Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 910

Capítulo 910: Battle of the sands(2)

Had you asked any common soldier twenty years ago who the Sand Riders of Azania were, he would’ve shrugged spat you on the boot, and returned to sharpening his spear. They were a footnote then.

But that was before Arlania and the day of the Shifting Sands .Before the day the War Imperator fell beneath their charge like a child caught beneath a storm.

After that, the world learned their name very, very well.

The defeat of the Empire’s fiery monarch became a tale sung in taverns from the Southern Coast to the Inland Princedoms to those in the deserts. What two centuries of obscurity had failed to achieve, one shattering victory carved into history.

For that victory the Sultan showered the tribes that sent those warriors with lands, gold, and wives. Tribes that were once bickering families under the same sky now strutted with an arrogance earned in blood with their great achievment having partecipated in that battle.

So when the Confederate warriors, far from their ocean-whipped homelands, saw that rising wall of dust sweeping across the plains… they knew.Oh, if they did…

They had spoken of them in jest, around campfires.They had mythologized them as men often do with distant threats they do not expect to face.

But hearing of wolves is one thing.Seeing them run at you is another.

They had grown fat on victories, an Empire drowned at sea, another toppled by fire and steel. They believed themselves chosen by fate, sculpted by salt and storm, incapable of falling. They had mistaken momentum for immortality.

So they soared,high, reckless, sun-drunk.Never noticing their wings were only wax.Never imagining the sun could burn.

But the sun was rising now.And it brought riders with it.

— ALALAIIII —

The battle cry rolled across the plains, deep and terrible, a sound that did not belong on the human spectre for its meaning.

It rattled shields.It slithered into men’s bones and coiled there making roof.

Even the sky seemed to quiver.

The archers of Khairo still held their shots, hands trembling as they stared at the front ranks,at their own parents, their own elderly, the faces of neighbors they had known since childhood. They could not loose a single arrow. Their oaths to the city, their morality, their humanity, those invisible chains held firm.

But the Sand Riders?Their only loyalty was to the men riding beside them.Blood ties ran sideways, not backward. They had no common ancestry here, they were after all foreigners that the Sultan had put a leash on, and they cared not if the rabbits they were to hunt were pets to somebody.

And so they felt no hesitation.No pity.No conflict as they sank their teeth and claws.

In their eyes, the slaves before them were nothing more than carcasses already half-rotten,meat flung on the path to inconvenience their charge. And beyond them? Behind that shaking wall of bones and tears?

Rats.That was what the Sultan had deemed the Confederacy.Sea rats, unworthy even of the sand they died on.

Terror incarnate took shape on that field as the desert beasts descended.The first impact was not a sound but a sensation, rumbling in the ribs, a tremor in the teeth, the kind of vibration that tells a man the world itself is about to break.

Then came the slaughter.

The pirates standing behind the human shield heard only muffled cries,thin, pathetic whimpers swallowed instantly by the roar of camel hooves. Men were not merely struck; they were erased. Lives became shapes, shapes became pulp, and pulp became nothing at all.

Under the thunder of those great beasts they learnt how big the world they trudged on was , and how little they were.

Bones snapped like brittle branches under winter frost.Skulls burst into red mist,flowers blossoming for only a heartbeat.Jaws froze mid-scream, then vanished beneath hooves as if the earth itself devoured them.

The Sand Riders did not even lower their spears for the slaves,they weren’t worth the effort.Nor did they steer aside to spare them.Like a sandstorm, they passed through the bodies with no more recognition than wind has for a dying leaf.

No hatred.No satisfaction.No malice.

The Riders were beyond all human sentiment; they were function made flesh, drilling forward like burrowing moles. What lay behind them ceased to exist the moment it passed beneath their beasts.

It was only once they burst through the collapsing wall of dying bodies that the true impact began, and thier meaning took shape.

For there,past the mangled remnants of the slave line, stood the Azanians drafted into Confederate service. Azanians who knew, deep down, that they had been chosen to die today. Their spears shook. Shields trembled. Yet they braced all the same.

A lifetime spent raiding fat merchant ships, burning villages, and tormenting fishermen had made the Confederates forget what a beast could do to a man. They were used to enemies who screamed and ran, who begged or bled or broke.

The Sand Riders reminded them of how beautiful slaughter could be.

With a force no mere horse could muster, five hundred kilograms of muscle, rage, and steel smashed into the first proper line of the Confederate host.

The collision was… obscene.

Speed met flesh. Weight met bone.And the human body, fragile, laughable,failed in every conceivable way.

Lances drove through ribs like parchment.Torsos ruptured.Hearts tore loose from their cavities.Brains burst against the insides of their skulls before the skulls themselves shattered.Men were shaken apart from within, organs liquefying under the sheer momentum.

Even as momentum slowed on corpses, the beasts did not falter. They trampled. They kicked. They surged onward, each hoof a hammer blow that turned skulls into clay, and clay into mist of a flower’s bloom.

Above them, the riders, steady, balanced, terrifyingly calm, finally went to work.

Curved blades rose and fell in elegant arcs, harvesting lives like a farmer plucking ripe fruit. A scimitar kissed a neck. A head spun away. Another blade sliced through shoulder, breastbone, and lung with all the resistance of wet parchment. Men who attempted to crawl to safety had their spines folded backward like paper by the next camel to pass.

And though not a single Confederate had yet been touched,their own cannon fodder taking the punishment by design,the sight alone hollowed them.

These were men who had murdered without purpose, without meaning, for nothing more than the thrill of domination,like animals seeking pleasure before the sun burned out. Their entire lives had been built on the illusion of superiority. They were predators who had never tasted their own fear.

Now they watched as true apex predators ripped through their allies like butcher’s scraps.

Their minds blanked.Their bravado evaporated.Their spines softened to wax.

For the first time, the Confederates understood:

They were not hunters today.

They were prey.

Fear spread through the Confederate ranks like rot through damp wood.

You could hear it in the muttering, feral, broken little things breaking from dry throats:

“By the deep… they’re carving through them like fish guts.”

“We’re dead. We’re all dead.”

“Not even hell wants beasts like these…”

“Look at them,, why did we ever come here?”

“I knew Hardgut would get me killed… curses on him… curses on me for following him…”

Some men clutched their axes as if the wood might crumble out of their hands.Some backed away from the front, steps small, hoping no one would notice.Others simply stared ahead, eyes empty, watching the camel riders tear apart the first line like dogs ripping open sacks of grain.

One pirate,a brute who had flayed a man alive last winter for sport, fell to his knees, whispering, “Mother, I don’t want to die like this…”

Blake saw it all.

The trembling.The sweating.The shrinking of men who once called themselves wolves into whimpering pups.

Something inside him snapped,not in despair, but in fury.

They were his.His crew.His army.His damned idiots.And he would not see them die as frightened vermin.

So he stepped forward.

He didn’t walk,he strode, shoving aside men twice his size as if they were reeds in riverwater.His presence alone pressed the air down, making even the panicked look up.

He climbed onto a wooden cart,once filled with grain, now empty from looting—and turned it into his throne for one heartbeat.

Then he roared.

The shout tore out of him like something ancient, rivaling the shrieks of the dying ahead:

“EARS TO ME!”

Every head snapped toward him.Even the camels in the distance paused, snorting steam.

Blake stood tall, shoulders broad, hair whipping in the wind like a banner soaked in blood.

“There is only ONE man among you who dares raise his head today,” he growled, voice deep enough to crack marrow. “And that man is ME. And now, NOW , I ask you: what in all the hells do I see before me?”

He swept his arm across them, accusing.

“I see sheep! Sheep trembling at thunder!”

He spat.

“Where are the wolves who butchered Romelia? Who carved their dominion on the seas with nothing but grit, blades, and curses? Where are the monsters the world feared?”

Silence. Shame.Men looked away.

Blake leaned forward, eyes blazing.

“You fear because this is a challenge. Good! A life without challenge is a life wasted. Stones on the road are not walls,either you kick them aside or you leap over them! But you—” he punched his chest, “—you were born to smash through them!”

His voice rose, sharp and triumphant:

“Raise your steel into the air!”

Some did.

“Howl your souls into the sky!”

Others joined.

“And show all the world,show THEM—” he pointed at the charging camel riders, “—that THEIR time has passed, and OURS HAS COME AND JUST BEGUN!”

A roar erupted.

Not a cheer.A pure, primal howl,raw enough to tear throats and shake earth.

Blake leapt off the cart, landed in a crouch, and without hesitation sprinted toward the chaos showing the way forth.

The soldiers parted instinctively as the Red Angel wove through them, axes in hand, charging toward a fate no sane man would choose.

But Blake was not sane.He couldn’t have been if he had led them all the way there.

And shame,heavy and choking, hung behind the pirates.

One by one, then in groups, then in a tidal wave, the Confederates surged after him.

Axes lifted.Helms donned.War-cries ripped from their chests.

They ran,toward the nightmare beasts stamping the world flat.