Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 902

Capítulo 902: End of a golden age(2)

There were hundreds of screams. Hundreds of groans, shouts, sobs, and prayers , all of them tangled into a single maddened roar that no longer sounded human. The battlefield was alive, moaning and writhing like some wounded beast, every sound birthing another pain, every cry feeding the endless echo of dying men.

And yet, for Alpheo, there was nothing.

Nothing but silence.

The world had gone mute the moment Egil fell to the ground.

He did not remember drawing breath, nor commanding his horse to move. He simply was.

Around him, men screamed and bled, clutched their torn bellies or begged the heavens to be merciful, but to Alpheo it all blurred into a single, colorless hum.

He was deaf, blind, and yet painfully aware , as though his mind had shrunk into a single, pulsing thought.

And even that was overwhelmed by fear.

He passed by a man clutching his intestines, sobbing for his mother. Another dragging himself by the elbows, leaving two red lines behind. A third, screeching hysterically through a hole in his throat. All of them ghosts, all of them irrelevant , because ahead of them lay him.

And he was so pale.

When Alpheo finally reached him, his friend’s breath came out in broken gasps, his chest convulsing with each one. The prince stumbled from his saddle and half-fell into the dirt, hands trembling as he crawled toward the still figure.

There were others nearby , camp boys, wounded riders, a few legionnaires too exhausted to cheer and one of them, barely more than sixteen, was staring at Egil with wide, horrified eyes, recognising him, and what this moment meant.

His hands were shaking, his lips moving but no sound coming out. The look on that boy’s face was the same Alpheo felt stretching across his own.

“Move,” Alpheo hissed, his voice cracking as he shoved the boy aside. He fell to his knees beside Egil, his gauntlets sinking into the wet earth.

“Egil,” he whispered, but the name came out more like a plea than a call. His friend’s head rolled slightly to the side,eyes opening up and down. Alpheo reached out, fingers shaking so hard he nearly dropped his sword, before throwing it aside and pulling Egil’s head onto his lap.

“MEDIC!!!”

The scream tore out of his lungs like it was dragging his soul with it. It carried above the moans of the dying, above the clash of steel still echoing in the distance, above everything. His voice cracked, turned ragged, but he screamed again anyway.

“MEDIC! NOW!”

No one answered.

His heart hammered so fast it felt like it would burst out of his ribs. His breath came short and shallow. The edges of his vision flickered black.

He pressed a hand to the wound and felt the heat, the pulse beneath his palm. The silk sutures were torn, soaked through with blood. The artery was open again, spilling Egil’s life into the dirt like wine from a broken jar.

“Press on the wound! Press it, damn you!” he barked.

Three men threw themselves down beside him, pressing with both hands, but the blood still seeped between their fingers.

“Harder!” Alpheo shouted, voice cracking again. “Press harder, gods damn you!”

They obeyed, grunting, slipping, their palms sliding in the blood until it painted their wrists.

“Where is the stretcher? WHERE IS HE!?” Alpheo roared, twisting toward the camp, his eyes wide and wild. He could not feel his legs. He could not feel anything below his ribs. Only the roaring in his head, the screaming of his friend’s pulse.

Someone answered from the distance, but the words made no sense.

“Stay with me,” Alpheo pleaded looking down at his brother, his voice trembling so much that the words barely made it out. “Do you hear me? Stay with me!”

He cupped Egil’s cheek with one trembling hand, his glove wet with blood, and gave him a light slap, enough to force his eyes to move, to see him. He could not bear those eyes to stare into nothing. Not yet.

And then, miraculously, they did.

For one desperate heartbeat, Alpheo felt the weight on his chest ease. Egil’s pupils , unfocused, glassy ,turned toward him. It was enough. He was there. He was still there.

After what must have been seconds, though it felt like hours stretched into eternity, Egil’s lips parted. His breath trembled out in a weak wheeze, and then, somehow, he spoke.

“…Enkilae?”

The word was barely a whisper ,soft and childlike, which he had never expected to hear from him who had made so many people cry.

Alpheo froze. Pushing down the knot in his chest.

“No, Egil,” he said quickly, leaning closer, shaking his head as if he could rattle the name out of existence. “No, it’s me, Alpheo. Alph. Your brother. I’m here. I’m right here with you.”

But Egil’s eyes didn’t recognize him. His pupils flickered, like a dying candle, searching for a face that wasn’t there.

“Brother? Enkilae,” he murmured again, “is that you?”

He felt the world tilt. He couldn’t bear to correct him again ,couldn’t bear the thought of dragging him back into this bloody, broken world when his mind was somewhere far gentler.

So he lied.

By all the shame that man could perceive, he did so.

“Yes,” Alpheo whispered, his voice trembling as he brushed a lock of blood-matted hair from Egil’s forehead. “Yes, it’s me, Enkilae. Stay with me, brother. Just stay.”

Egil smiled faintly , an innocent smile that no one should be capable of on a field like this. “The goat,” he mumbled, the words slurring together. “The goat… I lost it. I’m sorry.”

Alpheo’s lip trembled. His throat felt tight enough to choke him. “It’s all right,” he said softly, forcing a calmness he didn’t feel. “It’s all right, we’ll get another one. Even two, if you like. You just… stay here, with me. That’s it. Good, that’s good.”

“It’s not your fault, Enkilae,” Egil continued weakly. “It’s mine. Don’t… don’t tell Mother.”

The memory of innocence echoing from the mouth of a man carved by war.,

Alpheo swallowed hard, nodding as he bit the inside of his cheek to keep his voice steady. “We won’t tell her,” he whispered. “I promise. We’ll get another. Just stay with me, brother. Please.”

But Egil’s body was trembling now, his chest rising faster, shallow, uneven.

“Don’t tell her, Enkilae,” he wept, moaning once more, his voice rising higher , cracking apart , scaring Alpheo more than any battle could had ever done . “Don’t tell her, please don’t.”

Alpheo pressed his forehead to Egil’s, unable to stop the tears now rolling freely down the man’s cheeks. His breath came in short bursts, each one sharper and quicker than the last, panic clawing its way up his throat.

“MEDIC!” he screamed, so loud his voice broke. “MEDIC! SOMEONE, NOW!”

He looked around wildly until he finally saw them: two men running toward him, red-cross bands on their arms, their faces grim and pale as they stumbled through the wounded.

“Here!” Alpheo roared, his voice raw, his throat bleeding from the effort. “HERE!”

When they reached him, he simply stood and stepped aside, his hands hovering over Egil as though afraid to let go. The medics fell to their knees beside the dying man, their movements frantic, their breath ragged.

“Hold the lord,” one said, his tone all business.

They rolled Egil gently, one hand pressed to the leg, the other at the neck, and Alpheo watched as his friend’s face twisted in pain and then softened again, as if drifting further away.

“Stay with us,” Alpheo demanded of Egil,not as his prince but his friend, his voice breaking apart.

No one said anything; the carriers only nodded to each other as they bound his leg tighter, wrapped a tourniquet around his thigh, and lifted him onto a stretcher.

Egil’s hand brushed Alpheo’s as they hoisted him up, a brief, twitching contact, warm and weak.

Alpheo grasped it instinctively, holding it until it slipped from his fingers, falling limp at his side.

He followed the medics with his eyes. The sounds of the battlefield crept back in slowly, but all of it felt distant, irrelevant.

He could still hear Egil’s voice and feel his tears.

And for the first time since the battle began, the prince truly felt cold.

And for the first time in years, he felt like truly crying.

He lifted his head toward the sky. The heavens were the color of ash, heavy and unmoved, the same indifferent sky that had watched men die since the dawn of time. His throat ached as he forced the sobs down, his jaw trembling from the effort.

He was scared.

A sound pulled his gaze back to earth

caw… caw…

There, barely a step away, stood a crow. Its feathers black as oil beneath the sun. It stood among corpses as if it were their appointed judge.

It should have flown, should have taken to the air like every other crow either that or feasting on the dead , but it did not. It simply stood there, close enough that Alpheo could see his own reflection shimmer in its onyx eyes.

Those black iris met his.

For a moment, neither man nor bird moved.Each looking in each other’s gaze as if recognising something shared.

Then the crow tilted its head slightly, as if in pity, and let out one last caw before spreading its wings and taking flight.