Chapter 1310: Lost in the fog(2)
"I will never tire of discovering more about you," Alpheo murmured, his rough thumbs gently kneading the soft skin of her cheeks, tilting her face so she had no choice but to look at him. "Fifteen years under the same roof, and yet I still find myself fishing for secrets in your waters."
"This is hardly a secret, Fox," Jasmine countered smoothly, leaning into his touch for a brief second before pulling back to eye him in the looking-glass. "I have always been rather minuciously observant, and it is not as though you have ever made much of a mystery of your clumsy feet."
"An open book, am I now?" he teased, a low rumble in his chest.
"Only when someone finally bothers to crack your spine and open you up, and here I am the only one in the position to do that" she said, flashing that sharp, cheeky smile that always reminded him of her sharp wits.
He didn’t quite know whether that notion entirely pleased him or not. But as she held his gaze the smile faded from her lips. She knew him too well. There was a shadow behind his eyes, a heavy, grinding anxiety that all the wine and wedding music hadn’t been able to wash away. More than one ghost was bothering him tonight.
Alpheo let his hands fall from her shoulders. "This was meant to be a flawlessly happy day. I truly did not want to sour the air with matters of state. I have already done far too much ill to Lysandra and Ratto, the least I could do was ensure they didn’t have to see their King brooding like a vulture during their feast."
Normally, the mere mention of her sister’s deal would have brought a flash of heat to Jasmine’s eyes, an irritated tightening of her jaw. But surprisingly, she did not flinch. Instead, she rose from her vanity, her silk nightgown whispering against the floorboards. She caught him firmly by the hands, using her leg to hook a heavy, cushioned chair and pulling it forward until it faced her own.
With a quiet, commanding grace, the Queen guided her warlord down into the seat.
"Do you feel like speaking of them?" she asked, her emerald eyes boring into his with an intensity that demanded absolute honesty. Alpheo knew that if he denied her now, if he retreated behind his usual wall of stoic silence, it would cut her deep. And truth laid bare, it wasn’t as if these troubles were a secret he meant to keep buried. Perhaps it would do his spirit some good to bleed his grievances .
"It is about Oizen," the King admitted at last, the name scraping out of his throat like iron over stone. Even now, in the safety of his palace, his heart burned with a white-hot, agonizing humiliation at the reports. "We have had nothing but bitter trouble over there."
A sharp frown instantly settled over her fair face, her posture stiffening. "Are the conquered southron lords conspiring a rebellion? Raising banners in the name of Sorza?"
Alpheo needed a good laugh, and he let one escape his chest.
"I wish to the gods they were," Alpheo sneered, his fingers clenching into iron fists against his knees. "I would gladly pay good silver to face their rusted blades and meek aristocratic drivel in an open field again. I broke their backs at Aracina, I slaughtered them at Apurvio, and I ran their grand vanguard into the dirt at the damn Ford with mine own flesh. Those curs don’t have a single tooth left to bite me with. If it were just a matter of heraldry and feudal levies, I would sleep like a babe."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly hiss as the frustration boiled over.
"But it is not their banners that give me pause, Jasmine. It is that fucking Vulture Lord. The bastard is a phantom.’’
That gave her pause. The smooth, courtly mask she so expertly wore completely slipped, leaving her staring at him in uncharacteristic bewilderment.
"The bandits?" she repeated, making a slight face as if she had just bitten into an unripened plum. "A pack of forest outlaws? That is what is keeping the great conqueror of the South awake at night?"
Alpheo merely stared at her, his expression flat and unyielding.
Jasmine blinked, the realization hitting her a second later. "Oh," she murmured, her tone softening instantly. "Forgive me. That was not my attempt to mock."
Alpheo offered a tight, single nod of his head. He knew her heart. He knew she wasn’t cruel, just detached from the ugly, unglamorous realities of asymmetric warfare.
"It’s just..." Jasmine trailed off, leaning forward and resting her delicate chin in her palms. "I didn’t think it mathematically possible for a handful of desperate rogue-blades to give you such immense trouble. I mean, you defeated the Grand League’s unified army again and again on the open field. You broke princes and shattered coalitions."
"Aye, and those league forces were led by proud, lordly men," Alpheo countered, his fingers aggressively tracing the grain of the ironwood arms of his chair. "They marched with their colorful heraldry fluttering loudly in the wind, with columns of dust so massive my scouts could spot them from ten miles away. They had explicit, predictable objectives they intended to aim for, and rigid strongholds they were legally bound to defend. They had lumbering baggage trains and supply lines that I could easily map out, ambush, and exploit. They had arrogant men at the helm whom I could fundamentally understand, predict, and bait into acting exactly as I willed."
He ran a heavy, calloused hand through his hair, letting out a sharp, frustrated breath.
"That damn Vulture Lord possesses absolutely none of those things. He carries no banners, holds no castles, and leaves no supply trail to follow. I can easily fight five men that I can see, Jasmine. But show me how you are supposed to fight one ghost you cannot see among a dozen shadows."
He could see the grim reality of the problem finally settling into the contours of her face. She was seeing it too. Indeed, how did you wage a war against an adversary you did not know, who possessed no fixed address, and who retained absolute knowledge of exactly where and when you were most vulnerable?
"I have no earthly way to know where they will strike next or where they lay their heads at night," the King admitted, his voice dropping into a harsh whisper. "All I can realistically do is deploy my men to protect the vital resettlement zones I wish to keep under my heel. But doing that means dividing my glorious legions into smaller, isolated sections,making each garrison dangerously vulnerable to a concentrated, well-thought assault. Not optimal, but the best tool at my disposal. I am forced to turn my wolves into sitting ducks."
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed slightly as she followed his dark logic. "And what are you planning to do to tip the scales?"
"I am giving Edric everything he needs," Alpheo revealed, "More men, more coin, and a completely blank check from the treasury. Edric is a patient hound; if I give him enough resources to choke the valleys, he will eventually corner the bird."
"In time, your legions will find them and hang them from the highest trees, I am certain of it," she spoke, her attempt at soothing him as sweet and kind as it was ultimately ineffective.
"In time, indeed, they will," Alpheo muttered dryly. "But the true nightmare is what will happen across the province before that rope is tied. Every single time an attack is successfully made upon those bearing my imperial banners, it is a public, humiliating spit upon my cheek. And the smallfolk watch. The lords watch. Do you actually know who the Vulture Lord was before he took up the feather?"
The Queen shook her head, her dark waves shifting over her shoulders.
"He was a highborn lord of Oizen," the King explained, his lip curling in disdain. "He was brutally usurped of his lands by his own kin, his cousin or brother, I care not which. The bastard had given ample military support to Sorza during the grand war, so the crownless prince turned a blind eye to his crimes and allowed him to retain the land he usurpsed, just as we did when the Vulture attempted to lay his bloody claim before my court.
So, what do we have now? We have a displaced lord at the head of a small, highly effective guerrilla army, systematically laying waste to the usurper’s lands and my resettlement efforts, with ample support no doubt. You see the dangerous connection?"
Jasmine’s breath caught slightly in her throat. "You fear he will become a symbol."
"Like a roaring fire for the moths," Alpheo said grimly, his brief smile dying a sudden death. "He is a living testament that the Fox of Yarzat can be defied and bloodied. I suppose that is precisely why Nibadur gave the bastard so much covert financial support beneath our very noses."
"Habadia is backing him?" Jasmine asked, her voice dropping into a shocked whisper.
"Aye. Why is that so hard to believe?" Alpheo asked, a bitter edge to his words. "Nibadur wants me weak, distracted, and bleeding out in the mud. Every single day the Vulture goes unpunished, the conquered southern lords will look at his defiance with a growing, treasonous respect in their eyes. Who knows? Perhaps some of them are already secretly lending him grain and shelter in the dark. And that is catastrophic. The exact moment bandits gain genuine respect in the eyes of their fellows, be they highborn aristocrats or starving lowborn smallfolk, that is when a nuisance transforms into something dangerous."
"Surely you can use your authority to force the local Oizenian lords to aid you in the hunt?" Jasmine proposed, her political instincts flaring. "Make them deploy their own local levies to police their borders."
At that exact mention, Alpheo found himself desperately missing the burning kick of strong wine. He would have gladly taken a deep, numbing gulp from a flagon right then.
"Starting by next winter, I intend to do exactly that," the King sighed, leaning his head back against the ironwood chair. "But right now? The Oizenian lords are barely passing the season as it is; their fields are scorched, and their storehouses are empty. If I force them to feed my armies and hunt ghosts in the snow, they will starve before the spring thaw, and I will have a province of corpses instead of taxpayers, a bad trade if there was ever one.
But by next year..." Alpheo’s dark eyes locked onto his wife’s reflection, a terrifying, absolute certainty hardening his features. "By next year, I pray to the gods I won’t have any further need of their help with those bastards. Because either Edric will bring me the Vulture’s head on a silver spike, or I will personally march down there and burn the entire forest to ash just to smoke him out.Then I shall unfeather him like a common chicken and show his innard to all that trudge through that accursed land . Then the moths shall see that their fire was no more than cinders breathed upon by a flimsy breeze."