All that could be done was done.
Alpheo judged as much when he finally let himself fall backward onto the cot, the coarse fabric of the tent ceiling above him rippling faintly with every gust of night wind.
He had already doubled the patrols, placed runners between the watchfires, and stationed trumpeters along the inner periter. If the enemy so much as sneezed in the dark, they’d have ti to wake, mount, and form ranks for a counterattack.
It was a pity they couldn’t take advantage of the night themselves , but with half their allied troops being as disciplined as a sack of ferrets, that would’ve been suicide.
A night attack required a pack; what he had was a parade.
So there was nothing left to do but wait for dawn...he truly hated having pigs as teammates.
He wished for a clock ,sothing to asure the endless crawl of hours , but knew well enough that it was late, very late. He told himself to rest. The morning would be cruel; better to et it with so strength left.
Strangely, he wasn’t as tense as he’d feared.
His hands didn’t shake, his breath ca even. The nervousness was there but it hadn’t seized him. He’d drawn up the best plan possible, even accounting for the inevitable chaos that followed first blood. That small, uncertain comfort was enough to keep his mind from chewing itself apart.
He’d just decided to lie down when the flap of his tent burst open.
"Hey, Alph," ca Vrosk’s rough voice. "The Rolian boy’s asking permission to enter."
If there’d been any sleep left in him, it vanished like fog in the sun.
"Of course," he muttered, pushing himself up wondering what the hell he wanted now. "Escort him in."
He dragged a chair toward the center of the tent, brushed his hand across it to clean it of the crumbles of bread he had eaten there, and by the ti he turned around, the young Imperator sha was already stepping through the entrance.
"I apologize for the late hour," sha said stiffly, chest rising and falling with a quiet tremor.
Alpheo didn’t need an oracle to read the boy’s nerves.
"Please," he gestured to the chair, "sit."
The Emperor obeyed, hands folded too neatly in his lap as he looked around his ally’s tent.
"Trouble sleeping?" Alpheo asked, knowing the answer before it ca.
sha blinked, surprised to be so easily read, then gave a sheepish nod.
Alpheo’s lips curved into sothing between sympathy and amusent. "Don’t worry about it. It’s more common than you think. It’s your first battle, after all , and if I recall my first campaign, most n were shaking so badly they could’ve churned butter with their knees."
That earned a nervous smile.
"I suppose," sha murmured, looking down, "you already know what it is I’m worried about."
"Isn’t the answer a bit too obvious?" Alpheo poured two cups of wine from a jug, handed one to his guest. "The night before the first battle always feels longer than the war itself. Drink. It’ll help. Even your father must’ve felt that way when your eldest brother besieged him in the Eternal City.Bet he was shitting his pants"
sha looked up sharply, then muttered a quiet "thank you" as he took the cup.
After a few monts, he asked, "Did you... have trouble sleeping before your first battle?"
Alpheo considered lying , the truth was rarely comforting. But he chose honesty.
"No," he said simply without any real pride. "I didn’t."
sha did not look surprised.
Alpheo smiled faintly. "All my life until then had been a battle. I was born in one, lived in another, and by the ti I first stood on a real field, I’d already learned to lose everything that could be lost. That day, there was nothing left to fear , nothing to bet except myself.
And yet..." He leaned back, gaze drifting toward the flickering lamplight. "Yet there was everything to win. My heart didn’t tremble with the thought of dying , it raced with the thought of taking sothing for once. Of seizing the whole damned pot when all I’d ever been given were scraps."
He looked at the young Emperor, whose knuckles were white around the cup. "Fear’s a fine thing, your Grace. It keeps a man alive. But don’t let it fool you, courage isn’t not feeling fear. It’s rembering you’ve got sothing worth fighting for while your hands are still shaking.It is not bad that you are feeling it, what’s really important is what you are going to do even though you have it."
Alpheo sank back into his chair, the worn wood creaking softly under his weight. Across from him, sha’s gaze followed every movent, the lamplight shimring in the red of his wine.
"I said it once already," the young Imperator murmured, voice low and distant, "but allow to repeat it now... You truly have extraordinary companions."
Alpheo tilted his head slightly. "Egil?"
sha nodded, eyes still on the cup. "Yes. Him. All of my party , lords, knights, and sycophants alike froze when my brother spoke his threat. Not one of them dared a word. And yet he did. He mocked Mavius as if he were a drunken beggar. Laughed in his face as if the gods themselves were protecting him. It was... srizing." He hesitated, swallowing hard. "In comparison, I was useless. I couldn’t even find my voice. I sat there like a coward while he spat defiance. My father would’ve wept to see such weakness in his son."
Alpheo raised a brow, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "I think your father would’ve had more reason to weep at seeing brother turned against brother, don’t you?"
The jest fell flat. sha’s eyes darkened, his jaw tightening as sha and anger warred beneath his skin. Alpheo sighed quietly and stood, circling the small table until he stood over the young Emperor.
He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder , firm, grounding. "Listen to . That was not what I saw at that peace conference that started our alliance.
I did not see the craven you are speaking of when he rose up and dared the other to go to war against and you. I didn’t seen the sha you are speaking of when he did what he believed was right.’’
sha looked up at him, uncertain, searching.
"And as for your father," Alpheo continued, tone softening, "he was a fucking failure as one. The eldest despised him so much he chose to freeze in the north rather than breathe the sa air. The middle? A raving lunatic who’d sell his own soul for a throne hell, maybe he already did. You’re the only one of that brood with a spark of decency left in him. The only chance that man’s bloodline has at redemption."
sha’s lips parted. "That’s not true," he said quietly. "I didn’t do any of this for what was right. I did it because I couldn’t bear to return to my grandfather empty-handed. I was desperate to be sothing.
When I stood up to the princes, it wasn’t courage, it was fear of being nothing. And I was scolded for it later , told it was reckless, dangerous. They said it was a miracle it didn’t turn into disaster."
Alpheo barked a laugh, a deep, unrestrained sound that filled the tent. He clapped the young Emperor on the shoulder again, hard enough to make the boy jolt slightly. "Reckless? Dangerous? Gods, if I had a coin for every ti I was called that, I’d have retired to a villa of marble by now. That’s what living is, your Grace. A man who never risks anything never becos anything.A man truly play our gas when he, for once, moves himself as a piece"
He grinned, raising his cup. "And besides you did succeed. You even managed to drag into this damned war of yours. That takes more courage than you think. We should drink to that.
The Emperor who tricked the prince."
sha hesitated, then allowed himself a small, embarrassed smile as he lifted his cup. "To dangerous decisions, then."
"To dangerous decisions," Alpheo echoed, and their cups t with a soft clink.
They drank.
sha set his cup down, fingers fidgeting along its rim. His voice ca smaller this ti, quieter, like the confession of a child rather than a ruler.
"Still...what if I’m not enough?" sha asked. His voice trembled just enough to betray him. "What if I’m not like you?"
Alpheo turned to him slowly, the wine still warm in his throat. For a mont he simply looked at the boy and wondered what the hell went so wrong in Rolia that a child had to look to him for reassurance.
Did he think Alpheo was his father? Gods forbid.
I’m your ally, boy, he thought bitterly. Who the fuck talks to an ally like that? Did no one teach you how to stand without leaning on another man’s shadow?
But he wasn’t fool enough to waste the chance .
"Not like ?" Alpheo said at last, his tone caught sowhere between amusent and pity. "You’d better pray you’re not. n like don’t get happy endings,we get buried in unmarked graves with too many scars to count and too few friends left to care.
I’ll be dead in a decade if the gods are kind, sooner if they’re in for a laugh. You, though..." He leaned forward, the glint of firelight dancing in his eyes. "You still have the chance to build sothing out of this madness. To be more than the shadow of your father’s failures and your brother’s sins. You can be the Father of Rolia."
He watched the words hit,saw them burn behind the young Emperor’s eyes, slowly at first and then all at once, like cinder.
Alpheo stood closer, the air between them taut with the sll of iron and smoke.
"Despite it all, you’re a head of state," Alpheo said, his voice low and rough. "Never forget that. You are the axis around which your people spin. When you start second-guessing yourself, they’ll start falling apart. You cannot waver. You cannot falter. Even when you’re lost, you walk like you know the way. That’s what keeps armies standing and nations breathing."
He gave the boy a sharp little shake, eyes locked with his. "Tomorrow might bring victory or ruin. Doesn’t matter. We march all the sa."
He grinned then wolfish, tired, but real.
"Always forward," he said, and then, with a final squeeze of the Emperor’s shoulder, added quietly:
"Never back."
He peered down at the pure admiration in the boy’s gaze, he gave him a good shrug of the shoulder as he ended it.
Wondering if all this effort was going to reap him anything...
’’Now go take a wink of sleep, tomorrow will be a big day for all of us, we shall all pluck a very fat chicken who thought himself a dragon.’’
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