Blood and Mud

Chapter 30: Chapter 30

Sorry for the delay on the Chapter. Your fantastic and brilliant Author had some electronic exams to take care of at university, so today: double Chapter.

v

I sprinted upward, my leather boots slapping against the wet cobblestones, chasing the trajectory of the Imperial Falcon. But halfway up the second flight of stairs, my body violently rebelled.

I stumbled, catching myself against the cold stone wall, gasping for air. A sudden, agonizing spike of pain shot through my legs and up my spine. It wasn’t the familiar, dull burn of lactic acid from training. This was a deep, skeletal ache. It felt as though the marrow inside my bones was being slowly crushed in a vice.

I squeezed my eyes shut, clutching my chest as a wave of feverish heat washed over me. I had been ignoring the signs for weeks, attributing them to Alysia’s brutal sparring sessions. But my reincarnated mind, possessing the knowledge of an adult, finally pieced the terrifying symptoms together.

I was a fourteen-year-old girl. Nature was trying to push my body through the violent, rapid changes of female puberty. My hips were trying to widen, my chest was tender and developing, and my bones were screaming for a growth spurt.

But the Ember was fighting back.

The furnace of the Dormant Bud was trying to solidify my vessel. My body growing meant that my cells where dying and changing but the ember was fueling them , preventing the normal decay. It was acting like a forge, attempting to cast my current physical state into permanent, unyielding iron. The magic was actively warring against my own DNA, forcefully slowing my aging process to a crawl. The pain was the byproduct of that war—my skeleton trying to grow while the magic brutally compressed it.

Adapt and overcome, I told myself, gritting my teeth , the mantra that made humanity stand tall for millennia. I forced the Ember to suppress the pain, wiping a cold sweat from my brow. I couldn’t afford to be a terrified teenager. Not today.

I pushed off the wall and ran the rest of the way to the keep.

When I shoved open the heavy oak doors of the war room, the atmosphere was thick enough to choke on.

Miklas stood at the head of the massive wooden table, his massive hands planted flat against the map of the West Border. The brass dispatch tube lay discarded on the floor. Lieutenant Alysia, Yuni, and Kaelen were already there, staring at the unrolled parchment in the center of the table.

Miklas looked up as I entered. The Captain of the 5th Coohort looked grey. The fiery, indomitable aura he usually projected had been replaced by the cold, hollow stare of a man looking at a mass grave.

”Close the door, Elvit,” Miklas said, his voice stripped of all emotion.

I locked the heavy iron bolt and stepped to the table. ”The falcon. Is it Commander Erula?”

”It is a general broadcast from the capital to all frontier strongholds,” Yuni answered, his obsidian eyes scanning the parchment, his voice unusually tight. ”The forward Imperial defense lines across the river have fallen. All of them.

My thoughts stalled for a fraction of a second. ”That’s impossible. We had three full regiments stationed beyond the river. Thousands of men. How did the Mud and Blood Coalition break a fortified line?”

”Because it wasn’t a raid,” Miklas stated grimly. ”The Coalition has formally reopened total hostilities against the Empire. The dispatch reports a unified horde marching directly toward Trivi. Thirty thousand warriors.”

”Thirty thousand?” Kaelen slammed his massive fist onto the table, rattling the inkwells. ”That’s not a warband, that’s an entire army! We have five hundred men!”

”Sixty to one,” Yuni calculated instantly, his mind immediately grasping the sheer amount of body the enemy will trow at us. ”Even with the fortress walls, they will bury us in their own dead to breach the gates.”

”Captain,” Alysia leaned forward, her face twisting in confusion. ”The barbarians are fractured. They spend more time killing each other in the mud than fighting us. How did they amass thirty thousand men under one banner?”

Miklas took a slow, heavy breath, looking at his lieutenants. ”Because you are thinking of them as mindless savages. They are not. The Coalition is formed by nine distinct tribes. Every year, they meet in the center of their territory, at the Mud Arena, to elect a single representative leader. Candidates can come from the lowest scavengers or the highest chieftains. Every tribe takes the name of the beast they use for their embalming, blood-sucking rituals.”

”Except the Border Tribe,” I muttered, recalling fragments of geography I had read in the Shepfold archives.

Miklas nodded at me. ”Exactly. The Border Tribe proudly bears that name to make its constant, bloody fight with the Empire clear. They have no sacred beast; every member is free to decide which animal’s blood they use to fuel their magic. But here is the problem we are facing: if a Coalition leader is defeated in the Mud Arena, they don’t just lose power. By their ancient law, the defeated leader and their entire retinue are permanently exiled from all nine territories.”

”So they form warbands,” Yuni realized, tracing a line on the map from the swamps to Trivi. ”They have nowhere to go but East. They seek an honorable death by throwing themselves at the Imperial border.”

”This is different,” Miklas corrected, tapping the parchment. ”This isn’t an exiled leader looking to die. The scouts report that multiple tribes are marching together. This is a unified front.”

”How?” Kaelen grunted. ”They don’t have a standing military. They don’t even have an economy. They live in wooden palisade huts coated with swamp resin and barter for scraps.”

”They don’t need a standing military,” I interjected, looking at the massive stretch of land the Coalition occupied on the map. My past-life knowledge of warfare kicked in. ”Captain... what is their estimated total population?”

”Two hundred million,” Miklas said. The number hung in the air like a death sentence. ”And in their culture, there is no distinction between a civilian and a soldier. Every single tribesman, from the hunters to the resin-gatherers, can become a warrior at a moment’s notice. Their entire population is a terrible, sleeping warring force.”

”And they are waking up,” Alysia whispered, her hand instinctively resting on the hilt of her scimitar.

”There is something worse,” Miklas said, pointing to the second half of the dispatch. ”The survivors of the forward lines reported that this horde is not fighting like traditional barbarians. Yes, they still dress in layered pelts and scavenged linen, but they are unusually well-equipped. They have Imperial-grade steel. Standardized shields. Siege equipment.”

A chilling silence fell over the war room.

I looked at Yuni, and I saw the exact same realization click in his calculating eyes.

”The Republic of Sfirt,” I said, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

Miklas nodded slowly. ”The mercenary company that took Trivi was just a distraction. A test of our defenses. While we were focused on a few men with repeating rifles, the Republic of Sfirt was secretly funnelling steel, weapons, and resources across the northern sea directly into the swamps of the Coalition. They are arming two hundred million barbarians to fight a proxy war against the Empire.”

”Gods above,” Kaelen breathed out, his aggressive bravado finally faltering. ”We aren’t fighting savages. We are fighting a funded army.”

”It gets worse,” Miklas continued, his voice dropping an octave. ”The dispatch confirms what we have always feared about their religion. They believe in nature spirits. They believe their people were created from the mud of their marshes, and that the ancient trees gave up their resin to breathe life into their lungs. And because of this...”

”Shamans,” Alysia interrupted, her scarred face draining of color.

”Yes,” Miklas confirmed. ”Among the thirty thousand, there are hundreds of Shamans. They aren’t Imperial Knight-Mages. They don’t use the Ember to fortify their bodies. They use it to manipulate the earth. They control the earth, the roots, and vegetation. If they reach Trivi, they won’t need battering rams to break our gates. They will tear the stone apart from the foundations.”

I stared at the map. The sheer scale of the threat was paralyzing. Thirty thousand well-armed warriors, supported by earth-manipulating mages, bearing down on a fortress held by five hundred infantrymen.

”What are our orders, Captain?” Yuni asked. For the first time since I had met him, the mercenary lieutenant was scared and looked like a man calculating how long he had left to live.

Miklas stood tall, pulling his crimson cloak over his broad shoulders. He looked at each of us, his amber eyes burning with the terrifying resolve of the 7th Legion.

”The capital is mobilizing,” Miklas announced, his voice steadying, filling the room. ”Commander Erula is assembling the main force of the 7th Legion, and the Emperor is recalling the central armies. They are going to wait for the horde to fully commit to the siege of the West Border, and then the Imperial Army will strike them from behind, crushing them against the river.”

”But to do that,” I said, finishing his thought, ”the horde has to be stopped here. If Trivi falls, they cross the bridge, spread into the rural districts, and the Empire loses the chokepoint. The Imperial Army will have to fight them on open ground.”

”Exactly,” Miklas said, looking directly at me. ”Our orders are absolute. We do not retreat. We do not surrender the bridge. We hold Trivi.”

”Against thirty thousand?” Kaelen laughed, a harsh, humorless sound. ”Captain, even with the river protecting our flank, we will be fighting on the walls for days. The men will exhaust their Embers. We will bleed out.”

”Then we bleed out,” Alysia said coldly, drawing one of her scimitars and driving the tip into the wooden table. ”I was born in the logging districts. I’ve seen what the barbarians do to the villages they capture. If we fall here, my family burns. I say we make them pay for every inch of stone.”

Miklas nodded at the scarred lieutenant, then turned to me. ”Elvit. You had always displayed unusual tactic during our lectures. The barbarians will be at our gates in three days. How do we kill thirty thousand men with five hundred?”

I looked down at the map. I ignored the deep, agonizing ache in my bones. I locked away the agonyzing pain numbing my bones, and I summoned the cold, ruthless ghost of the veteran commander I used to be. I looked at the river, the stone walls, the bridge, and the mud.

”We don’t fight them fairly,” I said, my voice dropping to a deadpan whisper. ”They have Shamans. They have Sfirt steel. But they are still an army of thirty thousand marching through a bottleneck. They need to eat. They need to cross the water. And they are arrogant.”

I looked up, meeting Miklas’s gaze. ”We turn the river into a meat grinder. We trap the bridge. We don’t just defend the walls; we make the very air in front of Trivi toxic. By the time they even touch our gates, I want ten thousand of them dead in the mud.”

Miklas’s mouth twitched into a grim, predatory smile. ”Then get to work, Lieutenant Elvit. Turn this fortress into a slaughterhouse.”