Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

The war cry tore through the darkness like a blade through flesh—”Either we win, or we all die!”—as two hundred riders thundered toward the Oizenian camp, their horses’ hooves pounding like the heartbeat of some great beast awakening.

The gate yawned open before them, not by chance, not by mistake, but because the Voghondai had already struck like ghosts, their knives slipping between ribs before the first guard could even gasp. Now, the way was clear, and Egil’s cavalry poured through like a river of death unleashed.

Inside, chaos reigned.

The Voghondai had done their work better than any could have hoped from them.

Their part of the camp’s defenses had collapsed in a storm of silent killing—sentries crumpling with slit throats, watchmen dragged into the shadows with muffled gurgles. Now, the raiders moved like wolves among sheep, their axes rising and falling in sprays of crimson.

Men died half-asleep, their dreams becoming nightmares in the instant before steel found flesh. Others stumbled from tents, barefoot and bleary-eyed, only to be ridden down before they could so much as lift a weapon.

A night attack was never complete without fire.

The temptation had been there—to hurl torches onto the oiled canvas, to watch the flames climb and hear the screams rise like some macabre symphony.

But the prince had forbidden it. No flames. Not yet. The darkness was their ally, and revealing their position too soon would have been suicide.

It had worked.

The Oizenians had seen nothing, heard nothing—until death was already among them, breathing down their necks, its blade already wet.

Coordinating an assault with over two thousand men in pitch-black night should have been impossible. But the Black Stripes had led the vanguard, moving with the eerie precision of men who could march, fight, and kill blindfolded.

Striking the right , were the levies, held back just long enough to avoid stumbling into each other like drunken fools. And then, at the rear, the Voghondai—men who saw better at night than most did at noon—had scaled the walls unseen, their ladders slamming against the palisade moments before their blades found flesh.

Now, the camp was theirs.

The Oizenians had seen nothing, heard nothing—until death was already among them.

The air was thick with choking dust, swirling in great clouds behind the pounding hooves of Egil’s riders. What had once been an enemy formation was now a broken, screaming mass—men tripping over their own dead, their discipline unraveling into blind panic. The cavalry rode them down without mercy, like wolves falling upon scattered sheep.

And among the hunters rode a boy.

Ratto.

Thirteen summers old, his body still more angles than muscle, his hands barely large enough to properly grip the weapons they now clutched. This was his first real battle—if one didn’t count the starving elders he’d been forced to cut down .

There was no room for hesitation here. The world had taught him that lesson early, back when he’d been just another starving rat fighting for scraps in the gutters before fate—or perhaps something darker—had led him to the mercenary captain who’d given him a blade and a purpose.

Now he rode with the rest, his heart hammering against his ribs like a prisoner pounding on his cell door, his knuckles bone-white around the reins.

Ahead, a soldier fled, his spear long discarded, his breath coming in ragged, wet sobs as he stumbled through the churned earth. Ratto didn’t think. He simply acted.

His arm drew back, the javelin an extension of his will, and with a grunt born more from desperation than strength, he let it fly.

The shaft cut through the dusty air with a sound like a dying man’s last gasp before punching clean through the runner’s spine. The iron tip erupted from his chest in a crimson geyser, and he folded like a puppet with its strings cut, his mouth slack, his fingers clawing at nothing as he collapsed face-first into the dirt.

Behind him, one of the veteran riders barked a laugh that carried over the din of battle. ”Hah! Fine throw for a whelp!” A gauntleted hand clapped Ratto’s shoulder with enough force to nearly knock him from the saddle. ”Now let’s see you do it where they can look you in the eyes!”

Ratto’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached. He kicked his horse forward, his lance now in hand, its weight both familiar and terrifyingly alien. He’d practiced this motion a hundred times in the training yard—the perfect angle, the precise grip, the way to brace against the impact.

But the yard had no screaming men. No blood spraying hot across his face. No stench of opened bowels hanging thick in the air.

Another soldier ran, clutching a bleeding arm, his chainmail glinting dully in the hazy light. Ratto lowered the lance, tucked it tight against his side just as he’d been taught, and rammed it home.

The impact jolted through his bones like lightning, the force nearly unseating him as the steel tip ripped through mail links, flesh, and lung with equal ease. The man was lifted clean off his feet, his body sliding down the shaft like meat on a skewer while the boy discarded the lance.

His mace was in his grip before he’d even consciously decided to draw it, its iron head already darkened from the straw dummies he’d shattered in practice. Now it would taste real blood.

A soldier turned at the last second, his shield coming up in a desperate block—too late. Ratto swung with all the fury of his galloping mount behind him. The mace smashed through the shield’s rim with a splintering crack before crushing the man’s helmet like parchment. His skull caved with a wet crunch that Ratto felt more than heard, and he dropped like a sack of stones, his legs kicking spasmodically as his brains seeped into the churned earth.

This time, no one cheered.

The battlefield, relentless and uncaring, moved on without him, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the corpses he’d made.

Somewhere in the distance, a horn sounded. Somewhere closer, a man wept for his mother. Ratto wiped his face with a shaking hand and found it came away red. He was a warrior now.

The knowledge tasted like bile in his throat.

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He’s got the killing spirit.

Egil had witnessed enough green boys in battle to know which would crumble and which would thrive. Ratto, for all his youth and scrappy limbs, was proving himself the latter.

From his vantage, Egil watched the lad carve through the retreating enemy with the wild-eyed fervor of someone too young to understand death’s true weight. The javelin throw had been true, the lance strike brutal if unrefined, and that last mace blow? Messy. Overcommitted. But effective.

At least the pup’s got fire in his belly.

Alpheo would want to hear of this. The commander had hesitated before throwing the boy into the fray, but war had no patience for childhood. Today, Ratto was proving he could be forged into something useful.

Egil’s gaze swept across the ruined camp, taking in the chaos with the cold assessment of a man who had seen too many battlefields. The Oizenians had come here thinking themselves conquerors, thinking they could take what wasn’t theirs. Now, they ran like startled deer, their arrogance turned to terror.

The Voghondai , the only footman he could see from the rear, moved among them like reapers in the dark.

A soldier stumbled, his robes tangling around his legs as he scrambled backward. A Voghondai warrior stepped into his path, his axe a crescent of dull iron in the firelight.

The man opened his mouth—to beg, to bargain—but the blade took him in the throat before a sound could escape. His body folded, his blood soaking into the same earth he had marched upon with such pride.

Near the smoldering remnants of a tent, a group of Oizenian levies huddled together, their spears trembling in their hands.

They had been farmers, vagabonds, men who had never wanted this fight. But the Voghondai showed no mercy. Their blades rose and fell in brutal rhythm, cutting through flesh and bone with the same indifference as scythes through wheat.

A boy—no older than Ratto—collapsed to his knees, clutching at the ruin of his stomach. A boot to his back sent him sprawling, and a dagger found the base of his skull.

This was justice.

The Oizenians had come to take their land, their homes, their future.

Now, they would leave only corpses behind, of course Egil cared for none of the three, as the real reason , was that he simply enjoyed the bloodshed.

Egil’s attention snapped back to the present as a wounded soldier dragged himself through the dirt ahead, fingers raking the earth, his breath coming in wet, panicked gasps. Without breaking stride, Egil ripped a javelin free and let it fly. The weapon hissed through the air before thunking into the man’s back, pinning him to the ground like a butterfly to a board. One final twitch, then stillness.

There would be no mercy

Egil’s gaze had already moved on.

Beyond the chaos, past the scattered remnants of the Oizenian forces, a cluster of riders was breaking away. A dozen, perhaps more, moving different from the rest—no banners, no gleaming armor, some riding bareback as if born to the saddle. They cut through the retreat like shadows, swift and silent, angling for the distant tree line.

Egil’s pulse quickened.

Men who flee a lost battle with nothing but the horses under them? Those weren’t common soldiers, as those did not know how to ride.

Those were men with value. Nobles. Princes.....

A slow, wolfish grin spread across his face.

”With me!” His voice cut through the din, sharp as a blade. ”Anyone who values glory over grunt work, on me!”

Not all heard him, but enough did. Riders who heard the call of their commanders peeled away from the slaughter—veterans with keen eyes and fresh bloodlust, their mounts foaming at the bit.

Egil didn’t wait for a headcount.

He kicked, and his horse surged forward, muscles bunching beneath him as they tore across the field. The wind whipped at his face, carrying the scent of sweat and iron, his fingers already finding another javelin.

The hunt was on.

And Egil, blissfully unaware, was moments away from realizing he’d just sighted the crown jewel of the night—Shameleik himself, Prince of Oizen, fleeing amidst his dwindling guard.

Perhaps Egil could make the promise Alpheo had made long ago to the prince’s son true, as the next time they met it wouldn’t be with his son drinking and eating at his leisure, but with the prince himself as hostage .

But that revelation would come later.

For now?

There were throats to cut and lives to end.