Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Arrows and stones hissed like serpents through the sky.

Then came the screams, short, sharp bursts of agon, followed by the wet, sickening thuds of bodies hitting earth. Limbs twisted at wrong angles. Skulls cracked open like fruit beneath the hammer of a cruel harvest. Blood sprayed in bursts, soaking into the dirt, and the ground drank deep, as if the earth itself were a starving beast eager for flesh.

Then the front shattered.

The enslaved tribesmen, barely held together by fear and threats, met the forward line of Valen's defense, and smashed like waves against the stone.

Their formation, loose and chaotic from the start, collapsed into a mess of desperate men trying to push through angled stakes, trenches, and screaming steel. From above, it looked like a boat already halfway to sinking, punched full of holes, now splintering into driftwood.

Valen's preparations held firm.

The angled stakes funneled the attackers inward, dragging their chaos into a bottleneck of death.

Some leapt over the trench, exposed mid-air, and found only spearheads waiting to split them open. Others tumbled into the ditch below, screaming, scrabbling at the walls like rats in a pit, only to be met by cold steel driven down into their necks by the Yarzat above, who had the clear advantage of height.

There was no rhythm to their assault, no war cry that carried conviction. Just raw panic masked behind forced roars, the kind of screaming men do to hide the sound of their own thoughts.

And yet all they met was silence.

The Yarzat were calm in their butchery. Their spears jabbed with mechanical precision, short thrusts to the belly, the throat, the groin. When their spears went it and a body fell, bringing it down with them, they switched to knives or short swords, cutting through sinew and skin with the ease of butchers.

Valen watched from his platform, eyes cold, mouth tight.

The enemy had no spirit for this. No armor, no discipline. Just mediocre weaponry and desperation.

Wherever Yarzat weapons landed, they carved through flesh like a plow through wet soil.

A gurgle, a scream, and then blood. Always blood. So much of it.

Red fountains that soaked tunics and faces, that sprayed across shields, that pooled at their feet as men collapsed into it like sacks of meat.

And yet more came.

Driven from behind, shoved forward by the threat of blades, the next wave surged ahead. Not because they wanted to, but because to turn back meant death just the same.

Valen's hand rested on the pommel of his sword. His face was expressionless, but inside, he felt the rhythm of the moment tighten like a drumline before a crescendo.

This was only the first wave. The fodder. The beginning.

The storm had not yet arrived.

And yet the fields already ran red.

The trench, once just a line in the earth, now pulsed like something alive. It heaved and writhed, not with mud or water, but with broken bodies stacked like butcher's refuse.

Some were dead. Most weren't, as the moaning was hearable if one leaned forward.

The soldiers that did that work watched, jaw clenched, as limbs twitched in the mound of flesh, hands clawing, reaching skyward.

Faces half-sunk in blood and dirt gasped for air that would not come. They flailed, sobbed, and shrieked, so guttural were their sounds that they didn't seem human anymore, but instead, if one closed his eyes, he would think of hearing shrieking sheep.

The living buried beneath the dying. The dying crushed beneath the dead.

They looked like worms and sounded like sheep.

Beasts made of men, wriggling and slick, gasping in pain and panic, slick with blood and horror.

The next wave saw it. You could see it in their eyes, the moment when momentum faltered. When one foot hesitated on the edge. When they stopped screaming their war cries and just stood there, staring at what had become of their kin.

A wall of meat. A creature made of men.

Some froze. Statues in the face of terror. Their gaze locked on the trench as if their minds refused to register what they were seeing. That it was real. That it awaited them.

But the war behind them had no patience for fear.

The screaming of comrades.

The push of shoulders and elbows and desperation. And then they were moving, forward, over or into the pit.

And they screamed as they did so.

Some tried to step over it delicately, as if crossing puddles of mud. Others tripped and tumbled headlong into the muck, falling hard as they crashed into the pile below, screaming as something far beneath them cracked, ribcages, collarbones, someone's skull. The lucky ones died quick. The others flailed, shrieking beneath the crush.

And still they came.

Some tried to turn back. A step. A breath.

They were shoved.

They were thrown to their deaths, as their culprit too joined them in their unwanted jump.

And the worst part they would find was that those who did the pushing didn't do it out of hate. There was no malice in their eyes. Only fear. Only the raw, animal terror of men who knew that if they didn't shove forward, they too would be fed to the wolves waiting behind.

So they pushed their brothers. And their brothers fell screaming. And the spears met them like they always had, cold, steady, waiting.

Valen's eyes narrowed as he saw it.

As he knew that every man crossing that trench wasn't doing it for victory. They weren't dreaming of glory or conquest.

They were here because behind them, somewhere far from this cursed field, there were children. Wives. Sisters. Held hostage by fear and warlords who offered one simple bargain:

Fight, and maybe live. Run, and they die.

So they charged. Not for themselves, but for the chains that bound them. The invisible nooses strung around the necks of their kin.

And one by one, they fell.

Still, as the slaughter raged below with the hours passing , the hilltop rained death without pause.

The air was thick with the hiss and snap of projectiles, stones whirring like angry hornets, arrows whispering their deadly promise before thudding into flesh, wood, or bone. It was a constant, merciless rhythm. Not even the wind dared break it.

The boys and men atop the slope did not falter. Slingers, barefoot children no older than thirteen, twirled their cords with silent intensity, their eyes empty of youth. The rhythm of their wrists was machine-like now. Swing. Release. Reload. Again.

Beside them, archers with thick forearms and calloused fingers notched and loosed with the precision of priests performing a ritual. The air sang with violence. Every few seconds came a grunt of effort, the twang of bowstring, and then the distant wet thuck as arrows found purchase in meat.

Blades below darted like fangs between shields. Thrusts were short and brutal, not the elegant dances of duels but the panicked jabs of survival. Blood sprayed like spit from severed throats.

One moment a man stood, snarling, driving his blade into an enemy's gut and the next he collapsed, his own neck opened by a curved axe he hadn't seen.

Valen watched it unfold with cold eyes.

The Duskwindai's enslaved tribes broke themselves on the palisade like waves on rock. They were desperate, undisciplined, but numerous, and numbers had weight. The trench overflowed now. The lucky landed atop the dead. The unlucky landed still breathing, only to be crushed or gutted.

Yet the Yarzat and Chorsi held.

Their spears darted like vipers through the gaps in the defenses. No wasted motion. No calls for mercy. They did not fight with hatred. They fought with precision like farmers cleaving wheat. Strike, retract, step aside. Again.

The stakes had slowed the charge. The trench had broken the cohesion. But it was the blades that finished the work.

Some of the Yarzat had begun to climb atop the piled bodies in the trench itself, which appeared to have made a bridge out of the bodies, using the dead as stepping stones to strike at the still-living who stumbled forward.

And still, the sky rained stone and arrow as the hours passed.

Valen tore his gaze from the trench, where the writhing dead continued to twitch, and turned, not out of revulsion, but duty. He needed to see the field. Every inch of it. The battle had been built like an open book. No flank was obscured, no movement hidden. When your numbers were few, you couldn't afford to fight blind.

The hill offered clarity. He pivoted in the saddle, eyes scanning the horizon, ears still filled with the unrelenting noise of war, the churn of steel, the cries of pain, the wet gurgle of dying breath. A soundscape so thick it almost felt frozen, a storm so constant it became silence.

And then, he saw motion.

Valen's jaw tightened as he spotted the left flank.

At first, he thought it a break in the enemy line, a rout, perhaps, a surge of cowardice tearing through the ranks of the Duskwindai's conscripted slaves. It should have been cause for celebration as now the true might of the enemy would join the fight.

But then he looked closer. And the blood in his veins turned to ice.

It wasn't just the enemy that was fleeing.

Their left was giving chase.... deserting their posts and disrupting the plan Valen had made, the only thing that could have brought them hope of victory.