Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

He could not understand what was happening.

They knew the plan. They knew. Every commander, every warband chief had been drilled on it like scripture. The centre held. The flanks resisted.

They waited for the enemy's fury to burn itself out, and then the hammer would fall, the centre would fall back deep behind the lines , hidden troops would spring out and encircle the enemy centre and once broken they would outflank the rest of the enemy.

So why?

Why in all the hells was the left pursuing?

Had they forgotten? Had they gone mad? Or worse, had that fool Varaku entrusted the flank to one of those hot-blooded chieftain desperate to carve a name in stone with the blood of his own men?

Valen's heart hammered in his chest. The whole battle hinged on timing, on coordination. The left had not just disobeyed, they had fractured the spine of the entire formation. The momentum was broken, the shape unraveling. His carefully built trap had been torn open like a gutted deer.

The enemy's true might hadn't even moved yet and now, with the left exposed, they would.

He almost ripped his helmet off and howled at the sky. He almost let the rage claw its way out. But a general's fury was a gift to the enemy. A moment of weakness made glorious in their eyes.

Instead, he forced his eyes open wider. Drank in the chaos. Searched for patterns. For something—anything, to salvage.

His mind turned like a grindstone, sparks flying behind his eyes. One thread. He needed one thread to pull.

That thread soon came to him, as flimsy as it was, he would have held on to grass if he could.

And right now he hadn't enough option to play picky...

The centre of the enemy's vanguard began to falter. Not a full rout, not yet. But hesitation. Confusion. Their left had shattered, and it was spreading like rot. Now even the right of their front line was beginning to retreat.

Valen's breath caught in his throat.

This was no solution, for they had none , it was a gamble the gods had handed him, double-edged and glinting.

He had two options. Retreat and leave the Chorsi to their fate or break ranks, abandon the trench, and commit.

Valen would not define himself like a betting man, but unfortunately , there was no time.

His eyes darted behind. His troops were waiting. Staring at him. For a moment it appeared that even the enemy center was waiting. Waiting to see what he would do.

It was all or nothing.

He drew his sword and raised it high, voice rising to tear through the din of battle like a blade of its own.

"Men of Yarzat!" he bellowed, his voice ringing like iron. "Look ahead, see your enemy run! Our allies on the left chase them like wolves. Will you be the ones to cower in the trench while they feast on glory?"

He rode along the line, his horse thrumming with energy beneath him, its hooves kicking dust from the blood-soaked earth.

"Today is the day you carve your name into legend! For your homes! For your honor! For your prince!"

He turned his horse toward the carnage.

"CHARGE! Strike them down while their backs still turn! Glory is not given, it is TAKEN!"

He did not wait for their answer. He spurred his horse forward into the wake of the fleeing enemy, praying in the marrow of his bones that his men would follow.

And then thankfully he heard it.

The war cry.

A thousand and a half voices rising like a tidal wave behind him.

They came spilling out of the trenches like a tide of steel and blood, boots trampling flesh and splintered bone, stepping over mouths frozen mid-scream. Hands grabbed at the wooden stakes for leverage, pushing, pulling, dragging themselves into the light of open slaughter.

Some were helped by comrades behind, shoulders shoved, war cries barked into ears gone deaf from fear.

Birthed by the land , they would water it with the blood of their enemy.

Valen could not follow their path. Mounted, there was no elegant way to leap a trench littered with corpses. No hero's route through the forest of death he'd built with his own plan. So he wheeled wide, circled past the defenses. Not graceful. Not glorious, still the only alternative

He felt the dull thrum of hoofbeats in his legs, in his chest, like the horse's bones were rattling his own. His sword pommel was already wet with his own sweat.

He realised that even he did not believe in this alternative.

Still it was their only choice....

The enemy's retreating rear had become a harvest at the very least. The Yarzat moved through them like reapers through grain, cutting, stabbing, clubbing. Screams rose and broke in the air like fireworks of agony.

Valen held back. He would not let ego lure him into the meat of the chaos before his strength was with him. He turned in the saddle, eyes scanning the wave behind.

His men were coming. All of them. A human avalanche now cresting the ridge of the trench and pouring down toward him.

That was the advantage of a horse. Elevation. Vision. From his saddle he saw not just the chaos at hand, but the line beyond it.

And what he saw froze the thrill in his veins.

The Duskwindai elite. Still untouched. Still waiting. Shields like a wall of hammered dusk.

They had not moved. Not during the slaughter. Not during the rout.

They had watched.

Watched their enslaved brethren break and run. Watched the lines of the Yarzat charge. Watched the left and right begin their foolish pursuit.

And now, finally they moved.

It was subtle. Quiet. The shifting of formation. A shuffling of boots. An inhale before the roar.

They were coming.

Valen hissed through his teeth, spit and sweat beading in the corners of his lips. His heart clawed at his chest.

If they rallied the fleeing fodder, if they managed to reform the line, his advantage of terrain, of control, of tempo, it would be lost. They would be drawn into a true brawl, in the open, outnumbered and outmatched.

He slammed his blade into the collar of a shrieking tribesman, steel parting neck from shoulder in a sickening crunch. The body twitched once, violently, then folded like wet parchment.

"Damn," Valen muttered to himself, flicking gore from his sword with a sharp jerk. "They're going to rally them."

Valen did not know whether to laugh or retch at what instead happened.

He had expected a rally. A tightening of enemy lines to convince them to join the fighting. The expected move of any commander worth the blood in his veins, reform, rearm, and send the fodder back to die with dignity to wind the enemy's forces.

But the Duskwindai did not rally their fleeing slaves.

They butchered them.

Axes rose like executioner's hammers and came down on the necks of the broken, the disoriented, and the screaming. Men who had turned to their masters for shelter were rewarded with blades to the belly. Spears punched through chests like wooden fangs. Shields slammed into skulls. Bones crunched. Limbs flailed. Blood fountained in arcs that painted their killers' armor black.

Valen saw one boy, no older than thirteen, maybe, raise his arms in surrender, stumbling forward with tears streaking down his mud-caked cheeks.

They split him from chest to throat.

All around, the first wave died not at the hands of the Yarzat or the Chorsi, but by those they had marched with. Hunted down like diseased cattle. Not soldiers. Not even men. Just meat that had outlived its usefulness.

Some turned and ran, not back toward the Yarzat, not even toward death, but sideways, into the unclaimed chaos of no-man's-land, desperate to vanish from both gods and monsters.

Others stood frozen, too stunned to flee as death came from both sides.

In their savagery, the Duskwindai had accomplished what even Valen's plan had struggled to do. They cleared the field of their fodder.

And in doing so, they gifted Valen a moment of dreadful clarity.

Because now, there was no mistaking who stood across the field.

Gone were the screaming hordes. Gone the ragged slave-levy and broken charge.

What remained was the steel.

The elite.

The true spine of the Duskwindai host, row upon row of disciplined warriors, glimmering in blackened armor and silence. Their blades unsullied by the blood of slaves. Their shields locked tight. Eyes hard. Purpose absolute.

Valen wasted no time.

He had long ago learned that in battle, hesitation was death. And now, the field stretched before him like a slate wiped clean, not by mercy, but by massacre. The retreating slaves were gone, their corpses ground into the earth. The open plain between the two armies yawned like the mouth of some ancient god, begging to be filled again.

And Valen would answer.

He wheeled his horse around, voice rising sharp and clear over the carnage. "Form ranks! Spears to the front! Shields locked! "

The men of Yarzat, responded immediately rallying around the man. Despite the chaos and blood and ruin, they obeyed.

Behind them, the Chorsi followed suit, gruffer in movement, less uniform but no less fierce. Valen had put his Yarzat at the front not out of pride, but familiarity. He knew them. Knew how they moved, how they broke and held. If he was to wield this army like a blade, then Yarzat would be the edge, and the Chorsi the weight behind the blow.

He scanned the field as the lines settled.

Arrows jutted from the earth like graves, and stray limbs peeked from heaps of the fallen arms sprawled in the terrain as if welcoming the embrace of death.

And as Valen looked to the darkened line of the Duskwindai elite, now marching forward with great speed and ferocity, he knew that this next clash would be the one that wrote the fate of all.

He truly was no man of dice...