Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1084: Charge
Graceless. All of them.
That was the realization he made when he turned slowly to survey the men he was to lead into the mouth of the beast. They stood in the grey light of dawn, a ragged assembly of the desperate and the damned. The air was choked if not by the cowing of crows, by the rhythmic, shivering clink of chainmail, not the proud chime of knights ready for glory, but the frantic rattling of men whose knees were knocking together in terror.
Beneath the rims of their rusted helms, their faces were pale, haunted masks, the eyes of men who had already smelled the scent of their own open graves.
The Warrior might grant His blessing to those of extraordinary strength or unyielding will, but Mers knew, in the marrow of his bones, that there was no such favor here.
These men were forsaken.
Their lords and princes had cast away the grace of the gods as if it were a soiled rag, and the heavens had seen fit to punish the flock for the sins of the shepherds. Yet even now, with the plague fresh in their lungs and the rot at their feet, they refused to learn.
Fools all of them. Arrogance in every step of theirs, heads held so high when they should instead bow before the sky.
His task was a simple: he was to spearhead the breach. They intended to cave in a section of the eastern wall, carving a red path through the stone so the knights could finally swarm the stronghold and overwhelm the garrison. The bitter realization that a month of slaughter had not yet conquered a single one of the four strongholds hammered at Mers’s spirit more than his own disability ever could.
So much to go hunting foxes....
He was told he would lead two hundred souls for the first tower-charge.
"All of them may die, so long as you get the knights into position," Lord Malis had told him, his voice as casual as if he were discussing the price of grain. Malis was a cousin to the Prince of Oizen, a man who bore a small, pinched sun upon his chest, having denied the big herald since he was not of the main line, something that Mers somehow knew rankled the man’s pride.
Mers had not denied the charge. If the gods wished him dead on the morrow, he was not the man to bar the door against Fate.That would be meaningless
He would stand at the head of the raggedand the hollow-eyed dead men, walking into the shadow of the Mountain atop the Bastion. If he was to die in this sinkhole of sin, he would do so with a prayer on his lips and his sword held high, a solitary candle against the encroaching dark.
No one would say that Mers did not die bravely in the end.
"That may be," he remembered replying, his gaze fixed on that small, stunted sun. "I could lead a thousand, and they would still serve for little. They have no heart for this fight. You have fed them nothing but fear and pox, and you expect them to find courage in the dark while holding no light?"
Malis had laughed at those words.
For the life of him, Mers could not see the jest then , and even now, he did not.
All he could see was the rot in the man.
He adjusted his sword belt, the weight of the steel a familiar burden. He began to whisper a prayer for the graceless he was to lead, his head bowed, when a voice cut through the damp morning air from behind him.
"Is there room in this company for one more sinner, or are you keeping all the glory for yourself?"
Mers turned with the speed of a lightning strike. His eyes fell upon a figure clad in ornate, polished plate that seemed to catch what little light the sun offered, a red and green plume as if it were the crest of a roast rose in the air, while flickers of red and blue silk ribbons fell from his waist.
There, standing with a cheeky, irreverent smile that defied the gloom, was the Cock Knight of Ezvania. His surcoat was bright, his plumed helm held under one arm, and his eyes danced with a reckless light that only youth could muster.
"Why are you here?" Mers found himself asking, the question feeling heavy and blunt. Every other word of protocol or greeting had vanished from his mind, withered by the sight of the Ezvanian’s bright plumage in this grey dawn.
"Am I so unwelcome in your house, brother?" The Cock Knight purred, his smile widening even as he tilted his head to survey the trembling levies.A strange look passed in his eyes. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚
"We both know how this ends," Mers said, his voice dropping to a low, hard rasp. "The knights stay in the rear, the fodder goes to the front. You are a knight of the Ezvanian court.Nephew of the prince. You have no business in a suicide charge.Go back to the rear and wait your moment’’
’’I believe this is indeed my moment, ser.’’
Mers looked at the man wondering if he had gone mad. ’’.. why do you wish to join?We are going to our death’’
The young man’s smile didn’t falter, but the light in his eyes shifted, losing its mocking edge going as stale as a stick in a lake.
"Shared trouble makes for strange brothers, " he said softly, looking out at the silhouette of the Bastion. "And I wouldn’t miss this for all the gold in the Oizenian vaults, not between us I believe there is hunger of that.
If the gods demand a host be led to certain death, you’d be happy to know I have already dictated the missives for my funeral. I’ve told my sisters which of my hounds to keep and which of my mistresses to pension off.Plus I am not a nephew but a very distant cousin to the prince, truth be told we are almost stranger..."
He stepped closer, the ornate silver cock on his breastplate gleaming with all the nobility that Mers thought the lords had forgot and that yet was in this arrogant knight of royal blood. "I’d rather die in the mud with a man who knows the meaning of an oath than sit in a silk tent with princes who haggle over what to do with the bodies of their own soldiers."
He had been wrong. He had watched the Cock Knight during the councils, seen the way he preened, the way he laughed at the wrong moments, the way his heraldry seemed designed to provoke. He had thought the man shallow, a creature of vanity and courtly games.
But he remembered now. When the lords had turned their backs on Mers, calling him a failure and a cripple of the spirit, only one voice had risen in his defense. It had been this man. He had spoken for Mers when it served no political end, when it gained him nothing but the scowls of his peers.
"You’re a fool," Mers said, though for the first time in weeks, his heart felt a glimmer of something that wasn’t despair. Perhaps there was still good in some of them.
And yet he would soon lead him to his death
"Perhaps," the knight laughed, clapping a gauntleted hand on Mers’s shoulder. "But I’ll be the best-dressed fool in all the Hells.We shall dance there admist the flame and sings of the deeds we did in life’’
"You speak of funerals and hounds," Mers said with a smile,the day somehow not looking as bleak as it did some minutes ago, "but if the Weaver has any mercy left in her loom, you will survive this day. And when you do, when you finally cast off that plumage and take your seat as a Lord, I am certain you will be one of the best of them. Perhaps the only one among them who remembers that power is a burden, not a toy."
The Ezvanian’s cheeky grin faltered for the briefest of heartbeats. He looked away toward the looming shadow of the Bastion, his gloved hand tightening on the hilt of his slender blade. When he looked back, the mockery was gone.
"A Lord?" the younger knight mused, his voice stripped of its usual purr. "If that day comes... if I find myself sitting on a high chair in a hall that smells of old stone and duty... will you come and serve me? Will you be the iron at my right hand to tell me when I am being a fool?"
A promise for a future he never truly expected to see. Yet, in the face of such unexpected sincerity, he felt the old stirrings of the knightly code he had thought dead.
"I would be honored, my Lord," Mers replied, bowing his head with a solemnity that echoed through the damp morning air. "Should we both walk out of this, I would gladly trade my current liege for your service. I would follow a man who laughs at death before I follow a prince who hides from it."
At that the Ezvanian let out a short, sharp laugh, the reckless light returning to his eyes. "Then it’s a pact! Sealed in the mud of Yarzat. Try not to die in the next hour, Mers, it would be a terrible inconvenience to lose my first retainer.Off to war we go."
