Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Like fishermen casting their nets by midnight, the defenders atop the wall threw their arrows blind. There was no light ahead, no glint of steel to mark a hit. Only the sounds carried through the profound, consuming darkness: the sickening thwack of wood on bone, the strained groan of splintering oak, the relentless shoveling of feet in wet mud caused by the rain of the earlier day, and the high, broken whimpering of dying men.

The flickering light from the oil pots aflame and the sporadic torches barely illuminated the few poor souls venturing into that maw of death. They moved in slow, shield-armed pairs, each bearing a clay urn . Many fell before their mission was accomplished, their lives claimed by a rogue arrow or a tumbling stone. The pot would crack on the ground, spitting a final tear before being swallowed by the mud.

But for every man who perished, two more stepped up to take his place.They had many of those fodders so it wasn’t as much of a loss.

The lords defending the Fingers had realized the truth quickly. This was no genuine breakthrough attempt. This was just a butcher’s tax.

The army outside was not trying to win the night; they were trying to bleed the garrison dry, grinding their fortifications down.

Lives were the cheapest commodity in war. It was a truth Alpheo had always known, and tonight, it was his turn to make use of it.

It felt good to have no qualms about casualties for once...

”WE ARE OUT!”

The shout belonged to a defender on the wall, an archer who had just plucked the final arrow from his quiver. He nocked it anyway.He found a flicker of torchlight below, reflecting off the face of an enemy, he fired. The shaft buried itself deep in the small of the man’s back, right between the shoulder blades. The shield-bearer stumbled, the urn tumbling from his grasp, shattering uselessly, its oil swallowed by the earth.

”Where the gods-damned supplies?!” the archer roared down the parapet. ”That rotting donkey forgot the last run!” ”Someone go and—”

They were not the only ones with eyes in the dark.

Fffffft.

A shaft from one of the attackers’ counter-archers, perched on one of the squat, ugly wooden towers rolled up for the night, found its mark. The missile slammed the defender directly in the center of his right eye. He froze for a single, glorious, agonizing moment, the brain registering death just before the body committed to the collapse. Then his legs failed, and he toppled over the merlon, falling lifelessly, just one more to the count piling up below.

The defenders had a month to prepare for the breach, but Alpheo had a month to prepare for the grind. The movable wooden towers were not a stratagem to topple the walls, but they stacked bowmen high enough to rain death on the defenders’ heads. It was a tedious inconvenience, yes, but every casualty added up. Every death eroded the garrison’s will.

Archers atop the wall played a game of peek-a-boo, shooting and then desperately diving behind the stone for cover to not get the kiss of death. More often than not, the defenders heard the high, venomous whistle of an incoming arrow before they could loose their own shot. Sometimes, it was the very last thing they heard.

Still, it was undeniably better up than down.

On the wall, they fought the arrows and the smothering dark. Down below, however, they fought madness.

”FUCK! FUCK! STAY BACK!”

The soldier’s shout rolled out his throat as he thrusted his spear, driving the point at the man below who was methodically hacking the wooden stakes at the base of the wall. Arrows whistled past the soldier’s back, but the sound registered nothing in the man’s ears.

He leaned out farther, pushing the spear, desperate for the reach to land a decisive blow. ”FUCK

O—”

The curse withered in his throat. The attacker below stopped chopping and turned his full, terrifying attention upward. The man’s skin was the color of weathered oak, but in the gloom and the feeble torchlight, that detail was lost. All the soldier could see were the eyes: two flat, horrifyingly white pools staring up as if judging a cut of meat that had been throw on his plate.

Too late the defender realized the attacker was not empty-handed. He held the spear shaft.

The soldier tried to wrench his weapon back and promptly failed.

He was already falling before his brain connected the dots.

The attacker had simply pulled, using the spear as a lever, dragging the defender away from the safe lip of the wall and down into the blood-soaked dirt below.

Away from the heavens and down in the mud where the devils lingered.

He came face to face with the monster.

He was enormous, a brutal slab of iron and muscle, far bigger than he had seemed from above. Every visible inch of his body, save his face, was encased in dark, functional iron.

”SVYR MORNJA!” the monster roared. With two great strides, he surged through the gap he had just widened.

His great axe moved first.It claimed the soldier’s sword arm, slicing halfway through the forearm, shearing the mail shirt as if it were spun cotton. The Voghondai barely paused. A casual kick dislodged the axe, simultaneously shattering the soldier’s elbow and dislocating his shoulder, ending any hope of fighting, or even living intact.

The last thing the man saw was death descending on him.

The eaxe went shearing through the soldier’s neck, helmet and all.

The head tumbled onto the dirt.

His death came with a final realization that made the passing as horrible as it could have been at that moment: the monster was not alone. Two dozen more of those well-armored devils strode forward, their movements terrifyingly coordinated, their great axes already rising in the gloom. They fell upon the remaining stakes, widening that gap until it seemed the gates of hell itself had slackened its jaw and sent its most efficient, most pitiless warriors forth.

In a matter of minutes, the only thing separating the defenders from the surge was cut down and smashed away like a ship dismantled by a storm. The Voghondai axemen, once their work was complete, retreated seamlessly back into the horde that had birthed them. They gave way to the hundreds surging forward, each with their own desperate duty.

”STOP THEM! STOP THEM!” A knight commanding the first line screamed, his voice cracking with useless panic. He might as well have been ordering the rain to cease or for the sea to stop the tide.

It was wasted air.

His soldiers desperately leveled their spears, but what good were pointing them when the enemy simply threw their pots and melted back into the mass? They were out of range, then they were not, then they were safe again.

The double lines of arrow fire coming from the undamaged sections of the wall surrounding the breach were inconsequential against the tide. The attackers didn’t care about a casualty rate; they cared about delivery.

They saw their futility when the first oil pots arced through the night. Dozens upon dozens were launched, heavy clay urns raining down on the wooden fortifications and the men behind them. The attackers carrying them seemed joyful, running their route only to disappear back into the crowd, exchanging the exposed attention of archers for the relative safety of the rear ranks.

”FUCK! FUCK! OIL!”

It splattered everywhere, on the wooden barricades, the ground, the troops. Men held their shields high, but the defense was useless. The viscous fluid found every seam, every gap, coating their arms, faces, and boots.

Then, the confusion truly began. Torches began to arc over the heads of the attackers, replacing the clay urns.

The ground was slick, treacherous. The soldiers were coated in flammable death. And now, instead of oil, flames rose up.

”The wood is lit!”

”My leg, my leg!”

The shouts of the wounded and the terrified mixed with the frantic cries of the untouched. The line buckled. The officer, realizing his position was now compromised , spun around.

”FALL BACK! FALL BACK!”

It wasn’t an order; as much of a description of what the soldiers were already doing.

Discipline shattered instantly.

They dropped their spears and shields, slipping and scrambling over one another in a frantic rush to escape the inferno. They abandoned the first wooden wall they had spent three days building, leaving the blazing structure to the invaders, an empty, burning offering to the gods of war that was now clearly favoring the other side.

Now the only defense was a second, smaller line of stone and desperation twenty steps behind.

------------

”One hundred and twenty-five dead, two hundred and ten wounded. Eighty-five without any prospect of returning to the battle, my lord.”

The scribe’s voice was a dry rasp. Lord Willios raised his head, the motion slow, weighted. He felt like a chastised child, despite having just spent hours leading the defense on the lip of hell. He had seen the madness firsthand: the clinical, grinding violence of that the siege had missed for so long.

The casualty count, which they could not possibly afford, was a painful sting. But it was the loss of the first wooden wall that truly set his nerves on fire. One night. That was all it took. One night of oil and axes, and now they only had a single shield left before the enemy held free ground inside the fortress. If The Fingers fell, it would be the floodgate separating the Core of Romelia from the vast, Eastern and Northern Provinces.

They lacked the lumber, the time, and the manpower to construct a second major barricade. Their entire plan was reduced to staking the ground ahead of the breach and doubling the archers on the remaining walls. The exact same tactic they had used tonight. The tactic that had so visibly and comprehensively failed.

What truly chewed at his gut as much as the current situation was bad alraedy , was about the man he served.

It did not help that the vast majority of available reinforcements were being hoarded by his liege, left to man the great gate and the distant, irrelevant towers. Willios was no fool; he knew exactly why the Imperator did it. Mavius had claimed the throne with the backing of the East, and he was now perpetually twitchy about his provincial lords betraying him in a moment of crisis.

It was funny really , the tactic he had used that year, now keeping him on edge.He also of course understood it, as things stood they were the one on the backfoot.

But understanding did not breed empathy.

Willios had no patience for the Imperator’s paranoia, that was a sovereign’s burden. But Willios could not, would not, forgive this paranoia being prioritized over the defense of the fortress. Did the man truly understand they were moments away from losing everything?

If the Core gained back The Fingers, their situation would collapse into utter devastation. The raids and invasions they had once inflicted upon the heartland would now become their own yearly bread, served up with blood and steel by Mesha and that arrogant dog that he had brought from the South.

No, he would not allow that to happen

Unfortunately, disaster was never a solitary visitor. The rhythmic rapping on the door was the sound of yet another bearer of bad news.

That would soon remind him that the night had only just begun.