Chapter 1419: Welcoming guests(1)

The long, bronze-throated war horns of the legions blared from both flanks of the grand avenue its resonant bellow shook the marrow of the bone like an hearthquake that brought down building on its passing.

Merelao rode at the head of his column, his cloth-of-gold mantle draped with practiced elegance over the cantle of his saddle. Sunlight flared along the polished silver rims of the legionaries’ cuirasses. The iron-clad infantrymen stood in immaculate, motionless ranks, lining the paved causeway like columns of marble from an elder age, long before martial pride had degraded into southern vanity.

Merelao knew vanity well enough.

The sweetest sin of them all.

He knew it well enough.

Yet the newly minted King of Yarzat was vainer still it seemed to him, the vainest creature under the five gods, for Alpheo took boundless vanity in pretending to possess none at all.

Where the soldiers did not hold a horn, they gripped heavy throwing pila, their broad steel tips raised skyward in an arrogant challenge to the very stars. There was a quiet, suffocating menace to them.

These cohorts had never tasted defeat; they knew the taste of mud only when grinding an enemy’s face into it beneath their boots. And to men who had never known the fall, reaching for the stars felt as natural as drawing breath, for they had never overreached for anything they could not grab.

Behind Merelao, the lords he had dragged here gaped at the iron host. Not all of them were blind greenhorns to the strength of Yarzat, a few of them had witnessed the slaughter at the Ford and knew what horrors lay beneath the polished breastplates,but the sheer scale of the display made every man check his reins.

"And there are a thousand of them?" murmured Ser Myles, brother to Lord Dagons of Floria. He had come north in his brother’s stead to witness the coronation, a fresh convert to Merelao’s rebellion and entirely unversed in the workings of the Yarzat war machine. Neither Myles nor his lord brother boasted many grand deeds to their name; Merelao desired Floria for its spears, not the military genius of its masters.

"A thousand heavy foot to a legion" Merelao answered smoothly, his voice carrying that effortless, aristocratic grace that made lesser men feel clumsy. "Two hundred light horse on the wings, soon to be bolstered by one hundred heavy lances. There was once a contingent of archers in each line, but the Fox stripped them out. The mountain auxiliaries handle the bows now"

"If you can get savages to loose arrows for free, why pay good coin for archers?" remarked Mishon, the elder of the Polleson twins one madder than the other, letting out a cackle as he did. "Even a rogue as spendthrift as the Fox knows when to pinch a copper. There’s only so much a man can shit after all."

Merelao gave a faint yawn, though a shark’s grin played across his lips.

"Still... so many men, all armored in plate?" Ser Myles pressed, his eyes darting between the towering shields. "The cost alone must bleed the royal treasury dry."

"Bugger the cost, Ser Myles," barked Mivion, the younger and thoroughly unhinged twin. He was Merelao’s favorite of the two, possessing none of his brother’s caution and twice the appetite for blood.

Mivion nudged his mount forward, waving for Myles to follow, and pulled his destrier up a mere pace from the front rank of the legionaries. The knight leaned down from his stirrups, staring directly into the open visor of a towering veteran whose right cheek was mapped with an old, puckered scar that dragged the corner of his mouth into a perpetual sneer of disgust.

"Tell me, Yarzat," Mivion drawled, tapping his scabbard against his greave. "Do we bother you if I show my friend your worth?"

"It is my pleasure to endure it then, Ser," the legionary replied without a twitch of an eyelash, his gaze locked firmly onto the horizon.

"See that, Myles?" Mivion laughed, wheeling his horse with a theatrical flourish. "The finest butchers you’ll ever find among the lowborn! Some old fools swear they’re as iron-hard as the Red Legions of the ancient Empire, and they aren’t blowing smoke. Look at the width of the bastards! Doesn’t it make your bowels turn to water just imagining a thousand of them marching across the field toward your banners? You weren’t at the Ford, Myles, but take my word for it: you’d sooner throw yourself into a pit of vipers than meet these devils in the mire. They’ll kill you with a wink and blow a bloodydamn kiss! AH!"

For all his haughty confidence, Merelao shared the sentiment. He had seen these very cohorts break their disciplined ranks and roar like wild beasts when they believed their Prince had fallen at the Ford. The fury radiating from their iron lines had hit the enemy like the blast from a furnace, their war cries drumming loud enough to crack the hills. Merelao loved a duel as much as any tourney champion, but he was profoundly glad these iron dogs were leashed to his cause, poised to tear the meat from his usurping uncle and the Habadians.

"They look... fierce," Ser Myles admitted after a long, dry swallow. He shrank back into his saddle, feeling the full, crushing weight of Alpheo’s silent boast echoing down the avenue:

Look upon my crop, little lords . I have ten thousand more where these came from.

Merelao made no move to rush his entourage past the ranks. He was happy enough to let them gawk.

He let them count every spear, every rivet, every scarred lip. The more terror they swallowed today, the more breathless their praise would be when they wrote back to their castles.

It was not Merelao’s steel lining the road, true.

But even borrowed strength had its use.

"Trust me, my lords, you will find the King of Yarzat vastly more amiable than his iron," Merelao called back over his shoulder, his golden hair catching the morning glare as he nudged his charger forward.

Though certainly no less dangerous, he added silently with a faint, predatory smirk. And vastly more venomous when cornered.

The Oizenian had learnt that to their great sorrow.

They had long passed through the inner monumental gate, the cramped stone and bustling noise of the lower city fell away entirely, swallowed by an expanse of green, separating the crowded sprawl of common folk below from the high court perched upon the crest.

The avenue ran broad and true, flanked by brown-barked willows and cypress trees whose boughs swayed softly in the cold breeze.

The path climbed on a gentle, unbroken ascent, with only a single, quiet fork veering off beneath a shaded arcade of weeping birch, the winding stone path Merelao remembered well from two winters past, which slipped away from the main ceremonial spine into the secluded sanctuaries of the royal gardens.

The causeway of blue-grey river stone curved and swerved through the gentle contours of the emerald expanse, the ring of armored hooves echoing off the grass before the road finally bypassed the keep’s inner barbican. Rolling through the vaulted portcullis, the party drew rein upon the wide, flagstoned terrace just outside the palace’s grand entrance.

Stable-boys swarmed out to take the mounts, quick under the sharp eye of an aging steward with a bristling white mustache and snow-white hair mixed with some black. Merelao recognized him, Sebastian, the palace castellan. After a swift appraisal of their party, the old man bowed with crisp courtly precision and ushered the high lords up the marble stairs and through the soaring bronze doors of the court.

Behind them, an army of livery-clad pages set to work directing their sprawling baggage train, dividing squires, guardsmen, and personal servants toward their quarters. For a passing moment, Merelao wondered where the palace intended to stow such a host, whether an encampment of silk pavilions had sprouted outside the walls, or if the sprawling lower vaults held chambers enough to swallow an entire principality’s retinue.

The thought led him into a swift, silent tally. Every southern lord riding to Yarzat would drag along his brothers, nephews, cousins, and half a dozen bannermen to witness the consecration of the new realm. Multiply that swarm of highborn pride by their armed escorts, horse-leeches, squires, and grooms, and the logistics alone were a nightmare to make a quartermaster throw himself from the battlements.

Merelao cast a final, assessing glance back at the citadel’s limestone silhouette before stepping across the threshold. The palace was formidable, yet it hardly looked vast enough to harbor half the nobility without bursting at the seams.

Still, the roof over other men’s heads was none of his concern. He had his own enterprise to advance, and in truth, his arrival might do Alpheo some small mercy. With the newly minted King drowning in holy oils, seating charts, and tourney lists, Merelao was more than eager to drag his ally’s mind back to the only trade that truly mattered between them , the cold and yet glad and beautiful business of war.