He woke just as shitty as he thought he would be.
His eyes opened with himself on a bed, a comfortable bed. White blanket covering him and a pillow clearly filled with goose feather nestled comfortably below his head. The air around him was cold and crisp though the blanket was warm.
As he tried to shift, his limbs twitched in a violent, throbbing protest. His muscles felt like overextended bowstrings, frayed and ready to snap; he had pushed them far beyond the limits of human endurance, and now the bill had co due.
For a flickering second, he expected to see a certain blonde man leaning over him with a leering grin. Instead, he woke to a whirlwind of white tunics.
"He’s awake!" a voice cried out "The Prince has returned!"
A cold hand clamped onto his wrist, fingers pressing firmly against his pulse, while another man clicked his fingers re inches from Alpheo’s nose, checking for the tracking of his pupils.
Alpheo watched the finger move, his irritation rising with his consciousness.
Am I a prized hound to be snapped at?
"Ne—" He broke off into a jagged, rattling cough. His throat felt as though he had swallowed a handful of hot embers. He cleared it with a wince and fixed the doctor with a look that had sent veteran captains scurrying for cover. "Next ti you snap your fingers at ... I’m going to claim your hand."
A petty pleasure blossod in watching the man’s face turn the color of his tunic.
"He’s only doing his job,don’t take it out against him." a voice rumbled from the shadows.
Alpheo turned his head, slowly and painfully, to see Jarza. The Legate looked as though he had aged another ten years since the field. Dark circles hollowed out his eyes, and his posture was slumped with a bone-deep weariness.
"You look disappointed," Jarza noted, his voice a gravelly rasp. "Am I not to your liking?"
"I half-expected to see Egil," Alpheo admitted, his voice a ghost of itself.
He gave Jarza a long, searching stare. He thought of confessing even as a part of him still refused to believe it, refused to accept that what happened was indeed true.
As much as he loved Jarza, he knew the man wasn’t the right vessel for this particular confession. Jarza was a soldier; he wouldn’t know how to handle a Prince who spoke of seeing ghost.
"For a mont, we thought you’d gone to see him," Jarza said, leaning back in his chair with a heavy sigh. "You dropped on like a sack of potatoes, Alph. Gave and half the Legion a heart attack. After the field was cleared, the n... even so of the wounded ones... they went to Mass. We really thought you were gone."
Thousands of n, broken and bleeding, whispering his na to the Gods. He didn’t know how to carry that, so he did what he always did: he deflected with a jest.
"Nah," Alpheo wheezed, forcing a small, pained smirk. "Death chewed on for a bit and spat my bloody ass out. Too hard for her taste..."
The two n shared a low, shaky chuckle that ended too quickly.
"How long?" Alpheo asked.
"Sixteen hours. Going on seventeen."
Alpheo groaned, closing his eyes. He rarely slept more than seven hours, even in the height of luxury. To have vanished for nearly a day felt like a dereliction of duty.
His body felt like a bruised peach, every inch tender and pulsing with a dull, rhythmic ache. He had trusted his armor to keep the world out, but the world had a way of leaking through the gaps.
He was ragged shit when it was over.
"We truly thought you’d never wake," the Legate said "Your son certainly acted as if you were already dead. You should speak to him when you can. Basil wasn’t as ready for this as he believed, and it’s played hell on his mind.Don’t misunderstand he was light enough when seeing man burn and die, even after offering him the choice to give rcy to so of them he denied it.
But he was not ready for the possibility that you would die.
Asag ntioned how rattled the boy was when you ordered him away. He was thoroughly convinced you were riding to your grave."
"Convinced?" Alpheo rasped, his brow furrowing. "What do you an, convinced?"
Jarza didn’t elaborate. He simply looked away, his jaw tight. Alpheo didn’t press; if Jarza was withholding an answer, he likely had a rcy in mind that Alpheo wasn’t yet strong enough to dismantle.
"And the others?" Alpheo asked instead, shifting his weight and regretting it instantly.
"Mostly well, all things considered. Rykio took a spear to the thigh, but it missed the bone; he’s already grumbling about the soup, which is a good sign. Torghan had his shoulder popped out of its socket by a mace, but the bastard took the head of the Lord of Calpia as an apology. We have dead, of course. No one of the inner circle, but we lost Ser Ary, Eurenis’ brother, then the Lord Helvius and several of Damaris’s cousins .And quite so in your guard too."
"He’ll raise a localized hell over that," Alpheo muttered.
"I’d say he’s been rewarded enough as it is. You’ll need to put your boot down with him.He is a stag not the falcon"
"We’ll see. Anyone else?" He caught the way Jarza was chewing on the inside of his cheek—a nervous habit that usually preceded bad news. "Jarza. Who else?"
"The little wretch of Herculia. He fought like a man possessed; nearly had the head of Sorza’s cousin, or so the n say. Would have had it, too, if the cunt’s sworn shields hadn’t intervened. He took a spear in the side mid-lee. The doctors say it’s a coin flip whether he sees another sunrise. We have so deads too though, Ser Tham Badfoot is unaccounted for, while we just discovered Ser Miro and Ser Rolon dead. Vrosk is wounded though lightly , doctor believes he will recover."
"I see..." Alpheo looked toward the tent ceiling, a hollow feeling in his gut. "Both Herculeian brothers served with rit. This war has been a heavy debt for them to pay. and for us to pay"
He scanned the room. The doctors, sensing the private nature of the conversation, had slipped away once they were certain the Prince wasn’t about to expire.
"Where is Agalosios?" Alpheo asked, trying for a lighter tone. "I expected him to be my personal caretaker. I am the Prince, after all. A certain level of coddling is expected."
Jarza didn’t even offer a courtesy smile.
"We are hard-pressed, Alpheo. Agalosios has worked from the first dawn until now without a wink of sleep. The poor bastard finishes stitching one man only to have another lose half his blood on the next table. It’s a butcher’s shop out there."
"We brought one hundred and fifty specialized surgeons," Alpheo reminded him, his voice thinning.
"We’ll be needing more in the future," Jarza asserted flatly.
"It was that bad, then?"
"We suffered heinous casualties, Alpheo. Any other host would have shattered at half the cost. Because we aren’t ’most’ armies, we stayed, and because we stayed, we bled." Jarza winced as he spoke, the pain of his lost Legionaries clear in the lines of his face.
The reality settled over Alpheo like a shroud. His Legions had stood in that at-grinder for hours, absorbing the weight of a continent before being hurled into a half-mad, desperate charge. They had broken the enemy, yes, but the win had been carved out of their own marrow. He rembered the red mist, the screams, and the way the ground had turned into a soup of n. They had survived a slaughter by becoming the most efficient part of it.
"Where’s Sorza?"
"In the sa place he was after Apurvio," Jarza replied, his voice flat. "Safe."
Alpheo exhaled a long, ragged sigh. It was a foolish question, born of the lingering haze of combat, but the sight of that golden sun banner had been the final image etched into his mind before the dark took him. It sat in his mories like a splinter.
"I had hoped to mount his head on a pike," Alpheo admitted.
Just the thought of that craven coward lurking behind ranks of better n was enough to beckon his old friend, Rage, back into his dizzy mind.
"You’ll have to wait for that, I fear," Jarza said. "As we speak, he’s no doubt riding hard for the safety of his capital. I’d wager he won’t sleep soundly for months unless he’s hiding under his wife’s skirts. This was his last chance to break you, Alph. Now, with the League’s interest shifting toward Kakunia after today’s display, he’s going to find himself very cold and very alone with no one to wipe him dry in the bum."
Jarza shifted in his chair, his eyes narrowing as he studied the bedridden Prince. "Speaking of Kakunia... I can’t make sense of the weather. One mont, the plan was to prop relao up as a convenient distraction, an allied prince to draw the League’s fire away from our borders. Then you tell that, in the future, the two of you are destined to be enemies. And yet, look at the field today. The Bull followed the Fox like a loyal hound."
Well more like the Fox followed the Bull, the prince thought.
Jarza leaned forward, his confusion bubbling over into a string of questions.
"He spends half his ti in that tent of his with that paramour, and occasionally more than one guest, if the rumors are true. But he’s co to this tent once already, and he plagues the doctors with questions about your state every few hours. What changed? Is he an ally, or a threat we’re feeding at our own table?"
The questions poured out of Jarza in a relentless stream, hitting Alpheo before he had even fully drifted from the heavy veneer of sleep.
Provided he even had the answer for that.
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