Chapter 1413: Checkers and players(3)

The King of Yarzat studied his son in silence, his sharp, predatory eyes sweeping over his eldest boy as though measuring a colt for a heavy saddle.

Then, the hard lines of his mouth melted into a warm, paternal smile.

For a moment, Basil felt thoroughly awkward beneath the stare. Trapped on the spot without a clever word on his tongue, he merely returned a sheepish, stiff grin of his own.

Alpheo’s smile deepened into a low chuckle as he leaned forward and pulled open the broad central drawer of his desk. With a flick of his wrists, a long roll of spaper unfurled across the dark oak, pinned flat beneath a brass inkstand and a lead surveyor’s weight put there by the king.

Basil leaned over the timber, his eyes catching the ink-drawn rivers and fortified ridges. "Oizen," he murmured.

"I am glad to see you recognize your future seat," the King replied, drumming his ringed fingers against the parchment. "I commissioned the cartographers long before our vanguard crossed the border. A prince must never underestimate the power of a proper map, Basil.

Marching into a campaign relying solely on local guides is a fool’s gamble with thousand lives on the other edge; you must know which valley holds sweet water and which ridge chokes your baggage before your boots ever touch the mud. Having a map is essential, but possessing both a map and a local guide is vastly better.

A shepherd knows every hidden gully and goat-track that cavalry would gallop straight past. Always diversify your wells of information, my boy; the more eyes you have in the dark, the fewer daggers find your back."

Basil offered no rebuttal. He was still quietly perplexed as to why his father was giving him a lesson in border cartography, but he knew his lectures always took the scenic route before springing the trap.

To catch the fish you first had to dig for the worm.

"During the early moons of the war, we had no such luxuries,I mean that of time" Alpheo continued, slapping his broad palm against the parchment with a dull thud. "Everything was fought on a shoestring. Jarza and Rykio played their parts to bloody perfection, burning every outlying granary, ambushing supply convoys, and putting fear into the enemy’s rear. Those raids broke the southern momentum early on; they denied them a safe line of march and forced them to peel off front-line units just to guard their flour sacks."

"I recall it did their flour sacks precious little good," Basil noted dryly.

The King lifted his gaze from the map, his eyebrows arching with amusement. "Ah, true enough. I had nearly forgotten you rode in Jarza’s saddle-tracks when you put that southern depot to the torch and slaughtered the garrison. You burned two moons’ worth of grain and salt-pork meant for the besieging army."

"Lord Jarza let me loose a half-dozen arrows into the compound, too," Basil added.

His father waved a dismissive hand "That bandit’s work was only possible because of Lucius and the Zero Legion. They spent half a year living like beasts in the pine forests, charting every ravine, stream, and canopy trail so the main host could march blind. And among Lucius’s irregulars were scores of mountain sellswords recruited from the northern crags. We were desperate for warm bodies, so we took every savage who could swing a notched blade. They took to the slaughter like foxes in a hen coop," the King said, a brief flicker of distaste crossing his brow as he rubbed his stubbled jaw. "As you well know, nine-tenths of the atrocities our enemies wailed about during the campaign were laid at the feet of those mountain bands."

Basil did not hold it against him; he had heard the whispers too.Though he also knew the other tenth was from the Hounds.

That part his father left unsaid.

"Lucius could barely keep a choke-chain on them," Alpheo went on. "Then, when the Vulture Lord slipped our net, Torghan took command of those same auxiliary bands to track the rogue through the thickets. They proved themselves peerless hunters and trackers, to say nothing of their sheer savagery when the steel was out. Useless at holding an iron wall against heavy horse, perhaps, but at breaking an ambush or gutting a rout? Utterly terrifying. In many ways, they mirror the Voghondai."

Alpheo stopped, noticing the quiet shift in his son’s posture. "I see. Am I boring you, my Prince?"

"What? No, Father, never..." Basil stammered, feeling heat rise to his collar as he looked away. "It is only... I was wondering where my part lies in all this."

"Patience is the king of virtues," Alpheo reproached him with a clicking tongue, "and I was arriving at the point. The trouble is that these mountain bands are mercenaries, bound to our banner by two-year contracts. Once their term expires, they are entitled to keep their steel, their silver, and whatever plunder they cut from the south. Aron and I had harbored a quiet hope that many of them, having tasted soft bread, rich wine, and civilized coin, might choose to settle within our borders."

The King leaned back, his chair creaking under his weight. "The Voghondai have proven to be a formidable asset, half the discipline of the legions, perhaps, but twice as ferocious, and they make magnificent attack dogs when loosed.There is a tool for every situation after all.

More importantly, they make obedient subjects. They pay their tithes, they fight on command, and because they pray to their own strange gods, they are entirely alienated from the high nobility and the church. The crown is their sole shield against a hostile realm, which means their loyalty to my throne is absolute."

Basil nodded. He was not so green as to believe men stayed true out of romantic oaths; self-interest was the only anchor that held in a storm. The Voghondai understood that if the King fell, the southern lords and the holy orders would butcher them like wolves.

Alpheo let out a heavy, gravelly sigh, stretching his arms over his head. "So I thought to myself: why stop with one pack of wolves? If the Voghondai serve so well, why not tame the rest of the mountain tribes?"

Basil caught the sudden sour twist at the corners of his father’s mouth. "And?"

"And... they are not the Voghondai," the King muttered, the disgust plain in his tone. "These hill-clans, the Valakii, the Mashki, the Aranuai, are cut from an entirely different cloth. The Voghondai may be wild, but they respect a leash and understand gold. These others? You need only spend an hour listening to their feats and squabble to realize they are hard to tame."

"They are trouble, then?"

"Trouble?" Alpheo scoffed, leaning over the timber until his dark eyes bore straight into his son’s. "They are a bloody plague, Basil. If we plant them on our borders, a moon won’t pass before the magistrates come weeping with tales of burned granaries, and outrages in every hamlet. We would need to beat the plow into their hands, force them to till the earth, and ensure they don’t break the harrow over a neighbor’s skull. They have spent two long seasons plundering and butchering across these vales; I fear they have acquired a taste for it. And they would scarcely feel welcomed to a realm of peace."

Like wolves that have tasted man’s flesh, Basil thought, a cold knot tightening in his stomach.

Another question then popped up.

"Then why keep them at all?" Basil asked, leaning forward on his palms. "If they are this much grief, pay them their silver, march them to the wharves, and ship them back to their hills. We can thank them for their bloody work, and when the next war drums sound, send recruiters with heavy purses to buy their steel again."

"Because, as I told you, my boy, they are fierce dogs," Alpheo replied, tapping his temple. "And in a realm ringed by vipers, a king always has a use for vicious hounds. It is vastly better to have them inside our borders and teach them how to bite at their enemies. If nothing else, they provide a deep well of savage recruits whenever we need shock troops.

They are not the Voghondai, true, but they are their raw clay. They simply need a firm boot on their necks, clear boundaries, and, should a clan grow too unruly, a quiet, ruthless culling of the most troublesome chieftains to remind the rest of their place.Perhaps some crucifixion too where the other tribes can see..."

A bead of cold sweat prickled at the base of Basil’s neck as his father laid out the butchery with all the warmth of a grain ledger. Yet the boy forced his spine straight and swallowed the chill.

This is the trade of princes, Basil told himself firmly. This is rule. Either you learn or you get ruled.

Alpheo caught the flicker of grim understanding in his son’s eyes, and his thin lips curled into a predatory smirk.

"And that, Basil," the King murmured, sweeping a broad hand across the map of Oizen, "is precisely where you take the reins. You have heard the tally of their virtues and their vices. You know their hunger, and you know the rot they bring. Now it is your turn to weigh the scales."

Basil blinked, caught off guard. "What do you mean, Father?"

"I mean the choice is yours," Alpheo said, stepping back and folding his arms over his chest. "Oizen is to be your future seat, and its soil will bear the weight of your rule. I am placing the mountain tribes entirely in your hands. You will choose where to settle them, which valley to give them, which borders they are to watch, and whose throats they threaten if they step out of line.

In short, white paper my boy...."