Chapter 753: Mind’s games(3)
The commander, who less than half a minute ago had barked the order to open the gate, now stood frozen in disbelief at his own mistake.
His eyes followed the lone rider galloping away down the road, the massive barring plank balanced across the man’s shoulders like a trophy of war, which in a certain way it was.
It was surreal, and of course, he needed some time to process what had just happened and how much he had fucked up.
A hollow silence hung in the air for the briefest of moments, broken only when the distant sound of the soldiers below crying at the misdeed that was done awakened him..
“Archers! Loose! Loose, damn you!” He ordered as the few bowmen stationed along the battlements scrambled to obey, their fingers fumbling at bowstrings as they tried to pick out shapes in the shifting dust beyond the gate.
“Quickly, bar the gate!” the commander roared next.
Still even with all that had happened, he could not yet place the allegiance of the force outside.
His first suspicion fell upon the Sharjaan Princedom, their southern neighbor. It made perfect sense if one was to muse over it.
Freusen lay along the southern border, a tempting target for the Sharjaan prince to seize in a dishonorable strike without any declaration of war, especially for the mines that it guarded….
The Yarzats, on the other hand, were far to the north, and even though they were at war, there was an entire princedom between them . For them to strike here, they would need the whole of it just to reach this remote, southern wall.
It was clear which theory made more sense.
And yet, the truth was the other.
For as truly unbelievable as it sounded, Alpheo’s force had really come leaping across an entire state like a frog in a pond.
Returning to the courtyeard below , there could be found only chaos.
Barring the gate without its great wooden plank was proving far easier said than done. After all, no one in their right mind would ever have imagined losing the very thing meant to hold the gate shut.
It was like a chair that everyone took for granted, and that once it taken, caused the one standing to fall.
It wasn’t that the plank itself was irreplaceable, far from it. There were a dozen ways to secure a gate if one had the time and tools; unfortunately, since the situation was just that unbelievable, they had no solution for it, as none would have thought that they’d have be robbed of that.
And apparently, the very thing that made it expendable also made it rarer than gold.
Turning away from the chaos made form below, the commander’s gaze drifted beyond the walls, and what he saw turned his unease into something colder.
Rolling into view along the road was… a carriage, or at least something shaped like one. Yet its form was so alien, with all the steel horns that were put on it, that it looked less like a human construct and more like some war-beast conjured from the pages of an old soldier’s tale.
Worse still, trailing in its wake came the pounding thunder of hooves, hundreds of cavalrymen closing the distance fast.
It was clear what the carriage’s use was for.
His voice snapped out the same orders he had given moments ago.
But repetition did not solve the problem.
And in those precious seconds they had, the best the soldiers could find to bar the gate was… a broom used to clean dog’s shit around the streets.
The pathetic stick of wood was shoved into place like a child’s toy, looking for all the world like a toothpick wedged in the palm of a giant. Even the man who placed it seemed embarrassed, averting his gaze from the commander’s astonished stare.
For a moment, the garrison leader felt a hot sting at the corners of his eyes, he wanted to cry from sheer frustration at the absurdity of it all.
As that flimsy scrap of wood was the only thing separating them from the army outside.
Unfortunately, they were out of time as that monstrous carriage, gleaming like the plated hide of some ancient predator, finally found itself slamming against the very target it had been aimed at.
———-
He was a fucking genius; that was the only way Egil could have deemed himself after this day.
He threw his head back and howled at the sky, the sound rolling out like thunder across the plain. Behind him, two hundred riders, the closest thing he had forged to his own tribesmen, echoed his cry their voices melding into a primal sound.
Lances angled at their sides, ready to lower for the charge, they surged forward, the ground trembling beneath the pounding of hooves.
The wolves’ pelts draped over their shoulders and necks seemed to ripple with life, as wolves under the moonlight, as if the beasts themselves had risen to ride alongside them.
Egil’s eyes tracked the great carriage he had prepared for this very moment as it thundered toward Freusen’s gate.
The horses that had driven it forward were already gone, cut loose at the last moment. His faith would not allow their needless slaughter, so he had ordered the reins severed before the driver leapt clear.
The plan was unfolding exactly as he’d envisioned.
A plan Asag had scoffed at, calling it reckless, impossible. Soon, Egil thought with a pleasant smile, he would press his success into Asag’s face and slap him with it.
The carriage roared the last stretch toward the walls, the modifications he’d ordered gleaming in the dim light. When the collision came, that sharpened prow would tear into the gate like a predator’s fangs.
And then it struck.
The impact sounded like the cracking of a mountain. The reinforced point bit into the wood and iron of the gate, splintering it with a deafening groan. Bolts screamed from their sockets. The timbers shuddered once and then gave.
Inside, the handful of soldiers bracing the gate with their weight were wrenched from their positions as if hurled by an unseen giant. The air filled with the sound of breaking bones and strangled cries. One man slammed against the stone wall with a sickening crack, his leg bent at an impossible angle. Another was flung backward across the courtyard, rolling limply before coming to rest, clutching his ribs and gasping for air.
The gate itself burst open, vomiting splinters into the courtyard as its two great leaves swung wide. The wrecked carriage lodged in the threshold like a jagged wedge, the last shards of its steel prow still embedded in the ruin of the gate.
And Beyond it, the riders rode.
The pounding of hooves shook the earth beneath them, the open gate ahead yawning wide, inviting them in like the brazen spread of a lover’s legs.
The roar of their charge rose above all other sounds.
The man leading said charge, moved his eyes the side of the road, where a lone rider sitting astride his horse, watched them with a gaze that burned with both pride and longing. Vanno.
His arm was useless at his side as he looked like a child who had lost his family.
He had been the one to make this moment possible, yet he could not ride with them into the kill. In his eyes was a hunger, a yearning to be in the thick of it with his brothers, that nearly matched Egil’s own.
An idea struck him like lightning.
Egil rose in his saddle, one boot planted in the stirrup, the other leg swinging free for balance. His trusted axe gleamed in the light as he lifted it high. The wind tore at his hair and cloak as his voice rang over the thunder of hooves.
“My Hounds! My Brothers!” His words cracked through the air like a whip. “As you ride to carve the enemy’s flesh and paint their walls red, do not forget the man who made this day ours!”
He swung his axe in Vanno’s direction, pointing the weapon like a king bestowing honor. “There stands your brother Vanno! The poor sod took an arrow through his shoulder to tear this gate open for you! Without him, there would be no slaughter, no glory, no victory! When the killing’s done, you will thank him as only you do!”
The Crown’s Hounds answered not with words at first, but with steel. Lances were lifted high, then brought down in unison to strike the iron rims of their shields—clang, clang, clang—each blow a booming note in a war-drum’s rhythm.
Then came the chant, a rolling cry that seemed to shake the very ground:
“Brother Vanno! Brother Vanno!”
The air quivered with their voices, the sound carrying across the open plain and into the doomed city beyond the shattered gate.
Vanno’s eyes widened, his lips parting in disbelief as the chorus of his brothers washed over him. Slowly, he lifted the great wooden beam he had carried, the very plank that had once barred the gate, and raised it above his head.
His howl rose into the night, raw and primal.
The riders answered in kind. Mouths opened wide in the long, guttural cry of wolves under a full moon. The sound rolled through the charge like a living thing, deep and proud.
And in that moment, Egil understood something that warmed his heart.
He was no longer a rider without a tribe.
For those men howling into the wind, were his tribe. His blood. And now his home.
The howl faded into the pounding of hooves, and the wolves of Yarzat surged forward into Freusen, hungry for the feast that awaited within.