Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

He stood before the great iron door.

The second week since they had driven the enemy back to their last refuge, their final cage of stone and steel.

For seven days there had been silence.

The prisoners thanked their god for that mercy, spared from being thrown like fodder into the grinder.

The Azanians had no shortage of blind points, places where they could work hidden from watchful eyes. Blake had given them a week, and in that time they dug like moles.

Many dismissed what his brother had found as babble. But they dug anyway, and after days of clawing through earth and stone, they found it.

By the abyss they did.

Iron bars sealed the chute, of course. But iron is only as strong as the dirt around it. A little undermining, a few strokes of pick and spade, and a final, vicious kick, and the way lay open to glory.

They had their entrance and now they simply waited.

Not in sight of the gate, never that. A line of men with axes stood in the open,was like shouting for all to hear that they were preparing for an assault.

Blake knew the defenders would look down from their walls, see those waiting brutes, and us the time to fortify the gate.

That could not be allowed.

So they all stood hidden , except for the Red Angel himself.

He let his gaze wand3r . His eyes slid over the mound of rotting corpses they hadn’t still burnt by the far wall of the keep, limbs twisted, faces frozen in screams,piled high where both the defenders and the fresh fodder could see them.

They truly were wicked people...still, it wasn’t their fault.

Their homeland was nothing but rocks and brine. Islands of stone and wind, where the soil grudged them even a handful of potatoes, where only fish and salt sustained the living. And when neither sufficed, the sea offered its only mercy: a ship and the chance to steal from those who had more.

It had never been a choice, only hunger shaping men into raiders, and raiders shaping others into victims.

Blake closed his eyes, and for a moment he felt the weight of it, what he was or instead what he was becoming, where he stood, the blood that had brought him here. And yet the thought stirred not shame, but a shiver of exhilaration.

This was the kind of age poets would gnaw their tongues to have witnessed: when giants tottered and fell, when the old orders cracked, leaving a space for wolves to rise.

It was not so long ago the Azanian Empire could boast that their banners stretched across half the world, that their drums could make kingdoms tremble on the far side of the continent. And now? Their once-proud capital lay sacked and stinking, brought low by the hands of ragged sailors who smelled of ale, blood, and rot.

Time was a cruel beast for all.

Muffled shouts suddenly rose from behind the iron door as Blake eagerly turned to the sounds as if they were Mermain’s lyrics.

At first they were little more than echoes, twisted by the thickness of the gate and the foreign tongue of Azania,but then came the clearer sounds: the crash of objects toppling, the shrieks of men caught in agony.

It sounded like music to Blake’s ears

He didn’t need to understand the words to know what was happening. The sewer rats he had sent were biting deep.

He puffed out his chest and filled his lungs until they burned, before unleashing a roar that rolled across the yard like a thunderclap:

”ALL ON THE GATE!”

No room for speeches. No space for clever words ,now only steel would do the talking.

Rows upon rows of men,who were staying in place hidden behind the same walls they had clawed from the enemy, moved forward only to gather behind their captain. Shields clattered, axes rose. The silence of the last week shattered in an instant into a storm of war.

Behind the gate, the answering cacophony swelled. Azanian voices, dozens, rose in alarm. Steel rang against steel. The clash grew nearer, closer, until Blake’s back straightened, his jaw locked, his teeth ground hard enough to ache.

He stood waiting, every nerve wound tight. Waiting for the moment to be delivered.

Who would have thought? Of all men, it would be Cain, the limping mad who would be the key to Blake’s crown.

Then the gate broke open.

And they entered through the maws of death.

It was madness all around.

From the black maw of the chute they had dug to, fifty men had crawled through piss and filth to carve a path. Less than twenty still stood when Blake stormed in with his horde at his heels. But their sacrifice had burst the iron, and through it the angel came, along with the thousands of wicked devils he had brought to make a butcher-house of the Sun Palace.

The marble floors of the palace were no longer white , but crimson blood , painted so by bodies flung and butchered where sultans once trod with gilded shoes. The moans of the dying echoed in the vaulted halls, carried by the cold ring of steel.

At the gate itself, a single figure remained who single-handedly had doomed the fate of an empire that had stood proud for centuries.

A simple man , he was no a lord nor king, with one arm hanging useless, a dagger planted from his side like a branch torn from a tree. His knees buckled as he leaned back against the iron door he had torn open for them.

He had done all he could.

”My bones... for the Abyss...”

Blake’s throat tightened. His head whom he had not lowered for kings or emperors, dipped low respect.

”Bones for the Abyss, brother.”

The man sagged to the ground, dead before he could hear the honor given him. His name was unknown, but his deed would be sung. Blake vowed it.

Then the captain’s eyes snapped forward, the sadness all gone.

Dozens of skirmishes burned across the hall. Azanians and Free Men locked in desperate combat. The defenders were greater in number, but not in spirit. The Free Men were dying, but dying gloriously, carving their mark into marble and flesh.

Blake’s gaze locked with one Azanian warrior just as the man drove his spear deep into a sailor’s gut. The Free Man folded over the shaft, choking, his bowels spilling across the floor. The Azanian ripped his weapon free and the body collapsed like a sack of oats.

Blake roared as he chose the next victime and fears stepped through the Azanian’s eyes.

The soon to be dead stepped back, stumbling over the corpse at his feet.

Blake came down on him in two great strides. His axe, raised high, fell with the great weight.

He felt it cut through meat.

The man shrieked once before collapsing into nothing.

Blake tore the axe free, blood spraying across his face.

”Forward!” he roared to his men, his voice shaking the rafters.

And with that, the tide poured into the heart of Azania.

The defenders who had been locked in the bitter struggle looked up from their work as the gate thundered open. What they saw made their blood run cold.

The Azanians froze. For a heartbeat, their arms faltered, and their blades hung in the air. The sight of so many, the stink of blood and sea salt and sweat, and the mad howls of a host unchained, it shattered them.

Some let their weapons slip from trembling fingers, spears clattering against marble, swords dropped like they weren’t the only thing giving them still meaning.

Their surrender was answered not with mercy, but steel. Axes split their skulls; swords hacked them down where they stood. Some fell to the blades of those who moments ago they were butchering.

For those still standing, terror turned to frenzy. With no road left but forward, the Azanians raised their weapons once more, shields shaking in their hands. They smashed steel upon steel, striking against Free Men as the tide crashed into them.

The chamber filled with the sound of war, clung, clung, clung, iron on iron, shield upon blade, the rhythm of death itself.

But the song of steel was drowned by another: the wild cheers of the Free Men as they swelled into the palace. Their cries of triumph rolled above the screams of the dying, a storm that battered the last defenders into despair.

Those who had clawed their way through the sewer, those gaunt and reeking devils who had paid for the gate with their blood, did not meet salvation or death in silence

Some, battered and bleeding, leaned on their weapons and bellowed across the hall at their comrades now pouring in:

”’Bout fucking time you came, you lazy bastards!” one roared, his voice cracking with exhaustion but sharp with laughter.

Another, staggering with a gut wound that soaked his tunic red, raised his axe and shouted his own name with a mad grin ”TARVIN! Remember it, you dogs! Sing it tonight when I am for the abyss!”

Others joined in, hacking and spitting blood, each shouting their names into the roar so that the tale of this day would not bury them faceless, but carve them into memory: heroes who had cracked open the gate of Great Khairo with shit on their boots and steel in their hands.

And the Free Men answered.

From the new host flooding the chamber came cheers like thunder, howls of joy and triumph at the sight of the sewer-crawlers still standing, still laughing in the face of certain death that was now evaded. Spears and axes slammed against shields in wild applause, a rhythm of savage pride to honor their brothers.

They sang and shouted at the sound of an empire brought down by people who made a profession of sailing the seas.