Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Silence held the great chamber .

Around the long table of polished darkwood,Alpheo's close council stood in shock , mouths parted, eyes wide, unable to fully absorb what Alpheo had just said.

It was Shahab who finally shattered the silence, his voice rising like a blade drawn in haste.

"Allowing foreign merchants to buy our land? Have you lost your mind?"

Alpheo did not flinch. He met Shahab's anger with measured calm, hands folded before him, the golden seal-ring of the Crown glinting under the light of the tall windows.

"I have not," he replied smoothly. "I've weighed it, and I believe this is not a concession as you may think but simply an investment. If Yarzat is to grow, we must let go of outdated pride that serves no one but the past."

Jasmine, her silken robes rustling as she shifted forward in her seat, added her voice.

"A common man cannot hold land equal to a knight's fief," she said in a simple tone as if she was stating fact. "That is the very foundation of our order. The land belongs to kings, knights, and nobles. Farmers till it and pay their taxes, but they do not own it.

There are laws that forbid the passage of land to dead hands.

What you're suggesting, allowing foreign merchants to possess land, undermines that very boundary. We might as well lower the drawbridge and invite every vagabond to sit at our table.

Do you understand the shame this would bring to us from the other princes? It strips us of the only privilege that marks our class from the masses."

Alpheo leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing with faint reproach.

"You weren't so scandalized when I granted land to the Voghondai and the other tribal groups," he said.

Jasmine shot back without missing a breath.

"That's different. They work the land, they pay their taxes, and when the horns of war sound, they send their sons to fight. In that, they are like any village under the crown's peace. They live by the obligations of citizenship."

Shahab nodded, folding his arms across his chest.

"Merchants do not send levies, Alpheo. They send letters and tolls. They vanish at the first sign of a campaign. They are not rooted here, they owe nothing but coin, and coin buys only fleeting loyalty. If you give them even a foothold, you turn nobility into landlords of circumstance. The very idea makes a mockery of us and an enemy out of many."

The chamber buzzed with nods , a wind of tradition rising to push back against Alpheo's challenge.

But the prince was not so easily swept. He said nothing for a moment, letting the protests echo and fade like thunder retreating into distant hills.

"The only thing that makes a mockery of nobility," Alpheo said, his voice clear and measured, "is a refusal to adapt while the world reshapes itself beyond our walls.

The foundation of our strength is not merely the land beneath our feet, but the silver and gold that flow through our ports, markets, and hands.

Is it not trade, our markets, our exports, our merchant fleets, that has raised Yarzat from a forgotten borderland into something the world now watches? Relying solely on land and lineage brought us this far, but no further."

He stood then, letting his voice carry across the stunned silence.

"If we are to become more than a modest princedom, if we are to ascend to something greater, then we must evolve the very structure of our power. Wealth brings might. Coin buys arms, feeds armies, and pays for the steel that protects our realm.

Yet there is only so much silver a state can squeeze from wheat and barley. One failed harvest, and our strength wilts like dry stalks in summer heat."

He gestured toward the window, where the faint haze of the fields rolled to the horizon.

"The world has changed more in the last five years than in the decades before it. The old powers are breaking. New ones rise from ruin. We must seize this moment, not cling to traditions that serve only pride.

Gods only know how static society has been for the last centuries, and it requires a good shake.''

He let the words settle for a moment, then continued more slowly, transitioning to the deeper logic behind the decree.

Just like the crown's first decree, the husbandry exemption meant to bolster wool and animal resources, this new law too was rooted in a vision of long-term economic cultivation.

Yarzat's soil, rich and generous, had for generations been used almost entirely for food crops: grains, vegetables, fruits,anything that could be eaten by man or beast. A necessary focus, yes. But a limited one.

Alpheo saw beyond survival. He saw profit.

What he envisioned was a shift toward coin-crops: olives for oil, grapes for wine, wool for cloth, rare herbs for dye and scent, goods that fetched high prices beyond Yarzat's borders and could be produced on home soil.

These were crops of trade, not just sustenance.

This was the crown's second great bet on the future. Not to feed more mouths, but to feed an economy and build a state not bound by its borders, but by its reach.

"Let us speak plainly. Until five years ago, merchants made their craft by sailing goods from Azania, silks, dyes, spices toward the eastern continent. Harmway's fall changed that. The sea is no longer open; it is infested with pirates. Only the wealthiest traders can afford protection, and even then, only a trickle of goods makes it through. The flow has thinned. The prices rise."

He picked up a small leather pouch from the table and tossed it onto the map. It landed with a soft clink.

"Pepper," he said. "The price has tripled in half a decade. Tripled. Do you see the opportunity?"

Still, their eyes held wariness. He continued:

"Romelia once dominated the market in oil and wine. But the eastern provinces, their olive hills and grape valleys are gone. Seceded. The core of Romelia grows grain and a little wine, yes, but not nearly enough to match demand."

Alpheo's voice grew firmer, more commanding.

"Now imagine what we can gain. We allow merchants, foreign or local, to lease land. Land that we are not using . They build vineyards, oil mills, dye farms.

In a few years our entire industries will not be reliant on just Soap, Cider and Paper, but also on Luxury Crops, which there is great demand for and not enough offer."

Jasmine and Shahab shifted uncomfortably, their silence heavy with doubt. Jarza and Asag exchanged glances, attempting to follow the current of their friends' reasoning but unable to form words of their own. Egil, meanwhile, had already abandoned any attempt to keep up, his face a mix of apathy and quiet resignation as he watched a bug that landed on the table.

Alpheo pressed on, his voice steady, echoing slightly in the chamber.

"The merchants have the opportunity to satisfy their markets and what do we gain in return? Everything.

The Crown receives coin from the leases. We take talls, from the goods exported beyond our borders. And most importantly, we raise levies not from slaves, but from paid workers, our own citizens, free men with wages to spend.

That coin does not vanish into noble coffers or sit idle in strongboxes; it moves. It buys bread, tools, fabric, iron, wool. That flow of wealth, not hoarded grain, is what feeds a state."

He paused, letting his words weigh on them.

"That is a stronger, sturdier economy than any field of barley alone can yield."

Of course, Alpheo was not blind to the risks that came with dedicating arable land to luxury crops.

History had taught that lesson well, he often recalled the Roman folly, when much of Italy's fertile interior was turned over to vineyards and olive groves, as the farmers turned to sell their lands to big landowners, given their inability to compete with the grain that came from their eastern provinces.

Rome had come to depend on Egypt for its grain, and when the Nile fell to a rebel or revolt stirred, the empire's belly ached.

Augustus saw that with his own eyes when Mark Anthony turned against Rome.

Alpheo had no intention of repeating such a thing.

That was why every lease was temporary. And each one remained under the Crown's authority, subject to revocation if it proved a threat to the realm's stability. Should this experiment in commerce turn against Yarzat's interests, he would reclaim the lands with a pen stroke, taking out the problem with full knowledge that the attempt did not cost them anything.

Yet for all his planning, Alpheo harbored deeper anxieties.

Soap. Cider. Paper. They were the cornerstones of his rise, inventions that had propelled Yarzat forward and filled its coffers with silver. But they were also fragile things. Their production was protected by secrecy.

Still, secrets have a way of slipping.

And Alpheo knew, once the formulas were stolen, once other states began producing what only Yarzat could sell, the illusion of superiority would collapse. The market would flood, prices would plummet, and what was once monopoly would become a memory.

That was why he couldn't afford to wait. He needed to diversify, to build new industries not dependent on secrets or novelty, but on the enduring power of land and labor. Wine, oil, and dye, goods the world would always need, whose value rose with refinement, and whose markets had been shaken since the eastern provinces of Romelia had seceded.

There was a gap in the trade routes now, a chasm where once Romelia's exports flowed. Alpheo saw it not as a crisis, but a golden opportunity, a void Yarzat could fill if it moved quickly and cleverly.

But establishing those industries would take time. And funds. Both of which were in short supply.

Hence, the introduction of this new policy.