Reborn Mercenary: Epic Fantasy With Progression

1. Last Hunt of the Wolves

Last Hunt of the Wolves

I taste iron and woodsmoke on the updrafts climbing the fortress wall. Under it lurks the stink of men who know they’re already corpses: piss-soaked wool, sour barley brew fermenting in bellies, and that particular reek of terror sweat no amount of sage burning ever masks.

It’s a good smell. An honest one that means everyone understands the odds.

The battlements of Ironside Tower bristle with mercenaries.

My Wolves of the Gale are scattered among the perfumed knights we’ve been paid to die alongside.

Most won’t meet my eyes. The smart ones do, and what stares back is the same thing living in my gut.

Raw animal certainty that tonight ends in fire and extinction.

Jorgen One-Eye limps toward me along the wall walk. His notched axe drags sparks from the stone. Yesterday’s gut wound still weeps through dirty linen. It should have been cleaned, blessed, stitched by holy fingers. Instead he’ll die of rot in a few days if steel doesn’t claim him tonight.

“Captain.” He stops beside me and surveys the enemy fires below. “This is it. We’re out of salted pork. Men can’t find rats anymore. Checked the cellars myself. Nothing but empty barrels and mouse shit.”

I scratch at my split lip and shrug with the ease of a man who stopped caring about tomorrow a long time ago. “Yeah, well. I was getting tired of the shits anyway. ”

He snorts. The motion pulls at his wound and turns into a wince. “Always looking on the bright side.”

“That’s why they pay me the big coins.” I clap his shoulder, careful to avoid the bandaged mess of his torso. “At least we won’t die hungry. Just regular dead.”

“Small mercies.”

The temple-sworn healers fled at the second bell when they glimpsed the enemy numbers.

They took their blessed bandages and prayer-charged poultices with them.

Took what remained of the food stores too, the selfish bastards.

Their loyalty changed from coin to crown the moment the math turned sour.

Now infected wounds fester, bellies cramp empty, and men who might have lived tomorrow won’t see sunrise.

I slam the butt of my spear on stone. The ringing cuts through night sounds: creaking siege engines, distant prayers in half a dozen languages, the wet cough of men already dying from yesterday’s arrows. Helmets swivel toward me.

“Listen up, lads!” My voice carries that particular edge that makes even battle-drunk berserkers pay attention. “There’s no gate behind us. No ships waiting in the harbor. No bloody tunnel dug for a secret crawl. Ironside’s the end of the map.”

I grin, teeth red from the split lip I earned teaching a lordling proper spear grip. “So if any of you woke up hoping for a bright tomorrow, time to adjust expectations.”

Scattered chuckles leak out. It’s the sound of men who’ve made peace with doom.

“You know the contract,” I say. “Thirty gold a head, double for officers, assuming the client lives to pay. ”

I jerk a thumb toward Lord Aveline de Forchester. He clutches his banner pole in both fists as if expecting it to sprout wings. “Nobody here believes that includes his lordship. So, spend the coin in advance. Spend it in blood.”

A few cheers, ragged but real. Jorgen raises his notched axe from where he’s returned to his post.

“What if we try legging it, Captain?”

Fletcher. My best archer, always the practical one.

“Run and the bastards outside will catch you.” I let my grin widen. “And if you run fast enough to escape them? Don’t fool yourself. No one waits for you out there. Whores who’ll miss your gold and tavern keepers who’ll wonder why their tabs went cold.”

That earns honest laughter. The kind that comes when death stops being a maybe and becomes a when.

I sweep my spear in a slow circle. The bladed head draws orange reflections from the braziers. Ancient oak shaft wrapped in wind-worn leather, steel head engraved with runes that make priests sweat. The weapon hums with stored violence.

“You want glory? Wrong place. You want songs? Fine, but the bards will get your names wrong and claim you died for honor instead of coin.”

I pause to let that sink in. “Don’t worry, they’ll lie to your families if you’ve got any!”

I let the grin fade. My voice drops to bedrock. “What you get here is simpler. You get to die standing. You get to take a dozen bastards with you. You get to make them pay in screams for every inch of stone. ”

I stab the spear tip toward the constellation of enemy fires beyond the moat. Their camp spreads across the valley, a plague of tents and torchlight. I can see the white pavilions where their healers work. Rows of them. Blessed sisters and battle-clerics keeping their fighters whole.

Cookfires burn down there too. The smell of roasting meat drifts up to taunt our empty bellies.

Must be nice. Having gods that don’t abandon you when the counting’s done. Must be nice having supper.

“First wave hits the east curtain wall,” I announce, reading the terrain. “Dwarf sappers confirmed. Battlemages spotted. They’ll crack us open, then pour bodies through until we drown.”

Sir Delain, wearing enough polished steel to outfit three real fighters, scowls through his lifted visor. “Perhaps we should consider terms.”

“Sure.” I bare teeth again. “You walk out there waving white silk. Let me know how that goes.”

The lordling actually considers it. His minder, an older knight with scars worth respecting, yanks him back.

I clap gauntlets together. Orange sparks scatter across the stones. “Positions! And remember: shields high, spears low. When they breach, make them buy every stone with interest.”

Boots thunder across wet planks as men take posts. I claim the obvious weak point where yesterday’s bombardment left a spiderweb of cracks in the outer facing. My Wolves cluster nearby. Their mismatched armor and well-worn weapons are a sharp contrast to the parade-ground sheen of the house troops.

This is it .

I grip the spear. We’ll sort the rest out when it matters.

The war drums cease. The silence stretches long enough for men to wonder if perhaps the enemy had second thoughts.

Then the valley erupts. Ten thousand throats roar as one. The sound rolls up the slopes like a wall of hate given voice. Dark shapes surge forward: ladder teams, shielded rams, and worst of all, the scuttling forms of dwarven underminer teams with their steel coffins full of explosive runes.

Arrows rise from our walls in stuttering volleys. Green counter spells spawn as enemy casters turn our own shafts back at us. The first rank of archers becomes smoking meat before anyone can blink.

The eastern wall explodes.

From below, the flash of an explosive charge punches up through foundations we thought solid. Stone becomes shrapnel. The world inverts.

I land hard in a tangle of masonry and men. A severed leg pins my chest. I shove it aside, ears ringing, and crawl from the rubble to witness disaster.

The breach opens wider than a manor house. Enemy shock troops pour through: slab-muscled Veterani in segmented plate, their tower shields locked in formation. Behind them, robed figures throw battle magic that stinks of sulfur and burnt copper.

“No retreat, lads!” I roar over the sound of steel on steel. “We’re fucked proper, so let’s return the favor!”

The Wolves answer with action. We crash into the enemy.

Formation fighting dies instantly in the press. It’s replaced by knife work where you smell what your opponent had for breakfast. The Veterani reek of bacon and fresh bread. My stomach clenches with something that isn’t hunger anymore. The memory of it converted to fuel for killing.

My spear flows through the forms drilled into muscle memory. Angled thrust low to high. Punching through a throat before the bastard can get his shield up. Pivot. An overhead strike crashes down on the next man’s guard, levers his shield wide, and the follow-through caves in the skull behind it.

A blade meant for my kidney skitters off the reinforced leather beneath my mail. I pivot, trap the arm, drive my knee through the elbow joint. Bone splinters wetly followed by a cry. I follow up with a quick stab.

Already I count eleven dead by my hand. Or is it fourteen? Numbers blur when you’re painting stone red.

A mace clips my helm with enough force to rattle my teeth. My vision fractures. I stagger into a pocket of space and find Sir Delain there. His sword shakes. A red line opens across his formerly delicate throat.

“Can’t,” he gasps. “Can’t feel my legs.”

I catch him before he falls. I stuff his own silk banner against the wound. “Pressure here. Hard.”

His eyes focus on me with desperate intensity. “The healers. Where are the healers?”

“Took ship before dawn.” No point lying to the dying. He should have remembered. “Decided their oaths to serve didn’t cover certain death. ”

He stops struggling. The peculiar peace of men who realize the game’s been rigged from the start settles over him. He bleeds out against the rubble, still clutching that silk banner.

I turn back to the fight just in time to watch the gatehouse tower implode.

The dwarven sappers had done their work there too. Chunks of worked stone heavy as wagons crash down. They crush friend and foe without discrimination.

Dust rolls thick through the courtyard. Through the haze, shapes emerge. Tower Brutes. Orcling bred or maybe half trolls in crude plate, twelve feet of muscle and malice bred for breaking walls. Their massive frames make the ground shake.

Behind them, a pair of Thrice Dead. The bone knights of the southern wastes, armor fused to flesh by necromantic arts. Even from here I can see the silver threads where battle-clerics stitched them back together after previous fights. Must be nice, being valuable enough to resurrect.