Blood and Mud

Chapter 31: Chapter 31

The map table in the command keep was no longer just a piece of parchment but it was the tool for our survival. I stared at the topographical lines drawn across the West Border, specifically the terrain directly across the roaring river from Trivi. Nature had provided us with a brutal canvas for the upcoming slaughter.

Across the churning, white-capped water, the land did not flatten out into an open plain. Instead, it was dominated by two massive, rocky plateaus. The northern plateau ended abruptly, its sheer stone cliff face dropping vertically into the deep, freezing rapids of the river, offering absolutely no foothold. The southern plateau, however, sat further back. Between its steep, jagged cliff and the riverbank lay a stretch of flat, muddy earth—a natural corridor roughly a hundred yards wide.

This was the chokepoint.

To reach the heavy stone bridge that led to our gates, the barbarian horde could not spread out their thirty thousand warriors. They where forced to march through that narrow gap between the southern plateau and the river. They would be compressed into a dense, inescapable column of flesh.

I traced the corridor with my finger, looking up at Miklas, Yuni, Alysia, and Kaelen.

”They will funnel through here,” I said, my voice cold and clinical. ”The sheer volume of bodies will make them slow, trampling over each other in the mud. But the real threat isn’t their infantry. It’s their command structure. The chieftains and the Shamans who can manipulate the earth.”

”We can’t hit them with arrows from the fortress walls,” Yuni observed, his dark eyes analyzing the distance. ”The plateaus are out of effective bow range, even for a Swelled Bud. By the time their leaders are close enough for us to shoot, their Shamans will already be tearing the stone bridge apart.”

I reached under the wooden map table and pulled a heavy, canvas-wrapped bundle onto the surface. The metallic clank drew everyone’s attention. I unrolled the canvas, revealing six pristine, long-barreled repeating muskets. They were the weapons we had salvaged from the Republic of Sfirt mercenaries in the courtyard ,the gunpowder flasks and pouches of lead balls we had stripped from the corpses sat beside them.

”We aren’t going to use bows,” I said, picking up one of the heavy wooden stocks. ”We are going to use their own technology against them.”

Alysia stared at the iron pipes, a flash of phantom pain crossing her scarred face. ”Those weapons are an abomination. And we have no idea how to manufacture the black powder to keep them firing.”

”We don’t need to manufacture it,” I replied, checking the firing mechanism. ”We scavenged enough powder and lead for roughly two hundred shots. In a sustained firefight, that is nothing. But as instruments of targeted assassination, they are priceless.”

I pointed to the tops of the two opposing plateaus on the map. ”I want six of our most level-headed legionnaires. We equip them with these muskets and send them across the river tonight under the cover of darkness. They climb the cliffs and dig in at the highest vantage points on both plateaus. They camouflage themselves with mud and scrub brush.”

Miklas’s amber eyes narrowed as he saw the brilliance of the trap. ”A crossfire overlooking the bottleneck.”

”Exactly,” I nodded. ”When the horde funnels through the corridor, our six snipers will have a God’s-eye view of the enemy ranks. They don’t shoot the infantry. They wait for the men wearing the heaviest pelts. They wait for the Shamans carrying the resin-staffs. And from an elevation where no barbarian arrow can reach them, they execute the Coalition’s leadership before the siege even begins.”

Kaelen let out a low, rumbling laugh, slapping the table with his massive hand. ”By the gods, Elvit. You have the mind of a demon. You’re going to decapitate their army before they even see our walls.”

”Do it,” Miklas ordered, looking at Yuni. ”Find me six men who can shoot straight and won’t panic when thirty thousand barbarians march beneath their boots.”

With the assassination protocol set, the fortress of Trivi transformed into a frantic, hyper-efficient hive of industry. We had exactly seventy-two hours to turn a stone citadel into an unbreakable fortress.

The most critical vulnerability was the main gate. The heavy iron-reinforced wooden doors had been completely shattered during our own assault a few weeks prior. We couldn’t survive a siege with an open throat.

I walked down to the lower tier courtyard. The noise was deafening. Kaelen had conscripted every able-bodied civilian blacksmith, ironworker, and carpenter in the city. The massive forge fires roared day and night, turning the freezing, damp air into a sweltering furnace.

”More heat! Keep the bellows pumping!” Kaelen barked, stripped to the waist, his massive, tree-trunk arms glistening with sweat and soot. While barking orders he was swinging a massive sledgehammer alongside the civilians, using the kinetic force of his Ember to mold salvaged iron plates in to the gate.

They weren’t rebuilding a traditional wooden door , they were constructing a solid iron portcullis, using melted-down mercenary armor, shattered shields, and raw ore from the fortress stores. It was ugly and immensely heavy, requiring massive chain pulleys to operate, but it would not splinter under a battering ram.

While Kaelen fortified the entrance, Alysia and I handled the logistics of the incoming siege.

A siege was a battle against starvation as much as a battle against the enemy. I requisitioned the old sweeper, Rivlio, to help organize the civilian populace. Despite his frail age, the man knew every cellar, storage room, and granary in Trivi.

”Move the salted pork to the upper keeps!” I directed a line of young men and women carrying heavy wooden crates up the stone stairs. ”Leave the grain in the lower tier, but elevate the sacks off the stone floors to prevent rot! I want the water cisterns checked twice a day for contamination!”

Every piece of available land within the walls was utilized. We piled massive stacks of arrows behind the battlements. We prepared vats of pitch and animal fat to be boiled and poured over the walls. The civilians worked tirelessly alongside the Dormant Bud soldiers. The shared trauma of the mercenary occupation had forged an unbreakable bond between the citizens of Trivi and the 5th Cohort. They knew that if the Coalition breached those new iron gates, there would be no prisoners. Every man, woman, and child would be slaughtered for the blood rituals.

As the second day bled into the third, the physical toll of my accelerated training and my halted biology reared its terrifying head again.

I was inspecting the ballista emplacements on the semicircular wall when my vision suddenly swam. A violent, sickening cramp seized my lower abdomen, followed immediately by a searing, white-hot pain shooting up my spine. My knees buckled. I grabbed the cold stone of the crenellations, my knuckles turning white as I desperately tried to stay upright.

Breathe. Just breathe.

My body was actively fighting the Ember.My bones ached with a deep, crushing pressure, demanding to grow, while the furnace in my chest forcefully compressed my cellular structure, ensuring I remained the perfect, unchanging vessel. The pain was blinding. I tasted copper in my mouth, realizing I had bitten my own lip to keep from screaming.

”Lieutenant?” A young spearman nearby took a step toward me, his face laced with concern. ”Are you alright?”

I forced the Ember to flare, pushing a wave of scalding heat through my nervous system to burn away the pain receptors. I straightened my posture, releasing the stone, my face a mask of absolute, unfeeling authority.

”I am fine, soldier,” I lied, my voice perfectly level. ”Check the tension on that ballista wire again. If it snaps during a volley, it will take your head off.”

He saluted nervously and returned to his work. I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, staring out into the bruised, grey horizon. I didn’t have time to be a child. I didn’t have time to be a woman. I only had time to be a weapon.

That night, the fortress fell into an eerie, suffocating silence.

The forge fires were extinguished to conserve fuel. The new iron portcullis had been lowered, its massive, ugly spikes biting deep into the stone of the bridge. The granaries were full, the cisterns were locked, and the arrows were nocked. Five hundred soldiers of the 7th Legion stood on the battlements, their boiled leather armor slick with the freezing drizzle that perpetually haunted the West Border.

Across the river, on the high peaks of the two opposing plateaus, our six snipers were in position. I couldn’t see them. They had buried themselves in the mud and the scrub brush, wrapped in dark cloaks, their deadly Sfirt muskets resting on bipods of scavenged wood, perfectly zeroed on the chokepoint below.

I stood on the command balcony of the upper tier alongside Miklas, Alysia, Yuni, and Kaelen. We didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. The tactics were set. The logistics were secured. All that remained was waiting.

As the first pale light of dawn began to bleed through the heavy grey clouds, the horizon shifted.

It started as a low, rhythmic vibration that I felt in the soles of my boots before I heard it. Thrum. Thrum. Thrum. The sound of massive war drums, beating in perfect, terrifying unison.

Then, the fog rolling off the wild moors began to part.

An enormous barbarian army was on the horizon, they poured over the hills. Thirty thousand warriors of the Mud and Blood Coalition. A sea of bodies that stretched as far as the eye could see, their war cries blending into a single, deafening roar that challenged the rushing of the river.

Through my enhanced vision, I saw the glint of scavenged Imperial steel. I saw towering figures wearing the skulls of bears and wolves, holding staffs twisted from black swamp resin. I saw the sheer, apocalyptic scale of an entire culture mobilized for our absolute destruction.

They reached the edge of the plateaus and began to funnel into the narrow corridor between the cliff and the water, exactly as we had anticipated. The massive horde was compressing, forced into the muddy chokepoint to reach the bridge.

Miklas rested his hand on the hilt of his broadsword, his amber eyes locked on the sea of barbarians. The ancient rune on his neck was already beginning to hum with a faint, deadly light.

”Let them come,” Miklas whispered into the freezing wind.

High above the chokepoint, hidden in the mud of the plateaus, the first spark of gunpowder ignited.

CRACK!