Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

On every side of the camp, the night rang with screams.

The rebels, drunk on victory before the battle had truly begun, were now dying like flies in a lantern’s flame. The trap had not simply been sprung—it had been perfectly timed, and the carnage it birthed was almost surgical in its efficiency.

At the left flank, Jarza’s infantry had torn into them like a thunderclap. The rebels had been scrambling to get inside the camp, pushing and cursing at one another in the pitch-black as they vied to be first to loot the tents. They were out of formation when the silent march of disciplined boots struck them like a wall of iron. Javelins and arrow plunged through backs before men even knew which way to turn. Maces slammed into ribs, caving them in like broken baskets.

They had no time to fight. No line. No command. No chance.

On the right flank, Egil’s horsemen came like wraiths born from the shadows, the rhythmic sound of hooves and wind-splitting javelins their only herald. Those rebels not already cut down by the first volley were too stunned to form up before lances and axe-heads reaped them like wheat. Their screams were short, gurgled, or never came at all.

And then from the rear, the thundering arrival of Sir Mereth and his heavy cavalry. His knights, shimmering even in the faint flicker of torches, cut a golden arc through the night. Their arrival should have inspired awe. It brought only death.

The camp, the shining prize they had dreamt of plundering, now burned behind them—its walls slick with oil and flame—and before them, at every approach, the prince’s steel-clad executioners hacked their lines to ribbons.

They were like flies in a bottle, and like flies, they dropped.

They died in the dark, confused and terrified, most never seeing the men who killed them. What had begun as a scramble for loot had become a massacre, and now the looters became the loot—cut down, crushed, and fed to the fire.

What little formation they’d ever had had vanished with the first blood.There was no flank to reinforce.No rear to retreat to.No command left to obey.

Like a dog losing his owner during a walk.

Only smoke, steel, and the sickening crunch of bones beneath boot and hoof.

It had been minutes. Barely enough time to catch your breath after a charge. But for the rebels, that breath had turned into a final gasp.

So fast and vicious was the ambush that their line—if it could even be called that—broke like thin ice under a warhorse’s hoof. Panic didn’t spread. It exploded.

Screams turned to sobs. Formations shattered like brittle bone. And the blackness of the night, once a veil they thought might protect them, now became a prison that hid every direction but doom.

The enemy came from everywhere—like ghosts, like wolves from the treeline—falling upon them from the left, the right, and the back.

So, with nowhere else to go—surrounded, slaughtered, and blind with terror—men did what desperate men always do:

They ran.

Not as an army. Not as anything resembling discipline. They moved like stampeding cattle, a blind surge of survival instinct overriding every scrap of training, brotherhood, and command. They trampled the wounded. They trampled each other. They smashed into armor and tents and corpses as though speed alone could save them.

Over shouts. Over screams. Over the shrill, useless commands of officers who had lost not just their men—but their grip on the moment.

Some tried slipping through the chaos, ducking low to avoid the arcs of blood-wet blades or crawling like beasts through and due . A few turned toward the woods, toward the dark, toward anywhere that wasn’t here. They weren’t cowards or deserters.

They were survivors.The only kind of soldiering left to do was fleeing.

Some made it. Lucky ghosts who would later tell stories .Most didn’t.

Some tripped and were crushed underfoot. Others screamed for surrender, hands raised high—only to catch a blade between the ribs before the word left their lips. There were no prisoners so early in the battle tonight.

It was awful to be anywhere in there, yet the worst place to be… was the center.

Crushed from both flanks, with the rear caved in and the front a wall of flame and oil and screaming horses, the men in the middle were trapped in a nightmare with no exit. Pinned between burning tents and slaughtering steel, they turned wide, blood-slicked eyes toward the only landmark that seemed to offer a shred of hope:

The camp.

They ran to it—not as conquerors now, but like beggars chasing a lie.The tents, once a symbol of spoils and victory, now stood crooked and burning. But men still rushed them, arms flailing, shrieking like drowning sailors chasing wreckage in a storm.

They thought the camp meant protection. That walls meant safety. That if they could just reach the wine-soaked tables and silk-lined pavilions they had salivated over hours before, it would all make sense again.That someone would be in charge. That someone would know what to do.

They were wrong.

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“Where the fuck do we run?!”The cry split the air, high and breaking—a man with a broken helmet, face streaked in soot and blood that wasn’t his own, his voice raw with panic.

“Which way?! Left? Right?!”

“I don’t bloody know!” another shouted back, stumbling over a corpse still twitching. “I don’t—”

“There!” someone screamed, pointing through the black haze at the shadowed gates of the camp. “The tents! Get inside! Gods damn you, MOVE!”

“But it’s burning—!”

“Then BURN, I don’t care! Just GO!”

And so they did.Not in ranks. Not in lines. But in a crush of bodies and limbs and shrieking fear. The heart of the rebel force folded inward, like a dying lung, collapsing into its own center. They poured into the inferno as if the fire might cleanse the chaos behind them—as if the tents might forgive them.

They became a whirl of ash and screams and crushed bone, crawling, falling, clawing at the canvas walls of the same feast-hall dreams that had lured them here. Like rats into a sinking ship’s hold. Like children into a house already burning.

And all around them, the trap closed tighter.

The fire, the steel, the night—it all pressed inward.

No gods watched them now.Only blades.

———————–

Lord Gregor sat tall on his saddle, his horse’s flanks steaming with sweat and streaked with blood. Around him, the camp was a riot of shadows and screams—but it was the rear that held his gaze. The flames there were no longer just cooking-fires turned wild. They were walls of fire now, rising higher, stretching wider, devouring tents and men alike.

He narrowed his eyes.

We were winning, damn it!

The enemy had been scattered, butchered like lambs. The camp had fallen. Victory had been tangible, something he could feel in his hands, taste in the sweat on his tongue. So why now—why now—were men howling in panic, why were the flames swallowing half the damned field?

He turned toward the entrance, where the rebel troops were swarming like panicked ants, jamming into the narrow gate they had forced open not long ago. They were pushing, screaming, clawing over one another to get out. Horses reared, men fell, trampled, crushed. The entrance that had been a prize was now a bottleneck of death.

Gregor’s jaw clenched. His knuckles went pale on the haft of his axe.

The enemy had shattered like glass, scattered before their boots. The camp had fallen—their prize, their banner, their moment. He could feel it even now, the weight of victory that had once pressed warm into his hands. He could still taste it on his tongue, in the salt of his sweat and the iron on his teeth.

And yet…

Why were they screaming?

Why were the flames encircling, not fleeing?

Why had victory turned to panic?

He wrenched around in the saddle, eyes scanning the entrance—the one they’d stormed not long ago with cheers in their throats and fire in their bellies. Now it was a choke point. A trap. The gate had become a mouth, and it was feeding on men.

They surged toward it like ants doused in oil, climbing over one another, pushing, clawing, shrieking—not to attack, but to escape. Horses reared and crushed men under hooves. Shields were discarded. Weapons dropped. No ranks, no command, no order—just fear. Pure and blinding.

Gregor’s jaw clenched. His knuckles went white on the haft of his axe.

“It’s always been a trap.”

He didn’t mean to say it aloud, but the words slipped from his lips like breath from a dying man. And once spoken, they echoed inside him like thunder.

They hadn’t stumbled into ambush.They had marched into it, heads high and blades drawn, thinking themselves hunters—when all along, they were the prey. The flames were no accident. The chaos, no misstep.

This was an oven, and they were the pigs. Slow-roasted in fire and steel.

He should have admired it. He would have, had he not been standing in the middle of it. The strategy was brutal in its elegance. Wait until the rebels were packed tight, bellies full of false triumph, eyes full of spoils. Wait until they sang and laughed and threw discipline to the wind. Then slam the jaws shut. Cut off the rear. Seal the flanks. Burn the way back. And let them boil.

A masterpiece

He might have marveled at it—at the precision, the patience.He might have laughed, even, had it not been his men who now screamed.

“How…” he growled, eyes wide as the gears turned. “How the fuck did they know?Weren’t they drunk? How could they possibly kn—?”

And then the thought struck him, hard. It wasn’t like a revelation. It was like a fist to the gut.

He slowly turned his head. Not toward the flames. Not toward the gate. But behind him—toward the man who stood a little apart from the fighting. Wounded. Quiet. Watching.

Robert.

The elder lord met his gaze, leaning slightly on his saddle as if he were simply waiting for the sun to rise.

His face was blank.

As if he had been counting down the seconds until they finally understood.

Gregor’s breath caught in his throat.

“You…” he whispered, eyes wide with fury, his grip tightening on his axe.

Robert didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. Just tilted his head, like someone listening to a story they’d already heard a thousand times.

Gregor’s lips curled back into a snarl.

Now he knew.

The trap hadn’t been sprung.

It had been invited.

“You traitorous cur,” Gregor growled, voice trembling with fury. “How could you do this? How could you—”

He jabbed a thick, trembling finger at him, spittle flying from his mouth.

“Three times,” he roared. “Three fucking times you betrayed ! And now what—what do you think happens to you now? You think you slither your way out of this one too?”

Robert stood still, hands loose at his sides. His lips curled into something like a weary smile, and for a moment he looked ancient.

In reality he was just tired of it all.

“I imagine…” he said softly, “I’ll be remembered as Robert the Traitor. Seems fair enough, doesn’t it?”

He turned his head slightly, watching the chaos at the gates as if it were just another battlefield he’d long grown tired of.

“So what now, Lord Gregor?I suppose I will not get out alive from this….”

Gregor looked down at his axe. Looked back at Robert. Then the subtle crunch of hooves drew attention—Gregor’s guards closing in, steel drawn, eyes grim. Robert didn’t raise his hands. He didn’t plead. He didn’t run.

This was where he would die, spat upon like a traitor.

When Gregor’s axe came down, Robert moved, deflecting the blow with a surprising speed, the blade screeching as it skidded off a steel bracer.

But before he could turn the steed and make a response

—CRACK—

a mace slammed into his back and down from the horse he went like a tree felled by an axe .

He hit the dirt hard, coughing blood, one hand twitching.

Gregor didn’t wait.

He dismounted with a snarl, the heavy thud of his boots lost in the roar of the burning camp. With both hands he raised his axe and brought it down, screaming.

“FUCKING! TRAITOR!”

The blade sunk into Robert’s shoulder, cleaving flesh from bone. Again.

“YOU—”

His forearm came off next, hacked away at the elbow, ragged and twitching in the dirt.

“—SNAKE!”

The next blow cracked ribs. Another mangled the leg, the crunch of knee and femur loud even over the screams outside.

In all of it Robert was still alive, breathing and screaming from the pain.

Gregor’s face was a contorted mask of hate, his arms slick with blood, gore spattering across his face like war paint as he hit, hit and hit.

By the time Gregor finished, Robert was scarcely more than a butchered husk—a mass of torn limbs and pulverized bone. His limbs, o were now no more than meat—his torso heaving no more, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, jaw slack, eyes wide but empty.

There had been no final words. No heroic last thought. No curse, no confession. Death had claimed him mid-breath, before he could even understand he was dying.

It was not noble. It was not tragic. It was final.

The angered lord stood over the ruin of the man, chest still rising and falling like a bellows, blood dripping from his axe. He gave the pieces one last look—not of pity, nor remorse, but of sheer, seething contempt. Then he turned, gripped the pommel of his saddle, and hauled himself back onto his warhorse with the ease of a man born for war.

“We’re retreating,” he snarled, not looking back. “Form up.”

One of his guards, his face smeared with soot and ash, turned toward the gate and then back again. “My lord… the gate. It’s blocked. Jammed with men.”

Gregor’s eyes flashed behind the slits of his helmet. “Is your weapon made of wood?”

The guard blinked.

Gregor pointed his gore-drenched axe toward the gate, where chaos still reigned—panicked rebels pressed shoulder to shoulder

“Clear it,” he barked, voice as cold as steel. “Cut them down—every last one.”

His guards, clearly aknowledging the state of their lord did not even try to raise issue with the order , swords drawn and visors down, they spurred their mounts ahead. Hooves clattered over broken bodies and upended tents as they charged into the jam at the gate.

Gregor followed, axe swinging in wide arcs. He cleaved ribs like ripe gourds, bones shattered under the weight of his blows.

And at the edge of the swift–moving tide, in a patch of scorched earth where the fire had not yet claimed it, lay the gutted husk of Robert. Torn limbs fanned out like a grotesque starburst, his shattered torso half-swallowed by embers, and the dark sky overhead bore silent witness. Strands of matted hair curled with smoke, and every stolen breath of wind sent a swirl of ash dancing over the shattered remnants of a man whose last betrayal, despite not of his choice, had cost him everything.

By dawn, his remains would be nothing more than cinders mixed with bone dust, swallowed at last by the inferno he had helped unleash.

Tonight, mercy died.

The last casualty of a war that was finally over.