Chapter 1272: Nasty victories(1)
Chapter 1272: Nasty victories(1)
The brownish hue of cheap ale splashed violently over his leather breeches as a dozen heavy horns and pewter mugs clinked together in a deafening, sloppy chorus. Harlon didn’t mind the spill; it wet his hands and soaked his sleeve before he allowed the rest of the foam to flow down his throat like a roaring river.
The winter winds were howling outside the stone hall, and a fierce, unyielding thirst was raging within. This might not have been a battle of steel, but it was a grueling political skirmish nonetheless. The only decent thing a battle-weary man could do after such an ordeal, provided he wasn’t lying dead in a ditch, was drink until the world blurred at the edges.
His brother always said that.,
And so they drank. They drank, they gorged on roasted meats, and they had a thoroughly jolly, rowdy time of it.
Are these truly my comrades? Harlon thought, his eyes scanning the boisterous crowd. He hadn’t put down his war-axe because it had grown too heavy for his arms to wield. No, he had stepped off the blood-soaked field because his family desperately needed someone with a sharp tongue to speak in their favor, someone to read the shifting currents and steer their ancestral ship before they were completely swept away by the tide.
He may have been good , well decent actually, at politics but he hated it, each time he looked at the dawn above the sea where the docked ships would depart at the morrow, he always had a wish to half follow them and leave everything behind.
But he did not. He had a duty here, even if they could not see it.
Yet, all he received from his own kin was bitter scorn for his willingness to do his administrative duty. It had been nearly two winters since he had last seen his brother, who was still off campaigning. All Harlon ever received from him were brief, detached letters and strange, exotic charms native to that vast, sandy southern land.
It was a nice gesture, he supposed. He liked to turn the bizarre tokens over by the warmth of the hearth fire, wondering what meanings they held. He had eventually sent a letter back, half-jokingly asking his brother to send a slave with the next baggage train so he might finally have someone to question about the foreign trinkets.
To his surprise, his brother had actually sent one. She was a striking woman, beautiful in a fierce, exotic way, with smooth skin the color of oiled tree bark. He had bedded her a few times, as was his right maybe even planted a brood inside, and afterward, he would show her the charms, demanding to know their secrets.
She was likely born of high blood back in the sand , given that she spoke the common tongue of the East flawlessly alongside the sandy dialects of the West. Harlon had never explicitly asked about her lineage, so she never volunteered the answer; her ancestral home had probably been put to the torch by his brother’s sweeping armies.
In Harlon’s mind, her current end wasn’t the worst fate a conquered soul could suffer. It was vastly better to serve one master for the rest of her days than to be forced to serve a thousand for a single afternoon.
Of all the charms she had deciphered for him, there was one that had left a permanent impression on his mind. It was a small, heavy wooden cube bristling with sharp iron nails that protruded outward like the defensive spikes of an angry hedgehog. If a man were to take it bravely, wrapping his entire palm around it , the uniform pressure ensured the nails would not pierce the skin. But if he shied away, growing timid and trying to gingerly grab it by only a few spikes instead, the cube would slip, tumbling down to ruthlessly prick and tear at his flesh.
Apparently,parents gifted the wicked little cubes to their children at the tender age of two, using them to beat a lesson of raw courage into their blood and teach them to utterly disdain caution or shyness.
Valakar, she had called it.
While the title the reserved for truly brave, unyielding men was Valakarai.
"But all of them are dead now," she had muttered in a flat, hollow whisper after he asked why his brother encountered so little resistance. "Now, only the cowards remain to tend the fields. All Valakarai are dead, and now only the little fish remain to swim in the red waters. ’’ he had looked at him in a uncomfortable way ’’Today, this tragedy happened to my people. One day, the wheel will turn, and it will happen to yours."
He had taken his pleasure from her right after that, thoroughly pricked and irritated by the defiant, prophetic tone of her voice. Aye, perhaps defeat would be their shared fate one distant day, but right now, House Auscii would ride the crest of the wave and spread their black-sailed ships across the waters.
It had been the glorious era of the Eagle, and then the brutal era of the Sand; it was only right that the Sea now took its own bloody, triumphant turn on the great wheel of power.
"A toast! A toast for Barbut!" Karlin suddenly bellowed, flashing a long, remarkably warm smile across the table. His long blonde hair whipped around his shoulders as he turned to face the dense congregation of their political allies. "May the miserable wretch wake on the morrow with a second, wider smile carved neatly down his chin!"
The lords and captains guffawed loudly, raising their vessels and laughing until the rafters shook. Harlon had entirely lost count of how many times they had toasted to that exact, bloody sentiment. How many times they had hoisted their wine and ale to the ceiling before bringing them crashing down to their lips.
Still, this was a magnificent celebration. They had achieved a political victory, entirely due to the clever trap Barbut had attempted to spring on them, a trick that had backfired so spectacularly on the old man that he could no longer threaten their interests, now the neutrals were firmly against him, though still not with them.
Still , as the host of this rowdy victory feast, Harlon had to properly entertain his guests.
He traded sharp, easy jests with Murold, loudly praising the delicate beauty of Murold’s daughter, whom the old man had seen fit to drag along to the feast in hopes of securing a wealthy match. Truthfully, the girl wasn’t much to look at, pudgy-nosed and sour-faced, but it cost Harlon absolutely nothing to be kind and grease the wheels of diplomacy. He drank deep with Toothless Tack, doing his absolute, heroic best not to stare into the cavernous, black holes within the man’s rotting dentures every time he barked a laugh.
All the while, Harlon smiled genuinely, sharing quiet, clever aside-whispers with his dear, loyal Karlin, watching the lords dance like puppets to a tune they had beautifully composed.
He had also, of course, invited many from the neutral faction, though they dined and laughed with significantly less joy than the rest of the hall. At their head sat Publius. He was a strange, striking man with luscious black hair that fell in heavy waves around his neck, contrasted sharply by a prominent, beak-like nose that looked like a clenched bird’s foot turned downward. He was half-Romelian, his mother having been from some noble landdwelling house before being brought to bed by his father.
Perhaps that was why he had entered politics so young.
It was in his milk blood.
It had been most interesting to find him at the table; it was far from the first time Harlon had extended an invitation to the man, but it was the first time Publius had actually accepted. Harlon was apparently the only one in his circle who found the man’s presence queer. Karlin, by contrast, was more than happy to see him, confidently writing it off as a political move by the neutral party to get closer to the interests of the Iron Anchor .And of course it made sense, especially with the stun the Shoreline had just put up.
Harlon had tried to strike up a meaningful conversation with the half-Romelian, hoping to see whether the neutrals would finally lean toward their faction. But talking to Publius was like trying to wrestle honey out of a wild northern bear; Harlon got next to nothing for his efforts.
Though Publius had made it quietly known that he thought very harshly of what had happened at the latest political session, one he had not partecipated in and was just told of. Hopefully, that lingering bitterness would translate into more neutral votes for Harlon’s side when the time came.
In a few months, the assembly would hold a critical vote to reaffirm the ownership of Harmway. Considering the island’s supreme importance as a vital supply station for any vessel sailing toward the Azanian land, it was of the most paramount importance that it either be reaffirmed under Blake’s wardenship, or at least be given to someone deeply sympathetic to their own cause.
If someone from the rival Shoreline faction managed to seat their own candidate on the island’s seat, they could very easily raise the docking prices for ships sailing to Azania, or drastically lower them for those seeking to sell the exotic wares they brought back from the land of sand. Considering the only other port that would freely accept their foreign wares was their own home isle, it would be exceptionally difficult, though not entirely unthinkable, for a Free ship to sail all the way back home each time they wanted to turn a profit, to say nothing of whether they even possessed the coin to sustain their wares.
Harmway, after all, had effectively become the new monetary capital of their entire confederation. It was an island always bursting at the seams with people who strutted through the docks with fat, jingling purses.There many merchants from Romelia and the South that even came after paying a proper Confederate-made permission paper to make affairs, though the travel was always dangerous as there were always people willing to turn a blind eye to the papers for a profit.
Yet, despite the grand political victory they were celebrating tonight, Harlon could not bring himself to share the unbridled joy of his guests. The raucous laughter of the lords’s retenairs and masters and the clinking of ale horns felt distant, muffled by a nagging unease that had settled deep in his gut.
His mind kept drifting back to the assembly hall, to the exact moment the final votes had been counted and loudly proclaimed to the floor. While the rest of the room had erupted into a chaotic storm of wild cheers and furious boos, Harlon’s eyes had been entirely fixed on the damn bastard himself.
Harlon took a slow, deliberate sip from his ale horn, his gaze staring blankly into the amber liquid as he remembered the scene.He had expected to see him angry or troubled from the clear defeat. It was none of that.
He almost turned angry as he thought of it.
What the hell had he to smile about?