Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 536

Chapter 536: Falling sword(3)
They emerged like a curse given form—one hundred and twenty silent wraiths in steel, blooming from the alleys and the gutters, from the places where honest men did not look. No war cries, no drumbeat of challenge. Only the whisper of boots on stone, the muted rasp of blades slipping free from leather, the creak of gambeson tightening over racing hearts.

They moved as a single shadow, pouring through the unguarded gate like black water rushing a breach. The narrow approach to the keep swallowed them whole, their forms ducking beneath the torchlight’s feeble grasp.

What they lacked in the polished precision of royal troops, they made up for in the kind of ferocity only found in men who had learned war not on a drill field, but in the alleyways, the border skirmishes, the backroom murders. These were not soldiers.

They were butchers.

Had they faced Alpheo’s veterans—hardened ranks who slept with swords in hand—they would have broken like kindling. But fortune favored the wicked tonight. The men stationed here were garrison troops, half-trained and softer for it, their vigilance dulled by peace.

For one fleeting, gilded moment, it seemed they might take the keep without a single alarm. That the world would wake to find the gates already sealed, the banners already changed.

But silence is a fragile thing.

The bell tolled.

A single, shrieking note of bronze split the night—high, frantic, the kind of sound that claws its way into the skull and lingers. The old alarm bell, rusted from disuse, now screamed like a slaughtered thing, its voice hurling itself at the stars.

The keep convulsed awake.

Torches flared along the parapets, their light swinging wildly as men stumbled from barracks, still buckling breastplates over sleep-shirts. Shouts tangled in the air—questions, curses, the raw panic of men who did not yet know the shape of their death. Steel rang as it was torn from scabbards in haste, edges catching the firelight like jagged teeth.

Too late. Far too late.

The walls fell first.

Scarred mercenaries and hard-eyed killers swarmed the battlements, their boots finding purchase on aged stone. The handful of city guards stationed there barely had time to turn before the knives found them. One man fumbled for a fallen lance, only to jerk backward as two javelins punched through his chest, their iron tips glistening as they emerged from his back.

Another swung a mace in a wild, desperate arc—until a shield smashed into his jaw, followed by a headbutt that dropped him like a sack of grain, his skull cracking against the stone with a sound like splitting mortar.

The courtyard was worse.

A half-armored soldier lurched forward, sword raised, only to choke as a short blade slipped between his ribs. Another, better prepared, locked blades with one of Lucius’s captains—their struggle a whirl of gritted teeth and splattered blood, until the captain drove his dagger up beneath the man’s chin. The body crumpled against a pillar, painting the stone in a wet, black streak.

For a heartbeat, defiance flickered. An officer—voice raw with command—managed to rally a dozen men atop a stone stair, his sword raised high.

Then the javelin took him.

The iron point erupted from his chest in a burst of crimson, the force lifting him onto his toes before he toppled backward, his body rolling down the steps like a broken doll. The men around him scattered, their courage unraveling like old rope.

And through it all, Lucius walked.

He moved through the carnage as if it were nothing more than a stroll through his own gardens, his expression unreadable. Shadows bent around him. Steel sang in his wake. The keep—ancient, proud, built to withstand armies—trembled beneath the weight of betrayal, its stones drinking the blood of men who had sworn to defend them.

The chaos behind him—the clamor of steel, the cries of dying men, the thunder of boots scrambling across the walls—was beneath his notice. His gaze remained fixed ahead, cold and steady, as if the path through the keep were nothing more than a stroll through a market square. He walked not like a man amid treachery and war, but like one who owned the place—and was only now coming to collect.

Behind him, thirty warriors followed in silence, their footfalls echoing through the high stone corridors like a second, quieter heartbeat to the violence outside. Their faces were grim beneath helmets and cloaks, weapons slick with the blood of guards who had stood between them and destiny.

Lucius paid no heed to the dying clamor beyond the inner courtyard. The metallic song of blades, the wet thud of bodies hitting stone—it was all just noise now. The outer walls had fallen with the ease of rotted timber, surprise and savagery doing their work before the defenders could even string their bows. Momentum had taken over. Fear had done the rest.

His gaze locked onto the door before him—a heavy, iron-bound monstrosity of oak.

The last barrier. The final threshold.

Beyond it lay the inner sanctum. The chambers of command.

The golden goose.

The door, predictably, had been sealed the instant the alarm bell shattered the night. Barred, braced, likely with every piece of furniture they could shove against it. A desperate act. A futile one.

Lucius paused before it, tilting his head slightly, as if listening for some secret whispered through the grain. Then, almost idly, he drew his sword—a long, wicked thing, its edge dull in the torchlight but its point needle-sharp. He tapped the flat of the blade against the door twice.

Clink. Clink.

A craftsman testing his material. A hunter prodding a snare.

He turned, his voice flat, devoid of fire or fury.

“Smash it.”

No grand pronouncement. No rallying cry. Just an order, given with the same disinterest as a man requesting his boots be cleaned.

Two warriors stepped forward, dragging a compact battering ram between them—no ceremonial piece, just a thick log of blackened oak, its iron-capped head on the front poised for the hit.

Lucius took a single step back, his eyes flicking once to the high window above the door. No arrows. No pleas. No last-ditch offers of negotiation.

Just silence.

It doesn’t matter who’s inside, he mused, resting the tip of his sword against the floor, his arms folded. Kings or cooks, they all scream the same when the door comes down.

BOOM.

The first strike hit like a landslide. The door shuddered, its hinges screaming, the wood groaning as if in pain. Dust rained from the archway above, the very stone trembling under the force. Somewhere inside, a voice shouted—thin, panicked.

Lucius smirked.

“Again.”

His tone was bored. A man ordering another round of ale.

BOOM.

This time, the sound of splintering wood joined the thunderous impact. A crack split the door’s center, a jagged black line running from lintel to threshold. The voices beyond rose in pitch—commands, curses, the frantic scrape of furniture being dragged, of blades being drawn in trembling hands.

Lucius exhaled through his nose, rolling his sword lazily between his fingers. Behind him, the battle sounds were fading. The outer yard had gone quiet. The walls were his. The defenders were corpses or cowards now. Only this last pocket remained.

He leaned against the cold stone of the archway, casting a glance at the ram team. They were sweating, breathing hard, but their eyes were bright with the same fever that had driven them through the night.

His thoughts drifted, just for a moment, to Ebran.

The boy should be finishing up by now.

Ebran had the simpler task—cleanup. The traitor knight who had handed them the city on a silver platter was holed up in some crumbling manor, guarded by a handful of loyal fools. A quick knife in the dark. A body dumped in a ditch.

If he can’t handle that, he shouldn’t be in this line of work.

BOOM.

The door buckled inward, its central beam snapping like a bone. A gaping wound now split its face, darkness pooling beyond. The ram team stepped back, chests heaving, waiting.

Lucius pushed off the wall.

“Again.”

This time, he didn’t just say it. He felt it.

This wasn’t just a door.

It was the last veil between him and the prize. The final gasp of a dying regime.

When it fell, he wouldn’t just be stepping into a room.

He’d be stepping into power.

The ram drew back.

The night held its breath.

Then—

CRACK—CRASH!

The door splintered apart with a final, deafening snap, the wooden beams giving way in a cloud of dust and shattered iron. A portion of the frame collapsed inward, and the battered gates of the keep swung open like the jaws of a dying beast.

The force of the final blow had sent those behind it stumbling forward—a few servants who’d been foolish or unlucky enough to brace the door were flung into the hall. They fell in twisted heaps, limbs flailing, eyes wide with panic.

Lucius’ men surged through like a flood of iron and blood.

The clash of steel followed—quick, brutal, efficient. The servants didn’t scream for long.

One of the warriors raised his sword high, ready to bring it down on a dazed kitchen boy who had crawled to a corner, hands raised in silent terror.

“Stop.”

The voice sliced through the noise sharper than any blade.

Lucius stepped into the hall with the measured gait of a man on a hunt, not a sprint. His cloak fluttered behind him, his boots clicking softly on the tile slick with blood.

The warrior hesitated mid-swing, then backed away without a word.

Lucius walked up to the trembling figure on the ground—a boy no older than sixteen, dressed in stained linen, his face dirtied with soot and fear. The lad looked up at him like one might look at a wolf deciding whether or not to bite.

Lucius crouched slowly, the leather of his gloves creaking as he rested one hand on his knee.

“You,” he said, voice like warm oil. “Do you know where the royal chambers are?”

The boy nodded frantically, too terrified to speak.

Lucius tilted his head, then smiled “Congratulations twat! You just bought your life.”

He reached out and grabbed the boy by the arm, hauling him upright with surprising strength.

“Walk,” he said. “Lead the way.”

The boy’s legs nearly gave out beneath him, but Lucius steadied him with an iron grip on his shoulder and gave him a gentle, almost paternal shove forward.

Behind them, the thunder of boots echoed through the hall as the rest of Lucius’ men poured into the keep, spreading like wildfire, blades ready and eyes alert, ready to tighten the noose on the dying beast.