Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1077: Enemy(4)

On the walkway, the air was choked with the scent of grass, wet hide, and the sour sweat of terrified men. There was only one road to victory for either side, and that road was about to be paved in bone.

The first line of contact was composed entirely of the lords’ levies, Herculeans and common Yarzats.

A brittle line of brittle men.

They lacked the feverish greed of the invaders who dreamed of loot, and they lacked the professional detachment of the mercenaries who bled for coin. Most were here because their lords had commanded it, and the only thing they feared more than the siege tower was the hangman’s rope waiting for them back home if they deserted.

They stood in a ragged, shivering line, their spears leveled at the great wooden face of the tower. They were the shield-wall meant to be broken.

The iron chains began to scream, a high, piercing wail as the counterweights were released. Then, with the force of a falling axe chopping through the spine of the world, the wooden tongue slammed down. The impact sent a shockwave through the stone, and for a heartbeat, there was only the swirling dust of pulverized wood and the deafening silence of indrawn breaths.

Then came the knights. All of them charging.

The dismounted knights of the League, clad in full plate that clinked with each of their step surged onto the wall. The sun caught the polished steel of their breastplates, making them appear as a wall of silver fire crashing into the defenders.

The sight was so overwhelming, so saturated with the promise of death, that the first rank of levies instinctively recoiled. One step, then two, their formation buckling before a single blow was struck.

When the clash finally came it came clear it was their harvest.

The knights charged with the same reckless arrogance they possessed on horseback. Their one-handed swords, axes, and maces became a blur of silver and red. Yarzat spears, held by trembling hands, skittered uselessly off the rounded surfaces of their plate armor or snapped like dry twigs under the weight of their advance.

The levies proved to be little more than fodder for these high-born killers.

A mace crashed into a Herculean’s helmet, collapsing the steel and the skull beneath it in a single, wet spray. An Ezvanian axe sheared through a spear-shaft and continued its arc, burying itself in the shoulder of a boy who had been praying to the Warrior only moments before. The air was filled with the carnal, rhythmic sound of metal meeting meat, the sickening thud of maces, the screech of blades on mail, and the low, bubbling whimpers of the dying.

These were the landless knights, the younger sons, and the ambitious champions gathered from every corner of the South. They fought without remorse or pity, fueled by a singular, burning hope. Word had spread like wildfire through the taverns of the League: the Princes had promised land, titles, and manors to any man who proved his worth on the Yarzat ramparts.

And when such retirement was waved in front of those who had nothing and dreamed high, their swing came out with the strongest of muscle.

To these knights, every levy they butchered was a step closer to a fief of their own. Every life they extinguished was a payment toward a future manor. They pushed deeper and deeper into the breach, their ambition setting their hearts aflame even as they waded through the gore of men who only wanted to go home.

Clearly their zeal was having an effect.

The center was failing and the levies were all but on the verge of breaking. The knights of the League raised a triumphant roar, believing that theirs was the honor of bringing the castle down.

But as they pushed further onto the walkway, intoxicated by their own easy slaughter, they failed to notice the silence of the men waiting on the flanks. The Third Legion had not moved. Their halberds remained vertical, their spines stiff, watching the knights over-extend into the "soft" center Asag had prepared for them.

They were men of silk and steel, their plate armor polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the carnage they wrought upon the levies. For three long minutes, it was not a battle but a butchery.

It was only when a single roar tore through the screams of the dying that the true war began.

"Stick the bastards with the pointy end, brothers! Low and hard!"

The voice might have belonged to a decurio or sir Ghalrim himself who was leading the charge, but the words acted as a cold splash of water on a drunkard’s face, waking the enemy from the stupor of easy victory.

It was when the Third Legion moved that men begun to die.

These were not men of the field and furrow. They were the Prince’s iron, tempered by five hours of drills every day of their lives until the halberd felt less like a weapon and more like a limb. Their armor was not for show, and their hearts were not for sale.

The knights, drunk on the easy blood of peasants, found their sport abruptly ended. Their fine plate, which had turned away the trembling spears of the levies, wrought by hands of men who ate two peas porridge a day, proved little more than piss when met with the weight of seven kilograms of Yarzat steel and swung by an arm harder than that metal.

"Heave!" Ghalrim’s voice boomed and the halberds came down in a silver rain.

Heavy, axe-like heads of the weapons sheared through pauldrons and gorgets, biting deep into the meat and bone beneath, and when they did not the force was enough to break whatever bone the armor was meant to protect.

The knights who had been pushing forward found themselves suddenly stumbling, the narrow walkway of the rampart turning from a bridge of glory into a narrow chute of death.

One knight, clad in the surcoat of a bloody axe raised a mace to strike shield held up to parry any blow coming his way, only for a halberd’s hook to catch him behind the knee, where normally he would not even have thought of defending.

With a jerk he was sent clattering , his plate shrieking against the stone .

Before he could draw breath, the steel spike of another legionnaire’s weapon was driven through his visor, pinning his head to the rampart like a moth to a board.

The knights tried to rally, their swords ringing against the heavy shafts of the polearms, but there was no room to swing, no space for the grace of the duelist. They were packed tight, sixty or seventy of them, a shimmering mass of silver and pride being squeezed by the relentless, methodical advance of the Third.

They were not used to such a style of fighting and it showed, they were trained enough to use their shields and weapons to protect the parts that were bare of steel, necks, armpits, sides, but in doing so they were taken off by surprise when the enemy always somehow managed to find a way to feint in a direction and easily attack with the other without pause and fast as lightning.

And as they were hardpressed on front and sides, roars came from behind.

’’Move!Move!’’

’’Get out the way for us!’’

Men that were still on the bridge called for them to give space so they could join in the fighting, but the knights were packed against the walls preventing reinforcement from coming through.

They could not simply jump over the wall, else half of them would fight with the soles of their boots on the helmets and shoulders of the other half.

Only when the space was cleared could more join in the fight. Initially it had seemed so, the knights finding little resistance from the garrison as they expanded the breach, more and more of their comrades joining behind gifting more current to the river that overwhelmed the defenders.

But when they were met with the Third, they could do little but lose ground.

The river of the League’s assault, once a raging torrent, hit the iron wall of the Legion and began to pool. The stone beneath their boots grew slick, the gray granite turning a dark, bruised purple as the red water of the high-born began to seep through the gaps in their armor. The air was no longer filled with the boastful cries of champions, but with the wet, metallic rattling of men breathing through punctured lungs.

And throughout it all , Asag watched from his vantage, his face hidden behind his iron grill.

The rhythmic thrum-crunch of halberds meeting plate armor,was but pure music to his ears. He resisted the urge to nod knowing there was more to the fight then the one he was overseeing.

Though this stronghold held for the moment, the fortress was a vast, stone beast with a dozen throats, and the League was trying to slit every one of them. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The air was was blooming with the scent of copper and scorched hide when the slap of boots on stone announced a runner. The boy was young, but he held his salute with a trembling hand.

"My Lord!" the messenger gasped, his breath coming in ragged hitches. " Lord Arnold sends word, the enemy’s great tower fell short of the stone, their bridge missed the wall! The knights are stalled below, and only the ladder-men are clawing at the ramparts now."

"Good," Asag rasped, his voice sounding like grinding stones behind his visor.

The West is a graveyard then, but the East will be a forge. Lord Xanthios is many things, but he lacks the iron of the Third. He’ll be hard-pressed ....

He turned his gaze toward the messenger, the iron slit of his visor gleaming. "Run. Tell Lord Arnold to peel away a quarter of his reserve and march them to the Eastern gate. If the towers there find their mark, Xanthios will need every sword he can get his hands on. Go!"

The boy bowed low and vanished into the smoke, the white ribbon on his shoulder, the mark of a runner, snapping in the gale like the wings of a panicked dove. Above them all, the great falcon banner of the Prince snapped and snarled against a sky the color of a bruised plum, indifferent to the men screaming below its talons.