Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Chapter 418: Sea Lion(6)

Chapter 418: Sea Lion(6)

Discipline is the steel spine of any great army. It is what turns mere men into an unyielding wall, what keeps swords steady when chaos reigns, and what forces warriors to stand firm before horrors that would send lesser men fleeing.

Beyond its practical edge in battle, discipline possesses a beauty of its own—the way it suppresses fear, how it molds instinct into obedience, and how it allows soldiers to march into death as if it were merely another step forward.

For a commander, nothing is more frustrating than an enemy that refuses to break. Battles are not won by strength alone, but are instead always won by the collapse of an enemy's will. Many wars have been decided not by sheer bloodshed but by the simple act of forcing the other side to run. Quick, devastating strikes—sudden ambushes, relentless charges, and overwhelming force—these have been the weapons of tacticians for thousands of years, used to shatter morale and send men scattering before a fight can even begin.

Few understood this better than Alpheo.

Time and again, he bent the tide of battle to his favor, exploiting the fragile resolve of enemy armies. Against the rebel lord Ormund, he struck fast and hard, driving into the enemy's center with ruthless precision with an ambush. Within moments, their lines buckled, and their left flank—made up of trembling levies—crumbled after barely ten minutes of fighting.

Against the Herculeians, Alpheo did not meet them head-on immediately . Instead, he shattered their cohesion with well-placed catapult fire, breaking apart their advance before his troops surged forward and drove them back. They might have routed entirely had their reinforcements not arrived in time to steady their ranks, opening the field for Egil to save the day with his triumphant cavalry charge.

But Alpheo's true genius lay not just in strategy, but in understanding the mind of the common soldier. He knew what made men stand and what made them run. He knew the weight of fear, the strength of hope, and the thin line between courage and despair. He used this knowledge to manipulate battles as a sculptor shapes clay, twisting the minds of his enemies to his liking.

Yet even a master of fear and morale has limits. No amount of cunning could shatter a force that did not feel fear—a force bound by iron discipline. When faced with warriors who had stripped themselves of hesitation and emotion, who held their ranks no matter the slaughter around them, even Alpheo's tactics faltered. There is no breaking an enemy that refuses to bend, no terror that seeps into the mind of a soldier who has buried his fear beneath sheer will.

Against such men, there could be no easy victory. Against such men, there was only slaughter, until one side stood alone on the blood-soaked field.

Still,even the most disciplined men were not immune to fear. No matter how much training, how many battles fought, or how unbreakable their formation seemed—fear was always lurking, waiting for the right moment to sink its claws into their minds.