Chapter 560: Last effort(5)

    It was blackness, a kind of darkness so complete that it didn’t just blind—it suffocated. The moonless sky gave nothing. No stars, no shapes, not even the sheen of steel or the glint of helmets. All the rebel soldiers had were sounds—and those sounds were hellish, provocative and nightmarish.

    Metal screamed against metal.Men cried out—some in fury, most in agony.The thudding rhythm of boots stomping mud.The sickening crunch of bodies breaking to the awful machine of war.

    But no sight.No form.No enemy they could point to and say: There—strike there.

    Death was around them and yet invisible

    And so, thousands stood paralyzed, trying to make sense of a nightmare unfolding in the black, with only bloodcurdling clues to guide them.

    On a normal day, in full daylight with colors flying and captains shouting, the sheer weight of their numbers might’ve stirred courage. They might’ve rallied and charged following their lords’ directives

    But this?This was madness.This was dying like cattle and no wanted to die in the dark.

    On the far edge of the chaos, in the dim glow of dying torches, some men clutched their weapons but did not move. They whispered, shouted at each other:”What’s happening? What’s going on in there?”

    ”Where is the enemy?”

    “Why are they screaming like that?”

    And then the wind shifted.

    And with it came the sound.

    At first, it was like thunder in the distance. A beat. A rumble.

    Hooves.

    Not the sharp trot of a scout or the shuffling of a patrol—this was a charge. A wall of horses cutting the night like razors, fast and deadly. The ground began to tremble. Men turned toward the sound with wide eyes, frozen in the dark, unable to even guess how close it was.

    And then the second sound came—the hiss.

    Dozens of projectiles, javelins, slicing the air like whispers turned into shrieks. Then the thunks, cracks, gasps—bodies dropping, men falling sideways, some not even understanding they were hit until they felt the wet heat pour down their ribs.

    There were no commands. No horns. No cries of attack.

    Just the oncoming storm in the shape of hooves and steel.And for the rebels caught in the middle—no way out.

    The javelins came like whispers of death, unseen in the dark but heard in the split second before they landed—a sharp hiss, then a wet, crunching thud as iron bit into flesh.

    One man screamed as a shaft buried itself in his thigh, only for another to slam through his neck when he turned. Another clutched his side, moaning, trying to stagger back into the crowd—until he collapsed, coughing blood, trampling feet crushing his ribs as others tried to escape what they could not see.

    Cries of pain erupted, ragged and high-pitched, like pigs at the butcher’s block.

    All around them, confusion and terror boiled, and men began to push and shove and fall—trapped in a pit of bodies and rising panic.

    Then came the sound that split the air.

    Drums of hooves.

    Not the scattered trot of scouts.

    This was a wall of death bearing down at full tilt.

    Two hundred horsemen, their lances lowered, teeth bared, thundering through the black with only one direction: through and due . Their banners weren’t raised. Their cries were not of war but of raw, merciless violence.

    The front line barely had time to turn. Some raised shields. Most didn’t. Some tried to run.

    It made no difference.

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    ”Either victory or we all die!”

    Was the last thing they heard as lances tore through men like they were stuffed sacks. Steel tips punctured through bellies, tearing out spines and organs with one thunderous impact. One man was lifted clean off the ground, impaled mid-run, his last breath a choked gurgle as he dangled like meat on a spit.

    Bones broke like dry wood beneath hooves. Skulls split under iron shoes. One man, trying to crawl away, had his spine crushed beneath a stallion’s weight, his scream cut short as his chest flattened like dough.

    The riders didn’t stop—they plowed through, dragging broken bodies on their lances, eyes wide, blood flecking their faces, many of them laughing—not in joy, but in the fury of it, the madness of war , the beautiful addiction of it.

    And behind them came the rest—maces raised, axes gleaming in firelight, finishing what the charge had started.

    Men were trampled, split, shattered.The living screamed.The dying twitched.And the soil drank deep for it was due for a feast.

    ——————

    Egil’s lance shattered with a crack like thunder, splinters flying as it drove deep into a man’s chest—so deep, in fact, that when the body crumpled, it took the shaft with it, snapping it clean in two. He didn’t even flinch. His hand was already reaching for the broad-bladed axe strapped across his back, the weapon sliding free with a heavy, eager sound like steel sighing in hunger.

    The moment his fingers curled around the haft, he was grinning—not the grin of a hero, but the crooked, tooth-baring smile of a man who had just been saved from the hell of tedium.

    “Thank the bastards,” he muttered, almost reverently, as he spurred his horse forward. “I thought boredom would kill me before any blade did.”

    The next rebel didn’t even get to scream. Egil’s axe came down like a falling star, splitting helm and skull in a single blow. Bone crunched. Blood fountained. The man’s body jerked like a puppet with its strings cut and hit the ground with a sickening wet slap.

    Another turned to run—Egil swung low from horseback, the axe catching him at the neck. It didn’t cut cleanly, instead biting deep and dragging half the shoulder with it, a grotesque tear of meat and mail, like peeling the rind off a fruit.

    He laughed. Gods, how he laughed.

    “Run, don’t run, scream, piss yourselves—it’s all the same to me!” he shouted, as a rebel came at him with a spear. Egil caught the haft mid-thrust with his shield , and the came toward him before butting him in the face with his armored boot so hard the man’s nose vanished in a spray of cartilage and blood. The axe followed, cleaving diagonally through collarbone and out under the opposite arm.

    Atop his blood-flecked horse, Egil turned his head briefly from the chaos, axe resting heavy in his grip, its edge wet and glistening. Screams rose all around—raw, terrified, human, some gurgling, some clipped short. The smoke, the night, the press of bodies—it was beautiful, in a brutal, wretched way.

    He glanced to the left, where Jarza’s infantry should be pouring like dark water down a hill, smashing into the rebels with cold precision and silent discipline.

    Then to the right, where he himself carved his path, each stroke a punctuation in the sentence of someone’s last breath.

    Behind, the thunder of hooves and gold-gilded banners—Mereth, pompous and shining as always, yet his heavy cavalry hit like the fist of a god, smashing through the rebel rear and grinding them beneath steel and hooves in a charge so devastating that only an armored contingent could achieve.

    Egil chuckled low in his throat, spitting a gob of blood—someone else’s—onto the dirt.”Fucking genius,” he murmured, eyes narrowing with something dangerously close to admiration.”That pretty bastard actually did it.”

    Alph. The prince. The strategist. The schemer.With just half of his total strength, the rest probably coming soon, had caught the entire rebel host by the throat and now watched them choke on their own ambition. A perfect encirclement, every angle sealed.

    Egil swung his axe lazily and caught a man across the jaw, the blade carving the face into a ruin of splintered bone and flapping skin.

    “Where you gonna run now?” he muttered toward the crowd, watching the panic spread.

    He leaned forward slightly, urging his horse toward the next knot of rebels too dazed to flee.

    ——————–

    In the shadowed rear of the seemingly plundered camp, figures flitted like phantoms, their movements quick, precise—intentional. Gloved hands hurled clay pots against the wooden walls and packed earth, each one shattering with a wet crunch and releasing thick streams of oil that oozed down the surfaces like black blood.

    The scent of it clung to the air—sharp, flammable, final.

    Just behind them, two men stood like officers of death at parade—Marcus and Lucius, their cloaks drawn tight, their faces half-lit by torchlight and the distant flicker of battle from beyond the tents.

    From where they stood, the screams had begun to reach them. Not the kind from surprise or scuffle—the long, dragging ones that peeled out of a man when hope was already gone but his body hadn’t caught up yet.

    Lucius smirked, lighting a slim pipe as though the world wasn’t cracking open on the other side of the canvas.

    “Sounds like they’re having their fun out there.” He turned slightly, eyes narrow and amused. “Ever regret it, Marcus? Leaving command, trading standards for shadows? We used to march behind banners. Now we hide behind curtains.”

    Marcus didn’t answer right away. His eyes remained locked on one of the agents spreading oil across the base of a support beam, his brush moving like a painter caressing the edge of a masterpiece.

    Finally, he said, “I miss the simplicity of it.”He scratched at his stubble.”Miss when all I had to worry about was the weight of the sword in my hand, not whether I’d be skinned alive for being late to a drop point.”He looked over to Lucius.”And if I died, at least it would’ve been in the open, with steel, not in some rat pit with a blade under my fingernails.”

    Lucius chuckled.”Pretty poetic.”

    ”Pretty sad” Marcus corrected

    Just then, one of the agents—a slim young man in oil-slicked clothes—turned. With a quick movement, he raised two fingers, then made a circular gesture, finishing it with a thumbs-down. The meaning was clear.

    Everything was ready.

    Lucius puffed his pipe once more.”Well. Time to light the match.”

    Marcus stepped forward, rolling his shoulders like a man about to get back into a familiar rhythm.”Let’s give ’em a bonfire to remember.”

    Lucius, always the more polished of the two, gave Marcus a sidelong look, eyebrows raised with a smirk creeping into the corner of his lips.”Care to do the honors, old friend?” he asked, voice calm and half amused, as though they were opening a vintage bottle of wine and not about to commit mass arson and murder.

    Marcus didn’t hesitate. “Do I want to? Are you shitting me?”He rolled his neck until it cracked, rage barely veiled beneath a chuckle.”I was forced to walk for days like a dog—no food, no water, sleeping under roots and praying for rain. “He snatched the torch Lucius held out, the firelight licking across his face like some kind of demon’s blessing.”Ain’t no one but me that gets to burn these rats. No one.”

    He turned on his heel, boots grinding into the packed earth, then with a grunt and a practiced throw, he hurled the torch across the space—its fiery tail a comet arcing through the dark. It spun once in the air, then landed with a wet hiss in the largest puddle of oil, igniting it with a ravenous roar.

    Flames screamed to life, racing like starving beasts along the trail of oil, crawling up the walls, devouring tents, spreading toward the center of the camp. The light danced wildly, casting tall, lurching shadows like wraiths tearing through canvas and timber.

    Lucius, already turning to leave, glanced back. “Perhaps,” he said, flicking his pipe out, “we should go. Before we end up crisped like the rest.”

    Marcus stood a moment longer, jaw tight, flames reflected in his eyes like the gaze of a man watching justice take its course.”I’d have loved to see one of those fuckers screaming with their skin melting off,” he muttered, almost wistfully. “But I think I’ll settle for seeing what’s left of ’em come morning.”