deny that a moment will come for every one of you, a moment in the dark, in the cold, where you will believe you are alone and the entire world is set against you. When that happens, remember this: You are not."
He dropped his voice, the intensity of it vibrating in the stonework. "Know that if any of you waver, if any of you let doubt guide your hand, you doom any chance of victory we have. We are a single will now. Every part must move, no matter the task, no matter the terror, no matter how impossible the odds may seem. We do not fight for glory today. We fight so that there is a tomorrow."
"Aye, we know the weight of it already," Jarza conceded, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to settle the restless air. He leaned forward, scarring the table’s edge with a calloused thumb. "No need to stoke our morale. We aren’t green boys looking for a story. We just need to know how to make them pay. Every man in the barracks is itching to find a bastard’s belly for his steel."
Alpheo gave a slow, measured and satisfied nod, his gaze returning to the vellum map where the ink of the borders still looked like fresh wounds. It had only been in three years, and yet already at war he was.
"They will come with the hunger of wolves," he said, his fingers hovering over the newest fortifications. "They are greedy for their prize, and pride will dictate their path. They’ll drive deep, straight for the throat of the capital. And why wouldn’t they?"
He looked around the room, a sharp, challenging smile flickering on his face. "On paper, they have every advantage a conqueror could dream of. Numbers, coin, and the arrogance of history. This is where we shall make our stand. This is where we will chip their teeth until they have nothing left to bite with. But to do that, we must hold the gateway. We must ensure the Bastion does not fall."
He raised his head, his eyes scanning the room. Though he hadn’t yet named his choice, the silence shifted toward one man. In a room of lions, there was only one who held the expertise of the turtle.
Asag rose. He didn’t move with the frantic energy of Edric or the sureness of Jarza; he stood with the slow, terrifying permanence of an old oak that towered over sapling. "You just need to give the word, friend" he said, his tone devoid of anything but pure, unadulterated valor. And if not that then it was madness.
"You will be surrounded, Asag," Alpheo said, his voice dropping an octave. "You will be cut off from the sun and the soil. You will be met by at least ten thousand foes at your gates before the first week is out. You are aware of the price of this command?"
"Aye," Asag replied, a dark, rocky glint appearing in his eyes. "And I say they shall all be feast for the rats, the ravens, and the worms. By the time I am done, the fields surrounding the Bastion will be plagued by rats so fat on Oizenian meat they can no longer fit through their holes, and worms as thick as snakes. Be they ten thousand or twenty, they will break against the Aracinea. It was so at the Siege of Aracina, and it shall be so at the Bastion. Stone does not tire,Alph. Neither do I."
Alpheo felt only warmth at his friend’s resolve.
"You shall assume command of your legion," Alpheo declared,"You will hold power over every provincial lord and levied peasant I send to bolster your ranks. If they hesitate,if they whisper of surrender, or really do anything you do not like you have my permission to see them corrected. In any way possible.
Do not worry for the political consequences of a nobleman’s bent neck. Those are concerns for a time of peace. In war, there is only the wall and those who hold it."
Asag nodded, his mind already beginning to count the arrow-barrels and water-troughs. "How many men can you spare me for the butcher’s bill?"
"Three thousand at the least, it all depends on how many man we shall muster from the lords. You’ll likely have some less of four thousand souls behind those battlements."
Asag went still, a look of satisfaction settling over his features. He had once defended a crumbling sea-city against three thousand with barely a thousand starving men at his back. The odds here were arguably better, and he was older now, hardened by a decade of more blood and wiser in the ways of the siege.
Above all, he had seen the Bastion; he knew its angles, its kill-zones, and its heart. When he stood atop its ramparts, he didn’t just feel like a commander. He felt like the mountain itself. Ironically enough that was his nickname.
It would be a nightmare of fire and iron,of that he had no doubt. But the legend of the Third Legion was built on the foundation of such hardness.
No one would say that when the time came, Asag did not take his seat, for beneath the iron there was only hard blood.
