Blood and Mud

Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Heavy silence permeated the command tent of the 5th Cohort.

The rain battered against the heavy canvas roof, relentless as it mocked our utter lack of progress. Staring at the map of Trivi, the grim reality of our situation settled heavily on my shoulders.

”We can’t starve them out,” Yuni stated, his obsidian eyes scanning the ledgers. ”They took the fortress completely intact. The granaries in the upper tier are full. They have enough salted meat, wheat, and fresh water to outlast us by six months. We, out here , will run out of rations in five weeks.”

”And we can’t breach,” Kaelen grunted, rubbing his bearded chin. The usually boisterous giant looked genuinely defeated. ”That blue arcane dome absorbs force, and the lower drainage grates are locked down by men holding those... those repeating fire-pipes. It’s a flawless defence.”

”Every fortress has a weak point,” Miklas said, his voice hard, though the dark circles under his eyes betrayed his exhaustion. ”A Republic of Sfirt mercenary company just marched into our territory and locked the door behind us. They had to use a key. We just need to figure out what it was.”

Before I could offer a tactical hypothesis, the flap of the tent was violently shoved aside.

Two of Alysia’s scouts stepped into the dim lantern light. Between them, dragged by his arms, was a frail, shivering figure covered from head to toe in brown sludge, river muck, and raw sewage. The stench hit the command tent.

”Captain,” the lead scout reported, saluting sharply. ”We caught him washing up on the riverbank, half-frozen and trying to crawl past our outer perimeter.”

Miklas stepped forward, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He looked down at the pathetic, trembling figure. ”Who are you?”

—-----------------------------------------------

Change of Pov:

My name was Rivlio. I was sixty-eight years old, and my knees had been aching for the better part of two decades.

I was not a Knight-Mage. I had no Ember burning in my chest. I was just an old man whose entire world consisted of the damp, stone-paved alleys of Trivi and the vast network of sewer grates I was paid a handful of copper fairs to keep clear of debris.

As I lay on the muddy floor of the military tent, surrounded by terrifying giants in boiled leather armor, my mind dragged me back to the nightmare of the past week.

It had started with a storm.

We had been waiting for news. The garrison commander, a good man named Hallen, had dispatched patrols to the East, waiting for the 5th Cohort to arrive and reinforce our numbers against the barbarian threat. The city was anxious.

Then, one evening, through the torrential rain, a massive group of people arrived at the gates.

They looked like ghosts. There were nearly two hundred of them, shivering, limping, dressed in tattered Imperial cloaks and battered armor. Their leader, a tall man with cold grey eyes, had shouted over the roaring river that they were the remnants of a border army. They claimed they had been ambushed by the Mud and Blood Coalition, barely escaping with their lives. They begged for sanctuary, just for a few nights, to rest and tend to their wounded before moving on to the capital.

Commander Hallen, driven by the sacred duty of the Empire to care for its soldiers, ordered the gates opened. The civilians of Trivi brought them warm blankets, hot stew, and dry firewood. We welcomed our brothers in arms.

We welcomed the wolves into the sheepfold.

I remember the morning the illusion broke; it began with an eerie, suffocating silence.

I had woken up before dawn to begin my cleaning route near the upper barracks. I walked into the courtyard with my long wooden rake, only to find the cobblestones slick with a dark, sticky substance. The rain was washing it toward the drains. It was blood.

The bodies of our garrison soldiers were stacked against the stone walls like firewood. Commander Hallen’s head was spiked on the iron gate of the armory.

The ”refugees” were no longer limping. They wore strange, mismatched armor—dark leather reinforced with riveted iron plates. Before the city could even process what was happening, the massive bronze bell in the main square began to toll.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Mercenaries kicked down the doors of the civilian homes. They didn’t shout or laugh like the barbarians. They moved with terrifying efficiency. They dragged us out into the freezing morning air, herding over eight hundred civilians into the main square of the upper tier.

I hid behind a stack of empty rain barrels, holding my breath, my old heart hammering against my ribs. I watched through a crack in the wood as the leader with the cold grey eyes stood on the stone fountain.

”Silence,” the man said. His voice carried over the panicked crowd. ”You belong to the Iron Vanguard Company now. This fortress is under the control of our mercenary company. If you cooperate, you will live. If you resist, you will be executed immediately.”

A young blacksmith, desperate and angry, lunged forward with a hidden hammer. He didn’t even make it three steps.

Several mercenaries raised their iron pipes. A deafening series of explosions—CRACK-CRACK-CRACK—shattered the morning. Muzzle flashes erupted in the grey light. The blacksmith was torn to pieces, his chest erupting in a mist of blood before he hit the ground.

The crowd screamed in absolute terror, falling to their knees.

”Separate them,” the leader ordered coldly.

What followed was the most agonising display of cruelty I had ever witnessed. The mercenaries waded into the weeping crowd. They ripped screaming children from their mothers’ arms. They dragged husbands away from their wives.

”Men and boys over the age of twelve to the lower barracks!” a lieutenant barked. ”Women and young children to the upper keep!”

Families reached for each other, begging and crying, but the mercenaries struck them with the heavy wooden stocks of their weapons, forcing them into separate groups. By dividing the families, they ensured absolute obedience. No father would dare pick up a weapon against the occupiers if his wife and daughter were locked in the upper keep under the barrels of those terrifying weapons.

I knew I had to run. I couldn’t fight. I was an old, weak man. But I knew the bowels of the city better than anyone.

I waited until the square was cleared, the wails of the separated families echoing hauntingly from the locked keeps. When night fell, I slipped into the subterranean maintenance shafts.

For two days, I crawled through the darkness. The mercenaries had locked down the main grates, but they didn’t know about the secondary overflow chute—a narrow, foul-smelling pipe that dumped excess storm water directly into the roaring river.

It was near the exit of this pipe, hidden in the shadows of the lower armory, that I was forced to stop.

Two mercenaries were standing near the grate. They were smoking small, white sticks that glowed red at the tips, filling the damp air with the sharp, acrid smell of burning tobacco. I pressed myself flat against the cold, wet stone, praying the darkness would hide me.

”How much longer are we supposed to freeze out here?” one of the men grumbled, shivering in his dark coat. ”The 7th Legion is right across the river. If they push the bridge in force...”

”They won’t,” the other replied confidently, taking a drag from his white stick. ”The Commander said the barrier is holding perfectly. Their mages can’t even scratch it.”

”Yeah, but for how long? Those arcane domes require a circle of highly trained mages to sustain them. We don’t have any mages.”

”You worry too much,” the confident one scoffed. ”The engineers hooked the generator directly to the new Ember Stones.”

”Ember Stones?”

”Aye. The Commander bought a whole crate of them from the smuggling ships returning from the Northern Continent. I saw them myself. Crystalline rocks, glowing like hot coals. They say the natives of the Northern Continent don’t have biological magic like these Imperial bastards; their magic is fossilised in the earth. The stones act like batteries. The generator is just draining the raw Ember from the rocks to project the shield.”

”But batteries run out,” the nervous mercenary pointed out.

”Exactly. The engineers said the stones have enough juice to maintain the dome for another two days, maybe three if the Legion doesn’t hit it too hard. Once the stones turn to grey ash, the shield drops.”

”And then what? We face an Imperial Cohort with their swords drawn?”

The confident mercenary laughed. ”No. Once the shield drops, we march the women and children out onto the battlements. We put our rifles to the back of their heads. The mighty 7th Legion won’t fire a single ballista, and they won’t storm the gates. We hold the fortress until the rest of the Sfirt Republic army arrives next month.”

My blood ran cold. They weren’t mercenaries.

I didn’t wait to hear more. I squeezed my frail body into the overflow chute. The freezing, putrid water swallowed me. I slid down the slick stone in total darkness, terrified of getting stuck, until I was violently expelled into the roaring, freezing rapids of the river.

The current tossed me like a ragdoll. I drank water, choked, and fought for the surface, my old lungs burning. I don’t know how long I was in the water, but eventually, my hands scraped against jagged rocks. I dragged myself onto the muddy bank, collapsing in the freezing rain.

The next thing I knew, strong hands were hauling me to my feet, and I was being dragged toward a massive canvas tent.

—-------------------------------

Back to Elvit pov:

I stared at the old man, Rivlio, as he finished his harrowing tale. He sat on a wooden stool, wrapped in three thick wool blankets, a cup of hot broth trembling violently in his frail hands.

The silence in the command tent was absolute.

Miklas looked at the map, his jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth might shatter. Alysia was gripping the hilt of her scimitar, her scarred face a mask of barely contained fury.

But my mind was spinning with the goldmine this old man had just handed us.

The Republic of Sfirt hadn’t reinvented magic; they had commodified it. They were using fossilised magic to power technology. And more importantly, that technology had a fatal flaw. It was finite.

”Three days,” Yuni murmured, his eyes widening. ”He said the stones will burn out in three days.”

”And when they do, they will use the civilians as human shields,” Miklas said, his voice laced with venom. ”They know we won’t risk slaughtering Imperial citizens to take the walls.”

I stepped forward, looking down at the map of Trivi. The despair that had choked the room moments ago was gone, replaced by the cold, calculating focus of my honed mind.

”Then we don’t give them the chance to use the hostages,” I said, my voice cutting through the heavy air. I looked up at Miklas. ”Captain. We know the barrier will fall. We know they are relying on it to hold us back until they can reposition the civilians. This means they will be vulnerable the exact second the generator runs dry.”

”What are you suggesting, Elvit?” Miklas asked, his amber eyes locking onto mine.

”I am suggesting a synchronised breach,” I replied, tapping the map. ”We don’t wait for the shield to fall. We prepare the assault now. We calculate the exact moment those stones turn to ash, and before they can even blink, we storm the fortress. They have superior technology, but they are arrogant. We use that against them.”