Chapter 1344: Long Lost brothers(2)

The royal banner flapped and snapped violently behind him, whipped by the biting winter wind. Held high by his young squire whose knuckles were white from the effort of keeping the ash-wood staff steady in his stirrup, behind a forest of iron and flesh.

Still if he made a mess of it, Doria only had himself to blame, he was the one that insisted for the honor.Though the king would have cared little for that, especially today.

His dark armor rattled and clinked with each rhythmic stride of his great warhorse, the black beast whose heavy iron-shod hooves clattered sharply against the paving stones of the road.

Directly behind him rode the royal party, composed from the king’s guard, their polished breastplates reflecting the pale winter sun, their hands resting easily on the hilts of their longswords.

Behind them then came a different sort of army: sour-faced accountants , field medics with chests of salves and linen bandages slung over their packhorses, and a dozen scribes and royal aides bundled tightly in heavy fur cloaks against the wind.

Very few lords had bothered to follow their king, only those closest to him and as such knew how much that meant for him.

It was a flagrant violation of military common sense for the King to ride at the very head of the column, especially when descending into this chaotic, unknown sea of people. A stray arrow, a desperate madman with a rusted knife, or even a sudden surge in the crowd could end the head of the dynasty in a heartbeat.

Yet, scarcely anyone in his inner circle dared to point this out as the king would have hardly cared to listen.

As his horse trotted deeper into the road, the sea of exiles came closer to him.

Eyes, thousands of them, both wide with childlike wonder and narrowed with deep, hard-bitten suspicion, trailed across his towering figure. Alpheo looked down from his saddle, reading the raw, naked human terrain of the crowd. He could see a swirling range of emotions written on their dust-caked faces.

He saw in the face of some of the oldest, that perhaps had the wisdom to enquire about his sorroundings . Unfortunately in that of the youngest he saw only grippin fear.

It was clear to Alpheo that the Romelian convoy lords who had ferried them down from the north had explained little to nothing about why they were being led into the south. So left to their own devices they made their own reasons.

Still, he could understand their silence, in part. Why bother to explain to slaves their new fate? As all that was required of them was to walk?

Yet, who knew? Perhaps they had been fed one or two rumors during their long, agonizing march. A whisper passed around the campfires at night when the guards were deep in their cups; a name carried on the wind.

Alpheo hoped desperately that it was so. He would hate to be a source of terror to them, a second master appearing in iron to replace the ones they had left behind. But hopes availed to very little in a world ruled by steel.

He pulled gently on his horse’s leather reins, slowing the great beast to a walking pace as they drew parallel to a small huddle of travelers. A young woman, her face smudged with soot and her fingers blue from the frost, instinctively shrank back, pulling a shivering little boy deeper into the folds of her threadbare cloak.

Her brother, perhaps, though Alpheo knew the harsh realities of the empire’s pens well enough to know he could very well have been her son. They were slaves, which meant some had been destined for the fields, and others for the bed. Many of their children were simply the quiet, unintended consequences of the latter.

Egil had always spoken of his people as a proud breed, second in riding only to being first in fighting. Of course, if Alpheo had ever dared to ask how such peerless warriors had ended up defeated and chained, the man would merely offer a sharp snort and turn a cold shoulder to him for the rest of the day.

Looking at the crowd now, Alpheo could hardly see a trace of the pride Egil had boasted of.

A small girl, no older than his own Rosalind, stared blankly at the scabbard of his sword and then down at the heavy, mud-caked hooves of his destrier. Her tiny shoulders tensed, her eyes wide and glassy, braced for the casual backhand or the heavy kick she had spent her short life expecting from men on horseback. Alpheo noticed she stood entirely alone in the press; there was no protective mother’s thigh for her to hug, no hand reaching out to pull her back.

She was alone, he realised, alone in a world that hardly pitied her.Did her caretaker die on the march perhaps?She could hardly think she made the trail alone.

The others fared no better, whether grown or small. Men with broad, hollow chests, men whose fathers might once have ridden in the vanguard of the tribe’s great migrations, kept their gazes locked firmly on the dirt. The moment their eyes accidentally brushed Alpheo’s, they snapped their heads down so fast their necks popped, their shoulders hunching to make themselves as small and invisible as possible.

It was a depressing, harrowing sight, but above all, it was human, and old as it could be.

The bottomless pit of despair had claimed them long ago.

They were a broken people, through and through. They had been stripped of pride, denuded of dignity, and hollowed out of self-respect.

Fool, the King thought, a bitter, self-directed anger flaring in his chest. What did you expect? Cheers? A triumphant parade?

They had been owned, traded, and driven like cattle for thirty years. The children had been born in the dirt of the slave quarters, their very first lessons consisting of how to cower, how to avoid eye contact, and how to tremble at the approach of master’s boots.

The sight cut Alpheo deeper than any iron blade that had come close to his throat during the crossing of the Ford.

What overwhelmed him was the banality of it all.

Beneath his fine wool tunic and the gilded steel of his breastplate, the thick, ridged scars on his back began to itch and burn reminded him exactly where he had come from, and who he still was beneath the heavy crown he might soon wear.

But it was the thought of the others that struck him even harder. How many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of their kinsmen remained entirely lost, hidden away in the sprawling, limitless estates of the northern empire? How many of them were at this very moment rotting under the sting of a leather whip, their only misfortune being that the Emperor’s collectors word passed over their specific plantation during the search?

The scale of it was staggering, a vast, quiet tragedy continuing just beyond the reach of his sword.Beyond the sight of his eyes. Never to be spoken or listened.

How many among those were people just like Egil?Just like Jarza, Rosalind, Basil?How many would he never know?Just like him?

He felt the need to say something. Anything at all was better then the silence. Better than the stares he was receiving. With all the eyes on him, their expectation, their fears. He felt worse than a monster.

He felt a master.The thought of that amidst all that soup in his head, made him want to puke.

"All hail the King!"

At the bark of the royal herald, the children’s backs went instantly straight, their small bodies locking into rigid attention as their cowering only deepened. Alpheo wondered for a bleak, heavy moment what nightmarish thoughts were passing through their heads at his sight. He was a towering figure clad in armor black as sin, sitting astride a great beast of midnight dark.

"The one who rides before you is the King of Yarzat!"

Behind him, the silver trumpets echoed across the plain, braying like the long moans of great elephants. Alpheo raised a gauntleted hand, his voice cutting through the brass and the wind.

"And I declare myself a friend to you!" the King thundered. "Here, beneath the very walls of my city, may men lay witness to my words, and may the gods attest to my intention and my unyielding will! With the sovereign power granted to my crown, I hereby grant to each and every one of you freedom from your bonds!"

He watched the crowd, feeling the sudden, stunned confusion seeping from their gaunt faces. Near the front of the road, a young man with raw, swollen ankles, scoured bloody by years of heavy iron fetters, slowly tilted his head upward. The deep-seated fear was not forgotten, not yet, but it was pushed back beneath the staggering novelty of the situation. What did he look in his eyes? In him, Alpheo caught the first, fragile spark of wonder. Of hope.

"Slaves no more shall you be," Alpheo declared, his horse taking one slow, deliberate step forward. "This is my first gift to you. From this day forth, your backs shall know no whip’s cruel slap. Your stomachs shall know no hunger. Pride and dignity shall be your at your hand once more. Men made you slave and animals. Yarzat shall make you people once more. ’’

He looked down toward the ditch, his gaze catching an woman whose bare, frostbitten feet left dark, bloody soles upon the frozen ground with every shift of her weight. She was clutching a broken wooden bowl to her chest like a shield, her lips moving in a silent, terrified prayer to whatever gods she hoped were listening.

"You shall be given shoes," Alpheo said, his voice softening just enough to reach her.And then on louder note "You shall be given shoes! You shall be given warm clothes. You shall be given fertile land to till, and sturdy houses to shelter your children. You shall be men and women once more! These, too, are the gifts I extend to you."

A collective, ragged breath seemed to leave the six hundred, so akin to the rustling of dry leaves in a forest, as they now understood what was happening.

Alpheo leaned forward over his horse’s mane, his eyes scanning the sea of upraised faces. "In my youth, I sat by the fire of a great man.Both in spirit and in will. From his lips, I heard many grand stories of the Uthahia. He told me of a people who were swift as the wind upon their horses, and utterly fearless in their charges. He told me of a proud tribe of warriors."

At the mention of their true tribal name a collective shiver ran through the elders of the crowd. A burly man near the wagons, his face heavily mapped with the scars of some mines and with his back probably massacred by lightnings, suddenly gripped his young daughter’s hand. His jaw trembled. It was a name they hadn’t heard spoken aloud by in three decades.

"I do not see slaves before me today," Alpheo said, his voice rising to a powerful, ringing crescendo that echoed off the stone walls of Yarzat. "I see the Uthahia. And today, I give you back the dignity of your true name. I give you back your tribe! You are home."

Alpheo had expected for them to cheer. But instead a chilling silence filled the space. More cold than the wind, more chilling the ice.

The king was among them , the nearest Uthahia barely a step from his horse.

And yet he felt too distant.

He cleared his throat, the iron resonance of his voice carrying over the silent, weeping crowd.

"The name of the man who told me these stories was Egil," Alpheo said, his gaze softening as he looked out over the sea of faces. "Egil the Butcher, his enemies called him in terror. But his friends... his friends called him brother. He was a man I am deeply honored to have called so, twice he saved my life.

It is in his sacred memory, and to his everlasting honor, that you stand here today. I did not bring you south to serve a new master; I brought you here to give you back every single thing the whip stole from you."

He paused, letting the wind carry his words into the dirt-caked hair of the children.

"Long have I searched the slave markets of the north for you, and today, my efforts finally bear fruit. Do not fear the iron rows of my legions. This land shall become your sanctuary. Your children will finally live the life of peace that you were cruelly denied for thirty years, and your grandchildren... your grandchildren will only ever know of your past pain in passing stories told around a warm hearth."

Alpheo straightened in his saddle, his voice ringing with absolute royal decree. "They will be people of Yarzat, every last one of them. You will be people of Yarzat, worthy of every right, every piece of bread, and every span of protection that comes with that name."

The heavy silence returned, thick with tears and the stunned disbelief of six hundred souls trying to comprehend a world without chains, only the eldest among them could. But Alpheo was not finished.

He leaned forward, his dark eyes scanning the crowd with a desperate, sharp intensity. "I have returned your tribe to you," the King said, his voice dropping to a raw, urgent pitch. "But I must ask one thing of you now. I am searching for the immediate kin of my brother Egil. I am searching for a man named Enkilae."

None made a move to answer. The exiles merely stared back, paralyzed by the sudden shift in the King’s demeanor, their eyes darting to one another in silent, fearful confusion.

"Enkilae," Alpheo repeated, his tone growing strained, almost pleading as he broke the rigid protocol of kingship. "He is the younger brother of Egil. For those among you with that name, Egil was a tall, broad man with hair as blond as summer wheat. He carried a scar right across his chin, though perhaps he had not yet received it when you knew him . Please. If any among you know his face, or know where his bones lie, speak. I swear by the five gods, we are friends."

Still, only the howling winter wind answered him. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating, until the desperate hope in Alpheo’s chest began to curdle into a familiar, hollow grief.

What did he expect?

Then, right in the thickest knot of the silence, a small, loud rumbling of a hollow stomach echoed from his immediate left.

Alpheo blinked, his sweeping gaze dropping down toward the ditch. A small boy, no older than seven, was clutching his ribs, his face instantly wincing in pure terror as he got undivided attention of the towering black-armored King. The child shrank behind a woman’s tattered skirt to run away from the monster’s gaze.

A sudden, crushing blow of profound shame hit Alpheo right in the gut.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, a bitter taste in his mouth. Here I am, demanding names from the dead and chasing the ghosts of my youth, while my people stand freezing and starving in the dirt before me. Egil would have cuffed him upside the head for such foolishness.

When Alpheo opened his eyes, the desperate king was gone, replaced once more by the pragmatic ruler of Yarzat. He looked at the little boy and offered a soft, reassuring nod.

The boy’s head tiltled in confusion.

"The names can wait for later," Alpheo announced, raising his hand to signal his waiting attendants and medics.

He felt the taste of defeat in his tongue.

"For now... my people shall eat."