Chapter 777: Flower of peace(1)
Zayneth still could not quite understand why he had been chosen for such a task. Personally delivering a message to his liege’s enemy,he believed were not one of the duty he thought he would attend to.
He had racked his mind for a clearer reason, but nothing ever quite settled.
Not that it mattered now.
He doubted the Peasant Prince spared much thought for Habadia, a distant power separated from him by hundreds of kilometers and at least two buffer states. If anything, the rivalry was one-sided, the sort that festers more in the mind of an anxious monarch than in the thoughts of a rising conqueror.
But really he wasn’t about to say that to Nibadur’s face.
Even though he hated saying that, it was true that the Yarzat Prince was adept with warfare, as he nearly doubled the size of his state in only half a decade.
His gloved hand brushed instinctively along the side of his hip, fingers closing on empty air where his sword once hung. The absence of the familiar weight unsettled him. Stripped of his blade, he felt uncomfortably exposed and naked, though if the prince wished him dead no amount of steel would put a stop to that.
He cast a sidelong glance at one of the mounted men escorting him, broad-shouldered, silent, and wrapped in a heavy wolf pelt that draped down his back. Savages, Zayneth thought, though he kept the judgment behind his teeth.
The man looked as if he’d gutted the beast himself.
Though Zayneth had surrendered promptly, raising no resistance and clearly identifying himself as an envoy bearing the seal of his prince, they had still taken his weapons, that of his party, and subjected him to a stern silence. Not even a word of courtesy, not a single gesture of the diplomatic respect typically afforded to messengers under flag of truce.
Part of him itched to file it as a grievance to his prince. But he knew better.
That would not be the outcome his liege was hoping for. He had not come here merely to carry words; he had come to observe and gouge everything that he could.
After what felt like an endless stretch of riding through trampled fields and scarred hills, they finally approached a rise where a military camp spread itself across the land like a steel-clad tumor. Rows of tents, timber watchtowers and smoking cookfires.
As they finally passed through the true boundary of the camp, the place where the idle exterior gave way to the beating heart of a war machine, Zayneth realized why their pace had been so deliberately sluggish.
The Peasant Prince, it seemed, had prepared something for him.
Arrayed on either side of the main road were soldiers, rows upon rows of them, stretching down the path like pillars of judgment. They stood in perfect silence, unmoving, identical in appearance as if stamped from the same mold.
Black and white armor gleamed under the sun with a uniform polish that made the column look less like men and more like statues.
Zayneth’s breath hitched as he was led down that narrow corridor, flanked by over a thousand soldiers forming what could only be described as a corridor of power. He felt like a lamb dragged down the maw of wolves.
Not a word, not a whisper passed among them. Only the sound of hooves on packed dirt, and the quiet hum of discipline so tightly coiled it seemed ready to snap like a belt.
It was a performance. And it was masterful.
So, perhaps he had been wrong in thinking they cared little about Habadia.
But to what end?
Is this supposed to threaten me? he wondered, even as a shiver crept up his spine. A show of force for a foreign envoy? How foolish. Diplomatically reckless, even. To intimidate a neutral messenger before even hearing his message, that was truly the behavior of a mercenary, not a prince.
He forced himself to keep his gaze forward, hands clenched into fists where they rested on his thighs. The urge to avert his eyes, to look away from the crushing symmetry of the White Army’s gaze, was powerful. But he resisted. If they wanted him to flinch, they would be disappointed.
Still, he could not deny the pressure settling on his chest. Every soldier he passed looked the same: faceless behind their helms, motionless, as if awaiting only a word to turn their quiet stillness into swift violence.
Alive in a way Habadia’s fractured levies had never been.
He tried to console himself with the thought that this was a misstep on Alpheo’s part. A sword, once drawn, should only be drawn with intent to cut. This sort of display, this orchestrated intimidation, was wasted on a neutral envoy. The prince didn’t yet know what message he carried. For all he knew, Zayneth could have come to offer alliance, terms, or aid. What if this was seen as insult? An offense?
You don’t wave a cane at a dog and then hope it doesn’t bite when it start barking.
But even as he thought it, he knew this, too, could be used.
The prince had shown his hand, and his character with a propensity toward showing off his force.
That was perhaps the best thing that he could get out of this.
Still, even as he felt relieved at the prospect of having something meaningful to report he couldn’t shake the cold prickle crawling along the back of his neck.
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’’This should be the first time we’ve ever dealt with that bastard under the light of the sun," Asag muttered, standing at the side of a seated Alpheo.
The tent they occupied had once been used to receive high nobles, today was chosen to host the envoy of a rival prince.
Asag’s tone carried that familiar bite of disdain. And why not? This would be the first official contact between Alpheo’s camp and the crown of Habadia, and yet every sword, every coin, and every whisper that had moved against them in the past few years had, in some way or another, borne Nibadur’s shadow.
There had never been a declaration, never a speech nor a signed treaty to bind their names together in animosity. Yet the hostility between them was unmistakable, like poison slipped into a shared well.
"Did we ever get the reason for such hostility?" Jarza asked, stroking the edge of his greying black beard, his eyes narrowed as if the answer might be scratched out from beneath his own skin.
Gods, would I pray to know that, Alpheo thought bitterly, shaking his head.
He could recall no slight he’d committed, no act that should’ve earned such malice. Before the annexation of Herculia, there hadn’t even been a reason for Nibadur to spare him a thought.
But apparently their relation came before that, since he had been just another prince among many. And yet, the prince of Habadia had gone out of his way to throw support at every blade turned against him. He hadn’t eaten out of Alpheo’s plate, but he’d spared no effort in spitting on it.
Of course, he had no way of knowing that to Nibadur, he was never more than a tool.
A monster in the mist, pointed to whenever it suited Habadia’s ambitions. Alpheo, for all his victories, served best as a threat, an excuse. A specter that justified Nibadur’s dream of uniting the southern kingdoms into one coherent power. Where others preferred the political chaos the South was , Nibadur craved control. And to forge that order, he needed enemies that made his rule feel necessary.
Alpheo just happened to fit the silhouette.
It could have been seen as a noble ambition, even admirable in some abstract, academic way.
But only if he succeeded.
Bismarck, after all, was hailed as a hero only because his gambit succeeded. Had fortune turned against him, had Prussia fallen rather than risen, history would not have remembered him as the Iron Chancellor.
No, he would have been etched in memory as either a reckless traitor at worst, and at best, a well-meaning fool who gambled away his country’s future on a delusion of grandeurt...
In war and politics alike, success sanctifies everything. Failure damns without mercy.
Alpheo exhaled through his nose and straightened his posture. A low murmur rippled near the entrance, footsteps and whispers blending like the wind before a storm.
He raised a single hand.
"Silence," he commanded.
The effect was immediate. Conversation died mid-breath. Armor ceased its rustling.
And then, the envoy entered.
Both of them not knowing that the meeting they were about to begin would set their countries on an unchangeable course.
A course that would shape not just their fate, but that of the entire South.
For after all, even small men can cast a big shadow if given a light...