Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Minutes stretched like hours, and hours unraveled into what felt like days.

Arnold sat still beneath the heavy canvas of his tent, its silence pierced only by the occasional creak of leather or the distant clatter of a restless camp.

His eyes drifted again across the familiar fragments of his exile,objects that had not changed in weeks, yet seemed to weigh more with each passing day. The dried ink stains on parchment left from unfinished letters.

He had written them for Cretio and for his daughter; the first died , the other he divorced.

So to whom was he to send any words?

Was there somebody to give him true company? The answer looked to be negative as he gazed around at the loneliness of it all.

The tiny wildflower that had fallen to the rug beneath his cot, forgotten yet strangely enduring. A handful of trinkets and mementos, once comforting, now felt like relics from a life that no longer existed.

And then, always, his gaze found them: the fur-lined gloves resting neatly on the corner of his desk. Worn, weathered, but lovingly kept. Lord Cretio's gloves. The only physical thing he had left to remember the man who had once called him son.

His jaw tightened, and he looked away, but the ache in his chest remained.

It wasn't simply grief. Arnold had long learned to carry grief in silence. No, what clawed at him now, day after day, was something darker....betrayal. Shame. The rot of injustice creeping through the roots of a once-proud house.

Lord Cretio had stood beside them when no others would. Loyal through every humiliation, every desperate call to arms. When the nobility whispered, when others in court turned their faces, he remained. Even when Arnold's father demanded the impossible, Cretio never flinched. He raised banners, sent men, and eventually gave his life to defend the capital.

He died with his honor intact.

And how had they repaid him?

Arnold could still remember the coldness in his father's voice the day after the capital fell, before they even knew what had even happened to him. The annulment had been swift, political, and heartless.

Lord Cretio's daughter, Arnold's wife, had been torn from him like a contract being voided. Her grief hadn't mattered. Her pleas, her tears, her pregnancy, none of it had stopped the decree.

Even now, she carried his child. And yet, that child would be a bastard. Stripped of name, of inheritance, of place.

Arnold's hands curled into fists at the memory, his nails biting into his palms. He had wanted to fight it. To scream. To resist. But even that had been denied him. His obedience was demanded like a tax. His silence taken as part of his duty.

He often wondered how his grandmother had dropped his father as a child to make him so.

Was it ambition? Pride? Fear?

Or had the man simply never believed in the things a man should follow , loyalty, law, divine order, only in how they served him?

Arnold's eyes returned once more to the gloves, and this time he let the pain rise unhindered.

You were the better man, he thought bitterly. And we buried you like a criminal.

Perhaps this was the cost. Perhaps the Peasant Prince was the punishment they had brought upon themselves. A scourge sent not by human sources, but by the divine itself. A reckoning. And in some grim, poetic way, Arnold welcomed it.

Because what else was justice to a house like his?

His father had spat on every sacred bond, family, loyalty, law. He had turned marriage into a transaction and faith into a mask.

We deserved this, he thought.

He sank further into his chair, his breath slow and heavy.

What gnawed at him most wasn't just the cruelty of it.

It was that deep, unrelenting part of himself that still wanted to believe in something better. In the vows he had made, in the family he had started, in the name he once wore with pride.

And now, stripped of all that, he was left only with memory. And shame.

And a pair of gloves that no longer fit.

He couldn't bear the confinement any longer. He was going mad.

It had been weeks, endless, dragging weeks, since his father had ordered him confined to his tent like a misbehaving child. Two guards stood vigil just beyond the flap, silent sentinels of his shame, enforcing an exile. The tent was large, furnished in the style befitting a prince, but its walls closed in like a prison.

Time moved strangely here. The hours bled into each other, indistinguishable. He could no longer tell if it was morning or dusk without stepping outside, and that ,of course, was forbidden.

Arnold paced. He had done so dozens of times already, wearing a shallow path in the rugs beneath his boots. His gaze flicked restlessly across the tent's contents—the same mementos, the same damn gloves, the same papers that spoke of nothing but absence.

The world outside was changing, boiling, moving, while he was trapped in here, festering like an old wound. Information came in trickles, pieces of rumor caught from the guards or muttered between servants who cleaned the tent and thought he wasn't listening.

He had heard the names. Lord Talos. Vorminio. Great houses, now stirred into action. Apparently the fall of the capital had jolted many into remembering their oaths. His father's banners swelled again, the camp reportedly brimming with fresh troops, the sound of new forges hammering out weapons through the night.

But Arnold felt nothing but contempt and hate for the fact that something good was happening to that failure of a father.

Let them come, he thought bitterly. Let them bring a thousand more blades. He'll find a way to dull them all.

He clenched his fists. His father had already failed when he had twice the strength of the enemy, failed to trap the Peasant Prince, failed to outwit that damn Fox. He had squandered every advantage, every opportunity, and still wore the mantle of command as though it were a crown of divine favor.

A fool dressed in armor.

Arnold scoffed aloud and ran a hand through his unkempt hair. Despite everything, he still found himself yearning for something simple, the wind. The saddle. The open sky. Anything but this suffocating stillness.

He'd kill to ride again, if only for a day.

Suddenly, the silence broke.

From outside the tent, a voice called out, firm, but respectful. "My lord, may I enter?"

Arnold's scowl deepened, annoyed by the interruption. His voice came out sharper than he intended.

"Yes, get in with it already."

The flap parted, and in stepped a familiar face, one of the guards assigned to him since the first days of his confinement.

Arnold stared at him, irritation still simmering under his skin, but he couldn't help the flicker of curiosity that stirred within.

"Speak," Arnold said, straightening slightly. "Or is this just another check to make sure I haven't slit my wrists from boredom?"

"My lord, His Grace, your father, has ordered the army to break camp. We march at first light."

Arnold blinked, then let out a breath, his shoulders easing just slightly. "Finally," he muttered. "Are we heading west, then? Toward the heartlands?"

The guard hesitated for half a second before answering, "No, my lord. We march south."

Arnold's brow furrowed. "South? Why in the gods' names would we—?"

"He has accepted the Peasant Prince's challenge," the guard interrupted calmly. "A formal missive was sent two nights past. The enemy sent his reply this morning. The terms have been agreed upon."

Arnold's eyes narrowed, his mind sharpening like a blade pulled from rest. "What terms?"

"The battle will be fought in the valleys of Sitanum," the guard replied. "Seven days from now. The field was chosen by the Prince himself. The Peasant Prince… accepted."

For a moment, Arnold said nothing. He simply stared at him , as if trying to read something deeper behind the man's calm voice. Then he slowly turned his gaze toward the tent flap, toward the veil of canvas that kept him from the world.

South.

A challenge.

A duel for a crown.

Now that, Arnold thought, a flicker of something unfamiliar stirring in his chest, was something new.

For a long while after the guard left, Arnold remained still.

The tent was quiet again, save for the faint rustling of canvas and the distant murmurs of soldiers preparing for march. The familiar scent of oiled steel and trampled grass drifted in, mingling with the dull weight of dust and memory.

New smells finally...

He leaned back in his chair, exhaling slowly as his gaze drifted toward the ceiling of the tent. Sitanum. Seven days.

At least now, it was moving toward an end.

Whether it ended with them keeping the crown or his father being a corpse, a funeral pyre or a fanfare of trumpets, something within him was quietly relieved.

The endless waiting, the silence of the tent, the tightening noose of politics and shame, all of it would be swept away by the clash of armies in the valley below.

The wheel would turn.

He didn't know if his father would win, or if the Peasant Prince would finally bring his father to his knees. And truth be told, for once, he wasn't sure which outcome he hoped for more.

He bore no love from his father especially now, and he knew that their road would never join together, especially with the weeks his brother must have had to poison his father with whatever thought passed through his perverted head.

But what mattered most to Arnold, in that moment, was that it would end. The road would fork. The game would reach its final hand.

And something, anything , would finally give.