Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Despite knowing that in mere hours he'd be leading the most dangerous assault of the campaign,within reach of every archer and slinger perched atop the city walls, Arnold carried himself surprisingly well.

At least outwardly.

He kept his posture straight and his expression still, letting not a single flicker of fear show before the men who would soon follow him into the jaws of danger.

But inside?

Inside, he was a soup of sweat, nerves, and doubt.

The plan depended on him holding the enemy's focus long enough to let the cliff-climbing contingent go unnoticed. That meant drawing fire. And with his fine, ornate armor practically shimmering in the moonnlight like a signal flare, how long until some keen-eyed bowman decided to test his luck?

It was, in fact, a question he'd rather not dwell on.

So naturally, the gods, or the world, decided to distract him.

"Everything good?" Thalien's voice cut through the tent flap, breezy and irreverent as ever. "In a few minutes, we'll be wading through death's front porch."

Arnold didn't smile, but his voice carried a tired amusement. "You didn't have to volunteer."

Thalien shrugged as he wandered inside, letting his armor jingle with every step. He dropped heavily onto a nearby stool as if it were a throne, exhaling in lazy comfort.

"We barely have enough men as is to sell the illusion of a full-force attack. And besides, I think the prince assumed I was already on board when you presented the plan."

He leaned back, hands behind his head.

"After he praised my brotherly loyalty, what was I supposed to do? Correct him? Run for the woods? You know how awkward it would get...we are slave of our manners..."

A chuckle almost escaped Arnold's lips, but he smothered it before it could rise. The moment hung in a quiet lull, filled only by the soft rattle of chainmail and distant sounds of soldiers preparing for battle.

Eventually, Arnold broke the silence.

His voice was slower now, heavier, and quieter.

"You've… been kinder to me than I deserve. You stood by when I asked His Grace for aid with my wife and daughter, and again when I presented our counsel. You didn't interrupt or do anything that was not helpful. You just... helped."

Thalien glanced over, saying nothing waiting to see if a point was being made or not.

Arnold continued, his words careful and measured like steps across thin ice.

"I always expected you to carry the same anger for me that you do for our father. After all, I ignored you most of our lives. I pushed you away. I... I thought you'd want to see me fail. But instead... I found the opposite."

Silence returned again.

Thalien's gaze lingered on Arnold, unmoving. He tilted his head back, eyes drifting to the top of the tent, and slowly, without looking away, he closed his eyes.

Then he did something completely unexpected.

He hummed.

A soft, aimless tune, light as the wind, floated through the canvas walls. Not quite a melody. Not quite a song. Just a drifting, almost careless sound, like a man brushing dust from his shoulders.

"I hate him," Thalien said at last, voice low and steady,like a dam with cracks beginning to show.

He hadn't looked at Arnold. His gaze remained distant, unfocused. "Whatever word you might reach for to describe it, resentment, disgust, rage, ,none of it does justice to what I feel. None of it touches it."

He drew a shallow breath. "For five years, I lived like a shadow in a tomb. Not a boy, not a man, just a thing caught in his grip. Every time I tried to breathe, to exist, it was like slamming into a wall made of his will."

His jaw clenched, teeth grinding as he stared into the tent's canvas wall. "I wanted to ride. Not in parades or drills, just to feel wind in my hair and hooves under me, to see the fields outside the city like a normal fucking being. But I wasn't allowed. ''

"I wanted to read something that wasn't scripture. Philosophy, poetry, history... just something that wasn't hymns and prayers and gods-gods-gods all fucking day long. But in that gilded cage he called a library, there was nothing but piety. Dusty verses, rules, commandments. As if enlightenment came only from kneeling."

He exhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. "And I was locked in for weeks at a time. No light but the candles, no sound but sermons, and those damn tutors. Eunuchs with bitterness where their pride used to be. Men who thought losing their cocks made them wise.

Who wore their suffering like a crown and wielded it like a rod."

He laughed bitterly. "They despised me. Every breath I took was an offense to their quiet misery. And they made sure I knew it. Every step I took, they were there, chipping, chipping, chipping away. Like rats gnawing at the edge of my mind. Always correcting, always judging. Always reminding me I belonged to him."

His hands had tightened into fists. His voice grew rawer now—rougher. "At some point... I started losing it, my patience.''

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the dirt floor like it might answer him.

"I started fighting back. Small things, at first. Nails on their chairs. Pissing in their wine. Tainting their linens with my shit. Just to make them feel something besides that cold righteousness they wrapped around themselves. Just to let me feel something besides helplessness. Beside that fucking monotony"

A pause. A silence long enough that Arnold almost spoke.

Then Thalien's voice dropped lower, as if slipping into some dark, buried chamber of himself.

"Some mornings, I'd wake up with a knife beside my bed, I did not know how it got there, but I'd sit there. Staring at it. Wondering if I'd use it on them. Or on myself. I couldn't tell which thought was louder."

Arnold's breath caught. Thalien didn't seem to notice.

"The prayers never stopped. Morning. Afternoon. Night. Always on our knees. Always muttering the same holy words. Over and over and over and over. Like a song with no end. Kneel. Pray. Rise. Kneel again. Repeat. Repeat.Repeat."

His hands moved, as if reenacting the motions.

"I used to take that knife and press it against my arm. Just enough to cut through all the monotony. To feel something that wasn't goddamned prayer. A mark. A drop of blood. A reminder that I was still there. That something inside me hadn't gone completely numb."

"I wasn't trying to die. I just needed something, anything, that wasn't another sermon. I needed a moment that didn't smell of incense and rot. I needed to scream, but silence was the only thing permitted.So I bled and cut, cut and bled, bled and cut, cut and bled.

Then they started whispering  behind the doors," he spat suddenly, fury flaring in his voice like dry leaves catching fire. "Those bastards. The eunuchs, the servants, the stewards with their rotten teeth and perfumed robes. Whispering about me like I was deaf. Like I wasn't right on the other side of the door, listening at their laughing, at their chittering , at their being alive."

They'd mock how I walked, how I stammered when the prayers got too long. They laughed at how I stayed awake at night, staring at the ceiling until my eyes burned. They laughed at how I bled. Laughed at how I cut myself. Said it was a phase. Said it was divine punishment. Said I should be grateful for the discipline."

He whirled toward Arnold, eyes wild. "My tutors told them there wasn't any other explanation. I was cursed by them.

Told the servants about my 'failings.' About the bruises I gave myself. About the nights they caught me whispering nonsense . And they all laughed. They laughed in the kitchens, in the halls, behind my back. Behind those four walls."

"Always the same. The same bed. The same chair. The same holy symbols over the door, watching like a thousand glass eyes. The same muttered prayers. The same ritual. The same silence.The same monotony.The same cuts.The same food.The same books.''

He paused, shoulders tense, breath shaking.

"…I miss the gardens."

He didn't turn around. Just stood there, still but not as a statue chiseled from resentment, but instead of the stone discarded after the work.

"When I was little. Before all this. When you would take my hand and walk with me beneath the olives. When the sun would warm the stone path and the wind smelled like lemons. They would talk. Just talk. Not preach. Not command. Just talk."

He lowered his shoulder and let his gaze fall to the ground, voice softer now, thin and almost brittle.

"And all those happy memories…" he breathed, "they made the long days feel worse. So much worse. Because I knew what I'd lost. I remembered what it could have been. What he could have been."

His fingers trembled slightly as he clenched them by his side, as if trying to hold on to something long since spilled through them.

"By the end of it, when he realized he couldn't break me, and finally let go… when he left me to rot in my own silence… I tried to claw those years back. Tried to make up for every moment stolen."

A weak smile ghosted across his lips, joyless, exhausted, bitter.

"So I ran. Headfirst. Into everything. Pleasure, pain—anything that felt different. I was a fickle being in a world filled with pleasure. Jumping from one vain pleasure to the other.

Anything that didn't smell like incense and stale sermons. I swam in that sea,drunk deep from his water, trying to make a heaven from the differences of my hell.

Wine, women, food, opium… I tried them all like medicine. But none of it filled me. None of it fixed the... the gape.My attention was short lived, I wanted to taste everything and yet none sated me.

How fickle and vain my existence was."

He looked up briefly at the canvas roof of the tent, eyes wet with something unspoken.

"It only deepened it. Every night, deeper. Every dawn, emptier and emptier."

His voice dipped lower still.

"Then I went for more refined taste.

I thought revenge would heal me. That maybe if I took from him everything, his name, his gold, his honor, then something would settle. "

He exhaled, sharp and bitter.

"But even that, even that, god that I now served ,was empty. I stepped over him like a corpse. And the satisfaction I thought would come... it vanished before I could even taste it. Like all the rest. Like every forgettable, filthy night I'd spent numbing myself, in pleasure and debauchery.

No. That's not true," he said, softer now, more honest than before. "It was worse than the rest. Because when I finally stepped outside those walls, the ones I'd bled to escape, I felt something I hadn't expected. When I finally left the storm, the ship of my mind fought against. "

He looked at Arnold, then past him. Eyes distant.

But he didn't continue, especially when he saw it.

That so much hated pity in the eyes of one of those responsible for it.

He couldn't bring himself to admit how alone he felt at the peak of his success. How lonely he was in his sadness.

He just could not.