Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1085: Strong will(1)

Above him, the wind howled through the crenellations like the blowing of a flute below. Actually the wind wasn’t the only thing howling, some feet below a man was screaming himself hoare.

Asag looked from the trembling levies to the dark, broken shape twitching at the foot of the wall, wondering which company was more loathsome.

"Unlucky bastard," one of the spearmen muttered, his knuckles white as he leaned over the rampart to peer into the gloom. "One chance in ten and he took it. "

"Must have shattered his spine and his legs both," another answered, "Hear that wet rattle? Bloody hell..."

"The Gods must have willed it so," a third whispered, clutching a holy symbol made of wood. "Must have been a loathsome man."

"The Gods decide a lot," a third growled, spitting a glob of phlegm over the edge, "but I recall it was one of our spears that put the cunt over the side. Give credit where it’s due.The gods have little in this."

The Gods. Asag felt a cold, familiar bitterness rise in his throat, sharper than the sting of the opium, he was forced to take.

He had long ago ceased to look toward the heavens for anything other than rain or sun. What sort of Gods allowed a man to be bought and sold like a head of cattle? What sort of divine justice oversaw the branding iron and the whip? Any God that would allow such a thing, would never have his worship. That was certain.

For nine years, he had been a slave. Nine years of tasting dust and iron, and in all that time, no God had ever descended to break his chains. It had not been a deity that saved him, but a boy.

A boy with a fox’s cleverness and a lion’s heart. How could a man not love such an instance of existence? How could he not serve the only one who had ever truly offered him a hand instead of a lash? 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

He had sworn it then, in the heat of a burning field and he sworn it now, admist the roars of the dying man: he would give his life for that boy. No matter what the heavens wrought, no matter what the high-born decreed, the choice of how he would meet his end belonged to him alone.

He pulled his gaze away from his men, his eyes narrowing as he looked out across the valley. The morning mist was beginning to burn away, peeling back the shroud to reveal the nightmare beneath.

The League was moving, once more.

Through the shifting grey tatters of fog, he saw the massive, skeletal shape of a siege tower. It lurched forward with a rhythmic, agonizing groan of ungreased timber, sounding like the world’s slowest heartbeat. Around its base, a sea of steel moved in a slow, undulating tide, thousands of spears reflecting the pale light.

But it wasn’t the numbers that caught his eye. It was the rear. At the back of the ragged levies, he spotted a flash of silver so bright it seemed to cut through the gloom.

They had finally learned.

It had only taken the slaughter of hundreds of their finest knights and the shattering of their pride to teach them the basic subject of a siege.

They were pushing the peasants forward, a tide of meat and misery meant to clog the gears of the defense and soften the stones.The shimmering silver reserve ready to made way over the bridge of commoner corpses once the breach was made.

Two weeks ago, Asag would have laughed at such a clumsy stratagem. Two weeks ago, his walls were manned by the Iron-Born of the Third and veterans among the other levies who had tasted the salt of a dozen campaigns.

But time was a thief.

The veterans were mostly gone now, rotting in the pits or whimpering on the infirmary floor. In their place stood the rejects: the shaking boys and the hollow-eyed men who looked as though they’d sooner drop their spears than level them.

The ratio of the dead still favored the Bastion, nearly four to one by his own account, but the League had more lives to throw away than Asag had arrows to spend. They were dulling his blades with their very skin.

He surveyed the line. Today, he was leading the levies from Misio, Abea, and Tholicea.

These were new subjects from the borderlands, territories conquered three years prior. Their lords still held their titles, but their hearts were weather-vanes, liable to turn whichever way the wind of victory blew. Asag had placed them here for a cold reason: keep your friends close, but keep your doubtful allies in the teeth of the storm.

Alpheo had suggested not bringing them inside, but Asag knew that if they were left to their own devices in the rear, they could turn Operation Titan Fall into a charnel house by denying supplies to the guerrillas or striking the garrison’s soft underbelly.

But a line that won’t hold is a grave for everyone. There wasn’t a choice that brought only good tidings after all.

He had moved to fast when he scartched his cheek and he felt a sudden, sharp throb in his wrist that made his vision swim.

He shifted his grip, but his hand found only the cold, unfamiliar leather of a short sword. His fingers ached for his old friend, the heavy halberd Alpheo had placed in his hands nearly a decade ago.

It had been a chipped, ugly thing after more then ten years of service, but when the Prince had offered to replace it with a masterwork from the royal armory, Asag had refused. He’d had it reforged, the same iron biting through a thousand shields since.

The warmth of its familiar weight was gone, replaced by this pittance of a blade.

He looked again at the shivering troops. Their teeth were chattering, a sound like a thousand distant beetles.

A speech, he thought, that is what they need.

He wasn’t a man of gilded words. That was Alpheo’s trade, the Prince could make a man feel like a god even as he marched him into a furnace.

Asag’s tongue was usually reserved for these kind of thing, he did not have the bear of the Fox, nor that of Jarza. He was resilient yes, but his wasn’t a figure that inspired men.

People named him mountain, and yet he could not even climb out of his own doubts.

He didn’t stand tall, his body was too battered for that, but he stood wide, like a boulder that had sat in the same spot for a thousand years. He let the sword hang at his side, looking each trembling man in the eye until they were forced to look back.

"I admit I am not a man of candid words," he began, his voice a low, tectonic rumble that seemed to vibrate through the very soles of their boots.It took many by surprise to suddendly hear the legate adress them.

"My tongue was carved for humbler and thing, and some of you may find what I say next unsavory for your palates. I cannot promise you coffers of gold, for that is the Prince’s prerogative, though I tell you now, his grace does not forget the men who bleed for him. He will reward the titanic work you have wrought here with a great bounty’’

He paused, his eyes sweeping across the line of trembling spears.

"Praise is given where it is due. You have fought well. For a month of hell, you have denied the enemy the victory they thought was their birthright. Every assault they led, you repelled. Every man they sent to these walls, you turned into meat. None, not even the Princes outside, can call any of you coward or weak. You have shown the mettle of true men."

Then, the impossible happened.

Asag, the Legate of the Third, the Mountain of Aracina, Lord of Helvia, inclined his head. He bowed. The iron of his gorget creaking as he acknowledged the peasants standing in the mud, the peasants no one will sing and remember.

The clinking of mail ceased. The wind itself seemed to hold its breath.

"I have stood at my post through all this time," he rasped, rising to his full, battered height. "Bathing in the same blood as you, breathing the same rot. No one is better witness to your worth than I. And I see you."

He gestured with his good hand toward the shimmering, distant ranks of the League. "Despite the thousands coming to kill me, despite the blades that have shattered against my harness, I remain.

In spite of the prayers of ten thousand enemies begging for our downfall, I remain tall.

In spite of the fact that there is no audience for this noble defense, no singers to carry our names, I remain tall.

And in spite of these wounds, this wrist, this head, this heart, I remain tall and proud as the day I first came here."

He stepped closer to the edge, his shadow looming over the front rank. "No one can deny me that. My right to stand. It is a right every man on this wall possesses today. As it is mine it is yours!

So stand tall! Be proud, knowing you have done more than duty ever required. No man shall call you craven, or they will answer to me.

Under the eyes of the gods a secret I will reveal : I am more afraid than most of you.

I am so afraid that I believe ’bravery’ is a lie told by poets.

All men are terrified; the noble ones simply hide it better. But even through my fear, I push. I give more. I bleed more.Day after day.

So, if you find your knees buckling, gaze at me. If you are too scared to swing your blade, glimpse at me. If you are too terrified to see if the Gods are calling your name, search for me!"

Asag raised his sword, the shorter, humbler blade, high against the howling winds. At that moment, the bruised clouds above parted, and a single, defiant ray of sun pierced the gloom. As if the Warrior himself had sent his acknoledgement to the great warrior.

"The moment I stop going forward," he roared over the rising thunder of the approaching siege tower that seemed to roar so hoarsely that all fell under their land and power. "that will be your permission to do the same! But until that moment... look at me! Stand tall! Stand proud!And do you duty!

No one in this world or the next has the right to take that from you!

This you have earned!’’