Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1073: Fair bill(3)

The ringing in Mers’ ears was a high, thin whine that seemed to drown out even the roar of the collapsing timber of that early morning. His gaze was fixed on the threshold of the hovel, where the coal-black incinerated remains of his men lay in a tangled heap.

Not even the ravens would pluck at these corpses; the smell of scorched hair and rendered fat was so cloying it seemed to stain the very air with something so perverse it could not be named.

The limbs of the dead were locked in eerie straight angles, distorted by the heat into a final, desperate pose of escape. It was haunting to look at, as if their spirits were still trying to claw through the air long after their lungs had turned to ash.

He had spent a lifetime in the service of the Warrior of Wrath, but this was the first time he had seen a company consumed by fire. He had seen men disemboweled in the mud ; he had seen heads sheared from shoulders. He had sent many souls to the Gods’ judgment, but always through the honest weight of steel, there wasn’t a death that he did not dealt with his own hand.

Commoners and green knights misunderstood the Warrior. They saw only the blood on the blade and the fury in the eye. But to Mers, the Warrior was the god of perseverance. He was there in the soldier who held the line against impossible odds, yes, but He was also there in the mother screaming and bawling as she pushed new life into a cold world. He was the exaltation of the fighting spirit, the divine spark that refused to be extinguished.The god that sanctioned bravery and spirit.

The battlefield was the highest form of worship because it was where that spirit was tested most fiercely. He is not a god of good or evil, he is the god of perserverence.

But there was no worship here.

As the ringing in his ears slowly receded, the fractured voices of the survivors began to seep back in. Men were coughing, their faces smeared with soot, their hands blistered as they reached into the cooling pyres to drag out what was left of their comrades.

"Unlucky bastards," one man croaked, his voice raw from the smoke. "That’s an ugly way to go... no chance to even draw a knife."

"Have you seen Ronis?" another asked, something in his voice trembled. "I haven’t seen his face since we made camp yesterday."

"You think he’s in there? In the heap?"

"I... I don’t know. Gods be good, I hope he ran into the woods and never came back.Even if he deserted...anything but this."

Mers looked at the charcoal remains and felt a heavy, leaden pity. The men were right. There was no perseverance in a fire. There was no fighting will to be shown when the very air you breathed turned into a furnace. The flame did not care for the strength of a man’s arm or the nobility of his soul. To the fire, the reaction of a veteran knight, a small child, or a withered elder was identical: they all performed the same frantic, mindless dance until their sinews were eaten away and their voices failed.

It was a hollow, undignified end. It was the work of a Fox, not a Lion.

Honorless cowards them all.Bereft of the spirit of the Warrior. How could the gods sanction such princehood upon such a man?

The sound of heavy, uneven footsteps rang out on the scorched earth behind him. The knight turned, his lone hand resting instinctively on his pommel.

Ser Marvy stood there, the hollowed-out shell of the "Cock-Knight."

The arrogance had been burned away with the night, leaving only a soot-stained youth whose expensive silk surcoat was now a tattered, blackened rag. He looked as though he had finally realized that war was not as pretty and pink as the poem sang by maidens, all that he had was a stench that refused to leave his throat.

Had Marvy made even a single jest, Mers would have likely backhanded him across the square and faced the Ezvanian Prince’s wrath later. But there was no humor left in the boy.

"The sentries... we found them along the perimeter, Ser," Marvy rasped, his voice cracking as he forced his eyes away from a particularly grotesque heap of fleshy coal.

"All of them?" Mers asked, his voice low.

"Yes, Sir. Every last one," Marvy nodded, his head bobbing like a broken toy.

"How did they die?"

"Daggers. Mostly in the back of the neck or under the jaw. They went quick, at the very least. No one even had time to scream." The boy swallowed hard, glancing toward the darkened outskirts of the village. "And the stables, Sir... they’re empty. The bastards stole the horses while our men died burning. Every spare mount and half the knights’ chargers are gone."

Mers let out a long, jagged sigh at those words. Thirty sentries, silenced without a single alarm being raised.They were good.... He didn’t know whether to feel the icy prickle of fear or the white heat of anger.

The loss of the horses was a great one, he would never hear the end of it from the other lords. Knights loved their horses more than their wives, and many of them were sworn to lords, who would soon be howling for remuneration.

The failure sat squarely on his shoulders.

He had relied on their sheer numbers to act as a deterrent, believing that no small force would dare touch a thousand-strong column. He had been a fool. They weren’t the hunters; they were the bait, led by the nose into a slaughterhouse of their own choice.

"I’ve asked the quartermasters about the provisions," Marvy continued, his worry deepening. "We have enough for three more meals. That’s it."

Mers spun around, his lone hand clenching into a white-knuckled fist. "What about the livestock? Did the meat go moldy in a single night?"

"We have...had a thousand troops, Sir," Marvy reminded him gently, looking at the horizon with a newfound dread. "The men were famished. They hadn’t seen fresh meat in weeks. They had a banquet last night, they gorged themselves on every sheep and cow we found. The dogs and the ravens have already picked the bones clean. We have to hope we find a proper village further inland... somewhere with a granary and feed for the remaining horses."

A man coughed nearby, a wet, hacking sound that spoke of smoke-damaged lungs. Above them, the ravens cawed in rhythmic, mocking intervals.

The older knight looked at the path ahead, a dark, narrow road leading deeper into the Fox’s throat, and then back the way they had come. He made his decision. It was a choice that tasted like ash, and he knew he would face a gauntlet of shame for it, but he would not lead a thousand men into a vacuum.

"Bugger the ’proper village.’ This place will be our tomb if we push forward," Mers cursed, fixing his gaze on the young knight. "We’re turning back. We’re a day’s march from the main camp; at least the food we have will get us to the siege lines."

"But Ser! The mission! We were sent to get laborers to fill those ditches. If we go back empty-handed..."

"Then we fail and we face it," Mers spat, the glob of saliva landing far from the charred remains of his soldiers. "Don’t look so down, boy. I’m the commander; I’ll be the one to take the fall. You’re just the man who followed orders."

"But Ser, we could overtake them! As you said, they must be close. They’re burdened with the villagers!" Marvy protested, his face flushing with the desperate need to repay the night’s insult with blood.

"You still don’t understand, do you?" Mers said, his voice dropping into a patient, weary tone, like a teacher explaining a simple truth to a dull child. "This was all a setup. Every village ahead will be just like this one, empty, silent, and ready to burn. We’ll be hit again tonight, and the night after. If we go ahead, we’ll starve, our horses will drop, and we’ll face desertion before we ever see a Yarzat soldier in the light of day. At the very least, we can go back and warn the Princes. There will be no easy labor. There will be no villages to pillage.And there will be no honor to be found. This is a loss." he looked at his stump, then at the burning ruins. "No...it is not. This was my loss. The Fox had us from the moment we stepped off the road. He’s played us for fools."

Marvy looked down at his soot-stained hands. "It feels wrong... to tuck our tails and run without a single blow struck in return."

Mers reached out with his lone hand and gripped the boy’s shoulder, squeezing hard. "We’ll have our chance for vengeance. We’ll arrange that by seeing the Bastion broken and every man inside put to the sword. But to do that, we have to stay alive. Now, rouse the men. We march for the camp at a moment’s notice.We ought to inform all lords of the situation."