Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 898

Capítulo 898: Battle of the Eagles(6)

“Bwahhhh!”

The shriek gurgled out of the thing’s throat, a sound halfway between a sob and a howl, neither one and neither the other, but both at the same time.

“Fuck my ears up why won’t you?” snarled one of the Black Stripes as his boot came down, crushing the thing’s jaw with a wet crunch before the axe followed, cleaving through what was left of its skull.

The body twitched once. Then silence.

Good , long yearned silence.

The soldier exhaled, leaning on his weapon, sweat and gore painting his face beneath the dented rim of his helmet. The bastard had got a good blow on him…not the first and most likely not the last of that day.

But he had at least got him.

“Seem like that was the last of ’em,” someone called a few paces down the line. That whisper broke the dam. Voices rose all around him when it was known it was safe once again.

“By the Five, what the fuck were those things?” one of them asked staring and kicked at a corpse .

“Probably ate each other in hell and came back for seconds,” someone muttered, spitting to the side.

”Bit more than they could chew, I’d say” A man holding a mace muttered as he smacked his breastplate in pride.

He had got three of those things under his belt.

“They’re possessed, you idiots!” another barked, drawing the sign of the Star across his chest and closing his eyes tight. “We’ve been fighting demons, may the heavens shield us.Glory to the prince, soldier of the Gods. He brought us into this field for good.”

That earned a short, humorless laugh from his comrade. “Then I suppose we’re doing the gods’ dirty work today.”

“Aye,” said another, passing with shaky hands a lock of air apart from his eye. “Fighting heathens and ungodly monsters. Maybe this time the gods will remember which side we’re on.”

Before anyone could add more blasphemy or blessing to the air, a sharp pheeeeet! cut through the noise , the bone whistle of the subcenturii.

Everyone froze.

“Time to swap,” shouted a decurio, wiping his blade on a corpse’s tunic before waving his men back.

“About fucking time.”

“I’d have liked that whistle five minutes ago,” another grumbled, rolling his shoulder as he stepped out of the line. His arm was slick with dried blood that wasn’t his.

“Quit whining,” someone said, offering him a canteen. “Drink and thank the stars your head’s still on.”

The ranks shuffled with mechanical rhythm, the fresh wave of soldiers tightening shields as the weary frontliners stumbled back toward the rear.

As the men caught their breath, a few noticed movement farther down the field , a block of friendly troops marching left, tightening the flank.

“Hey!” a soldier shouted, waving his sword toward them. “The front’s here, you blind bastards!”

Another laughed. “What were you doing until now?”

“Fucking your girls!” came a quick retort from somewhere in those lines

The men burst into laughter.

“I got a girl?” one of the Stripes said between swigs from his canteen. “Lucky me , maybe she’ll wait till I’m done with this shithole.”

“Not if she’s got any sense,” his comrade shot back, and the line howled again.

For a brief, precious moment, the battlefield did not look as dark as it had before, as if mocking the madness they stood in.

It was extraordinary what light men could find in a tunnel

But not all was good.

For while the men in the line laughed and traded jests , trying to chase away the stench of death with crude humor ,their prince was living through a waking nightmare.

The messenger’s words still rang in his ears. The left flank , the one meant to be the safest, the least exposed , had shattered first.

“How in all hells did they lose the flank so soon?!” he had roared, rounding on the Romelian envoy. The man stood pale as parchment, his gilded cuirass rattling from nerves rather than battle.

He wanted to strike the man , to grab him by the collar and shake sense into his trembling frame , but forced himself still.

The envoy instead meekly bowed his head lower, words tumbling out like pebbles down a cliff. “The rear has taken position on the left, Your Grace. Lords Asag and Torghan are attempting to rally the remnants. For now, there is… no fear that the routed troops will turn back upon us.”

The prince stared at him, disbelief giving way to bitter amusement.

No fear?

How could that possibly be good news? The best that could be said was that the chaos hadn’t yet devoured the rest of the army , yet.

Still, the names Asag and Torghan offered the faintest ember of reassurance. If anyone could hold back that tide, it was those two units. At least for a time.

He turned away from the envoy, eyes narrowing toward the horizon where dust clouds thickened like storm banks, clearly more numerous than any other.

It was obvious where the enemy had placed their faith.

His position.

Just like they had expected.

The prince’s jaw tightened as he studied the mass of glinting steel and banners rolling toward them.Despire everything it was reassuring to know he had got a good read on the enemy.

Still that was a shaky enough reassurance.

His hand trembled as he reached for his sword. There was no command that could change what was coming.He was not even sure they could break through his flank.

He drew a slow breath and let out all the anxiety through his teeth.

“Christ help us all…” he murmured, so that only he could hear.

———

It mattered little that they had only just come out of one brutal melee ,when the call came, they answered as if it were their first breath of battle that day.

No whimper, no yealping, no grumbling.

The men of the line moved with a precision that only exhaustion and habit could forge. The constant rotation of lines had paid off; ten minutes of slaughter followed by ten of breath and water had kept them sharp enough to fight like devils.

“PILUM!” roared the decurii up and down the ranks, voices slicing through the din like whips, giving start to the slaughter

A thousand hands obeyed in unison. The men drew back their arms and, with a guttural growl that came from somewhere deep in the ribs, loosed their javelins.

The air sang.

Steel tore through the sky like a storm of black crows, hissing downward with all the mercy of gravity and hatred combined.

A heartbeat later , there was  impact.

The sound was hideous and beautiful all at once , the deep, wet thunks of metal striking flesh, the sharp cracks of splintered shields, the shrieks that followed.

Pilum tips tore through wooden shields, some driving through palms that had been gripping them too tightly, nailing hands to splinters. Others punched clean through armor, pinning men in place like grotesque ornaments.

People screamed as five kilogram of steel punctured their armor and went for the flesh.

A soldier somewhere in the second line barked out a laugh. “Ha! Hear that?” he shouted. “They scream just like men!”

The laughter spread, dark and raw, a chorus of relief and bloodlust.

“Not so divine now, eh you piss-soaked bastards?!” another yelled, hurling his next pilum with extra spite.

“Here’s a gift from your mothers, you horse-licking whoresons!”

“Catch, you oil-drinker!”

”It’s oil-fucker, dumbass!”

The sky filled again , another wave of spears cutting arcs through the dust. Some of the veterans even started humming a rhythm between throws, as if the whole massacre had become a song they’d long since memorized.

And when the second volley struck, the soldiers laughed harder , real laughter this time, not madness, not despair, but relief.

Because at least now, they were fighting men again , men who bled, men who screamed, men who died.

And they had made a vocation out of killing men.

Those few enemies who had managed to shield themselves from the storm of javelins were soon faced with a crueler choice. Their shields , now heavy with iron shafts , became nothing but anchors. The wooden faces bent and buckled under the weight of embedded pilum, each one dragging its bearer down.

Cursed and panicked, they had no choice but to let them fall. The trenches gave them no room to maneuver, no space to breathe. Between those narrow four-meter gaps, the shieldless men pressed together like cattle in a pen , and there, the steel of the legionnaires found them.

It was slaughter. Cold, precise, inevitable.

Alpheo watched it unfold from his horse, the din of battle below rising and falling like the breath of a dying beast being whipped by its master. His front line held firm as he knew it would. Discipline was their armor, and it had not cracked.

So his gaze turned, toward the flank.

There, just as predicted, the enemy’s shadow moved. A flanking maneuver that was long called for crawling along the side of the field like rot spreading across a wound. And waiting for them were the levies coming from the Yarzat lords with the equipment Alpheo stored in the capital and with a month of drills behind them.

To their credit, they stood despite all the odds.

The fortifications had bought them time and courage, with the earthworks denying the enemy’s full strength. The gap between the two sides became a funnel, and though the enemy outnumbered them, their advantage was blunted where from numbers , it went down to skills, where the Yarzat levies held the slightest advantage.

For a moment, just a fleeting, treacherous moment, Alpheo let himself believe they might hold. That perhaps, by grit and cleverness, they could turn the tide.

Then came the rider sent by fate to squash that hope down, coming to report yet the worst news of them all.

Egil was retreating from the field.