Chapter 686: Battle for a crown(7)
The Herculeians died screaming.
Steel rang, flesh split, and bones broke under the terrible weight of Yarzat halberds. What began as battle had become butchery.
"Don’t run now!" barked a footman, his voice hoarse from the fight as he drove his boot into the chest of a soldier. The Herculeian fell backward with a grunt, scrambling on blood-slick grass. A moment later, the heavy blade of the halberd came down like judgment, cleaving through spine and ribcage with a sickening crack.
All across the left, the Black Stripes were in their element, fighting not with honor, but with hunger.
They fought in silence, for the most part, save for when they chose to speak, which most of the time was during a pursuit.
They were men after all, even though after half an hour of fighting they didn’t look like it, so they had to take pleasure in their own way.
A Herculeian levy cried for his mother as a Yarzat dragged him by the hair, blood pouring from a crushed cheek. "She’s not here, but I’ll sing you a lullaby anyway," the man whispered, almost gently, before slitting his throat with the edge of his axe. The blood sprayed in an arc across the man’s face, and he let it paint him, grinning through it.
Another, armored only in quilted linen and barely old enough to shave, tried to crawl away with a gut wound, intestines spilling like snakes. "I’ll make it," he muttered, his self-conviction stronger than his stomach. "Just breathe. Come on. Deep." The boy tried as much as he could, in the end; however, he gurgled and choked on blood.
The field was a symphony of ruin, iron on iron, men wailing like animals, the wet impact of weapons sinking into bodies.
Bodies were everywhere. Some crawling with a blade on their legs. Some frozen mid-scream, eyes glassy. Some trampled so thoroughly by boots that they were nothing but clothing stuffed with gore.
And yet the Yarzat line pushed forward, unrelenting, unmerciful.
There was no music here. No glory. Only the rhythm of slaughter, and the cruel laughter of those who had been taught not just to kill, but to enjoy it.