Apart from the obvious arguments he had flung at the council, there was a deeper, quiet certainty that made Alpheo view demilitarization as a coward's surrender: they stood on the very precipice of greatness.
In every battle Alpheo had ever commanded, victory had not belonged to the gods, nor to luck, but to the brutal, relentless discipline he had drilled into his men. At Aracina, any other host would have broken and fled the moment the heavy horse thundered toward them. His men had stood. They held the line, raining iron down upon the riders until the horses tripped over their own dead, paving the way for a slaughter.
