Then It Is Love

CHAPTER FIVE

It was an awfully hot afternoon. The kind that could give one a feeling that he could be roasted alive. Nonetheless, such weather could not kill the joy of the soldiers living normally on the border barracks.

It was already over six months since the war at the border plains against the Nomadic nation folks, called barbarians, ended with the victory of the empire.

Like every other morning, the soldiers went through their rigorous morning drills at the central courtyard of the large barracks, before retiring to the mess room for breakfast.

For a bored general Alex Joss, the day couldn't get any borer, thus the heroic young man rode off with few of his most closest and trusted subordinates, dirt brown dusts of the road left at their wake, as they looked so energetic, tenacious and robust, whereas, him, steady at the front, looked so imposing, solemn, dignified, majestic and mighty.

Without being told, they were riding to the nearest town to the border, to drink at their once frequent bar.

As a stately and grand noble of powerful background, and worshipped war god, who had achieved not only one but numerous military meritorious achievements since his age of 12 he joined the army, and rose in rank all these years to a powerful and enemy scaring general at battlefields, he had every right to leave duties to his hardcore loyal deputy and trusted subordinates at the border and return to the capital, but he didn't.

In fact, to Alex Joss, the barracks felt more like home than that noble and grand looking manor and villas, where he never felt anything true love without day-to-day conspiracy buried in the hearts of  smiling faces.

Not to mention those vain and spoiled but without real worth daughters of the top major clans and noble clans that kept throwing one trick and the other, all in the name of stealing their way into his Joss clan as his wife and concubines.

To be honest, most people were already wondering why he was such an uncharmable man, thus, believing he was abstinent and temperamental, due to the number of women he either rejected ruthlessly or heartlessly 

In fact, even though he always knew he was a traditional man that was never capricious, he knew he wasn't a man for love. To his strong belief, no woman is honest. They are all scheming, conspiring and pretentious actors full of deception, vanity, and counterfeit.

As for his report to the emperor, he had dutifully sent over a well detailed letter, and also his deputy. The old man, as he only calls him privately, knew he wouldn't even return to the capital by coercion, or less, when the matter was serious or he wanted to by himself. 

Anyway, although he was only a childhood friend of the crown prince and once went through rivers of blood and flames of fire with him at war, when he was also still a general himself and is only a few years older than him, no one knew a very big secret that had been buried for years. He was actually the bastard son of the emperor. 

As for the Joss family, the current patriarch was only a good brother of the emperor, and the true love of the woman the emperor had him with. As it seems, his mother was from a mysterious and powerful background, outside of their empire. A power, even his hidden true father, the emperor would bow at. 

How did he know? Although it was a so profound secret even he himself could not unveil, he knew that his mother he never saw in his life was the only precious daughter of that force, and had escaped from home, when she was engaged to her own maternal cousin…

As for how he became one of the sons of the Joss clan, which also belongs to the ranking of top major families, with the current Head, having a middle official rank as the Minister of Finance and also the noble title rank of marquess, it was the emperor's doing.

The emperor knew that when it is discovered by the top major clans and noble clans, that his late Imperial consort,  who was exposed  as a mysterious woman and a witch with uncommon power, and that she was his mother, he himself being the 'evil power tainted' son she had with him, it would spell doom. Unrest and rebellion might arise, as all the top echelons very much rejected his mother's existence. Thus, after she died of childbirth for reasons unknown, though believed to be because she sent all her strength into the foetus in her womb for fear of losing him, as it was difficult for people of her origin to take in, let alone, finally birthing the child successful, the emperor left the child in the care of a later silenced maid who was sent to a discreet courtyard for his better upbringing, before his friend adopted him into his Joss Clan. 

Though the Joss members, unaware of his true background, detested him, as soon as he rose to fame and power, even returning victorious in all his battles, easily riding off his enemy nation generals, and also winning the favour of the emperor, they began to learn how to flatter him as calculative parasites, though also afraid of him, due to the notorious facts about how he handled women and pests that bothered him. Though that scared them, it didn't deter them. And to never wrong the man that truly treated him as a son, he always turned a blind eye, never treating them the same way he did to people that learn the hard way, though he could see through their facades.  

Even though Alex Joss knew that his foster father was taking so good care of him because of the emperor, he knew that it was even more 70% due to his mother. The woman he had fallen in love with during his youth, but she chose the emperor, who had been his best friend. Alex Joss always knew he was a good man. A man that could endure and still look after the one he loved, even when she chose his best friend. A man that could even take care of the child she bore to another, only because he was the child of that woman. His love, obviously, for Alex was even stronger than the one for his six sons and five daughters. Not even his wife and four concubines could compare.

But general Alex was never carried away by the Marquess' excess care and the Emperor's steady protection and indulgence to most of his self-willed actions, for he knew strongly that Marquess Joss' action were tinged by his selfish reasons, whereas, the Emperor, though believing he had a strong father's love for him and a guilty feeling for having wronged him by concealing his true identity to all, all this years, which had caused reasons why his beginning in life had a lot of obstacles and attacks, general Alex knew so well that the old man also had a strong and suppressed weariness and buried fear towards his rising fame and strength.

Even at that, general Alex was never afraid he would take actions against him, in order to suppress him from threatening his power and authority, nor his sons and  his most precious crown prince, who was also a good friend of general Alex.

Throwing away all unnecessary thoughts to the back of his mind and the wind, the stately, austere and great war god, known even to every ally and enemy nation, with a strong virile, rode his also majestic and fierce  dark warhorse, his speed faster than  flash itself. And his destination obviously affirmed.