Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king
Chapter 659: Smoky ends(2)

Chapter 659: Smoky ends(2)

The air inside the command tent was thick—oppressive not with heat, but with tension so dense it seemed to choke the very breath from a man’s lungs.

It was not unlike a blacksmith’s forge, not in warmth but in meaning. For what was being shaped here was not steel for battle, but the end of a campaign that had never truly begun.

Prince Lechlian stood frozen, his knuckles white as he breathed in sharp, shallow bursts as if air itself had betrayed him.

“That’s… that’s impossible,” he hissed, but even as the words left his mouth, they sounded more like a plea than a denial. His eyes darted toward the two scouts standing at the edge of the tent, their cloaks still damp with morning dew, their expressions grim and cautious. “How could the city fall in barely a month? You lie!”

His voice cracked as he stepped forward, not with regal authority, but desperation. His whole frame trembled—not with anger, but with disbelief that sought refuge in rage.

The older of the two scouts bowed his head lower, as if trying to fold into himself, a man who knew there was no comfort to offer, no silver thread to soften what he must say. “Your Grace,” he said softly, “we saw it with our own eyes. The smoke covered the entire skyline. We did not see the enemy host, but only a few watchers on the walls they built.

The enemy… has sacked Herculia.”

The words landed like hammers on brittle glass. Lechlian’s legs buckled, and he sank into the chair behind him with a thud.

The war table, once covered in maps and little wooden markers , now seemed to mock him with its useless abstractions.

He stared at it, his eyes wide but unfocused.

“Herculia… has fallen…” he murmured. His voice was distant, hollow. “The city… the capital…”

He slumped forward, the weight of defeat crashing over him like a drowning tide. His hands trembled as he pressed his palms to his face, unable—or unwilling—to stop the rising tide of despair.

“The gods must be punishing me…” he said, not to the scouts, but to whatever silent force still lingered in the corners of the tent. “They must be.”

A silence stretched, awkward and heavy. The younger scout looked at his elder, uncertain whether they should speak or simply vanish from sight. But Lechlian made no further sound—no command, no question. Just the low, rasping sound of a man too broken to mask the crumbling within.

And Lechlian, once a prince of fire and banner, now sat smoldering in ash.

Of course, it was Arnold who soon took the reins of the situation. While his father slumped in his chair like a shattered effigy of royalty, Arnold stood rigid, shoulders squared

“Have you clearly seen the city gates opened?” he asked, eyes fixed on the older scout with unnerving intensity ”The fire could have been to boil bots for food or oil”

The man shifted uncomfortably, glancing briefly at his companion before answering. “No, Your Grace… The walls the enemy constructed , they….are nearly as tall as Herculia’s. We couldn’t see the gates directly.”

Arnold’s jaw clenched, his nostrils flaring with a sharp exhale. “Then you haven’t confirmed if the city has truly fallen.”

The younger scout looked as if he wanted to melt into the earth. “We didn’t dare get closer, Your Grace. Enemy riders were circling the outer perimeter. We feared if we approached any further, they’d spot us and give chase. But the smoke…” His voice faltered. “The smoke was too much. Far too much to be just cookfires. It was everywhere, pouring from all sides of the city like a black tide. And we saw no glint of sunlight reflecting off the battlements… no gleam of helms or armor on the walls.”

Arnold stared at them a moment longer, his expression unreadable, carved from granite. Then, with a flick of his fingers, he dismissed them. The two scouts bowed so hastily it was a wonder they didn’t trip over themselves as they backed out of the tent, like mice who had been spared the cat’s claws by nothing more than whim.

When the flap closed behind them, silence returned—save for the soft rasp of his father’s uneven breathing. Arnold did not turn. He only stared at the tent wall for a long moment, as if the canvas might yield some secret truth if he glared hard enough.

Outwardly, he projected calm, a general weighing variables, a nobleman shouldering command. But within, a storm brewed that no soldier under his banner could see. His mind ran wild with doubt. Cold, creeping doubt that wrapped around his thoughts like vines around a tombstone.

The capital… has truly fallen. The phrase echoed like a bell tolling in his chest.

My father was in there… That much he knew. But what had happened to him? Had he died in the flames, sword in hand to defend the city? Or had he been taken—dragged from the citadel by Yarzat riders, bound in chains once again?

In his fears, he barely took notice of the fact that Thalien was in there too.

And whatever fate Lord Cretio had met, his younger brother had likely shared it. Perhaps they’d fallen together in the last defense, side by side on the walls.

He shook the thought off, but it clung to him like ash in a fire-blackened city.

Arnold turned slowly to look at the still figure of the prince , slouched like a sack of flour in his chair. Once, this man had inspired armies to rally and cities to cheer his name. Now, he couldn’t even meet his son’s eyes.

Disgust flickered in Arnold’s gaze—but only briefly. Even that required energy he could not spare. What was the use of hate when the enemy was no longer at the gates, but inside the house, dining in your hall?

He walked over to the edge of the tent and lifted the flap slightly, peering out into the morning. The sky was smeared with smoke, a long line rising in the far distance. He couldn’t see Herculia, but he could smell it—or at least, what it had become.

Burning wood. The stench of failure carried on the wind as if he were there ahead of the city , hearing the screams of women being raped and families being torn.

Arnold dropped the flap and turned back inside.

They still had an army. A broken one. Frightened, splintered, and perhaps too few in number—but it still breathed.

If Lechlian had collapsed beneath the weight of defeat, Arnold felt instead as though something was being born inside him—raw and feral, a fire in his chest that only grew with every breath.

If Father has been captured… we can still reach him, the thought whispered, then roared. If we strike now—if we strike hard—we can still break through.

The idea slithered into his skull like a viper and coiled itself around his resolve.

Like a snake with its head cut off, biting its killers in its final act as a beast.

The enemy had taken Herculia, yes—but no force stormed a capital unscathed. They must have come through iron and blood, dragged through a hurricane of flame and screaming steel. They had to be battered, bleeding, tired.

And if that was true… then there was still time.

Still a chance.

He turned abruptly, his boots thudding against the dirt floor as he stormed back into the tent.

“FATHER!” he barked, the word like a slap against silk.

Lechlian stirred. The prince, whose shoulders had once borne crowns and armies, lifted his head as if surfacing from drowning. His eyes were slow, like someone just woken from a half-forgotten dream.

Arnold did not wait.

“Give the order to march,” he commanded, his voice forged in steel and certainty. “We can still strike them—while they are weary, while they are wounded. We can end this, even now.”

Lechlian’s eyes barely flickered. His voice, when it came, was dry as parchment, older than he had any right to sound.

“We would be walking toward our doom.”

Arnold stepped forward, eyes blazing. “We’re already walking toward doom. Whether we sit or march, the abyss yawns before us all the same. But if we move—if we fight—at least we do so with our swords drawn with the chance of emerging out of it .”

Lechlian looked at his son, and for a flicker of a moment, Arnold saw something pass across his father’s face. Not anger. Not contempt. But something gentler—something almost wistful.

How good it is to be young again, the old prince’s eyes seemed to say. How foolish. How brave.

“You forget,” Lechlian said at last, voice as soft as dust on stone, “that before you reach your city, you must first break through the two wooden rings the enemy has raised around it. Siege walls, taller than trees. Trenches deeper than graves.

And if by some miracle you pierce them, then you must still throw yourself against the gates of what once was our city, now a fortress in enemy hands.” He paused. “Do you truly believe, from the bottom of your soul, that you can do it?”

Reality struck like a spear haft across the face. Arnold faltered, only for a breath—but a breath too long.

“…Do we have any other choice?” he asked finally, quietly, but not defeated.

“Yes,” Lechlian said, settling deeper into his chair. “We turn. We march inland. We seek allies beyond our borders. Somewhere in this world, there must still be a prince who values the balance of power enough to send us men and gold.”

Arnold’s jaw tightened. “We’ve already tried that. And they all turned us away.”

Lechlian’s gaze hardened. “Then we will offer something greater. Something worth their spears.”

There was a pause.

Then, calmly, he said:

“The hand of the next prince.”

The words landed like iron on Arnold’s chest.

“I am already married,” he said, his voice quiet but full of a new and rising fury. “You know this.”

Lechlian did not flinch. “Then you will divorce her.”

Arnold blinked, as if he’d been struck.

“You would have me cast her aside like spoiled wine?” he said, disbelief dripping from every syllable. “the woman I vowed before gods and men to stand beside?After what her father did for you?”

“Cretio,” Lechlian replied coldly, “is either dead or a prisoner. Your marriage no longer secures us anything for our current situation. It is sentiment—and sentiment is a luxury of peacetime.”

Arnold stared at him as though the old man had turned to stone before his eyes

“The months ahead,” Lechlian continued, “will decide whether we live on as a people, or whether Herculia becomes a name scribbled in some dusty ledger. This is not about love. It is not even about you or me.”

He leaned forward, voice like a whisper wrapped in iron, in that old tone of his.

“You are the heir. And heirs do not wed for pleasure. They wed for the future of their blood. You will take whatever daughter of a foreign prince brings us the most men—and you will be grateful for the chance.”

Arnold felt like vomiting in his father’s face.

Still, none of them knew that the entire future of theirs had just been nailed to sand, inside that tent that reeked of defeat.