Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 514

Chapter 514: Burning a banner(2)
The Oizenians barely had time to blink before the nightmare unfolded.

As they stood trembling before the silent advance of the Black Stripes—that wall of polished steel and hungry shadows—their ears caught another sound. A series of heavy thuds, boots striking wood, then the shriek of steel being drawn. From their right flank, shadows moved.

Men dropped from the walls like spiders descending on silken threads, landing light-footed among barrels and tents. Their swords flashed in the torchlight, already wet.

A new horror dawned on the Oizenians—Alpheo hadn’t sent one force.

He’d sent three.

And now the jaws of the trap snapped shut.

And so the first bites were taken

The initial assault came from the Black Stripes, their disciplined ranks halting just ten paces from the quivering, barely-formed levy line that stood as the Oizenians’ pathetic last defense. The synchronized stomp of hundreds of armored boots hitting the ground simultaneously sent vibrations through the earth that could be felt in the bones of every defender.

Then, without any shouted command that could be heard over the growing chaos, their front ranks moved as one perfectly coordinated unit. Arms snapped forward in unison, and the very air itself seemed to tear apart as a storm of deadly javelins shrieked across the short distance between the forces.

The sound was nothing short of unholy – a chorus of death whistles that would haunt the nightmares of any survivors. Iron points punched through wooden shieldboards with wet, splintering cracks that echoed across the battlefield, the barbed heads burying themselves so deep that men physically staggered under the sudden weight, their arms wrenched painfully downward by the embedded shafts.

One Oizenian soldier screamed in a voice raw with agony as a javelin pinned his shield directly to his own forearm, the vicious point punching effortlessly through layers of wood, flesh, and chainmail in a single brutal thrust. Another collapsed without uttering a single sound, the weapon’s tip bursting gruesomely from his suddenly ruined mouth in a spray of shattered teeth and arterial blood that painted the men behind him.

A second volley followed before the first victims hit the ground.

Shields became useless, bristling with shafts like grotesque porcupines. Men dropped them, only to be struck in the chest, the gut, the face. A levy clawed at the javelin lodged in his collarbone, his shrieks rising to a childlike pitch as he stumbled back into his comrades, spreading panic like a plague.

Then—

Silence.

For one heartbeat, the only sounds were the whimpers of the wounded and the drip-drip-drip of blood on trampled grass.

Then came the second bite

From the right, the shadows struck.

The flanking force moved quickly and remorseless.

Panic spread faster than blood.

Men who had been bracing for the Black Stripes now spun to face this new threat, their formations crumbling like sandcastles before the tide. The Oizenian line—already wavering—folded in on itself, its cohesion shattered.

Then the Black Stripes, having sent two of their javelins moved.

It wasn’t a charge.

It was an execution.

The silent wall of steel crashed into the Oizenians with the force of a collapsing mountain. The first rank barely had time to flinch before they were erased—shields splintered, bones snapped, men vanished under the press of armor and blades.

The silence of the Black Stripes broke only for the wet crunch of metal piercing flesh, the choked gurgles of dying men, the sheer weight of the slaughter as they drove the Oizenians back step by screaming step.

What followed wasn’t a battle.

It was a harvest.

The Oizenians died in droves—some fighting, some fleeing, most too stunned to do either. The Black Stripes cut through them like scythes through wheat, their discipline unshaken, their advance relentless.

Jarza watched from horseback, his lips curled in something too vicious to be called a smile.

This wasn’t war.

This was butchery.

And the night was still young.

Screams tore through the air. Some of the Oizenian levies abandoned their posts before a blade had even reached them. Others, driven by nothing but desperation, tried to hold, planting their feet and raising their weapons—only for the second detachment to fall upon them like a storm.

The noble levies, despite their lack of discipline, had one undeniable advantage: momentum. Their charge came minutes after the first strike, but it was enough to seal the Oizenians’ fate. Their flanks buckled under the pressure, their lines twisted in on themselves, confusion turning into chaos.

Men who had been preparing to hold suddenly found swords plunging into their sides. Their comrades who had been calling for formation now called for their mothers.

The Oizenian line buckled like rotten timber.

A levy in a rust-pitted hauberk made the fatal mistake of thrusting his spear at a Black Stripe’s exposed throat. The veteran warrior barely shifted his stance as he batted the shaft aside with his mace, the iron-reinforced wood connecting with the levy’s fingers with a sickening crack. Bones shattered like dry kindling. The man’s scream – high, wet, and childlike – was abruptly silenced when the mace’s spiked head pulverized his teeth down his throat in a spray of blood and enamel.

“THAT’S for my fucking pension, you sheep-fucking gutter rat!” the Stripe roared, flecks of bloody spittle flying as he wrenched his weapon free with a wet schlorp.

Nearby, two Oizenian spearmen tried desperately to hold their ground. “Oh gods, please-” The first man’s prayer was cut short as a war hammer smashed through his raised shield with the sound of a tree branch snapping in winter. The force snapped his forearm backward at a grotesque angle, sending him crumpling to his knees, mewling pitifully as he cradled his ruined arm like a mother might cradle a stillborn child.

His comrade swung wildly, screaming “Die, you black-hearted bast-” before a bearded axe hooked under his chin with surgical precision. The blade ripped upward through palate and sinus cavity, emerging in a shower of bone fragments and brain matter. His dying gurgles were lost beneath the chaos, his body twitching like a landed fish.

“Should’ve stayed home plowing your sister like a proper peasant!” the axeman bellowed, planting a boot on the corpse’s chest to wrench his weapon free with a sickening pop.

The air hung thick with the stench of voided bowels and copper-rich blood. A young levy – his beard barely more than peach fuzz – vomited violently between ragged sobs as he fumbled with his spear. A Black Stripe loomed over him, hammer raised high. For just a moment, something almost like pity flashed in the veteran’s eyes. “Close your eyes, boy,” he muttered, his voice carrying an eerie gentleness. Then the steel came down with a crunch like a melon hitting cobblestones.

The Black Stripes didn’t cheer their kills. Didn’t gloat over fallen foes. They simply worked, their weapons rising and falling with the mechanical efficiency of farmers bringing in the harvest. Only their crude banter marked them as human rather than some killing machine:

“Oi! This one pissed himself proper!”

“Hah! Did you see that one’s head pop? Like stomping a ripe tomato!”

“Next! Come on, I haven’t got all night!”

And the Oizenians died. And died. And died some more.

Five minutes. That was all it took to shatter the Oizenian line like fine crystal beneath a blacksmith’s hammer. The White Army advanced like a single, many-limbed beast of war, their weapons moving in brutal harmony – axes splitting skulls with wet thunks, war hammers caving in ribcages with sounds like green wood splitting, maces reducing faces to unrecognizable pulp.

But as the enemy finally broke and ran, the royal host began to fray at the edges. The noble levies, drunk on blood and victory, howled like animals and gave chase, their hunger for slaughter overwhelming any semblance of order. They surged forward in a disorganized mob, hacking at fleeing backs, screaming obscenities that would make a dockside whore blush

“Run you cowardly fucks! Run back to your whore mothers!”

“I’ll mount your heads on my fucking fenceposts!”

“Your wives will thank me for killing you, you limp-dick bastards!”

The Black Stripes, drilled since birth to maintain formation at all costs, found themselves torn. Their iron discipline warred with the primal urge to join the slaughter. A few at the flanks wavered, their feet itching to chase down the routed enemy. One grizzled veteran actually took half a step forward before catching himself, his knuckles whitening around his weapon’s grip.

Then Jarza’s voice cut through the din like a whip.

“AFTER THEM! LEAVE NONE STANDING!”

That was all it took.

The wall that their discipline had built , broke.

Like hounds finally unleashed, they charged, their usual measured advance dissolving into a furious sprint. They still moved with terrifying cohesion—no lone warriors straying too far, no reckless abandon—but now they ran with the levies, their weapons hungry for the kill.

A young Oizenian levy stumbled, his leg wounded, and turned just in time to see a white and black armor bearing down on him. The man’s eyes widened—no mercy in that face, no hesitation. The axe came down.

“No—!”

The blade silenced him mid-plea.

Nearby, a group of Oizenians tried fighting back seeing that they were being caught up , spears bristling outward in a desperate last stand. The levies hit them first, howling like madmen, but their wild swings were met with desperate resistance. Then others arrived. Shields locked, they pushed, their weapons striking with mechanical precision.

“Break them! BREAK THEM!” Jarza bellowed from horseback, his sword pointing like a conductor’s baton as he joined in the pursue.

And break they did.

The Oizenians crumpled, their final stand collapsing under the weight of disciplined fury. Some died on their feet. Others crawled, only to be butchered where they lay. The Black Stripes didn’t cheer—they didn’t need to. This was their work, and they did it without wasted motion.

Of course Jarza would never have allowed this under normal circumstances.

The White Army were not some rabble to be let loose like dogs—they were a weapon, honed and balanced, meant to strike as one unbreakable mass. To scatter them was to waste their strength, to risk them being picked apart by a disciplined counterattack.

But this?

This was no normal battle.

The Oizenians had no hardened core of veterans to rally around, no unbreakable shield wall to reform once the initial shock passed. They were levies—poor bastards handed spears and told to stand in a line. And now that line had shattered, dissolving into a screaming, stumbling tide of men who only knew how to die, not how to fight.

The Yarzats forces, on the other hand, did have that core. Even as their own levies howled and gave chase like wolves after wounded deer, the Black Stripes had instinctively kept their shape, their officers barking sharp commands to prevent them from breaking apart entirely, of course that being before their commander order.

But the enemy had no spine left.

Jarza watched, teeth bared, as the last semblance of Oizenian resistance crumbled. Men who had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder moments ago were now sprinting in all directions, some throwing down weapons, others tripping over the dead in their panic. There would be no rally. No desperate last stand. Just slaughter.

And so, for the first time in years, Jarza let go.

“FINISH THEM!” he roared, his voice cutting through the din like a blade through flesh his hunger made deeper by the fact that these were the men who gave throuble to his brother. If he was not a commander he would have gladly joined in the killing, unfortunately he was, which meant that all he could do was watch.

“LEAVE NONE WHO CAN LIFT A SWORD!” and of course cheer them on.

There was no art to this. No tactics. Just butchery.

And Jarza?

He watched, satisfied a bit peeved by the lack of action but still happy.

The battle was over. Now all that came was the killing of the fleeing sheep.