“Good. Let’s get moving,” she replied, throwing her fist across her chest. The captain’s long black braid swung over her shoulder as she turned and led the battalion toward the outpost’s massive lattice gate. The guards there spun the wheel mechanism, hauling the gate upward. Silence, like a stifling smoke, settled over the unit as they marched, racing to beat dawn’s light.
The battalions stationed in the outposts along Venia’s border, now the bloodiest of war zones, all marched toward an ancient fort just beyond the Canissaen border, reconstructed into a home base for the rebel’s campaign. Nearly lost to time and dirt, it’d become the perfect location right beneath the Venian’s noses. Being the closest in proximity to the fort, the 15th led the counterattack. They were the ruthless point of the sword, plunging swift and clean into the hearts of their adversaries, leaving nothing but torn flesh and broken bone in their wake.
Every prick of the chilled morning breeze sent Araes’seyes surveying the trees as he followed Captain Haidee and the southern flank down the sloping dirt road. His boots pressed into the earth, feeling its resistance against curled toes. The unit marched in unison, like a stealthy predator prowling toward its prey. There were no words shared between the men. There didn’t need to be. They’d been here before, settling into their roles and battle stances with silent understanding. Even the no-ranks, with expedited training, kept their eyes locked on the fort looming in the distance.
Faint flickers of candles illuminated the ragged stone walls like funeral pyres, sending shadows cascading down the exterior. The ancient stones, sealed with cracked mortar, came alive in wriggling, amber light. Flashes of golden steel glinted along each turret. The sentries, most likely outfitted with full quivers and signal horns, shifted every so often. From months of counterintelligence, Araes knew it was nearly a change of watch. The sentries would be exhausted, their heads clouded and eyes fogged with the oncoming relief of a warm rack and a few hours of sleep. Haidee was an impressive captain, having timed their departure perfectly.
The southern flank crept to the fort’s entrance, not a breath shared between them, and awaited the northern flank’s signal. Captain Haidee held up her fist, steadying her soldiers with a single gesture.
The distant sound of arrows raining from the skies and bodies falling from turrets sent tremors down Araes’s spine. Metal met metal and chaos erupted through the once-sleeping fort. Cries of the wounded and dying stained the otherwise peaceful morning.
Under the curtain of darkness, the southern flank relied entirely on the audible evidence of battle. He kept his eyes locked on Haidee’s fist, waiting for her signal. Blood roared in his ears, drowning out the sounds of swords slicing through skin, and steel connecting with bone.
Haidee’s fist flew forward. Araes took a breath and shut it all off before leaping from his crouched formation. He swallowed the last remnants of himself and broke into a sprint. The other soldiers, with swords raised and arrows nocked, matched his pace step for step. Their unit descended down the rolling hill and poured through the now-open gate, like a raging river through a broken dam.
Blood seeped into the muddy courtyard, staining the earth in crimson shades of death. Flames devoured the fort’s interior, now reconstructed with a small barracks and stable. And in that raging firelight, Araes’s heartbeat slowed, his breath evened, and he became a creature made from nightmares and blood.
No longer a man, a brother, a lover, or a son.
Simply a weapon, with the full force of death commanding his every move.
His blade sliced through man after man, carving lethal wounds across skin and bone. The silver steel, painted crimson, was a ruby gemstone glinting in the light of burning buildings and men. He allowed his brain to shut down, letting muscle memory from years of endless violence control every sidestep and lunge.
A crimson cloak flew across the sky and the body attached squelched as it impacted the mud. The sight of one of his own, now mangled and bloodied beyond recognition, sent a pang of rage through him, but Araes couldn’t allow those feelings to grow. Not now, with his sword plunged so deep through a Canissaen rebel’s stomach its point protruded from his back. The body, no longer human, he reminded himself, slid from steel and fell limp at his feet.
This was war. Brutal, bloody, and lethal. Soldiers were trained for death. If one wasn’t prepared to die on the battlefield, they’d surely face their end.
Araes ducked an impending blade, kicking his leg out as he rolled. The blunt toe of his boot connected with therebel’s shin, producing a crack that ensured he’d fractured bone. The rebel rolled to the ground, cradling his broken leg, his face mangled and distorted in cries of animalistic agony.
He wasn’t a man. Just a body. Just an obstacle standing between him and his goddess. Before the rebel’s eyes could meet his own, Araes sliced his sword through the man’s carotid artery.
A break in the violence presented an opportunity to take inventory of the remaining soldiers. Although the rebels outnumbered them three to one, now only few Canissaen men remained. The courtyard, littered with corpses, settled into an eerie quiet. Dawn’s light illuminated the sky through the heavy smoke lingering in the air, like lighting buried in a distant storm cloud. Only ash and fading embers remained of the makeshift stable to his right.
They’d won without reinforcements, and only a handful of crimson cloaks lay unmoving in the piles of soulless carcasses sinking into the mud.
Araes stiffened, feeling foreign blood drip from his arms, his legs, even his godsdamned cheeks. The metallic pang of it roiled his stomach, infiltrating his nose until it was all he breathed.
He risked a glance at the Canissaen now limp at his feet, entrails splayed out on the dirt. A distant, cloudy foam glazed over the man’s eyes. Araes’s gaze darted from body after body. Each was mangled and stinking. Some had charred flesh, some were face-down in pools of their own crimson lifeblood.
This hadn’t been a battle. It was afucking massacre.
“You’ve fought and won for our home! For your wives and daughters! For your sons and brothers! Today, we’ve proven to the rebels—proven to the entire damned continent–that we,weare not to be fucked with,” Haidee cried,her voice cracking between heavy breaths.
Araes watched his commanding officer through gritted teeth. She’d prepared them for bloodshed. For an enemy so vicious, so skilled in combat, that many, if not most, of his battalion would die.
The soldiers went into this fight with direct orders—No mercy. They’d sliced and hacked and burned their way through the front gates, and now here they were, blood hungry and grinning as they reveled in the misty death swirling around them.
In the past, he’d take those words to heart, compartmentalize everything else, and be the wheel in their deadly machine. But today—he dropped his sword, sending blood-stained mud scattering over his trouser hemlines. He thought of the Canissaen barkeep daydreaming with pencil and sketchbook in hand. Of the old man, Eadric, who’d shown him such kindness so many months ago.
His stomach turned. This wasn’t for glory or justice or peace. They’d fought today out of sheer vengeance alone.
“Lieutenant,” a no-rank, cradling his dislocated shoulder, called from Araes’s left. The soldier, no older than eighteen, held a gilded blade in his hand. Every hair on his body prickled with a current of immense power as the no-rank handed him the weapon.
An untrained eye wouldn’t blink at the simple dagger, its blade tarnished slightly from a long life of violence. But, the all-too-familiar crest carved into its pommel sent chills through Araes’s already frigid core. A circle of outward pointed arrows. The same design carved in the cliffside so many months ago.
“Where did you find this?” he asked, rotating the blade in his hands.
“They all have them, sir,” the no-rank said, gesturing to the unmoving corpses strung through the muck. Araes knelt beside a slain body, refusing to allow his wandering eyes to meet its clouded, empty face. He unsheathed thedagger strapped to the rebel’s thigh, and there it was. Another golden blade, embossed with an identical sigil.
