Day 382, 3:10 AM

“Guns, lots of guns.”

― Keanu Reeves

Two daggers whistle through the air, spinning before slamming into the sleepy guards’ brains through their eye sockets. Dead bodies fall backwards, slumping against the wall, and awkwardly slide to the ground.

I resist the urge to run, and wait. Nothing. No alarm, nobody noticed the faint whirling noise, the path ahead remains clear.

I sneak to the door and open it as stealthily as I can.

“We have half an hour more, you lazy bastards,” a drowsy whisper comes from the darkness and my balls shrivel.

I move so fast, I have no idea how it happened, but a second later I stand next to a pair of dead guards, their bodies hanging limply from the shortswords I rammed through their temples.

My heart slams against my chest, trying to break my ribs, and I swallow. Silence. The only sound I hear is the susurration of blood through my ears.

I lower the bodies to the ground gently, and start going through the rooms. I avoid light and feel like cursing whenever the parquet creaks under my weight. I have no idea who’s a knight, who’s a noble, I even kill the maids, wives or whores sharing the men’s’ beds. There is no time for contemplating morality, and mercy towards any of my enemies might doom my allies.

“Who is it?” A voice in the eighth improvised bedroom asks, neither loud nor quiet.

Shit!

I dash for the bed, draw a sword, and slash. I was quick, but not quicker than the scream.

“What happened?”

“Who screamed?”

Only two shouts, but then they start waking up, and I hear footsteps from the floor above. I dash out into the hallway and head for the staircase in the entrance hall. I reach the top of the stairs and seven men, four of them in sleeping gowns, look around in confusion.

I killed the knights. I notice at first glance these men lack the bearing of professional warriors. They are pudgy politicians and schemers, and they will die.

I throw a pair of axes at them, and five men shriek as blood from two corpses sprays the hallway. One of them is paralyzed, and a thrown dagger finds his heart, but the rest run into their rooms and slam the doors shut.

I have no idea who they are, nor what my target priority should be, so I settle for natural selection - hit the nearest one first. I kick the door off its hinges and it flies into the room, where I see a terrified man, carrying a chair. He slumps to his knees and pulls the chair closer, as if it could protect him.

I destroy his brains, along with the chair, and head for the second room. I kick the door, and the man inside screams from the other side. The door slams him onto the floor, and I kick it away, finishing him off with a single bash.

“Sound the alarm!”

“Invaders!”

Soldiers shout outside, but I hear a mere handful of voices. I disregard them and go for my next mark. Something heavy screeches from the other side.

He’s pulling a wardrobe or something.

I kick the door, the hinges break, but the massive piece of furniture is already in place and the door only cracks open a sliver.

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I go kill the final one before coming back and kicking the wardrobe over and over.

“Please! Go away!” the panicked noble sobs from the other side. “I will go back home, my army will retreat, just let me live!”

He’s got no balls, and he’s lying through his teeth. If a knight shouted something like that under different circumstances, I’d give them a benefit of the doubt, but a shitty politician? They lie the moment they open their mouths.

After timing six kicks, the wobbling wardrobe falls over, and I walk into the room. The old man is shuddering in the corner of the lamp-lit room, trying to open a window and jump out. I hurl the mace at him and turn around without waiting to see whether I’ve hit my mark. At this distance, I can’t miss.

There’s a wet crunch, a crash of glass and the noise from outside grows louder.

Unarmored soldiers, some in their underpants, charge into the mansion, but I have no reason to fight them. I consider going back and jumping out the window, when I realize a knight might have slept in a tent, rather than inside the mansion, and I have to eliminate the threat for Vatten’s sake.

I meet the soldiers at the spacious, winding staircase. I have the high ground and kill five of them in five strikes with a longsword. Their morale breaks and they run, I run after them and slash the sixth man’s back and he goes down.

I can make it. If I can reach the gate and open it, I can cow them into surrendering. Their nobles are dead, there’s nobody to fight for. I can live and go help Manny. Then, if I feel any pain from her, I will redo.

The thought is tempting. Living and seeing her again. But there’s a problem.

What if they have captured her? What if they are keeping her unharmed and waiting to use her to force me into surrendering? If I wait, I might get stuck in that reality, a reality in which my wife and daughter are used as bait, killed before my very eyes to enrage me.

I reach the gate in a red haze, my world that of blood and steel. The longsword in my hand is already dull, barely more than a metal club. I killed those in front of me, but didn’t bother chasing soldiers fleeing in panic.

The gate is open, I probably killed the guards, or they fled in terror. I faintly recall cleaving apart armored men, but they could have survived, and I don’t really care whether they live or die. I dash through the patch of light and into the loud, dark night, filled with shouts and curses.

I head down the main street, towards the city gate, when a disorganized mob of a unit spills out from a side street.

“There he is!”

“Where?”

“There’s only one man.”

Then I descend upon them, like a wolf on sheep, like a lion on zebras, and the screams start. The fourth corpse is still falling on the ground when the rest flee for their lives. They are unarmored, ill-trained. They stand no chance against a monster like me, trained by one of the finest knight coaches in the country.

The incident repeats itself with one more group of drowsy men before I reach the gate. There, twenty armed and armored soldiers stand with swords and short spears at the ready.

They run at me, and I chuck the sword through the squad leader’s torso before dancing between them. I grab a short spear right behind the tip, and ram its butt straight into the wielder’s chest. He goes down, and I ram the spear into another man’s neck, drawing a mace from my much lighter belt.

I swing and hit, break necks and limbs, and after two minutes of gore and death, I’m the only one left, the survivors have run away.

I head for the gatehouse, and fortunately, the guards weren’t paranoid enough to destroy the pulley mechanism which opens the portcullis. I work the crank like a man possessed and soon I can turn it no more. I break the lever just in case and go out.

There’s a host of people waiting for me, but I’m already at the gate, my mission complete. The ragtag bunch of conscripts stares at me, and I stare at them, torchlight behind my back.

“Kill him!” A man among them stutters, but they don’t move.

It’s done. Their morale is destroyed, their leadership and elites dead. All that’s left is to open the gate.

“Vatten!” I shout, and the trembling peasants step back as if they had rehearsed it. “I have done my part of the job, you do yours!”

I charge at the ones blocking my path to the exit, and half the men run out of my way, half of them just stand there paralyzed, waiting to be slaughtered.

I feel a phantom pain in my back, at least someone had the courage to attack me, even if it is when my back is turned. I don’t care about the wound, I’m about to die, but there’s no reason to suffer needlessly at the hands of amateurs who don’t aim at the back of my neck.

I swat backwards with the mace, destroying the offending spear, and probably the man’s arm. He screams, but it’s just a drop in the bucket.

I reach the gate and turn around, my back against the wood, and the soldiers freeze again. The mace is an ugly weapon to commit suicide with, and I drop it instead of tossing it.

I stare at the shaking peasants, and a sudden idea strikes me.

“I am the messenger of the gods, Manuella Eagleeye’s husband and general. I have conquered your fortress myself, but my wife is in danger far away. I can’t help her with a living body, so I shall do that as a ghost.” I draw my mercy dagger. “I will now die, explode this gate, and as a ghost roam the country to help my wife become queen. I am showing you mercy now. My ghost shall visit all who raise arms against Manuella Eagleeye.”

I stab myself in the forehead, and the gate explodes.