Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 839

Chapter 839: Sun’s city(3)

Thousands of Free Men rampaged across the marbled floors of Great Khairo, the jewel of the western continent, now turned into a butcher’s yard.

The dead lay everywhere, sprawled on the tiles, slumped against gilded walls, and piled in heaps at the base of stairways.

Bodies were trampled underfoot, faces frozen in the moment of horror when steel or axe had torn them apart from their feeble life. Marble, once polished to a blinding white, was crimson and wet with blood and strewn with entrails, so that red prints and the drag of torn limbs marked each step to each foot.

The maker of this hellish scenery worthy of Goya trudged upon their own work with prided. Avid hunger warped their faces, glee written into every stroke of their axes as they cut down the hated Azanians they had starved and waited two weeks to reach. Rage and relief blended into a single intoxication: the ecstasy of slaughter, the worst of all drugs.

They spread through the palace like a flood, pressing on every side, bursting into hallways and chambers, hacking apart all that moved. Servants, slaves, lords, soldiers,none mattered, none cared. Confederate steel was blind, and all who stood in their way were reduced to sacks of meat.

There was no formation, no strategy,only the primal frenzy of predators closing jaws upon prey. Whenever a passage forked, the horde divided without word or order, some veering left, others right, each group driven by the same blind instinct: to kill, to claim, to plunder.

Coordination would have been impossible; bloodlust had already swallowed discipline. Dozens of throats gave out howls as blades sank into dark Azanian flesh, each cry a signal to their brothers, a boast hurled into the air.

The palace shook with it,every howl, every clash of steel, every scream ricocheting through its marbled bones signalling the end of its time.

Death had claimed the halls as his court, and his herald was no noble knight but a raider from the sea, an apostate and a faithful both, carrying in his breast the worst vices and the rarest virtues of his people.

A maddening roar tore from Blake’s throat as he hurled himself up the great stairway, charging toward the fourth floor of the palace. Behind him, the horde thundered, a tide of boots and axes. Of the four thousand who had poured through the iron gate, perhaps three thousand still followed,others had already swerved into side chambers, swallowed whole by the fingers of lust either of flesh or of blood. Blake noticed, but he did not care.

He was no better.

The mask of the admiral, the commander, the planner, the careful hand of the expedition, slipped from him like a dirty cloak. In its place he wore again the old face: the warrior, the killer, the man who had once lived by the edge of the axe and the rush of spilled blood.

And by the abyss, how he had missed it.

The thrill struck through him like lightning, heart racing, veins burning, mouth dry yet grinning wide.

There was something off in that ecstasy, something rotten in the sweetness. It was too much,too sharp, too wild.

He had fought in bigger and more glorious battle, so why did he felt so clearly here?Ahead of servants butchered and soldiers crying when they steel came to them.Had he not served in feats worthy of higher glory?

The thrill did not lift him; it hollowed him, stripping away thought, stripping away restraint, until nothing remained but hunger. In that flood of fire, he could not tell if he was master of it, or if it was master of him.

There was only one truth left to him now, kill. Thought, reason, caution, all had burned away in the furnace of blood. And kill he did. He had not set foot in the palace for five minutes before he was soaked red to the waist, his arms sticky with gore, his face sprayed with it like war paint.

He led from the front, of course. That was his place. And that meant the honor of the first kills was his alone.

Blake knew he was on the right path when the stairway ahead darkened with armored men, three dozen at least, waiting in perfect ranks. Not just soldiers. No, these gleamed with the kind of polish no common blade ever wore. Gold gleamed from every plate, their bodies wrapped in ornate steel from helm to greave, their eyes the only piece of flesh left visible, black pupils staring coldly from behind masks of death.

Imperial Guards. Worthy prey.

To any other man, the sight might have been enough to slow the step, to spark doubt. But Blake no longer had such thoughts to give. His brain knew only one command, pounding in rhythm with his heart: kill, kill, kill.

With a roar, he hurled himself upward at them. Shields snapped into place broad, gilded ovals that locked from shoulder to hip, a wall of gold and steel. The clatter of their formation echoed like thunder, and one soldier slammed sword and shield together, eyes locking with Blake’s as if to single him out.

Blake didn’t hesitate. He hefted the first axe and hurled it like a spear into the gilded guard’s face; the blade struck with a wet clang, and the man staggered, hand flying to his helm. Before the soldier could recover, Blake drove the second axe in a brutal downward arc, the haft smashing into the man’s ribs with a bone-jarring crack. The guard folded, breath tearing from him, and Blake closed without pause , hand snaking up, fingers digging into the soldier’s throat. He squeezed, felt the panic under the polished steel, and in a single motion, he hurled him backward, over his own shoulder, down into the waiting horde of Free Men behind.

A forest of hands rose to meet him. Axes hacked down, daggers pierced up, and the golden guard vanished in a blur of steel and blood. His scream was swallowed whole, replaced by the cheer of devils who had been starved too long.

And Blake, chest heaving, teeth bared, stepped forward again, his eyes already searching for the next kill.

The gold-helmed guards close around him, their shields locking like teeth. He didn’t hesitate. His axe carved the first gap, wide enough for him to shoulder through. Another sword lunged for him , he let it strike as he has no way to block it, so he let the steel dig a line across his ribs.

Pain should stagger him. It doesn’t; he only returns the favor by chopping the soldier’s neck, with his axe.

A warm feeling spread when the axe cut sinew and flesh.

He smashes one helm flat. Another throat bursts beneath his grip. The rhythm builds. The clang of steel. The wet thud of meat. It is a drumbeat, and he is its only dancer.

A laugh slips from him as a soldier topples, skull caved in, finishing the kill with a stomp that broke the throat. The laugh was not his. It rolled out of his chest like fire through a cavern. His men heard it and cheer, thinking it courage. The Azanians heard it and blanched, thinking it madness.

Blake heard it too, as a foreign sound.

But he could not stop.

His arm moved before thought. His axe biting deep through a collarbone. When it got stuck, he wrenched it free with a boot to the man’s chest, the body flung back down the stairs.

Another guard went to his death; they all knew they were going to die so they chose this as their way out. Blake easily clasped the brave fool by the face, shoving him off balance and sending him tumbling head over heels into the melee below, where the pack tore him apart like dogs at scraps left by their owners.

As if coals were pressed against his flesh, he felt warmth as he caught another blow to his armor and once more, he dug his hand into the enemy’s throat.

This time he did not leave him for the pack; he even barely noticed when his fingers started sinking too deep.

The man screamed.

The whispers then started from there, he would never stop hearing them. He would curse upon this day, but he did not know it yet.

He was too happy for that.

Fire for the crown. Dust to all.

With a clearer mind, he would have recoiled, not understanding he was doing the very thing he promised to himself never to be.

He would have gagged at the sight of the blackened ruin in his hands where the skin was starting to peel of. Instead, a shiver of rapture runs through him. Exhilaration. Power at what he had done.

The rot seeped in unseen like poison int he wine. He did not feel it, did not fear it, did not perceive it.

Lost in the myth of his own kill.

He had truly lost himself on that last sail.