Eujal retched again, bile burning his throat. This time, however, only thin saliva came up. His stomach clenched violently as his body struggled to comprehend what just happened. The headless corpse lay only just a few feet away, blood still trickling out of its neck. An obscene surge of blood had already stained the pebbles where the body had fallen. A terrible metallic smell filled the air, and Eujal quickly realized it was the smell of blood.
His nose still throbbed, probably broken from the rough landing on the beach, but he wasn't too concerned to check. His wrists were swollen and bloody, and as a result, it felt incredibly awkward to wield the wooden club. The rough texture bit angrily against his bloodied and tender palms. Its surface was stuck with...he didn't want to know.
"Get up, maggot! Move!" A Zhardokhan mercenary, face displaying a savage grin and a bleeding cut above the right eye, kicked Eujal firmly in the ribs. "The Asirans will feed you to the dogs if you don't fight!"
Asirans? Does that mean we're in Asira now? The Kingdom across the Nuzian Sea?
Eujal was stunned. They had traveled that far in just a few days. He hadn't even thought of the destination due to the torture he experienced on the ship. Just a few days ago, he was catching fish with his father, and now...he was a slave being forced to raid an Asiran fort.
My life really has gone to sh-
"Oh...you think you can ignore me like that?" The mercenary spat, grabbing Eujal firmly by his swollen wrist and yanking it upwards. Eujal inhaled for a split second in surprise before a fist slammed right into his stomach, driving all air out of his lungs.
He scrambled awkwardly to his feet on the loose rocks, still dizzy, before pushing himself upright.
The scene before him was utter chaos. The beachhead was a churning mass of men butchering each other. Zhardokhan warriors clashed shield-to-shield with the disciplined ranks of chainmail-clad Asiran soldiers. Swords flashed, axes fell, and men screamed as their lifeblood drained from open wounds. Overhead, arrows continued their rain from the fortress walls, hitting Zhardokhan and Asiran alike with impartial lethality. A flaw in their defense, for sure.
The sea, stained pink near the beached warships, disgorged, even more, Zhardokhan, who splashed through the shallow waters and onto the rocky beach to join the fray.
Eujal was swept forward, partly due to the sheer amount of bodies rushing toward the fortress from behind him and partly because of his mindless obedience to the Zhardokhan. He stumbled, his legs weak as a newborn deer. Eujal could barely keep balance. He clutched the club, not like a weapon but more like a crutch. He had no idea how to fight, and he had no strength left in his limbs.
Survival became a desperate, moment-to-moment calculation as he moved towards the fortress: dodge the wild swing of an axe, duck behind a larger mercenary as an arrow streaked past, scramble away from the trampling feet of locked combatants. He didn't want to risk staying back and being slain by his own captors. If he wanted to survive, he would have to focus on the task given to him. Perhaps, if the Zhardokhan win this fight, he may be granted mercy.
As he reached the halfway point, in the middle of the chaos, he saw brutality that dwarfed the casual cruelty of the Hortator. A Zhardokhan pinned an Asiran soldier against a rock and smashed his face in with a mailed fist, laughing manically while doing so. Further down, a group of Asirans captured a wounded mercenary and slit his throat without hesitation. Death was everywhere, and its presence was sudden and ugly. The sounds were overwhelming as well. The constant clash and scrape of metal, the wet thud of weapons entering flesh, the screams of the wounded all around, the war cries...
The main push seemed directed towards a cliff face just below where the fortress stood. A natural barrier of sorts that the mercenaries would have to overcome to reach the stone walls. A fortified gatehouse stood at the entrance of a slope that had been built into the cliff face for easy passage, and that was where the attack seemed to be focused, as well as the defense. Siege ladders scraped against the rough stone as Zhardokhan tried to scale the natural rock walls under the constant rain of arrows. Others used heavy timbers as makeshift battering rams against the wooden gate that stood guard at the gatehouse.
Eujal pressed against the cliff base, trying to make himself small and clutching his club tightly. A dying Asiran soldier collapsed nearby, clutching a belly wound, blood seeping through his fingers in a hopeless display of incoming death. His eyes locked onto Eujal's for a terrifying second before suddenly glazing over. Eujal looked away, his hands shaking and his stomach churning. He felt like he could cry.
The Zhardokhan had finally begun to concentrate their forces at the gate, with the Asiran soldiers who had gone to meet them on the shore lying dead on the rocky ground. However, now that they were packed around the gate, the arrows began to hit their targets with growing accuracy.
The mercenaries fell from ladders, were pierced by arrows, or dropped due to losing their balance. A blast of rocks and boiling oil - or something of the sort - rained down from the battlements, engulfing a group of attackers in screams and smoke. The pile of bodies, both Zhardokhan and Asiran, grew steadily at the base of the walls and around the gate. The bearded bastard Eujal had seen earlier had become a whirlwind of death near the gate, his curved sword tearing through the flesh of the soldiers who dropped down to meet him. Defender after defender seemed to fall at his feet as he moved forward through the enemy forces.
Despite the fierce resistance, the numbers and ferocity of the Zhardokhan began to tell. A section of the wall near the gate crumbled under a sustained assault. With a final, splintering crash, the main gate buckled inwards. A triumphant roar rose from the attackers as they surged through the breach like a tide.
Eujal was carried along with the flood, shoved through the splintered gateway into the fortress courtyard. Inside, the fighting was even more frantic and confused. Desperate pockets of Asiran resistance fought Zhardokhan warriors amidst overturned carts, burning structures, and the dead and dying. Eujal clung to the courtyard's edge, pressing himself against a stone wall, watching wide-eyed as the Zhardokhan numerically overwhelmed the last defenders.
Eventually, the sounds of battle dwindled away as roars of victory filled the air. The Zhardokhan serpent banner was crudely hung from the central tower, fluttering in the wind above the carnage. They had won. The fortress was theirs. Eujal didn't know what purpose it would serve or the politics behind the seizure, but he was too tired to care.
The victory reeked of death. The courtyard was wet with blood. Bodies were lying everywhere. The Zhardokhan mercenaries, still numerous as ever, were already looting corpses and dragging captured Asiran soldiers – those pitiful few who had survived – into rough lines. Eujal saw a couple other slaves, those few who had survived the beaching and the assault, being rounded up. They seemed traumatized, with empty eyes that appeared glazed from a distance.
Eujal slid down the wall, the adrenaline finally draining from his body. leaving behind a deathly exhaustion. His nose throbbed, his wrists bled freely, and his borrowed strength was gone. He dropped the club, the clatter loud in the sudden quiet. He looked at his hands – blistered, bloody, shaking. Weeks ago, they'd been roughened by fishing nets. Now, they were stained by the Zhardokhan's bloody conquest. He had survived, somehow.