Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

They emptied the castle’s veins to stop them.

From the high, fractured walls, the defenders shot arrows, hurled stones, and threw anything that could maim, slow, or kill the relentless wave advancing toward the fortress’s doom. They even copied the invaders’ own instruments, raining down pots of oil on the massed bodies below before lighting them up, watching the slick human forms writhe into charcoal sacks after a shrilling dance.

But just as the defenders learned a better way to oppose them, the invaders never stopped shoving a new spike into the wheels of the defense.

The first day, the attack ended only when the demoralized assaulters became too scared to extinguish the flaming siege stakes, fearing the arrows and stones coming their ways.

At the second, Alpheo deployed the Voghondai to methodically cleave through the charred palisade, opening the path for the flammable advance. On the third day, the defenders started using their own oil pots to stop the enemy, and the attackers, wary of the resulting inferno and made up in the majority from Romelian levy, had momentarily routed.

Now it was the fourth day, and as the previous three had proven, the army at the gate learned faster than they could build.

”Shoot the bastards carrying it!” a knight, clad in scarred plate, roared from the parapet, waving his sword toward the breach.

The archers obeyed instantly, nocking shafts and pointing them toward a line of men carrying a massive, heavy plank of wood, a bizarre, protective shield, forward into the fray. They aimed, released, and watched as their ammunition failed.

The men carrying the massive burden were not screened by covering troops; they were the covering troops, equipped with the best, thickest plate armor money could buy. The arrows failed to achieve anything, either snapping upon impact or scraping uselessly off the curved, hardened steel.

Of course, having a shaft of wood shatter against one’s ribs, even if it failed to pierce the flesh, still hurt like a hammer blow.

But honestly, between having a foreign object lodged deep in your organs and feeling the wind momentarily knocked out of you, the second was vastly preferable.

So the Romelian levy, the expendable conscripts used as human battering rams, simply gritted their teeth, pushed forward, and took the punishment.

Still, the defense wasn’t perfect. Even with the enemy holding shields on the flanks, a concentrated effort could have slowed the advance, inflicted enough casualties, and caused a route.

Unfortunately, Willios did not have the luxury of such comfort.

While the previous assaults had been designed solely to wear down the fortifications, a goal they had devastatingly achieved, this new, coordinated push was clearly intended to conquer the fortress.

Apart from funneling men into the breach, the enemy launched scattered, violent attacks across the undamaged sections of the walls, forcing the defenders to spread their manpower. Willios could no longer amass troops solely at the break without risking a breakthrough elsewhere, he was deprived of that choice.

So, while the men below sprinted across the thirty meters of blood-soaked ground, which was filled with dead and burnt sacks of flesh, other forces hurried with light ladders to their assigned deaths, while archers hid behind improvised wooden covers, shooting high and blind against the defenders on the wall.

And on the edges of the main thrust, where the broken wall met the still-standing stone, men in the black and white livery of the Prince-Consort’s personal force were throwing down stones, shooting arrows, at the men who were doing the very same against their own forces, and now, as the massive plank carried by the cannon fodder reached the very lip of the breach, pots of oil.

”GO! GO! GO!”

A man screamed the useless order, his hands empty, before another defender shoved a clay urn into his grasp. He threw it down with a desperate, easy toss toward the massive plank and the mass of men advancing behind it.

”IT’S ON! FIRE THOSE BASTARDS UP!”

Men holding torches, wrapped crudely in damp linen to preserve the flame, aimed and released. They had done this before, and they waited for the familiar sounds: the high, terrible wail of men boiling in their armor, the sudden, sickening scent of burnt meat.

”Hope you like your meat roasted, cunts!” one defender roared, savoring the moment.

”Nothing better than a good—wait,the fuck?”

Whatever they expected did not happen. Instead, a peculiar, deepening silence greeted them. As the fire licked up through the flung oil, it failed to spread. It did not roar; it merely sputtered, dying down on its own without igniting the plank or the men behind it. It had failed.

Coming to the rescue of the confused troops was their superior, his voice tired both from the tension of the assault and the fact his own men were gawking like fools. ”IT’S BEEN WRAPPED IN WET HIDE, YOU FUCKS! AIM AT THE BASTARDS BEHIND THE PLANKS! BURN THEM TO A FUCKING CRISP!”

The defenders obeyed, redirecting their oil pots toward the mass of men surrounding the wooden cover. The pots hit true, splattering the oil over dozens. The attackers, however, had also learned from the previous three days.

Instead of advancing as a solid, combustible mass as they had done before, they had shifted tactics , moving in small, tightly controlled units of eight or ten. This time, as soon as the soldiers below felt the sticky oil coat their bodies, they immediately broke their small bundle and scattered, depriving the men above of a large, concentrated target.

The damage was negligible. The skirmishers simply tossed the few compromised units back in formation and kept advancing. It was clear to all parties that the fate of The Fingers would now be decided upon the cold, brutal geometry of hand-to-hand combat.

For all the desperate oil and arrows, the enemy had reached the last wooden wall.

It had not been enough.

And with this moment of truth came the final reveal of the Fox.

The great planks the front troops were carrying were not merely shields. Confusion, spread through the last line of defense. The soldiers holding maces and spears who were already feeling cold fear: knowing that what they were ahead would be the worst assault yet.

The massive plank came closer and closer, yet the troops below made no move to disregard it, even though its obvious task as a shield seemed accomplished.

It was only when the men below, coordinating with terrifying strength, rose it up above their heads, raising it like an offering, that the terrible, simple truth of the plank was revealed. The large, hooked iron claws built slightly below its far end were a clear enough indicator of that.

That was not a shield; it was a pontoon bridge.

With a single, unified roar of effort, the attacking troops slammed the pontoon down. It crashed onto the crenellated parapet of the wooden wall with the sound of splintering timber and shattering stone. The iron hook-claws bit deep into the soft, fire-scarred wood of the night before.

The soldiers of then finally realized, in one collective, stomach-dropping instant, that they had not been fighting to stop a charge; but instead simply to stop the path that would have led the monsters of Yarzat their way.

They had clearly failed, and now, the consequences were rushing over the bridge, cold and brutal.

A chill of pure revulsion and primal fear settled deep in the soldiers’ stomachs as the giants began to cross.

These were not men; or so they judged at first sight, they were hulking, scarred monoliths of muscle and plate. Their skin, visible in patches beneath the scrap-iron armor, was the color of rich, dark earth, tough as tree bark.

Wide, disturbing eyes and teeth of pearly white stood out in stark contrast to their hue, fixed in a predatory, harvesting gaze that saw meat where other saw people. Their long, braided hair, white-streaked and dirty, cascaded down immensely broad backs and equally broad chests.

There were so many, and so fearful, that it seemed they bathed in lakes of spines and slept on nails.

Their prince had given them lands of gold, where the nightmare of hunger did not exist, where the climate was a warm cradle, the animals plentiful, and clean, plentiful water flowed freely.

Food they had never dreamed of, waters of red and copper that only the Spirits could drink without thirst.

All he had asked for in exchange for these blessings was one thing, simple and absolute: to fight his enemies.

And fight, they glady did.

The defenders, who had expected to face their own kind did not know what to make of these elemental monsters of iron, both in body and in arms.

Their fear deepened, tightening into sheer terror that seized their guts and paralyzed their will.

The Voghondai aware of the reaction their foe always had, use that moment to roar their devotion in a tongue , one last blessing before they went and send sack of meat into the land of dark

”SVYRN MORNAAAAIEEE!”

Kill for the Sun-Son.

The words thundered, an ancient, terrifying acclamation only understood by the men whose ears would hear nothing else but the sound of death.

And with the first swing of their great, heavy axes, men began to fall like leaves in a sudden and violent autumn storm.