Herald of Steel

"Captain! What now! Should we start?" 

While his wife was scheming to commit adultery with another man, Lapitus was inside the city trying his best to make it out alive and give her a good future.

And as he was thinking how best to achieve that, he was suddenly broken out of his deep thoughts by this eager, quite restless voice.

"Hmmm?" And as he turned to face him with a low grunt and slight furrow between his eyes, his lips were pressed together indicating he was clearly not impressed at this interruption.

But even as his much superior officers, Lapitus did not chide the man.

One because Lapitus was normally pretty easygoing.

But more so because the eager teenager was surrounded by almost an even more eager crowd of similar faces- their countenances flushed with excitement, their hands clenched in anticipation, their armor hidden under their civilian clothes, their hearts filled with anxiety, and their spirits soaring for a fight!

They were not asking him for his permission to start the rebellion right now.

They were telling him to!

And as Lapitus faced this oppressive look of implicit pressure, for the first time he felt he understood what his former master, Lord Ponticus must have experienced.

Because it was almost a one to one recreation of the scenery from earlier when they forced him to go out and fight.

This was only on a smaller scale.

'*Tsk*, we lost so many men. Couldn't we have lost a few of these too!' And as Lapitus looked at the around ten men surrounding him, in a sarcastic way he wished some of these hot heads had died too.

But here Lapitus was just lampooning.

So putting such wishful musings aside, Lapitus then thought back on why the soldiers wanted to start right now. 

'Hmmph that idiot! He is actually organizing a feast right now! And he even wants us to attend? What more? Is he going to go there with his neck washed clean so it's easier to chop?'

Even though Lapitus hated Petrino, the ease with which the latter presented to him seemed to leave a bad taste in Lapitus's mouth.

But if one knew the entire story behind that was Petrino doing so, it was actually not so ridiculous.

What had actually happened was that Petrino was organizing his father's funeral and according to Tibian customs, it was tradition to carry out the burial in the morning, feed some poor and needy for lunch, so that they would be satisfied and pray for the departed, and as night came, the family and close relatives of the deceased would all get together and eat good food and drink.

This was done in remembrance of the dead, wishing for the health of his soul and to be among one's kin to lessen the sorrow of the loss.

Up until this, it was alright in Lapitus's eyes.

Petrino could go ahead with it no problem.

But the issue came in the following event.

For you see, the thing that most occurred during this time was drinking copious amounts of intoxicants, sometimes even to the point of being wasted.

As a matter of fact, the amount one could drink without letting oneself out was seen directly as a measure of one's true love towards the recently departed.

The Tibian people seemed to be a lively bunch when it came to death.

But of course, anyone could see the consequence of this practice. 

It would frequently lead to instances where the feast would quickly turn itself into a drunken feat of festivities where the men got hammered and completely wasted.

Their only saving grace was that the women in the feast were forbidden from drinking, and so could take care of them.

Though ironically, with this safety net in place, the men would let themselves go even more, and over time, it even became an unwritten rule that all the men who were considered to be relatively close to the decreased should drink to the point they either passed out or threw up at least three times.

And if you are so drunk that you have to empty your stomach three different times, one's mental acuity by that point could be imagined.

And it was precisely because of that practice that the soldiers were so eager to take advantage of the situation.

Every major noble and officer would be wasted beyond words by the end of that night. 

Could they have asked for a better chance even if the gods descended and promised to grant them a boon of their choosing? 

And as if this was not enough, which it certainly was, to add to the icing on the cake, Petrino even decided to make the entire thing a mass funeral for the entire city, meant to pray for the resting of the almost fifteen thousand (15,000) dead and around twenty thousand (20,000) captured or missing.

So it could be said that on that day, or night, the entire city would be wasted- the nobles, the guards, the ordinary citizenry, even the tramps and vagabonds.

After all, almost everyone had lost someone- a friend, family, or even an acquaintance. 

So killing the nobles and opening the gates would be a cakewalk then.

Hence it was little wonder the soldiers and officers under Lapitus were not willing to take no for an answer.

Now, being the devil's advocate, and not to bash too hard on Petrino, he, and the people around him did have a reason for doing this.

They were not total idiots.

It was just that they looked at it with a much different lens than Petrino's military view, who saw the entire thing as a huge security risk.

But these men looked at this move from a political point.

And from that angle, this was certainly a very good move.

For the situation inside Thesalie was very tense.

The people had suffered huge losses, the enemy was imminently about to break through, and the deadly fate Alexander promised if they resisted hung like a deadly guillotine hanging over their necks.

All this made the people very reluctant to stand and fight.

Not when there was an alternative.

Thus it was only through sheer fear and brute muscle that Petrino was able to keep them from rioting and rebelling.

But of course, fear can only be effective for so long.

And Petrino did not nearly have enough manpower to suppress all dissent.

And as Alexander drew closer and closer, there was no telling when the people's limits were going to simply burst and break.

So one of Petrino's advisors suggested this funeral ceremony as a way for the common people to vent their emotions and calm down.

The higher-ups hoped that this way they could be placated for the time being.

And surprisingly Petrino immediately agreed.

Though for all the wrong reasons.

For him, the man simply wanted to eat and party.

The stress of the siege was starting to get to him and he wanted to make merry and drown himself in alcohol to forget it.

And to that effect, for he wanted to share the joy, he invited everybody who was anybody to attend his father's funeral and the subsequent feast and drink.

'Darm fool! Just think about the state of our pantry!' 

But the huge food expenses that this would inevitably cause was simply one more addition to Lapitus's already long list of complaints.

It had to be remembered that being under siege, the city's rations were already running low.

And the promised supplies from the capital were supposed to only arrive with the remaining 10,000.

So to waste their limited stocks on such a frivolous matter was another mark Lapitus put against Petrino.

Though to be fair to Petrino here, Alexander was far more likely to break through the walls and slaughter them all before they had the chance to starve and die.

So it was actually better to use their food to boost whatever morale they had left.

While Lapitus considered all these, a small part of him still wanted to wait for any word from the capital.

Perhaps the king himself would write to them regarding their predicament and instruct them on what action they were to take, Lapitus naively hoped.

And in that same vein, he had asked the maester of the mansion about this, or if any messages had been sent to the courts informing them.

But the old man there never liked Lapitus because he had once caught the young boy years ago sleeping with his daughter in a stable.

So he briskly brushed him off with an annoyed face.

And in that same way, he carelessly did not bother to send any birds, thinking the 10,000 were surely on their way.

And no one else reminded him otherwise either.

Hence facing all these circumstances, Lapitus knew he had to make his decision.

Or in reality, the decision was actually already made for him.

For the men surrounding him were not the type to be patient and think things through.

They would likely do it even if he barred so.

So flashing a frosty light in his eyes, Lapitus nodded his head like it was carrying the weight of an entire mountain, "The reinforcements cannot make it on time. We will do it three days from now!"

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