Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 929: From the other side(5)

For a heartbeat it seemed as if the entire world had been torn from its foundations, as if sky and stone and blood and history fell and mixed together into some invisible abyss.

Panic seized breath and reason alike, and for several terrible moments no man upon the battlements could distinguish earth from thunder or dust from death.

Yet as lungs filled again and pulse abandoned its mad gallop, the truth emerged, narrower in scope than apocalypse yet no less catastrophic in consequence, for what had shattered was not the world entire, but it might as well have been for the people who for weeks so their world confined in four walls.

The murmur of stones breaking apart rolled through the fortress like the long sigh of a dying titan, and the crash of fallen masonry struck the ground, each slab exploding into clouds of powdered age.

Dust surged upwards in a rising column, pale as winter breath, frantic as the arm of a drowning man thrust toward salvation.

It climbed toward the heavens like prayer , while the bodies that once stood upon that wall sank into unmarked earth with the inevitability of damnation. When the air began to clear, faintly, painfully, the ruin revealed itself beneath the thinning veil, and with it came the sharp realisation of what had happened.

Mavius and Landoff stared through the drifting haze, eyes wide as if forced open with hooks, and neither man dared to speak, for words would have made the sight real. Where the rampart had stood for three unbroken centuries, where sentries had walked and where victories and defeats alike had once looked out across the valley, there now gaped a wound of shattered stone and half-buried corpses.

A great crescent of wall, thick as a castle tower, had simply ceased to exist. Just like that, with no explanation except the fact that the fox was lurking outside thier wall.

The line Landoff had spoken only moments ago curdled in his throat like spoiled milk, for the truth was laid bare before all.

It took only seconds for the first voices to break the frozen silence. It was a scream.

From the parapets and stairwells came frantic calls as soldiers tried to understand what had vanished beneath their feet. There was no chorus of wounded calling for rescue, no desperate groans from half-crushed men clinging to life. Those who had stood atop that wall were gone entirely, swallowed in the horrid beast’s belly, all that remained was the fear of those that stood alive.

None had survived, and all knew it.

Then another sound rose up, born not from grief but from an opposite and terrible root. It grew first from the plains below, faint yet unmistakable, like the roar of a distant sea. Those who for a week had hurled themselves against the fortress and died like flies against glass now saw with rabid joy the grave that had swallowed them torn open at last.

"How is the view up there, you uppity sons of bitches?" a soldier bawled, grabbing his crotch with both hands and driving his hips forward in a lewd, celebratory thrust. Another voice joined in with the drunk, wounded joy of men too long starved for hope. "You fuckers are finally at our level!"

It mattered little that their jeers never reached those high upon the walls, for the taunts were for the men around them, men who wanted to laugh, to spit, to feel like wolves rather than butcher’s swine for even a moment.

"Order the soldiers to stand behind the breach," Mavius barked, his voice scraping like iron dragged against stone as he swung toward his nearest guard. "They will launch an assault as soon as the debriis are cleaned, I want the opening held before they can mass!"

The bodyguard saluted and made to sprint toward the stair, but a gauntleted hand gripped his arm and halted him. Landoff, stern as the stones that had crumbled beneath them, stepped forward and cut through the panic with a single, merciless truth.

"The first ring is lost."

He spoke the words with visible pain, as though he himself had birthed them and hated the child that came of it. "We cannot hope to fortify a breach that size in time. Even if we pour men into the gap, it will only feed the enemy meat for their blades. We must abandon the first ring entirely and man the second. To stay is to bleed out slowly, to delay of a few days.The enemy have meat to spare, we do not."

Mavius spun on him with fury barely contained. "If we retreat now, we abandon the catapults! They will seize them and turn them against us. We still hold ground enough to fight. If we yield the first ring, we hand them our throat!" 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"Their losses mean less than ours," Landoff answered, his tone steady and heavy as a decree. "They will gladly spend five lives for one step forward. We cannot afford to spend one life merely to slow them for a day. Burn the catapults before the breach widens, and call every man back to the second ring. If we hesitate, we will lose them all, stone, soldier, and lives."

The bodyguard stood caught between them like a spear rooted in mud, awaiting direction, the mask of the Imperator unreadable as thundercloud iron.

The breach below was being cleaned as they stood silent, enemy troops already dragging rubble aside with the frenzied resolve of men who smell victory’s breath on their necks.

Landoff, seeing hesitation where there should have been command, stepped forward so close that only the pale reflection of the mask separated their faces. "We have no time left to weigh pride. If we do not fall back now, we invite them to break the second wall as they broke the first, and then nothing stands between us and ruin." He leaned closer still, voice low enough that only the Imperator could hear, though the urgency in every word could have sparked fire in snow. "If they send Yarzat’s legions through that breach before we pull back, they will carve a road through our defenders like a river cutting spring ice. You have seen what they are. To hold the breach is to die in it."

Below them, the cheering of the southern host grew wilder, rolling like thunder across the valley, triumph and hunger swelling into something feral.

Mavius finally exhaled, a sound half snarl, half surrender. "Why," he spat, each syllable drenched in loathing, "why is it always they who hold the better cards?Is there nothing in this cursed war that ever bends in our favor?"

Landoff did not answer, for he was not hypocrite enough to pretend agreement where none lived in his heart; they were cursed by their own deeds, and there was no sense in begging fate to favor those who had carved their own damnation with the blood of kin and the fat of its flesh.

Silence stretched between them until after several long heartbeats Mavius finally gave the command. At once the armies of the Fingers began to fall back,hesitantly at first, as if each soldier wished to deny the reality rising before them, and then all at once when the truth became too vast to ignore, like a tide retreating after the shore has already been swallowed.

And as Mavius watched the retreat unfold, contemplating the bitter shape of half the defeat he had suffered that day, once more at the hands of the same man whose people had been born to kneel in the mud and gather grain for their betters, he made the mistake of lowering his eyes.

Below, the enemy soldiers swarmed with relentless purpose, moving through the fallen stones like ants cutting flesh from a carcass, clearing a path as though performing the rite meant to deliver the first sweet draught of victory into the waiting hands of their Imperator.

And it was there, amidst the dust and ruin of the wall, at the very moment of receiving the second slap fate dealt him that day, that he felt himself caught by a stare. Not a casual glance, not the impersonal attention of a general surveying a breach, but the unmistakable weight of a single man’s eyes settling upon him with intent so clear it could have been a blade pressed against his throat.

A man underestimated by all, whose every step defied the expectations heaped upon his low birth, who bent the politics and powers of the continent like reeds in his grip despite being dismissed for most of his life as nothing more than a provincial prince with no name worth repeating.

A man with no ancient blood to boast of save the blood he had spilled, no noble lineage to anchor him except the family he had built with his own hands, and no legacy save for the one he carved day after day out of the bones of those who doubted him.

He sat astride a white stallion, the reaper of so much death, a creature so clean and bright against the grime of war it looked like a maiden’s ceremonial gown worn at the great oath, unmarred and unashamed even as battle raged around it.

And when his gaze lifted to meet Mavius upon the distant height, the Imperator felt the sun beating down upon him suddenly grow harsh and merciless, and still that glare was harder to bear.

The rider did not raise his voice, did not lift a sword, did not need to.

The fury in his eyes was hotter than the very sun, spoke enough to drown trumpets, banners, and soon nations.

And at that Mavius finally understood; he had the Fox’s full and undivided attention on himself.