Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 924

Capítulo 924: Rat Catchers(7)

No one can fight nature.

A hound born for the chase will never understand why its master beats it for doing the very thing its blood commands. You can shout, curse, drag it by the collar,but the instant its nose catches the scent, it will be gone, bounding after the chicken he sight as if the world itself depended on it.

A rabbt, when shadow falls upon it, cannot be faulted for its panic. Its whole being is stitched around the singular instinct to run.

And these criminals, these burrow-dwellers clinging to the illusion of cunning,are nothing but that: mices jolted from their nest.

They flee.Not in formation, not with even the faintest dream of order. This is no battle. This is not even a rout, which would imply a commander, a standard, a mind behind the movement

Their limbs were scrambling through the narrow gut of the tunnel in a frantic blur as they run everwhere that they felt was safe.

Feel, not think.

They don’t think anymore. They don’t look back. They don’t even understand what they are fleeing toward.

In their minds, salvation waits at the far end of the dark.A ladder, an exit, perhaps a friendly face to pull them from the earth.

Fools.

They do not know that the exits, every single one, were already choked with steel and shields. City guards, stationed hours earlier, were probably smashing the false walls, overturning crates, dragging screaming lookouts by the hair. Every escape route they had prided themselves on crafting,every hidden hatch and disguised door, has been sniffed out and sealed shut like cracks in a sinking ship.

By the time they reached the other side of the tunnel, the only thing waiting for them would be a ring of armored men with maces raised, eager to swing.

Some will arrive just in time to hear the screaming.Some will smell the iron in the air and freeze.Some will be shoved forward by the mass of bodies behind them, only to tumble helplessly into a gauntlet of fists, clubs, and boots.

And still they ran, because instinct does not negotiate.

For most of the march it was the same damned sight over and over again, the same packed dirt walls , the same worm-eaten wooden pillars holding the earth at bay, the same stale and foul air.

One of the corridors, according to one of their contacts, led beyond the city walls. It hadn’t taken much wit to figure out what that meant. This was a smugglers’ artery,meant to slip things out unseen, or slip things in that had no right to be there. And most likely it had been built to help those merchant bastards who forged royal charts to shuttle goods past the tax collectors.

If there was one thing history had proved without fail, it was that people would rather saw off their own foot than pay a copper in taxes.

Laedio thought that was all there was to the place,contraband, counterfeit, along with the usual vermin’s work, until the chase thinned. The fleers had either sprinted fast enough to earn a slightly delayed death at the far end of the tunnel, or run slowly enough to meet a mace on the spot. When the pursuit dulled into cautious steps, the company found something new.

A door.

And when they shouldered it open, human eyes stared back at them.

Dozens. Wide. Glassy. Terrified.

Women and children huddled together in a cramped stone alcove, their wrists bound with rope that cut into swollen skin. Some wore torn shawls that hadn’t been washed in weeks, some little more than rags. Their faces were gaunt, cheekbones sharp as blades. .A small girl, eight, perhaps, was staring directly at Laedio as if she understood exactly who among these armed men was the one in charge.

Savio, a veteran at his right, muttered something he had to repeat it a second time before he heard it.

“Animals. Rotting animals.”

Another guard spat, voice smaller but equally filled with disgust.”If it were up to me, they’d get the Wheel and do the breaking myself.”

Laedio said nothing, even though of the bunch he was probably the one who deserved to speak most.

Four years ago, all of this would have lived in the grey belly of the law. It was yet not illegal to practice slavery of Yarzat citizens.

He thought for it a bit…four years ago this sight would have been normal.

He himself, he remembered it too well, had once been among such rooms. Remembered staring up at men with swords, wondering if one of them would be the one to drag him out. Some nights he would wake up with those nightmares, pulling him away from any peace he had found here….it was strange to think he now had something he could consider home.

But times had changed.Thankfully. Their prince had made damned sure of it.

He kept silent when one of his men stepped forward, mace raised. The bar on the door was thick oak with a metal core, but the soldier swung with every ounce of fury in his bones.

CRACK.

It broke through, falling aside in two jagged halves.

The captives flinched, then slowly, one by one, lifted their heads.Their eyes widened.Hope, fragile and trembling, flickered inside them like a candle guttering in a storm.

The little girl did not look away from Laedio, even as the others gasped, even as the guards began cutting ropes and calming frightened hands. Her stare held something strange….gratitude?

Laedio turned away, as he gave orders to his men to follow him deeper into the hole, leaving to a dozen of his men to deal with the prisoners.

They obeyed without a word.

From then on the march grew slow and ugly, every few dozen paces they would corner some bastards, some of them were half–wits and lunged from the dark, they did not get very far. Those who dropped their weapons and begged were spared only in the stingiest sense: a smashed knee, a shattered elbow, a cracked shoulder that would leave them mewling on the ground until another squad found them.

There was no urgency now. The other city units were already sealing the farther exits; the net tightened with each passing breath.

Laedio felt it, felt the noose he had cast drawing taut around the last ember of shame that smoldered in his chest whenever the prince praised him. This time, he told himself, the city would finally be clean.

And he would finally be worth of his damn name.

He would have preferred legionnaires for the push but this would have to do. He had struck everywhere at once, as Alpheo would have: sealing escape routes, battering from the center, collapsing the enemy inward. A textbook assault. Had this been a real battle it might have been dangerous; cornered soldiers fight like starving wolves.

But these? These weren’t soldiers.They were vermin.

They proceeded as they scanned the way.

Hours bled away, or what felt like hours; time had no meaning underground after all, when they reached another fork. Laedio divided his force again, pointing one contingent left and leading the rightward passage himself.

When asked why the right, he simply said he felt it lucky. He was soon proven right.

The tunnel at the end of the right-hand path ended in a door. A real door, thick planks reinforced by iron strips, wedged into the dirt walls like a wart on rotten skin of an old man.

“Break it,” Laedio ordered.

Three men stepped forward, swung their maces, and smashed the hinges free. The door gave way with a splintering crack and sagged open into a room that looked exactly like everything else in this gods-forsaken hole.

Same packed dirt walls, without a single stone to dignify the place.Same sagging ceiling held aloft by warped wooden beams that creaked under their own weight.Same stale breathless air.

No furniture. No crates. No signs of life except—

They stepped inside cautiously, the only source of light one wavering torch carried by the front rank. The deeper they moved, the more shadows crawled across their feet like spilled ink. A few men lit their own torches and fanned out, waving flame back and forth to probe the corners.

Something pale and limp dangled from the wall, several things, actually. At first Laedio thought they were scraps of mold–eaten cloth, but a closer look showed they were pieces of wet paper.

He moved farther in…and his boot slipped on something.

Something small. Roundish.

He crouched, pinched it between two fingers, and held it up to the nearest torch.

Clay.

Raw, pale clay, still damp.

He rotated it toward the light—

And his jaw tightened.

Imprinted on the little disk, barely formed but unmistakable, was the soaring falcon of House Veloni-isha.

The royal sigil.

It was fake; however, one of the legs of the bird was too long. This was a discarded piece….

He had a thought as he straightened , snatched a torch from his nearest guardsman and swept it slowly around the chamber.

Dozens of clay pieces lay scattered at his feet.

Apparently, he had just found gold.

”Look around!” He ordered with a smile ”The bastard that made the fakes must be here!The door was closed!”

Around they looked, soldiers smashing all the furnitures open and looking around with the torches.

For a moment Laedio believed he had struck air and was about to call it off perhaps hoping they would get him deeper into the hole, that was at least until he saw a shadow move away from them aiming toward the open door.

He was quick to extend his leg, causing whoever caused that shadow to fall to the ground.

It wasn’t long before hands sprung up everywhere toward the moving figure; one quick sweep of a torch and they finally had the culprit, its small eyes looking up toward Laedio with an emotion he knew very well: fear.

What peered up in fear was a child.