Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1082: Closed doors(2)

With his thirst for wine sated the Wolf of Bracum seemed entirely indifferent to the venomous glares Asag threw his way. In truth, the Mountain’s irritation appeared to be the only thing providing the man any amusement in that gods-forsaken siege.

That of course and the mountains of bodies they were leaving behind.

"The Mountain sits, while the Wolf still wanders. Strangely fitting, wouldn’t you say?" Xanthios rumbled, a dry chuckle rattling in his chest like stones in a tin cup. He dragged a heavy oak stool across the floor with a screech so sudden and piercing the physician jumped, and Asag felt the vibration deep in his aching molars. "Careful with that meat, sawbones. If you ruin his sword-hand, I’ll see to it you lead the next sortie armed with nothing but a butter knife. Eh?"

"My day was already a feast of shit, Xanthios," Asag muttered, his voice thick with a bone-deep exhaustion. "My thanks for providing the dessert."

His head throbbed in a rhythmic, sickening cadence, competing with the white-hot pulse in his wrist. He was wrecked, half-broken and held together by spite and leather straps, but he’d be damned if he let the Wolf see him so.

"How did it happen, truly?" Xanthios asked, his eyes roaming over the mottled ruin of the wrist. "That looks like the work of a mace, and a heavy one at that."

"A scratch," Asag spat, though the word felt like a lie in his mouth. "The tower’s tongue slammed down before we were ready. We were heart-beats away from being overrun, and with the fire-pots dry as a summer bone, we had to do it the old way. The bloody way. I couldn’t leave it to the boys of Myros; they were doing more trembling than fighting. Fucking levies..."

He shifted, hissing as the physician tightened a bandage. "I led the push. Of course I had. We had to sever the chains to drop the bridge, and I was at the fore of it. Ghalrim took a shaft to the side of the breastplate where there was only mail, but the steel held. A finger’s breadth deeper and we’d be measuring him for a shroud instead of a bed.Glad that did not come to pass."

Asag’s eyes glazed for a moment, the memory of the red-slicked stone vivid in his mind. "We drove them back to the edge . Hacking them until the walkway was more meat than stone, the only way we know how to do it.

But the knights kept vomiting out of that wooden gut. It was a green-boy who got me. A boy with a mace and no beard.Some high born green fucking lad."

He let out a sharp, bitter breath. "I didn’t see him on the periphery as I hacked one of them. The little cunt swung true. Smashed the wrist first, then a follow-up to the temple that rang my skull like a cathedral bell. He thought he’d done it. He thought he’d killed the Mountain and claimed the Bastion end."

Asag’s lips pulled back in a snarl. "The fool lost his wit. He stood there gawking at his handiwork instead of finishing the job. My helmet took the worst of it, though my brains are still rattling like dry peas. My wrist was screaming, burning like it were on fire, but I found enough strength to swing. I put my whole weight into it. I felt the steel of his breastplate buckle and caved in like fucking clay, and then the delightful sound of the bones beneath snapping like kindling under a fire."

"Smashed every rib his whore of a mother gave him," Asag growled. "He went from a conqueror to a beggar in a heartbeat. Sobbing, he was. Sobbing and praying, begging not to be put out like the dog he was, and then was just dead. Likely some third-born son of a piss-poor knight, thinking he’d win his fortune by claiming my head.

Stupid little green cunt."

The squire returned then, trembling as he offered a foaming flagon of ale. Asag snatched it, his good hand steady, and took a long, cavernous gulp that drained half the vessel. He wiped the froth from his lip with the back of his hand.

"Takes more than a boy and a mace to kill me," he finished

Xanthios let out a breath at that, his gaze drifting to the window, a raw, unglazed rectangle of stone that looked out over a world of smoke. The Bastion had been raised in a fever of necessity, more a tooth of stone than a palace. It was a miracle they had roofs over their heads at all, let alone pretty windows to gaze at the mud below.

"I’d be more than bored. I’d be dead," the Wolf of Bracum admitted, his voice dropping into a low, somber register. "You’re the grit in the mortar, Asag. Many follow the Fox because they fear his shadow or love him, but they stand now, even with the Prince a hundred leagues away, because of you. You’re the one they see when the ladders hit the stone. Take pride in that. Not many men are built of such iron."

"Lord Arnold had iron enough," Asag said suddenly, his gaze softening as the ale began to dull the jagged edges of his pain. He looked at the older lord. "Have you gone to see him?"

Xanthios stiffened, his scarred face tightening. "The Lion’s cub? After the years of bile I’ve poured on his father’s name? The last thing that boy needs is me looming over his bed like a carrion crow. He’s been dealt a rot-handed deck as it is... how is he, truly?"

"Breathing. The worst of the fever has broken," Asag said, though his voice lacked any real comfort. "But he’ll be learning to walk on a piece of shaped oak from here on. The boy was cursed with a cruel sort of luck. He fought at the front, Xanthios. He led the charge into the teeth of the Oizenian knights. No man, high-born or low, will ever say he lacked the stomach for it. I’ll see he’s rewarded when the crows finish their feast."

"I saw the leg for a heartbeat before the medics shielded him," Xanthios muttered, his eyes distant. "A bloody ruin. Smashed like a dropped melon."

"The surgeons moved the best they could. There’s no better medicine than Yarzat’s steel and Yarzat’s herbs in all the known world, though I doubt Arnold sees it that way just now." he tilted his cup, draining the rest of the ale before thrusting the empty vessel toward the squire without a word. "You should go to him, Xanthios. The boy carries his father’s shame everyday. He’s spent every waking moment trying to redeem that name in the Prince’s eyes. It would mean something, more than a medal or a chest of coin, to have the Wolf of Bracum speak of his valor. Gods be good, he is nothing like his father."

He closed his eyes as he took a long, cooling gulp. The two of them, the Wolf and the Mountain, shared a long, knowing silence.

It was only a minute later that it was broken as they went on less savory subjects.

"Do you have anything for me, Xanthios? Any whispers from the other lords?"

Xanthios let out a bark of a laugh, but it was hollow. "They are getting tired, Asag. They are exasperated by the fact that they aren’t dining on hummingbird tongues and washing it down with ambrosia in their silk-sheeted pavilions. A bunch of fucking pansies, the lot of them.

They can’t stomach a fortnight of hard rations before they start crying for their mothers. To think I share even a drop of blood with some of those bastards makes me want to bleed myself dry.They want to go home and tend to their homes. Though I think if we were to ask these to the enemy we’d receive the same answer."

"That is not news. That is a Tuesday," Asag rasped.

"Well, what do you expect from me?" Xanthios snapped . "The last time a lordling spoke about our ’lost cause’, barely a week into the siege, I beat him so bloody his own hounds didn’t recognize him. Who has the stones to say anything like that in front of me now? Weren’t you supposed to be the smart one of this congregation?"

"Well, fucking geld me for hoping for a scrap of insight from you," Asag muttered, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward, the pain in his wrist forgotten for a moment. He looked meaningfully at the older man. "Are we at that point, Xanthios? Should we start putting some of them behind bars? Or perhaps over the wall?I noticed some lords getting close to certain subjects..."

Xanthios shook his head slowly, his hand coming up to rub the bridge of his nose. "Not yet. It’s too soon for the cages. If we start locking up the high-born now, we’ll have a mutiny of silk before we have a mutiny of steel. But keep your ears open, Asag.We may have informants inside , but even then we have no way to be sure that there is no dagger ready to stab us in the back’’

"Hence why I need to be up there and not rotting in this bed," Asag voiced out , thrusting his empty cup back at the squire with a sharp flick of his good wrist. He turned his gaze back to the man of medicine. "Patch me up, sawbones. Wrap it tight enough to hold the bone in place and give me something for the fire in my nerves. Something light, I’ll not have my wits clouded and sleepy when the ladders hit the stone again."

The physician’s face went the color of a blanched almond. "F-fighting, my lord?" He looked as if Asag had just commanded him to swallow a live coal. "That is... it is absolutely out of the question! The wrist has been dislocated, the tendons may be frayed, and the contusions are deep enough to pool the blood. You require weeks of stillness, or the humors will—"

"I require a sword, not a lecture on humors!" Asag roared, the sound echoing off the bare stone walls until the physician’s medicine jars rattled. "As I said: bind the meat and give me the steel for the pain. Aren’t you supposed to be a master of the craft? Weave your spells and get me back into a fighting state.No oppium though, don’t you dare slip that in my ale."

"My lord, that is beyond the abilities of any man of medicine," the physician stammered, his hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped his shears. "If you put weight on that limb, if you... you may lose the hand entirely. The rot could set in, or the bone could splinter into the marrow..."

"Oh, cry me a river." Asag leaned forward, his face inches from the trembling man’s. "’Beyond your abilities,’ you miserable quack? An itchy arsehole would be beyond your abilities! You’re not here to save my hand for a wedding, you’re here to keep it attached long enough to crack skulls. Give me some treatment and be gone with your shivering!"

The physician didn’t argue further. With a bowed head and a frantic, scuttling gait, he retreated to his heavy oak chest after providing what little treatments he could, the clink of glass vials going out along with him.

Now alone, Asag let out a long breath and looked up at Xanthios. The Wolf of Bracum had remained silent, throughout the display.

Looking as somber as the day his wife died.

Asag found in himself the need to say something.

"Looks like I’ll be trading the halberd for a one-handed sword," He looked at his ruined left hand, then at his right. " If I can’t find the grace for a parry, gods protect me....I’ve still got one good arm and a head full of spite. That should be enough for another day, shouldn’t it?"