Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The clang of metal on metal rang in Landoff's ears as the guards at the door shifted their halberds, opening the way with ceremonial stiffness. Two of them stepped inside ahead of him, barking curt commands at the figure within.

"On the floor—face down. Now."

The hunched man in the shadowed corner obeyed slowly, lowering himself with creaking limbs, his worn cloak spreading like a tattered shroud around him. The guards approached with practiced caution, roughly patting him down, checking for hidden blades or poisons. Only after confirming he was unarmed did they step back and nod for the lord to enter.

Landoff crossed the thresholdvand immediately wrinkled his nose.

The room was a squalid pit, a cell in all but name. The walls, once painted with imperial sigils, were now cracked and flaking, overtaken by mildew and the slow rot of neglect.

The air hung heavy with the stink of unwashed skin, old herbs, damp straw, and the faint, bitter tang of incense that had long since burned out. A single narrow window let in a blade of pale light, barely enough to illuminate the gloom.

The only furniture was a wooden stool, a moth-eaten rug rolled into the corner, and a bowl of water that looked more like a breeding pool for flies and those strange insects that float there. Strange markings had been etched into the stone with charcoal or bone dust, illegible to most, though Landoff recognized enough of the signs to know the man had been practicing his strange rites in secret.

The shaman turned his head, revealing a gaunt face half-hidden behind matted hair and ritual scars. His eyes, however, were sharp, especially, for someone kept in a cell like this.

Landoff's lips curled in distaste. This is what it has come to, he thought. From war councils and courts of marble... to whispering in a hole with a caged savage.

And yet, he knew, the Imperator had summoned this creature for a reason.

"Is he alive?" the shaman asked, his voice low and rasping, like wind dragging over dry bones.

"Silence, you!" barked one of the guards, stomping a heavy iron-heeled boot down with force. The blow landed inches from the shaman's face, sending flecks of dust and straw flying.

The shaman didn't flinch. His cloudy eyes held no fear, only the patience of someone long past pain. "Is he?" he repeated, calm and steady, as if the threat hadn't happened at all.

Landoff stepped forward, swallowing his discomfort. "He told me to tell you…" he began, each word tasting bitter on his tongue, "…that he accepts."

The shaman's head tilted slowly, the movement subtle but heavy with meaning. "Accepted," he whispered, almost reverently.

Was it his imagination, or was it distaste in his face?

"What has he come to accept?" Landoff said coldly. He didn't like how those words felt

"May I rise?" the shaman asked, still crouched.

Landoff gave a nod of annoyance.

With a quiet grunt, the shaman pulled himself to his feet. His bones cracked with the motion, joints long stiffened by damp cold and old injuries. His cloak, little more than stitched-together scraps of hide and frayed linen, dragged across the floor like the robes of some mockery of a priest.

"It would be better," the shaman said, turning to glance at the guards, "if we spoke alone."

Landoff hesitated only a moment before giving the signal. The two guards exchanged glances, clearly displeased, but filed out at his command, shutting the heavy door behind them with a groan of rusted hinges.

The shaman shuffled to his stool, lowering himself down with a grunt. The wood groaned under his weight. He reached beside him to a crude mortar and pestle, worn smooth by years of use, and dropped in a few sprigs of dried herb, blackroot, perhaps, and something more acrid. He began grinding with slow, deliberate strokes.

"You reek of rot," Landoff muttered, his lip curling. "You know you can ask for a bath? Though that won't wash away the stench of arrogance. Speak, and stop your alchemy. It's bad manners to work while your guest watches. Especially when your guest is the man who can order your head on a spike."

The shaman did not look up. "You are a noble. But he is the Imperator. And I obey his will now, not yours." He paused to breathe in the crushed herbs, deeply. "This must be prepared before the moon sets. For the ritual."

Landoff's face darkened. "Ritual? What ritual?"

"You still do not know what he accepted," the shaman said, finally looking up. His eyes were a strange, glassy gray, like fog over still water in winter. "Then you do not know your Imperator at all."

"What has he done?" Landoff demanded.

"Not done, accepted and agreed," the shaman corrected, slowly, carefully, as if unwrapping a corpse, "to let himself be commanded by fear. He has chosen to preserve what remains that he believes important at the cost of what truly is.The imperator is a wicked man. Poors the soul that will be ruled by him...."

Landoff took a stiff step forward, the foul odor of burnt herbs and fetid air pricking at his nose.

He took a step back.

"What madness are you speaking?"

The shaman smiled faintly, bitterly. "He has accepted foulness. Accepted blasphemy. He has opened the gate to powers that no '' he gave a chuckle ''civilized man speaks of, let alone bargains with. The roots of old things will stretch into your court now, and you will find yourself bowing to more than just lords and laws."

He turned back to his mortar, adding another pinch of blackened moss, grinding it with slow, rhythmic force.

Landoff's voice tightened. "Did you know this would happen?"

"I knew his heart," the shaman replied. "Better than he did. He hides behind commands and banners. But at the center of it, your Imperator is a man who fears death more than he loves the world. I knew …he would turn to us in the end."

The pestle stopped.

Landoff stared at the crude paste forming in the bowl. A deep unease clawed at his chest, heavy as a mailed fist.

"And what," he asked, his voice low, "will this ritual do?"

The shaman did not answer.

Not yet.

"That is not the right thing to ask," the shaman said at last, his voice a murmur, heavy as wet earth. His eyes fell to the dirt floor, avoiding Landoff's gaze

"What has he agreed to?" Landoff pressed, his voice colder now, more wary than demanding.

The shaman exhaled slowly, the breath catching like smoke in his throat. "He agreed to save his life at the price of another's," he said, almost with sorrow. "As I told you, he is a wicked man. And the wicked cling to life more desperately than any other, even cockroaches do not compare...."

A bitter smile curled on his cracked lips, as if laughing at his own joke.

"I deal in life," he finally said. "Or rather, vitality. The true essence of it. Not your civilized fantasies about honor and family and legacy.

No. I speak of the invisible fire that dances in your marrow and blood, the current that keeps a man breathing, thinking, being. Each soul burns with its own flame. When the flame gutters out, by time, by blade, by sickness,that is when a man dies."

He stirred the paste in the mortar slowly, almost reverently now. "Your southerners," he said with disdain, "cling to life like it is something to be measured in coin and kisses, in pleasure and pomp. But none of you see it for what it truly is, a brief gift, meant only to be passed on. Life exists to seed more life. That is its only truth. Its only purpose."

He paused. His eyes, once dull and lifeless, now gleamed faintly in the gloom, like coals beneath ash.

"And your Imperator," he continued, "has chosen to deny even that. He has chosen to spit in the eye of the world, to tear the meaning from his own breath… just so he might draw a few more."

Landoff was silent, his jaw tight, fists clenched at his sides. "How?" he said at last, his voice hoarse. "If you possess a method to extend life… then why do others not use it? Why do you not?"

The shaman turned sharply, his expression one of genuine revulsion, as if the question itself were an offense to nature.

As if wondering how he could even think of that.

"Because we do not sever our bond with the Mother," he said, voice furious. "We do not corrupt the gift that was given. My people live with the earth, not on it like the mold you represent. We know that each man has a string—delicate, sacred—tying his soul to the world. When the time comes, that string must be cut. It is the natural way. No one from my tribe would dare to twist that thread into a knot with others just to make it longer."

He spat into the ashes beside him.

"Even among my people, there are no fools bold or broken enough to curse their own spirit with such an act. Those who know the cost, recoil from it. Whether it is fear of what they will become… fear of the judgment of kin… or simply horror at the price that must be paid."

Landoff's voice came softer now, cautious. "What is the price?"

The shaman did not answer at first. He ground the last of the herbs into black paste, its scent foul and sour, and set the bowl aside with deliberate care. Then, without looking up, he spoke.

"Every man has his own string," the shaman said quietly, his fingers still dusted with the remnants of ground root and ash. "No string is like another, each is spun in a different pattern, from a different breath, a different sorrow. But if there is anything in this world that comes close to matching a man's own thread... it is the one woven from his own blood."

His eyes rose to meet Lord Landoff's, calm, level, but brimming with loathing.

Landoff knew that it was not just for the Imperator, but for him too....he suddenly desired to leave the room.

For in that moment, as the lord's face twisted, ever so slowly, first confusion, then revulsion.

The shaman knew the man had understood.

He had seen the shape of the price.

The price that only a truly wicked man would pay.