Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 819

Chapter 819: Baptised by fire(2)

It was a daring plan, reckless, audacious, bordering on suicide.

This was no common raid upon lonely hamlets or unsuspecting towns that dotted the shoreline of the Great Strait.

Such plunder had been the sport of every pirate worth the salt in his beard, the kind of petty foray that won a man silver and women but little more. No, this time, Blake’s gaze was fixed on something far greater, something that would shake the very heart of a continent.

They were not sailing for scraps. They were sailing for Khairo.The capital of the desert giant. The jewel of Azania, seat of the Great Sun himself.

Blake’s chest swelled with a fierce and hungry pride as the thought coursed through him. Khairo, untouched, inviolate for centuries, held sacred not only by its people but by the myths of the wider world.

He would impregnate that fucking bitch….

To strike at it was to strike at the very symbol of Azanian power. To burn it would be to burn away the illusion that their empire was untouchable.

His men dreamed of silver, of women, of streets paved with treasures yet unseen. But Blake’s mind ran deeper. He saw beyond the smoke and the fire. He saw Khairo not merely as loot to be pillaged, but as a keystone. If it fell, then Azania would falter, and by that he could build his own loyal power base there for that rush for kingship.

What the Romelians had failed to do, and what the Azanians themselves had feared in every prayer, Blake would do with fire and steel. They had all had their golden ages, the Romelians, whose eagle banners once shadowed the south, and the Azanians, basking for centuries in the unyielding sun of their god. Both giants had strutted their hour upon the earth. But time devours all. Time had chewed them hollow, left them bloated with pride and soft with complacency.

Now, it was the sea’s turn.

Blake could almost taste it, the salt of the spray on his lips mixing with the iron tang of blood yet to be spilled. He would not be the man who raided the edges, nor the fool who bowed before empires older than memory. He would be the man who carved a new empire out of the waves, who turned every harbor into a fortress and every strait into his toll-gate.

Already he could see it in his mind’s eye: castles by the sea flying his banner, fleets swelling with men eager to taste the wealth of Azania, warlords bending knee not to some distant emperor but to the crown he would forge upon the waters.

This was not Azania’s time. This was not Romelia’s time. Their suns had set.This was the birth of something new, something greater.

Blake’s mouth watered at the thought, his hands tightening on the rail as if he could already feel the stones of Khairo’s walls beneath his grip. Soon, that proud city would burn, and from its ashes a new order would rise. His order.

The time of land-born giants had ended. Now, a giant born of the sea would stride across the world.

Of course, before crowns and empires, there was a city to take.

The plan was simple. Azania, once unshakable in its order, was now tearing itself apart in civil war. Brother fought brother beneath the same burning sun, and though the faction holding the throne seemed to have the upper hand, the struggle had left cracks in their once-impervious walls.

Most crucially, the royal fleet, the same fleet that for generations had scoured the seas and crushed all who dared strike at Azania’s coasts, was not here. Its mighty galleys and warships were bottled up in the far south, busy blockading rebellious towns. That left the north stripped bare of its shield, its waters left wide and gaping like an open door.

And behind that door lay Khairo.

The city sat astride the great river, its gleaming domes and towers resting arrogantly upon its banks. A jewel that had always believed itself beyond the reach of raiders. But the river that fed its wealth and commerce would now be the very channel of its doom.

Blake’s lips curled into a grin as he leaned against the rail, the salt wind in his face. The plan was as straightforward as the cut of a blade: sail upriver, drive through the city’s soft underbelly, and strike straight into its heart. No creeping sieges, no drawn-out games of starvation, only fire, steel, and sudden ruin.

Turning, Blake let his eyes sweep across the horizon behind him. Forty-five ships stretched in a line, their black masts stabbing into the sky, sails swollen with wind, hulls cutting the water like wolves chasing the scent of blood. Six thousand hardened raiders, blades honed and hungry, all following him into the lion’s den.

Not that the river mouth had been entirely deserted. Patrol galleys prowled the approaches, but those were quickly dealt with. Blake had prepared for this. He had ordered the construction of swift, narrow boats, lighter than the hulking warships of Azania, their sails cut for speed. Like lean wolves, they dashed ahead of the main fleet, harrying the patrols, darting in and out of reach. Their role was not to sink but to stall, to tangle, delay, and hold their prey until the pack arrived.

And when the pack arrived, it was merciless. Heavy hulls rammed through the enemy’s flanks, splintering oars, capsizing ships, dragging screaming sailors into the tide. It was swift, brutal work. Within hours, the river ran red and dark with corpse, and the mouth of the Buush lay open before them.

Now the Roaring Axe surged upriver with the tide, the rest of the fleet in her wake. Already Blake could see the hazy outline of Khairo’s great walls on the horizon, the domes and spires of the capital rising like mirages above the sands.

The great city of spice, waiting for his hand to claim it.

He hoped to have timed it well, and that by the time the harbor guards had raised the alarm, it would be too late.

A handful of their ships, could hopefully slip into the harbor before the great chains could be drawn across the mouth. The rest of the fleet would remain outside, pounding the seaward walls with an assault of ladders, he of course, had little expectation of them actually breaching any of their walls; really it was to make the defenders think the storm was everywhere at once and distract their forces.

Blake’s task was different.

His task was swimming admist glory. He would be among the first to leap ashore, axe in hand, carving a foothold for his men. From there, smaller boats would ferry raiders into the city, while outside, the fleet’s thunder would keep the defenders scrambling from wall to wall.

Yes, the plan was daring , borderline madness, but it would work. It had to.

Blake’s fingers tightened on the railing until the wood creaked. His blood was pounding, roaring in his ears louder than the river. He was starving for battle. For a year now, he had been shackled to the dull necessities of command. Gathering food stores for six thousand mouths, bartering and bullying merchants into supplying iron and timber, cajoling and threatening pirate captains into unity, recruiting every cutthroat and desperate man who would raise a blade for silver.

And every night, he had returned not to blood and battle, but to the soft chains of his bed-slave’s embrace. Nights spent rutting, mornings spent writing lists, days spent in arguments with captains and scribes.

No raids. No burning villages. No screams clinging to the tide. No sweet crunch of steel against bone.

A year without bloodshed.

How much he hated it….

His hands twitched at the rail, as if they could no longer bear being empty. His arms burned to hew through helms, shields, skulls, through anything that dared stand in his way.

He had known ambition before, yes. He had longed for crowns, for plunder, for the fire of glory. But never like this. This was no ambition of the mind,it was as though his very flesh had been starved, and the only meal that could sate it now was Azanian meat.

His muscles bulged and flexed with restless protest, swelling as if preparing for the feast to come. He was both thirsty and starving, his veins alive with fever, his skin crawling with ants biting on them, making it burn like a fever. The city was so near that he swore he could already smell it: the spices, the smoke, the sweat of the doomed, all mixing into a promise his body craved to devour.

This desire was new, different , darker than anything he had felt before. He knew it, and he did not resist it. Why would he? To fight it would be to deny himself the very crown he sought. He welcomed the change, he felt so powerful.

Blake’s grin split wide, he started to pant as if he were a beast ,his mind hazy and his head lightly swaying, breathing heavily hands out to cover his mouth to hide the drooling from the passing crew.

The waiting was almost over.

He would have his great banquet.

And woe to those who were to be the feast and his feed.