They carved a wake of slaughter through the enemy lines.

Behind and beside the prince, surged the ragtag miracle Merelao had conjured from the ether. As he fought, Alpheo’s eye scanned them. He saw no legionary discipline here, no sober cohesion, nor the practiced rhythm of a professional vanguard. Instead, he saw a fever.

So bright a zeal that it took the place of the very sun that hid behind grey clouds.

These men fought with a chaotic electricity birthed by the silver-tongued madness of the man in the golden horns. They were a beggar’s army, unwashed and unruly, but they were the only road left to victory.

He hoped that it would be enough.

The ground here was a treacherous, even plain, softened by the season into a soup of clotted muck. They had advanced beyond the land he had watered, leaving the flooded fields behind, but the rain of the past few days had turned the entire valley into a graveyard of silt.

Far on the horizon, the skeletal fingers of trees reached for the grey sky, their branches already heavy with ravens. The birds sat in a terrifying, expectant silence, waiting for the din to fade so they might claim their feast.

There is always a fleeting, crystalline moment of terror just before the lines collide. It is not the blinding light of peril, but a needle of false lucidity. In that heartbeat, every man is a hero in his own childish dream; he sees himself prevailing, standing atop a mountain of the slain, untouched and immortal. Then, the distance closes. He sees the eyes of his opponent, set with the exact same murderous intent,and the dream flutters away like ash.

Reality reasserts itself with a cold, serrated edge.

And gods turns to mortal to the mettle of steel and iron.

Alpheo’s gaze locked onto a spearmen in the opposing press. The man was a ruin of rusted mail and salt-stained leather, his face a mask of grime, he was tired from the fighting and not injuried unlike the prince, whose every step send pain through his leg.

For a second, their eyes met, and Alpheo felt the man’s fear vibrating through the air like a struck wire.

As funny as the thought was, he felt as a boogeyman.

The spearman took a tentative step back, his lance trembling, his shield raised in a desperate instinctive defence.

The Prince of Yarzat did not hesitate in claiming his life.

He caught the spear-point on his breastplate mid-stride, the wood groaning against steel. He didn’t deign to give the weapon a second thought; he simply moved alongside the shaft, closing the distance before the man could reset. Alpheo’s sword lashed out.

The rusted mail held, but the force of the impact did enough.

The man collapsed with a wet thud, his weapon swallowed by the mud., screaming and whimpering as he clawed at his arm.

He must have broken a bone.

He lost more an heartbeat later with a quick thrust into the hollow of the throat.

By then, the world had shrunk to the few yards of gore immediately surrounding him. Deep into the battle he was again. Just when he thought it over he was dragged back in it, through nothing but the sweet and sour words of a madman.

A man-at-arms swung a heavy mace at his chest; Alpheo’s blade hissed through the air, parrying the strike with a jarring shower of sparks. The man danced back, resetting his stance with a fluidity that spoke of high-born training and long hours in the yard. In any other circumstance, Alpheo might have respected the skill, might have taken the duel seriously as a threat to his life.

But this was a slaughterhouse, not a tourney.

As the man-at-arms stepped in for a second blow, a wild-eyed zealot from Merelao’s pack lunged from the periphery. A dagger found the soft, vulnerable gap in the man’s armpit, plunging deep into the lung.Another man came and lent his head with a thrust to the throat.

The knight’s skill mattered nothing in the face of such messy, uncoordinated violence.

For the first time in Alpheo’s life, chaos favored him.

The field had lost the shape of war. There were no more proper lines, no grand tactical maneuvers, no elegant flanking movements. Tactics had been murdered by the mud and the sheer density of the dead. Now, there were only mumbled parties of warriors clashing in the mist, isolated pockets of men butchering one another in a frantic, primal struggle that was as old just as it was new.

It was a realm of pure martial spirit, stripped of its finery. It was ugly, it was exhausting, and as Alpheo raised his sword to meet the next shadow he knew it was the only battle he would give today.

A spear, or more like a javelin, hissed through the air, aimed squarely at his throat. Alpheo ducked, feeling the wind of its passage whistle just above his crown, followed instantly by the wet thud of steel meeting flesh behind him. A stifled moan was cut short by the gurgle of a lung filling with blood.

He did not look behind and Ignoring such a close kiss to death he surged forward, eyes locked on the thrower, but a man-at-arms stepped into the gap, hefting a heavy kite shield and a notched mace ready to welcome the black prince.

The nerve of his....getting between him and the bastard who seeked his life.

He unleashed a flurry of blows, down, up, lateral, his longsword shrieking as it bit into the rim of the shield. Splinters of wood exploded into the air like confetti.

He used his reach like a whip, striking and retreating before the mace could ever begin its ponderous swing.

The pressure was relentless and it payed off when the man’s footing crumbled, his boots slipping in the gore-slicked slurry of a gutted man.

He collapsed backward. The shield fell atop him like a wooden tombstone. Alpheo stepped onto the center of the board, his boot pinning the man to the earth, and gifted him a long, dreamless sleep with a single, downward thrust. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

He left the man to bleed out into there in the dirt, his blade already clamoring for more.

He found it in the exposed back of a soldier locked in a duel with a Kakunian zealot. Then he found it in the neck of a boy whose terror had turned his legs to water. Alpheo punished the stagger with a vicious up-thrust that buried a quarter of his blade in the soft meat beneath the chin.

He pulled the steel free and took a burning breath , he did not realise he was holding his breath. The battlefield was a kaleidoscopic nightmare.

To his left, riderless horses galloped through the press, their eyes wide with a madness that matched the men’s.

His helmet felt like a leaden weight, the deformed visor narrowing his world to a fractured, three-quarter view of the hellscape. He felt the side of his face grow warm, the heat of his own boiling blood no doubt, as he threw himself at the next man. And the next.And then another.

A southern horse thundered past breaking the streak of dead, its rider slumped across the saddle like a sack of grain carried forth in a cart, a javelin having punched a clean hole through his chest and out his back.

Laughter began to bubble in his throat. There was nothing funny about the heap of entrails at his feet, or the way his limbs ached, his breath short, his head light and sticky, yet he laughed at the irony of it all.

One moment he had been a statesman, a strategist worrying over the logistical integrity of his center; the next, he was a brawler in the muck, swords, maces, spears, axes coming his way, jabbed , thrusted and swung in a heed to slay the prince.

But that was what the armor was for. Instead of reeling, he charged the razor tips of the enemy spears, trusting in the smiths of Yarzat just as Achilles trusted his blessed body, as he hammered through the Oizenian line.

He felt like a hero of Greek mitholody when he saw the fear bloomin in their eyes.

"A ghost!" one man shrieked, falling to his knees and throwing up his hands in a futile shield.

That was harsh, he reflected as his sword made meat of the man’s plea. A ghost? he thought, his lungs burning. What ghost ached like this?

Then, the trumpets blared.

Da-DAAA! Da-DAAA! Da-DA da-DA da-DAAAAAAA!

The sound was a war-cry in brass, announcing the presence of the monster made flesh. Merelao was the only soul on the field who seemed truly, obscenely happy. Alpheo couldn’t help but be fascinated by him. In the sea of red and brown, the Kakunian’s flamboyance acted as a beacon to both friend and foe.

His red cloak billowed like a fresh wound; his horned helmet, decorated with the wet remains of his trophies, gleamed with a sickening luster. The trumpets were his, rattling the air, casting his position to every enemy within a mile as if daring the world to try and stop him.

Alpheo watched as Merelao found himself suddenly cut off, surrounded by three Oizenian men-at-arms. Any other man would have retreated toward the safety of his allies, or called for help.

But most men were not the Mad Bull.

Instead, he laughed and then with a joyful, melodic shriek, the Bull of Kakunia lowered his horns , blared with his mouth and charged the three of them alone, his golden armor flashing like a falling star against the darkening sky.

His thunderous laughter revealing just how that did not displease him one bit.

And to think that man was the best ally Alpheo could hope for.