Chapter 754: Mind’s games(4)
"A Fox! A Fox is among us!" The war-cry split the air , fierce and wild, carried on the wind like the call of some ancient predator. Lances sprang forward, their steel tips catching the light until they shone like a thousand stars.
Dust billowed thick beneath the pounding hooves, swallowing the riders in a swirling veil. Their shapes were little more than shifting shadows in the haze, but their presence was unmistakable. The earth trembled with their approach, and their howls, chants, and screams rolled like thunder across the plain, so fierce and unrelenting that it seemed a thousand riders bore down on Freusen, not merely two hundred.
Through the yawning gate they came.
Beside the breach, the town’s footmen scrambled, clutching shields and spears with shaking hands. The commander, still perched safely atop the wall and unwilling to meet the charge face-to-face, bellowed orders to form a line. His words scattered like chaff in the wind.
Few answered.
Fear had hollowed their hearts. Some men abandoned even the pretense of courage, flinging away shields and spears before turning heel, even before the fight begun . They vanished into alleys, fled toward the city’s heart, or sought any shadow deep enough to hide from the storm about to break.
It is known that cavalry kills twice. First with fear, then with steel.
A soldier facing a mounted charge must master the terror in his gut, must stand his ground even when the beasts are nearly upon him, their breath hot and their eyes wild. This is why the White Army drilled its men mercilessly.
Rows of infantry standing firm as riders thundered toward them, blunted lances striking shields with bone-rattling force, teaching them to endure the sight and sound without flinching.
But Freusen’s garrison had never tasted such training. And when Egil’s riders came roaring through the open gate, they found not a wall of men, but a table laid for slaughter.
Those few unfortunate souls who had been bracing the gate with their bodies when the ram struck lay broken upon the ground, arms twisted, ribs crushed, legs bent unnaturally.
Some writhed and groaned, clutching shattered limbs. Others lay still, wide-eyed and silent.
The invaders did not spare them so much as a glance.
Hooves the size of dinner plates came down like falling hammers. Skulls cracked, spines snapped, ribs splintered beneath the weight of charging warhorses. Blood fanned out across the packed dirt, mingling with the dust into a dark, wet paste. A scream rose before being cut off in a wet crunch as another body was driven into the earth.
By the time the last horse had passed, the ground before the gate was littered with mangled corpses and pulped flesh, the dead and dying alike, ground into the dirt beneath the trampling advance of the Yarzat Hounds.
And still the riders came, the gate behind them vanishing in the storm of dust and death they carried into the heart of Freusen.
Without a hint of resistance, they poured into the city. Not a spear was leveled against them, not a shield raised.
But absence of defiance was no gift of mercy.
It was simply an invitation.
Down the narrow streets they rode, hunting the garrison like wolves running down startled deer. The defenders fled in a frantic tide, scattering through alleys and courtyards, their discipline already shattered.
The Hounds came grinning, teeth bared, eyes alight with the fever of the kill. Lances leveled, the ashwood shafts quivered in the riders’ hands before they couched them low, points aimed for the exposed backs and heaving chests of the fleeing men.
"A FOX IS HERE!" one rider roared as his lance punched through chainmail, bursting links apart and hurling the soldier to the cobblestones in a spray of blood. He let the shattered shaft fall, freeing his hand to draw the curved sword at his hip, the blade flashing before it bit deep into the neck of another man who barely had time to scream.
"A FOX IS HERE!" another voice answered, wild with glee, as its owner brought his axe down with a savage cleave, burying it in the juncture of neck and shoulder until bone gave way and the man crumpled like wet cloth.
Some of the Hounds rode on, chasing their prey deeper into the maze of streets, their hooves hammering against stone as they picked off the stragglers one by one.
But not all joined the chase.
A knot of riders reined in at the shattered gate, wheeling their mounts to face the open road beyond. Their task was clear, they were to hold the breach open for the rest of the army to pour in.
They were the teeth at the mouth of the beast, waiting for the rest of the pack to arrive.
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With the arrival of the infantry, the city’s fate was sealed. The last pockets of resistance were butchered where they stood, some cut down in the streets, others dragged screaming from doorways as they tried to hide. A few managed to break away, fleeing into houses or scrambling toward the lord’s keep, throwing themselves behind its heavy gates in a desperate bid to join its defense.
It was a futile gesture, nothing more than a last, pitiful attempt to slow the inevitable. Within the hour, the full weight of an army thirteen hundred strong encircled the keep, steel and shields glinting under the fading light. The lord of Freusen was trapped, his men hemmed in with no road left to run.
The moment should have brought Asag joy, but it did not, as he had to share it with him.
"What did I tell you?" Egil grinned, leaning forward in the saddle, a streak of drying blood smudged through his blond hair. His expression carried the satisfied gleam of a man who had enjoyed himself immensely before arriving at the meeting point.
"I can’t believe that worked," Asag muttered, jaw tight. "By all rights, it should have failed."
"Well, what can I say? I’m a genius," Egil replied without a trace of humility. "And I’ll be eager to hear you admit it when we’re back in Artalerita." He began to whistle a jaunty tune, as if they weren’t standing on the edge of a massacre.
"I hope you drop dead before we get there so I can be spared the trouble," Asag said dryly.
"Unfortunately for you, I’m not so easy to kill. And by the Great Horse, I won’t be called to the other side until I’ve heard those sweet words from your lips."
"Never say never," Asag replied "Perhaps you’ll find your chest split open one of these evenings."
"If that happens," Egil grinned, "I’ll make sure my last will mentions our wager. One way or another, you’ll say it."
"Of course," Asag murmured absently, his attention drifting to the keep ahead.
Around them, soldiers laughed and swapped stories, their boots crunching on broken stone. The city’s surviving citizens had been herded forward, shovels in hand, forced to dig trenches and embankments around the keep to prepare for the siege.
At first, the defenders atop the battlements loosed arrows down at the work parties, each shot followed by curses and cries. But by the third volley, they had begun to conserve their shafts, realizing their meager stock was better saved for the moment the enemy finally came for them in earnest.
"I hate it," Egil growled, his face twisted in a scowl as he surveyed the keep. "When they run back into their stone cages. It’s fucking useless. A waste of everyone’s time. Can’t they take defeat with their heads held high? Back in the plains, the only way tribes fought was in the open, man against man, under the same sky. None of this hiding behind walls." He spat in the dirt for emphasis.
"That," Asag said evenly, "is exactly why the walls exist." His eyes remained fixed on the squat fortification ahead. "A lord in this situation will try to hold out until a relief force arrives, or use his position to bargain for better terms. If we were pressed for time, it wouldn’t be unthinkable to let him keep his lands in exchange for swearing fealty, just to spare the army from wasting time and men on a drawn-out siege."
Egil’s lip curled. "Sore losers."
Asag ignored the barb, his gaze scanning from the laughing Yarzat warriors nearby to the keep’s heavy gates. "Starving them out is pointless. Who knows how much food they’ve stored away? Storming it is our only real choice."
He pointed with his chin toward the city behind. "Luckily..we’ve got a whole city full of manpower.
We should put tools in their hands and send them forward. If they refuse, we can round up their families and make an example. Either way, we have the bodies to wear those walls down, then once the gate or the walls are taken we send our infantry in to finish the job."
Egil scratched his jaw, smirking faintly. "Think Alpheo will be fine with that? He usually prefer to leave the city mostly intacts to take taxes from them after the war’’
"He won’t care," Asag replied flatly. "This is barely more than a roadside town. It’s not the prize, just a pebble in the way of the real one. If we hand him the city with few casualties, he’ll take it and move on. The quicker we’re done here, the quicker we march to the real prize."
Egil chuckled low in his throat, glancing back toward where his riders milled about. "Then I’ll have my boys round up some pigs. Let’s see if our lord behind the wall likes the smell of rotting flesh under his windows."
’’Please do that’’ Asag nodded not caring much about what casualty they would incur, as at the end of the day all that mattered was to keep his legion safe.
Of course that and making sure to present the town as a gift for his dear prince.