Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Everywhere Vhomo looked, there was only death.

If he turned to the right—death. To the left—death again. No matter where his eyes landed, the battlefield offered him nothing but carnage: twisted bodies, blood-choked screams, and the final, pathetic gasps of once-proud warriors drowning in their own gore.

But what shattered him the most wasn’t the presence of death itself—no, Vhomo was no stranger to it—it was who was dying.

They were his.

His warriors. His tribesmen. His legacy. His ladder to power.

And he had led them here—led them straight into the jaws of slaughter, into the teeth of an ambush so brutal, so absolute, that even the gods would turn their gaze away in pity.

This wasn’t war. This was butchery. And the blood that painted the fields red was on his hands.

He stood dazed in the eye of the storm, his heart pounding like a wardrum in retreat. Around him, men he had grown up with—men who had followed him with pride, some who had once laughed and drank beside him—were now screaming, dying, begging.

A DuskWindai warrior, jaw half-torn and hanging, stumbled past him like a drunk, blood pouring from a wound in his belly that looked more like a cave than a cut. Another man clawed at his face, shrieking as the blunt end of a Chorsi axe had caved in one of his eyes. Flies were already gathering.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

He gritted his teeth, sweat mixing with the grime on his face. This day was supposed to be his moment. His birth into greatness. His rise above the shadows of his elder brothers. The campaign that would make his father finally see him not as a spare son.

Instead, the only thing he was conquering was shame.

”How...?” he whispered aloud, breath shaking. ”How can this be the same people who fled before my father’s war bands? How can these cowards stand like this? Fight like this?”

But more than the fighting—it was the steel.

He looked down at his own armor: a chaincloth hauberk, its rings already notched and dented from stray blows, barely held together with leather thongs and patches. It had been one of the few things his father ever gifted him.

Now, it felt like a mockery.

Compared to what the Chorsi wore now—gleaming chainmail with reinforced shoulders, horned helmets, plate-backed bracers—his armor may as well have been stitched out of old fishnet. It was like comparing a toothpick to a sword.

Where had they gotten such wealth? Such equipment? This wasn’t looted. This was forged, it was too new to be had from a corpse.

They were supposed to be broken men with spears.Instead, they had turned into an army of vengeance incarnate.

And worse—they fought like they wanted to die, so long as they could take someone with them.

Vhomo’s breath hitched in his throat. He wanted to scream, but the sound caught behind his teeth like a bone in the throat. His knuckles whitened around the handle of his axe, but even that weapon, once a badge of pride, now felt absurdly small in his grasp.

Earlier, his warriors had surged downhill like a tidal wave, cutting through the Chorsi’s center with terrifying speed, nearly severing the enemy lines in two. It had looked like a route. Victory danced on the edge of his tongue.

Now that wave had crashed—and broken—on the rocks of discipline and vengeance.

The flanks had erupted with thousands of armored Chorsi, bursting from the woods like a trap long laid. They came not in scattered rushes, but in tight wedges, their shields locked, their weapons rising and falling in crimson rhythm. Vhomo’s men had overextended, chasing too deep, too fast, too far. The battlefield that had once looked like an arrowhead now looked like a noose tightening around his neck.

The DuskWindai were caught between an anvil and a hammer. The center bled, the flanks folded, and in every direction there was only butchery.

This was not a battle.

This was a lesson.

And Vhomo, in his arrogance, had become the fool at the center of it.

Everywhere his eyes wandered, he saw only one thing now:

The death of his brave. The death of his name.And perhaps... the death of his .

His feet felt nailed to the blood-soaked earth. His lungs burned, but he could not move—could not breathe—only watch as the nightmare he had led unfolded around him.

Just a few paces ahead, a young warrior named barely a man, barely bearded—was on his knees. His shield, now lay shattered beside him, cleaved nearly in two. He gasped, hands pressed desperately against his stomach where a Chorsi blade had torn through the paddings and flesh like paper. Thick ropes of intestine spilled through his fingers. His mouth opened, trying to scream, but only a wet gurgle came out, blood bubbling between his lips. His eyes, wide and glassy, locked with Vhomo’s for a heartbeat.

Vhomo looked away.

To the right, two DuskWindai warriors were trying to pull their wounded comrade back—Jahrim, a bear of a man who had once wrestled oxen for sport. Now his leg was gone below the knee, a ruin of red meat and snapped bone. They didn’t get far. A Chorsi axe arced down like an executioner’s blade, splitting one of the rescuers from the neck to the shoulder. The other tried to run but was caught mid-step by a spear to the back—he fell forward, shrieking, trying to crawl with arms that couldn’t carry the weight of his panic.

Another scream drew Vhomo’s eyes leftward.

It was a massacre.

These weren’t clean deaths in the heat of noble combat. They were slow, wet, and ugly. Bones shattered like driftwood. Limbs dangled by strands of sinew. Guts steamed in the morning air. Men cried out for mothers, gods, and mercy—and received none.

could only watch as the sons of his tribe were cut down like dogs.

His legs finally moved, just a half-step back.

Shame was the only thing burning hotter than desperation.

It clawed at Vhomo’s throat more violently than the thick smoke curling from the scattered pyres of war.

The day was lost. He knew it with the bitter clarity of a man watching a dream rot before his eyes. His first real command, the moment that was meant to define his legacy and win his father’s pride, had turned into a pit of failure. The Chorsi had outmaneuvered him, out-armed him, and now outlived his warriors.

What remained was not a question of victory—it was a question of how ugly the loss would be.

He could cling to pride and let the dying continue. Let the last of the Wiskndai bleed into the soil for a cause already crumbling under boot and blade. But what would that earn him? Glory? No. Just bones—a hill of bones beneath a sky that didn’t care.

No, what he was about to do would be a political suicide. His name would be dragged like filth through the long halls of the chieftains. His brothers would sneer. His father might never speak to him again.

But shame was better than extinction.

If he let them die here—these men entrusted to him, these sons of proud blood—then his soul would wear that stain forever.

He raised his axe in one hand and cupped the other around his mouth, voice straining until it cracked against the walls of despair.

”WARRIORS OF THE WISKNDAI!” Vhomo shouted, his voice cutting through the din like a desperate prayer to deaf gods. Even he was startled by its force.

He saw some heads turn—bloodied, sweat-slick, wide-eyed.

”The battle is lost!” he roared, swallowing the bile rising in his throat. ”Our brothers lie dead beneath your feet! Do not shame their valor by dying beside them!” His voice shook—rage, fear, grief all riding the edge of each syllable.

He paused, just a moment, as the next words seared his pride like hot iron.

”Ahead of you may lie glory,” he bellowed, ”but behind you are our families. Retreat! Retreat, and protect those who remain! Live—to fight another day!”

He nearly choked on that last word.

The very idea of saying retreat on the battlefield had once seemed to him the language of cowards. But now he saw it for what it was: the cry of a man choosing survival over spectacle.

Of course, the roar of battle was a beast that swallowed voices. Blades still clanged, war cries still echoed, and the dying still screamed. It was a madness no single voice could silence.

But Vhomo didn’t need everyone to hear him.

He only needed a few. A few warriors close enough, bloodied enough, desperate enough to grab onto that one thread of hope. Those few would begin to fall back— pulling others with them in the instinctive flow of group survival.

The lines would break and at least some of his warriors would live to see another day, with at least the excuse that the retreat had been ordered by their leader. And that distinction, Vhomo knew, was all that would keep their name from being spit upon like rotting fruit in the mouths of the elders.

But it would certainly not prevent his.