Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 901

Capítulo 901: End of a golden age(1)

“Kill the godsdamn bastards!” a Black Stripe roared as his axe came down and the fleeing man’s helmet toppled with a wet thunk.

No command was needed. All morning the legions had been hammered, prodded, dragged through hell.

In that instant when the tide swung, the restraint they had worn like armor snapped. Men who had marched with bloodied heels and raw, rubbed palms in delight as they ran the routed down.

Helmets skittered across churned earth. Faces went white with terror and then red with blood. A mace rose, a shoulder slammed, an axe found a neck .

Men begged, of course they did. They spat prayers and curses, grabbed at boots and shield rims with fists that already trembled. It did nothing. Mercy was a thing the morning had eaten; there was only the business of killing.

Up close it was a sight that would have made any pious man reconsider how much the gods really cared about their creations or whether they took pleasure in seeing what a man could do to another.

A Black Stripe slammed his boot into a soldier’s throat and watched with the same careless interest a butcher might show a carcass as life leaked from between his fingers. Another dragged a man by the hair and with a single, rasping swing took his head off so close that the spray painted the attacker’s chin.

One fleeing banner-bearer left go of his pole as a giant in white and black wrenched it free as his prize of war and smashed the butt of his mace into his skull until the man’s mouth went limp and his eyes rolled up.

”LOOKED AT WHAT I GOT?” He then shouted finally raising the prize he had eyed for the best part of the hour , proudly showing off the eagle that had lost the battle.

”Put it over your ass and then your mouth, Mesius!”

Of course, the reactions weren’t that dandy and kind; after all, everyone would be envious of the man who had taken hold of the great prize and who would have the honor of gifting it to the prince.

It was so common that the desperation of one was the treasure of another.

Of course, running the bastard down, was not so emotional for everyone, as yet the faces of the killing men were not all savage. Many were blank, set to the business of finishing what the day had started, detaching themselves from the task that they just see as their job.

Some smiled with loose lips as they hacked ,as of course some would. Others shrugged as if shrugging off cloth; one slammed a man’s head against the ground and, as if tidying a table, wiped his brow with the back of his hand and moved on.

They were exhausted, blistered, and half-mad with exertion, but none of that slowed them. If anything, they went faster.

Men who yesterday had joked, traded mementos, and shared bread now bent to one trade alone.Whetever they took pleasure , pride in it or not, all felt one nagging thought at the back of their mind.

Lucky they weren’t us.

As them, also Alpheo for most of that day had been living inside a calculus of death. He had rehearsed a thousand ends in his head ,collapse under a lance, slow suffocation in chains, some theatrical martyrdom at the hands of the War Emperor’s second son. He had pictured capture and a dozen little humiliations between here and oblivion.

One worse than the other.

So when the tide turned and his army grew from hunted to hunter, something in him unclenched with a sound like a man letting go of a stone he has carried for years.

The relief that washed over him was addictive. He watched his men run down the fleeing Romelians, a grim, childish exultation on their faces as they closed the distance and ended the race. The scene was ugly and breathtaking and, in its own brutal way, curative for the weary soul.

Alpheo did not pretend to be above it.

He felt that same loosened happiness, but he also felt something bringing him down to the ground from the high that he was flying on, mainly the memory of reading about all the battles where a single flank rout into looting or a long, lazy chase had turned a victory into a stalemate, or worse, into a loss. Hell…this battle was exactly that as it was their right flank that was the first to fall.

He would not let that happen on their side.

So he let his men have their moment, and then he clipped it. A commander must spoil a feast if the feast will undo them. He sent riders with clear, concise orders: to Jarza, quick instructions to let the soldiers drink, piss and swear a while longer but not to scatter; to the centre and the right, urgent news of the breakthrough, while informing them they would prepare to wheel around.

He also made Shahab the lynchpin of the plan , charging him to steady the lords’ levies, to choke their eagerness to pursue, and to have them turned around toward the center.

He did not know how efficient that would be , but honestly, they needed all the troops they could get.

Everything in him wanted to stay and watch the field of hunting, to join the crude merriment. But he could not.

The hunt had to be finished, and the day had to bend the world in their favor before appetite could ruin them again. Fate had lent him his hands, and he surely was not about to spit on it.

Gods only knew how few those occasions were.

With all his orders given and his lieutenants trusted enough to execute them without his shadow looming over their shoulders, Alpheo finally allowed himself to turn his horse toward the mystery that had been gnawing at him for the better part of ten minutes.

Who in all the hells had saved him?

He rode through the carcass of the battlefield, the tail of his gaze lazily dragging over the scenery that would have made Picasso gouge his eyes out and paint a second Guernica in despair. Limbs, banners, broken spears , all strewn like offerings to some beast or god of war.

Had Omer been there, he would have written a second Iliad from that day.

The only difference being that the hero of today would fall by no arrows shot by a coward.

But as he drew closer, the image he had imagined , the heroic charge of salvation he had burned into his mind , began to unravel.

He had pictured it clearly: red-plumed clibanarii of Romelia thundering down like fire given flesh, or perhaps the steel-clad hounds of the White Army, wearing wolf’s pelt and majestic, descending like angels with iron wings. Men forged in glory, born of discipline and valor, sent by Providence itself to snatch victory from the jaws of ruin.

That, as it turned out, was wrong. Very wrong.

The shapes that emerged from the dust were not angels. They were… well, they were barely men.

No shining armor gleamed beneath the sun, no crimson plumes nor polished lances. Instead, Alpheo found himself staring at a mob of ragged riders , camp followers, grooms, mule-drivers, kitchen boys, and all wobbling on pack horses and beasts of burden that looked one bad cough away from collapse.

They had no weapons, no armor, not even reins in some cases. One man guided his horse with a piece of rope that looked stolen from a tent, another held a cooking pan like a shield, and a third still wore an apron.

And that colossal cloud of dust that had struck fear into one army and hope into another? It was no miracle of cavalry, but a farce of brilliance , long branches, broom handles, and hay bundles tied to the horses’ tails and sides, whipping up the illusion of an army.

One of them , a bony, cross-eyed man with half his teeth missing , still clutched the war horn that had sounded the note of destiny, and held it upside down as if wondering what end to blow.

For a long moment, Alpheo simply stared, stunned into silence.

Then, a laugh clawed its way up his throat . He bit it back.

To laugh would have been to mock them, and they did not deserve that. These were not warriors, not heroes blessed by divine favor. They were fools ,glorious, magnificent fools, who had ridden into the mouth of the beast with nothing but noise and nerve.

They had no promise of reward, no pension awaiting their families, no golden wreaths or songs to immortalize them. They had only the certainty of death if they were discovered, and yet they had ridden anyway.

He did not even need to ask who had led them. There was only one man in all the White Army who could have conjured salvation out of madness, who would think to turn kitchen boys and mule-drivers into ghosts of war , only one man who’d laugh at the impossible and make it obey him.

Egil.

The Butcher of Aracina.

A warmth flooded Alpheo’s chest at the thought. His heart, which had been coiled like a viper all morning, finally eased its grip. Of course it was him. Who else would have the audacity, the brilliance, the sheer lunacy to pull off such a ruse? The bastard probably thought it was funny, saving the army with broomsticks and pack mules.

Alpheo could almost see it already: Egil waiting for him, sitting high on his saddle with that crooked grin, his hair matted with sweat and blood but his eyes bright as ever. Alpheo pictured himself riding up, dismounting, and pulling the man into an embrace.

He imagined the laughter that would come from it , the jest Egil would throw, and how he’d say something crude about “scaring the piss out of three thousand men with horse shit and branches.”

The prince smiled at the thought,all that darkness that was between them disappearing in an instant. Friendship where cold laid once.His horse trotted forward through the haze, past the dust and laughter and cries of exhausted victory.

Alpheo’s grin widened when he finally saw him.

“Egil!” he called, his voice cutting through the noise like sunlight through fog.

The figure did not answer.

He urged his horse faster.

“Egil!” Alpheo called again, louder this time.

The man swayed.

Not the sway of pride, nor fatigue , but the slow, heavy collapse of a body surrendering to gravity.

He slid from his saddle like a felled banner, his body tumbling to the earth in a motion too gentle for what it meant.

Alpheo’s heart became snow-cold ice.