Chapter 789: Dealing before peace
With the fall of Turogontoli, the royal host found itself without an enemy left to strike. For the first time in months, the clash of steel and roar of fire had given way to an uneasy quiet.
Days would have to pass before they marched again, this time not to storm walls much to the soldier’s glee, but to the princely council, where words would decide what swords could not agree on.
For Alpheo, the battlefield had yielded all it could. Every prize worth taking by blood had been taken. What remained was not for generals, but a simple game of politics.
And yet, had he been left undisturbed, his vision would have stretched further. In truth, his original design was far grander than this sudden pause. He had intended to drive his banners all the way to the Lampianais River, to lock its crossings in Yarzat’s grip and choke the flow of food and trade into Sorza’s lands.
With Egil’s riders losing fire beyond its banks, villages razed, and fields torched, the granaries would empty within a year. Myros and Tholicea, would have found themselves walled up in hunger before founding an army besieging their walls the next year. Yarzat’s domain would have stretched across a quarter of the entire land of Oizen.
That future, however, had been stolen from him. The intervention of the other princes had cut his ambitions short. Their warnings had been clear, their posturing united: further conquest would not be tolerated. To defy them now would be to invite a coalition war, a storm of banners too great even for Yarzat to withstand. Alpheo, though loath to admit it, was not yet ready for such a test. Maybe in the future, but for now he wanted to avoid that.
So he turned his gaze to the only battlefield left to him, the bargaining table. If steel could take no more, then guile would have to suffice. His task now was simple in words but delicate in practice: wring from the coming peace as much as the war itself would allow.
This was the true reason he had driven his men with such urgency to capture Turogontoli. The city was not merely a fortress, nor merely a prize of coin and stone. It was leverage. With its fall, Alpheo gained not only walls and streets, but one more lord who was once big landowners.
Their coffers, seized in the sack, now jingled within Yarzat’s camp, emptied of the wealth they could have used to ransom themselves. Stripped of both freedom and gold, the only chance of ransom for these nobles lay in the hands of Prince Sorza. And that reliance was a blade Alpheo meant to twist.
If Sorza refused to ransom them, he would appear weak, a prince who abandoned his own. His lords, already whispering of his failures, would see inaction as betrayal.
And if he yielded, Alpheo would not demand coin. He would demand land. Either Myros or Tholicea, yielding the bridge of territory that Yarzat needed to knit its dominion together.
Still, the fall of Turogontoli did not mean Alpheo’s troubles were over. A city could be taken with steel and fire, but a council table was another kind of battlefield entirely. For all his victories, for all the walls that had crumbled before him, he was not walking toward ease. He was walking into a den where every face would smile and scheme against him, where every word spoken would be outing with the intent of curbing his rise.
The army could idle in its camps, but their prince had no such luxury. While the soldiers rested on plunder, Alpheo’s mind labored without pause, probing for cracks and advantages.
And in truth, he had found one. A great one.
“Did the fall of the city really make you that happy?” Jarza’s deep voice rumbled as he joined Alpheo on his way to the midday meal. The giant’s tone was half amusement, half suspicion.
Alpheo glanced at him, lips curling into a foxlike grin. “Up to a point.”
Jarza raised a brow. “And the other point?”
“Well,” Alpheo said, drawing out the word as though savoring it, “I’ve just received word from Yarzat. A message, in fact, that brings rather excellent news for our… upcoming appearance at the Princely Conference.”
Jarza snorted. “You’re skipping along like a boy with a sweet roll. They must be very good tidings indeed. I don’t recall you looking this cheerful even when little Rosalind was born.”
Alpheo halted, turned, and without ceremony drove the heel of his boot into the general’s shin. Jarza let out a guttural yelp that echoed off the stone walls, hopping a step back with a grimace.
“For this time,” Alpheo said”I will consider ignoring what you just said.As for the rest, yes, it is very good.”
Jarza grumbled, rubbing his shin with a hand the size of a shield. “Then stop dancing around it like a harlot at a fair and tell me, before I decide to return the favor.”
Alpheo resumed walking, voice smooth and almost too calm. “You know as well as I do, Jarza, that when we step into that hall there will not be a single prince, not a single envoy, who greets us with goodwill. Six seats, six voices, all bent on cutting us down to size.
We will dine at their tables, sleep in their cities, and every eye upon us will be hostile. That is the lay of the land.”
Jarza grunted. “A nest of vipers. Nothing new.”
“Indeed. And yet,” Alpheo continued, a mischievous light flaring in his eyes, “I have been at work these past weeks, searching for a way to break that circle. To tip the balance, even slightly. And—” He let the word hang in the air, as if savoring the pause, before flashing a smile. “I have found it.”
Jarza narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”
“I am pleased, honored, even, to inform you, my dear friend, that the great limping giant north of us has agreed to stand beside us.”
Jarza blinked. His mouth opened, then closed again as if words had betrayed him. “Them?”
“The Romelians,” Alpheo confirmed, savoring the word. “The one true Imperator of Romelia himself will make his presence known at the Conference. Not as a neutral observer. As our ally.”
“The Imperator himself? Not one of his envoys?” Jarza’s voice rumbled, incredulous, and not without a trace of unease.
For all his years of toil, even servitude under the late Imperator’s campaigns, the thought of standing before the man chosen by the gods to shield the continent was something that reached deeper than pride or fear.
He could not yet grasp what an immense gain in face it was for Alpheo that the sovereign of Romelia would walk into the conference at Alpheo’s side.
“You little scheming weasel….how in the blazes did you manage that?” Jarza demanded at last, his astonishment still thick in tone and word alike.
Alpheo only smirked, letting the silence stretch until it bit. “Not much at all. Well… in truth, I offered nothing.They basically pounced at it after a little bit of convincing.”
Jarza’s eyes went wide, the incredulity doubling.
Alpheo’s grin widened at the sight. “This opportunity is not a gift of mine, Jarza. It is as much a gain for us as it is a stage for him.”
“I fail to see the connection…” Jarza muttered after a long pause, brow knitted as though straining to piece sense from nonsense. To his mind, the Empire had little reason to meddle in a squabble of princes, and even less to throw its full weight behind them
Alpheo leaned closer, lowering his voice, each word dripping with deliberate care. “The Imperator is fifteen summers old. A boy, aye, but a boy who next year casts off the chains of regency and seizes rule for himself. For the first time, he will stand before the continent not as a shadow of his regent , but as master of his throne.”
Alpheo’s eyes gleamed, wolfish and sly. “Do you see it?”
Jarza, in truth, did not.
Alpheo betrayed no impatience at his friend’s slowness. Instead, he leaned back,as he explained further “The problem, Jarza, is that every triumph the Imperator has claimed thus far belongs not to him, but to his regent. He wears the crown, aye, but not the laurels. So he must gather renown wherever he may, he must taste glory with his own lips before the year turns and he declares himself master of his throne.”
Jarza’s frown deepened, but his eyes narrowed, listening.
“And here we are,” Alpheo went on, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. “We give him a perfect stage. To ride south, honored and hailed at every step, not as a boy dragged by his council, but as the Imperator, whole, sovereign, unchallenged. His presence alone will win him the fame he needs, while giving us all the power and legitimacy that only the Empire’s shadow can bestow.”
He spread his arms wide as though he were unveiling some grand tapestry. “Sorza may have five princes at his back. But we—” his voice lowered,mouth curling in disgust at the name “—we will bring an Empire.”
Alpheo, however, was not done. For while he was willing to show his friend one card, the others he kept close to his chest. The truth, whispered by his informants, was sharper still: the boy-Imperator’s urgency was not born only of ambition but of opportunity, as he wished to gain something from the Southern Prince.
For the old Lion of Romelia, the Regent who had ruled in his stead, the man who had carried the weight of theEmpire for the last seven years, would soon be no more.
By year’s end, there would be no regent. Neither in parchment, nor in flesh.
As the Old Lion was on his deathbed.