Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1086: Strong will(2)
The tower was a wooden throat, and they were the bile it was preparing to spit.
Speaking of bodily fluid , to Mers’s left, a boy no older than sixteen doubled over before he vomited onto the floorboards. It miserably splashed and splattered against the boots of the men packed tight around him.
No one cursed. No one moved.No one gave anything more than a grunt.
They merely stared with hollow eyes, too drained of spirit to care about the filth on their leather.
It’s all water, Mers realized, his gaze fixed on the thin, brownish liquid seeping into the grain of the wood. The bastards didn’t even feed them.
He swallowed a knot of anger that bloomed in his chest. Was it because the League’s stores were finally failing, or did the Princes simply see no profit in filling the bellies of men they intended to use as nothing more than a bridge of meat? It was a new low, even for a siege that had already buried honor in a shallow grave.
The tower lurched, swaying beneath their feet like the stomach of a leviathan. The massive timber structure groaned, a deep, rhythmic shriek of wood against wood that vibrated through Mers’s teeth. The wind howled through the narrow cracks between the planks, whistling with a mournful pitch that sent a chill through his hauberk.
A stray gust caught the small bundle of hair on his forehead, fluttering it against his brow, the only gentle caress in a world of iron.
More men began to succumb to the motion and the terror. The air inside the tower grew thick and foul, a soup of sour sweat, old fear, and the acidic tang of vomit. For those whose stomachs held, the anxiety did the work, tightening throats until breathing became a chore.
High above, the great wooden bridge remained upright, a massive shield of oak that denied them any glimpse of the ramparts they were approaching and probably dying in. It was a mercy of a sort. It meant the Yarzat bows couldn’t find them yet.
They heard the spectacle instead: the rhythmic thrum-clack of the catapults below that maybe were aimed at them or maybe not, as all they heard was the whistling arc of stones and their thumpf upon the dirt below,then along with it was the wet thud of arrows biting into the tower’s hide. For a fleeting, selfish moment, Mers felt a pang of pity for the men on the ground, who had to look their death in the eye while he only had to listen to its song.
Though he knew soon enough dead would look them in the eye.
Then, the world shuddered. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢
The tower groaned to a , bone-jarring halt. The momentum threw men forward, a clatter of shields and cursing tongues as they braced against one another. Confusion gave then way to fear as aknowldgement spread around.
It was time for the fight
From somewhere deep below, through the layers of timber and screams, the muffled order rose like a herald’s cry, confirming what they already feared.
"Drop the bridge! For the Sun! Drop it!"
At least they knew who manned the floor below...though to be frank most of the man manning the tower, including those that were to make the spearhead were Ozenians.
After all they certainly wouldn’t get meat fodder all the way from Habadia, no?
Two soldiers, their faces masked by soot, stepped forward to give way to the assault. They hacked at the thick hempen ropes with short-swords.
The ropes frayed and snapped with a sound like a whip crack. The heavy iron chains began to scream, uncoiling with a terrifying, metallic roar that drowned out the wind. The massive bridge, a ton of reinforced oak, swung downward.
It hit the stone of the Bastion with a thunderclap that shook the very foundation of the wall and the tower both. Dust and splinters erupted into the air as the bridge settled, flat and inviting.
Mers drew his breath, the cold air rushing into his lungs as the light finally flooded the tower. If the gods wanted them dead, who were they to deny them their wishes?
"CHARGE!"
The word left Mers’s throat not as a command, but as a desperate roar of liberation. He threw himself from the swaying wooden lip of the tower, a silver spark leaping into a dark sea of iron. For a heartbeat, suspended between the wood and the stone, a terrifying silence gripped him. He feared he would be alone, offered up to the pikes of the Bastion.
But then came the crack of the whips from the tower’s belly, a cruel incentive that spurred the "Graceless" to follow. They poured out behind him.
Mers hit the ramparts and felt the jar in his very teeth, a wave of lightening going through his feet. Looking ahead, he saw a mirror of his own misery. The defenders were not the iron-clad titans of the Fox’s legion; they were levies, shivering in boiled leather and rusted mail.
When the prince laid their stones it was the peasants that weeped.
Both sides had offered their subject as the first course for the crows. Yet, Mers knew the arithmetics was on their favor.
The defenders broke into a frantic run screaming as they went, shields raised, a wall of wood and hide closing the distance. Mers let out an icy scream that matched the winter gale and met them head-on.
The air was suddenly thick with the lethal music of the siege.
Arrows rang in the air from the tower that rose from the stony ground, moss making home in their stones, as death was released from their altitude.
A man to Mers’s right jerked backward, an arrow buried deep in the soft meat of his neck. The man’s hands clawed at the fletching as he tumbled, his life gurgling out in a red spray. Mers knew that shaft had been meant for him, the only shimmering target in a sea of grey.
The Gods are watching, he thought as the notion calmed his raging heart.
He leveled his first swing at a spearman. The man was quick, snapping his shield upward to catch the blade. The levy braced for the impact, leaning his weight into the wood, preparing to thrust his spear the moment Mers’s sword bit deep and stuck. But the impact never came.
Or at least not the one he expected as instead of the steel of the blade he was slammed by Mer’s steel-clad shoulder.
It was a feint.
The soldier stumbled, his balance stolen by the sheer mass of the knight. Before he could find his breath, Mers’s blade flashed downward, delivering a thrust that sank into the man’s throat just above the Adam’s apple.
He had little time to took joy in the kill.
Behind him, the battle descended into a travesty of war. This was no clash of disciplined lines; it was a gutter-scuffle fought with spears. Peasants smashed against peasants in a mindless press of flesh.
To his left, two men locked shields, grunting and straining until the Fox’s man slipped or was pushed back in a contest of strenght, whatever the case he fell to his haunches, his eyes wide with a sudden, lucid terror, only to have a spear driven through his guts by the victor. He folded over the wood, a slow, agonizing end in a place that didn’t know his name.
"Die!" a voice suddendly shrieked.
A levy, who apparently found the armored man with a missing arm , lunged with a spear.
Emphasis on armored.
The point skittered harmlessly off Mers’s breastplate like a pebble off a mountain. Mers didn’t even flinch. He spun, his cape a blur, and brought his sword down in a heavy arc that shattered the rim of the man’s shield.
Suddenly and before Mers could finish up, the sky rained splinters. A flight of Yarzat arrows hissed down upon the press. Mers heard the wet thuds and the sickening moans of the men behind him as they were harvested by the other’s countrymen’s bows. Three arrows struck Mers in a heartbeat. Two glanced off his chest with a metallic ping, but the third found a home, embedding itself deep in the tricep of his right arm.
Mers simply gritted his teeth,luckily he would not swing with that arm for obvious reasons.
The man he was fighting with didn’t have such protection and one of the arrow found him in the back of the throat.
He fell unceremoniously to the ground.
He stepped inside the next spear-thrust, ignoring the shaft vibrating in his arm. He swung once, parried. Twice, deflected. The third was a low thrust that found the gap in the levy’s mail, sinking into the ribs and taking whatever organ was in there too.
The man’s life-breath escaped in a ragged exhale as the blade bit deep into the meat. Mers didn’t pull the sword back yet. Instead, he lunged forward, slamming his forehead into the man’s face. Steel met bone; and a nose shattered.
As the man slumped, Mers finally wrenched his blade free, the steel coated in a dark, steaming red. He stood for a second amidst the screaming chaos, the arrow still jutting from his arm like a quill.
"Warriors lead my arm" he whispered.
He looked back at his "Graceless" company. They were dying, they were killing, and for the first time, they were moving forward. Mers raised his bloody sword and plunged back into the fray, a man in grey leading a pack of goats.
