Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 821

Chapter 821: Baptised by fire (4)

It tickled.

The warm smear of blood across his face that is, sprayed there in uneven streaks with the blade being his brush and him the mad painted. At first, Blake tried to wipe it away with the back of his hand, but all he managed was to smear it further, turning streaks into blotches, blotches into a mask. So he stopped. He let it stay there, drying into his beard, dripping down his jaw.

He sure it was a nice spectacle.

Someone with a poet’s soul might have given meaning to it, might have seen in those stains some metaphor for glory, fate, or the fragility of men.

Blake found no meaning in it.

He was no poet, Khaino the eldest, was, but he died. All his brothers died at Rock Bottom, and one was left crippled.

He put the anger into the next blow.Another spray across his chainmail.

It simply tickled, he felt nothing, and that made him laugh. A great booming laugh that split the chaos of the harbor as he swung his axe again, burying the iron head into the chest of an Azanian defender.

The man’s chainmail tore like cloth before the weight behind the blow, links snapping apart in a spray of sparks and shredded iron. Beneath it, flesh gave way as it always did , then bone, the ribs splintering with a crack that shivered through Blake’s arms.

The soldier’s eyes widened, pupils straining against the dim light of a life already leaving him. He had enough breath left to look up and meet the face of the man who had undone him, his killer grinning through a mask of red, teeth bared like a wolf’s.

Blake twisted the axe free with a kick that sent the body sprawling back. The corpse hit the flagstones with a wet crunch, armor ringing one last pitiful note. By the time the boy’s blood pooled into the cracks of the harbor stones, he was already gone.

Another laugh rumbled from Blake’s chest. His arms itched for more.

And there was no shortage of prey.

The harbor had become a storm of steel and screams. Azanian soldiers, twice their number, fought in a frenzied knot against the raiders who had forced their way through the river’s mouth. Blake had not known exactly what strength the capital’s garrison would bring.No one could, but this… this was not enough. Not nearly enough. The only explanation was that his diversion, the suicidal assault against the outer walls, had done its work. The garrison had split itself, and he was carving into what remained.

Blake spared no thought for the men outside the walls. He did not need imagination to know their fate. They were dying by the hundreds, swallowed by the city’s outer defenses. That was their role, boys and drunkards recruited in the hundreds by the tale of glory and silver. They could keep it as far as he cared.

For here, within the harbor, his chosen few the wolves who had followed him for more than a decade across seas and slaughter, were earning their share of immortality.

Around him, the clash was thunderous. Steel rang against steel, shields shattered, and flesh tore beneath axes, spears, and daggers. The air itself seemed thick, choked with smoke from burning ships, with the salt of the sea, with the copper stink of blood.

It was madness, and yet madness had a beauty of its own.

His men wore little more than their enemies. A chain shirt, a dented helmet, nothing more, for no man who wished to survive on the open sea weighed himself down with plate that would drag him to the abyss. But what they lacked in armor, they drowned in savagery.

These were not drilled soldiers fighting for pay, nor boys raised to hold a line. These were killers honed by fire and salt, who had raided, murdered, and bled their way into brotherhood.

They fought with reckless violence, throwing themselves into the Azanians with such ferocity that the defenders reeled, staggered, hesitated. Every swing was meant not to hold, not to parry, but to break.

They laughed as they killed, their voices carrying like wolves baying at the moon.

Blake drank it in, his pulse quickening with each scream, each clang, each spray of blood painting the air. His axes rose and fell like the beating of war-drums. He had dreamed of this storm for months, starved for it, and now that it was here, his hunger was endless.

The Free Men of the Isles fought like no army Khairo had ever seen.They had grown complacent after century of domination over the sands, and now the water was coming to destroy all that they had built and remind them that every civilization was doomed to disappear in one way or the other.

One of the unmaker of Khairo tore the shield from an Azanian’s grip with his bare hands, then smashed his forehead into the soldier’s nose, splitting it into pulp before ramming a dagger into the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

Another hurled himself bodily into a knot of spearmen, impaling himself through the arm just so he could drag the haft closer and split the man’s throat with his sword. A third went down under two defenders only to sink his blade into one’s chin, tearing away skin and meat before his comrade’s axes found the second of the pair and reduced him to butchered meat.

Blake watched it with his chest heaving, each breath stoking the fire in his veins. His hands twitched around the haft of his axes. The smell, the sound, the chaos, it called to him like a lover’s song.

The sight of his men tearing flesh and steel alike was not enough. His body ached to join them. His grin widened, teeth bared, and then he surged forward with a roar that shook his lungs raw.

The drool started to come down again, but he could not feel it above all the blood.

He hit the first man like a tempest. His axe came down in a brutal overhand, shattering a helmet and splitting skull to the teeth.

Hot blood sprayed across Blake’s face, and the heat of it made him gasp in something that was half a laugh, half a moan. He ripped the blade free and spun into another, cleaving through collarbone and chest, the body collapsing before the man even realized he was dead.

Another and another, he was close to the fighting and distant from it, his senses outside his body as if watching him from the sky.

With each kill, something shifted in him. The more he swung, the lighter he felt, as though some great weight had been peeled from his soul. His arms moved faster, his strikes heavier, each blow feeding the next.

A man stabbed him in the side with a spear, the head glancing off his mail, Blake hardly noticed. He seized the shaft, yanked the soldier close, and headbutted him so hard the man went limp before Blake’s axe ever fell.

He laughed again, high and wild, blood running into his mouth.

It was like drinking something stronger than any mead, more potent than any opium that his brother ever took during his fits of madness.

Every death was a gulp, every scream a breath of smoke filling his chest, making him more alive than he had ever been. He did not feel tired, he felt boundless. Invincible. The harbor blurred into a canvas of crimson and steel, and he painted it with every swing.

Never had he felt this way. Not in raids, not in skirmishes, not even in the triumphs that had won him his name. This was new. This was ecstasy.This was pure beauty….

Every heartbeat begged for another throat, another skull, another scream to tear apart. He was no longer merely Blake, he was their king, king of the sea, king of Azania, king of all, born amidst flesh and rebonr by slaughter and blood.

The more he killed, the more he wanted. The more he wanted, the stronger he became.The stronger he became, the more his dream grew.

And in the back of his mind, some faint whisper wondered, he knew it was not him, he had never felt that, it seemed as if he had lost part of himself.

He should have taken a moment to realize what was happening to him; perhaps that would have stopped what road he was to go and what he was to become, but…if he stopped, if the killing ended, would the fire consuming him vanish too?

He dared not stop.

Not now.

Not after all of this.

He was not capable of enough thought anymore, he was deep in the river of violence washing himself in his water and gulping mouthful after mouthful, he had never been so happy.

He was the patriarch of his house, he had avenged his family and he would make it now a royal house.

Are they watching me? He wondered as he raised his eyes in the sky.

He felt the need to shout

”Are you proud of me father?Khaino, Abel, Morni, Vior, are you watching your younger brother making a name for himself?You will be brothers and father of a king!”

No one heard him, both from the sky and the earth, so much was the ruckus, and he of course received no answer from anything, as the only thing watching him were the ravens cawing as they circled the air, as if dancing to the tune of screams and whimpers from below, as if thanking Blake for what he was giving them.

They were truly the only thing answering him.