Chapter 1418: Eyes on the ground(2)

The conversation that followed proved far less illuminating than the young prince had dared to hope.

Torghan offered little that Basil had not already gleaned from the dry ledgers and the horrified whispers of the camp scribes that flanked the legions to record of the war. He was already well-versed in the atrocities of the mountain irregulars; he had seen the battle-reports describing Leaguesmen stripped of their scalps, and the headless, limb-hacked torsos left ahead of the camp to break the League’s soldier’s spine during the siege of the Bastion.

It explained why so many had broken faith and deserted in the dead of night, certainly, but raw butcher’s work was not the knowledge Basil sought.

He pressed the chieftain for counsel on how to domesticate the clans, how to smooth the jagged edges of a people who knew only blood and mountain stone. Yet Torghan had precious few answers.

Perhaps because there were none to give?

They were opening the gate of the sheepcote to loose three fresh packs of wolves upon the clover; what magic, Basil wondered, could ever convince a predator to forget the taste of flesh? And yet, he mused, man made dogs of wolves with fire, bread, and iron. Are the mountain folk truly so different?

"How is it, then, that your own people settled with so little grief?" Basil asked, feeling the last of his optimism slipping through his fingers like dry sand. "I rarely hear tales of Voghondai turning highwayman. Yet when your wagons first rolled across the border, half the high lords at court openly wagered my father had invited a plague of heretics and cutthroats to burn our granaries and ravish our daughters."

"I was not privy to the court’s wagers, my Prince," Torghan replied, a dark, razor-thin smirk touching his mouth. "Though I cannot say I blame their panic. Our situation was vastly different. We arrived here broken, bleeding, and utterly friendless. When your father granted us passage onto these golden plains, all we carried on our backs were our bows, our short axes, and our starving kin."

The chieftain’s eyes hooded over, drifting into the smoky past, to the day he first set boot on Yarzat soil not as an honored guest, but as a chief holding the lives of three thousand souls in his shaking fist.

"We could have burned your manors, aye. Had we been left to starve, we would have butchered every fat merchant on the high road without a second thought. A man with an empty belly and an axe in his hand is merely a beast in leather. When your whole life is spent shivering beneath a roof of rotten thatch, what stone would you expect your sons to build with?"

"And yet you never raised the torch," Basil noted. "Why?"

"Because of the dirt," Torghan said simply.

Basil blinked. "The dirt?"

"The very first morning your father’s bailiff stood on the hill, pointed down at the barren scrub, and said, ’This valley is yours to till,’ I did not plant a banner. I went down on my knees, shoved both hands into the earth where the town of Marthion now stands, and hauled up two fistfuls of soil."

Torghan looked down at his own calloused palms as if the dark loam still clung to his skin. "It was rich, black, and crumbly as fresh bread, crawling with fat, squirming worms. Back in the crags, you can crack the mountain open with iron picks just to find dead dirt. But here? The dirt melted like butter between my fingers. We knew right then what a sacred thing we held, Prince. Not a man among us was fool enough to trade a paradise of wheat and fat ewes for the life of a hunted dog in the brush."

"So do you believe the Valakii and the others will see the same truth?" Basil asked, leaning in with renewed hope.

Torghan gave a slow, heavy shrug, his cloth shifting over his broad shoulders.

"There are many sweet poisons in this world, my Prince. We hungered for the simple bliss of green shoots breaking through fertile soil, and the luxury of waking in the dead of winter without a corpse in the next bed. It is a sorrowful thing to die with tears freezing over your cheeks.

The Valakii, the Mashki, the Aranuai... they may desire that too, but their peaks were never as cruel as ours, and their pride remains unbroken unlike ours was. No winter storm ever came to knock them from their high perches.

Theirs is a hunger for cheaper luxuries: the heat of your southern sun, the sting of strong wine, white bread, and soft women. Worse still, many of them truly relished the butcher’s trade, they took genuine delight in painting their chests red with the gore of civilized men. I do not presume to know their hearts, my prince, nor whether a field of black earth will ever be sweet enough to quench the bloodlust in their bones."

"To risk a life of peace and plenty for the sake of murder?" Basil frowned, his aristocratic reason recoiling at the thought. "You call that sane?"

Torghan turned his dark gaze upon the young prince. as if searching for the worsd to explain what Basil could not yet see.

"Aye, my Prince. To them, it is the only sanity they know. And what ’s life to a wolf... is merely madness and folly to the flock."

Basil slumped back into the heavy oak chair, utterly drained. He dragged both hands down his face, pressing the heels of his palms hard against his eyes until white sparks bloomed in the dark.

"I see..." the prince muttered, his voice muffled.

"May an old hound ask why your tail is tucked so low, my Prince?"

Basil lowered his hands, peering at the chieftain through his fingers. A flicker of youthful suspicion flared in his chest. Torghan was not like his father or his uncles, the man rarely indulged in mocking barbs or much teasing , yet Basil hesitated.

Was he truly the right vessel for a prince’s anxieties?

I came to his quarters unbidden after he spent months sleeping in iron, Basil reminded himself, fighting down his pride with a long, rattling sigh. The least I owe the man is the truth.

"What I am deciding here is not merely which patch of scrub we parcel out," Basil murmured, leaning forward. "The crown holds thousands of unturned acres. Would it break our coffers to give three clans a few valleys? Especially when our new southern borders are choked with unworked fields and abandoned crofts?"

Torghan shook his shaggy head. "Hardly think so.Your father is a rich man"

"My father is a rich man’’ Basil agreed ’’And always my father told me plainly: whatever charter I seal, he will enact without a single correction. Even if he judges it a catastrophic folly, he will let it bleed." Basil looked dead into the chieftain’s dark eyes. "Why do you think he gave me such a rope?"

Torghan shifted in his seat, suddenly looking as though he’d been handed a delicate porcelain cup with mailed gauntlets. Politics was not his trade.

"Because he trusts you, Prince?"

Basil stared at him as if the chieftain had suggested sprouting wings and flying to the moon. "Because he is teaching me a lesson. He will not always be standing behind the throne to catch me when I stumble. Ever since I was a boy, I loved to scramble up the high orchard trees. I lost count of how many boughs snapped beneath my boots, but there was always a guard, a tutor, or my father there to catch me before I broke my neck."

"And this time there is no hand to catch you?"

"No," Basil whispered, the weight crushing down on his chest. "This time, if the branch snaps, men will die. Women will burn in their beds. And their blood will be on my hands."

There was silence in that chamber, and Torghan studied the boy for a long moment.

Then he laughed.

Basil bristled instantly, his spine going rigid as his face flushed red. "This is no laughing matter, Torghan! People will die if I get this wrong!"

"And people will die if you get it right!" Torghan roared, slapping his knee as his laughter bounced off the timber rafters. "By the high winds, Prince, you have picked up the wrong end of the spear!"

"What are you talking about?" Basil demanded, bewildered and furious.

"This is not your father testing your wits at the counting table! He is not measuring your sums, boy, he is testing your spine!"

"My spine?"

"Aye!" Torghan leaned in close, his predatory grin wide and merciless. "My Prince, you carry the heart of an... an’’ He searched for the word ’’Oliphant! Yes! That great grey Azanian beast with the floppy ears and the curved ivory tusks! You have a vast, tender heart, Your Grace. But you are not being groomed for the priesthood! You are being forged into a sovereign. Men will die under your reign. They will die beneath enemy steel in wars you command, or they will die quietly in a ditch outside your eyes."

"And should I not weep for them?" Basil shot back, his voice rising. "Should a prince not care for his people?"

"Did you ever see your father weep into his wine for them?" Torghan countered instantly.

The words hung in the air like a raised axe. Basil pressed his lips tight, refusing to answer; to speak would be to concede the field.

"Your father acts more like a master butcher than a shepherd," Torghan said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly rasp. "He knows blood will spill from this choice. What kind of madman invites mountain wolves into his pasture and then wails when a few ewes are torn to ribbons?The king gave you this charter to see if you have the iron in your guts to make the stroke, and to see if you can sleep through the night even when you know people will scream for your choice.

Not all slaughter is done with three feet of forged steel, my prince. The most terrible butcheries are done in quiet solars, where you never have to hear the dying wail for their mothers.

Harden yourself. That is the only lesson the King is trying to hammer into your skull. Make your choice, draw your lines, and damn the consequences to the hells.

A common cobbler or a ditch-digger can afford the luxury of a soft, merciful heart," Torghan continued before pursuing his lips. "A kind man makes a good neighbor, and a gentle father makes a warm hearth. But a sovereign cannot afford such sweetness.

A king who flinches at the sight of blood will soon see his kingdom drowned in it.Others will take into account that kindness and mistake it for weakness.

Patience is close to forbearance.

You may only show compassion after you showed your fury! The gold of a crown is too heavy for a tender neck. It does not ask for your pity, and it cares nothing for your tears. A crown demands iron, boy. Iron of armies. Iron of spirit.

It demands fierceness, not softness.Your father learnt it by sorrows, but no father would wish that for his boy, so he has chosen that you shall learn it by teachings it would seem. "

’’But...’’

’’Yes people will die.’’ Torghan’s voice bulled over his ’’ And to hell with it, you have milions of subjects at your disposal do not dispair over each one.

Look at the mountain instead of the valley. Care not for the ants whose nest you break with your axle, for there will be thousands dead by your passing alone.’’