The defenses of the earth works were sturdy, but the enemy had been relentless. No matter the stiff resistance they faced, they pressed onwards steadily whittling away at the city’s defenses. It had been only a matter of times until the call for retreat had been raised, and all the while Count Stern had ensured that his own men approached not the chaotic melee at the front. It had been the perfect plan, one forged by decades of experience in both court and upon the battlefield. With its success, he would have stood to not only regain his old powers, but to reach even new heights of power. Perhaps even an elevation of title would have been in order, finally gaining the recognition he so richly deserved.

It was but a simple matter, awing the other commanders with both his high title and decades of experience upon the field of battle. The others were rather gullible and easy to manipulate, a given he supposed considering their tender years. Most of the local nobility called upon to defend the earth works were no older than thirty, little more than mere boys! They had gained their titles through the misfortunes of their family patriarchs, whose lives were lost either in the heat of battle during the civil war, or executed during the Empress’s purges in the subsequent years. They had never known battle and had served as a rather captivated audience as he regaled them with colorful tales of his own exploits upon the field.

They were ever so eager for advice from such a storied veteran that, without question, he had gained mastery over the formulation of the plans of battle, whether they be in tactics, stratagems, or troop dispositions. They had not once dared to voice concern that the Count’s troops never seemed close at hand when the foe approached, even as their own men fell in droves. Whether they were truly so naïve and clueless to strategy or had simply been blinded by their idolatry of his own position it mattered not, for the effect was the same.

While the defensive line crumbled and frayed at the seams, eroding more and more with every enemy assault, his men rested far from the field of battle, biding their time. When the call to retreat was announced, they would be at almost full strength, ready and waiting to conduct an orderly withdrawal back into the city. Once inside, he would possess thousands of disciplined and well equipped men, far more than any that might oppose him.

As the Home Guard fought and died holding the outer city, he would wait and prepare. While he was not naïve enough to believe with surety that the Duke’s army would prevail, with every exchange it seemed more likely. With the Home Guard occupied holding the curtain wall or the narrow alleys of the outer city, he and his men would be at their leisure to sabotage the city’s defenses. Striking swiftly from the rear, they could overwhelm the defenders at the gatehouse, flinging the gates wide to allow the Duke’s forces entry simultaneously as they silenced the city’s armament of cannon. While taking the entirety of the curtain wall upon which the cannon were mounted from the rear would be a nigh insurmountable challenge, the ammunition stores of those cannon were not so guarded, and would swiftly be destroyed with a simple application of incendiaries.

By the time the severely depleted and exhausted vanguard of the Duke’s army came clear of the alleyways of the outer city, it would find the curtain wall’s defenses all but completely annihilated. There, with the gates swung wide, a strong and fresh body of men in the Count’s employ would lay waiting to assist them in a direct assault upon the palace. For rendering the Dule such timely aid, and likely sparing the lives of thousands of his men in the process, he would surely be generously rewarded.

Possibly, he would even earn admittance to the Duke’s inner circle of advisors held only by aristocrats of great ability of status. It would be refreshing, to not only regain his gods granted rights bestowed upon him at birth as a nobleman, but to also have it be done in service to a new sovereign, one that actually bore appreciation of the Empire’s martial class in lieu of the Empress’s eternal enmity. With nostalgia towards the golden ages of old and greedy eyes contemplating riches and prestige previously unimagined, he had schemed for the treacherous deaths of tens of thousands of the city’s defenders.

But alas, it would seem that his aspirations for the future were not to be as he gazed upon the conflagration rapidly consuming what had once been the encampment of the earth works’ garrison. The men of the Duke had struck swiftly and without warning in the depths of the night. The nobility and peasants that had hitherto served as an able bulwark of flesh between his men and the enemy had been all but obliterated in the ensuing chaos.

With neither men of any high rank living upon the field, nor a direct missive from the Lord Protector, it fell to the Count to begin the call for retreat. His men remained alive and well at least, for now, but they would need to flee as a body with haste lest his final hope for advancement slip through his fingers. Unfortunately for the Count, however, the misfortunes he was beset by did not end with the sudden onset of battle. Just as he was about to give the order to sound a general call for retreat, a messenger sent from one of his lieutenants found him.

“Pardon my intrusion m’lord, but I bring evil tidings from Sir Jasper! We are trapped, surrounded by the wagons of the supply train. The only path clear to the outer city now lies through the advancing enemy!” The man’s face was awash with terror as he delivered the dire message.

“We will need to form up then. Lad, deliver the instruction to Sir Jasper that the camp must be roused to battle and dressed into ranks. The foe may have caught the others unawares, but with a determined formation we have hope yet!” His face stoic, desperately trying to conceal his own mortal terror clutching at his heart from within, the Count dismissed the messenger. It would not do to visibly be as terrified as he felt at the news, for his life and dreams rested upon the resilience of his men in the face of the foe.

With a grave aura, he crossed the camp towards where their planned line of retreat had lain. All about him, shouting men gave orders and groggy men frantically donned armor or scrambled for their weapons, creating a veritable cacophony of desperate sound. Standing near the edge of the camp, his back to the campfires to preserve his vision, he squinted out into the darkness. It was a dim night, with only the most meager sliver of moonlight left to illuminate anything not lying beneath the warm gaze of a fire. It was such deep dark that he almost missed it.

Large blocky outlines, almost invisible in the dark, lay well beyond the revealing light of campfires but were betrayed by the barest glow off of their light grey canvas coverings. These were the wagons of the camp’s supply train, and must have been driven to that point earlier that day to deliver provisions and ammunition to the garrison. How none of his men had noticed the movement in sufficient time for the Count to have devised countermeasures, he could not say.

But the presence of the wagons cutting off his men’s line of retreat cast all of his conniving and scheming down into ruin. The blocks of armed and armored men, either peasants or the Count’s personal retainers, would never be able to negotiate their way through those obstacles without breaking the formations down into scores of individuals, squeezing through small gaps in the veritable wooden wall. It would be slow going, and with the formation dissolving to affect a passage, they would be helpless once the enemy reached them. No, it seemed that if he wished to retain any hope of advancement he must have his men repel the Duke’s knights.

Thankfully in his foresight and owing to his extensive experience upon campaign, he had arranged for not a mere handful of sentries, but scored of them armed and fully armored, ready to fight upon a moment’s notice. They had quickly become aware of the chaos reigning in the other camps and roused the his band to battle. Unlike the amateurs that had been so swiftly dispatched amongst the other camps, there the foe would find the Count’s men prepared and waiting for their arrival, with neither their strength nor their numbers diminished from the day’s battles. There may have been hope yet for his ambitions.

Seeing the distant enemy slowly approaching, small groups of one or two having been alerted to the camp’s rousing to action, the commander of the band’s skirmishing element, Sir Jasper, gave the order to begin loosing volleys of arrows upon the foe. The nearby enemies were but few in number, likely swiftly dispatched by a judicious application of loosed missiles. If they could drive off the foe within the immediate vicinity about the camp, they would likely gain stay of execution enough to maneuver the entire formation around the supply train to affect a fighting retreat back to the outer city. Or, failing in that objective, they could at least hope to drive off the enemy after inflicting sufficient casualties. Overconfident as the foe surely was after such a night of slaughter, they would be caught upon the back foot should they face significant resistance. Few in number already, heavy casualties would force them, at least temporarily, to withdraw. They had already won after all, there was but little point in the Duke’s elites unnecessarily sacrificing their lives to prevent the egress of a few thousand mere peasants to no further benefit.

The first volleys of arrows met the steel bulwark of charging knights like so much rain, deflecting off of smooth metallic plates and falling impotently to the ground. Only a meager handful of knights were felled even after three further volleys, the longbowmen being unblooded in the field and neither calm and collected enough to aim accurately nor experienced enough in battle to be able to accurately target the chinks in the armor of the enraged steel hulks actively barreling towards them.

Once the lines were met in a great clash the longbowmen immediately gave way, possessing not the courage to stand in the face of imminent death. Though some amongst their number held billhooks or swords close at hand, they availed them little against experienced knights. Lines melting like butter set upon a heated pan the archers fell back, many having fallen to the wicked blades of the foe, but many more streaming away from the clash as they turned and fled. The knights and men at arms in the Count’s service stood at a distance behind the retreating longbowmen. While they kept their formation open, to facilitate the retreat of the archers upon contact with the enemy, the furrows lacked the width necessary to allow such a rapidly disintegrating formation means of egress. Instead of the planned calm and orderly withdrawal of archers, to be relieved by the Count’s heavy infantry, both formations disintegrated as the sheer mass of the archers flew back and parted the heavy infantry’s lines like a wedge driven into soft wood.

Everywhere men ran, tripping and falling over shaky, unsteady movement, breaking joints and limbs running into the heavily armored bodies of the Count’s heavy infantry. A few in their haste even managed to skewer themselves upon brandished blades. With every thud of men falling to the ground, whether in death or mere injury it mattered not for in the veritable stampede of men the fallen were not long for the world, new and more treacherous obstacles were lain in the path of the retreating bulk. The terror of the fleeing men was driven to a peak as they found their route of retreat increasingly treacherous in a self perpetuating cycle of death. By the end more men lay upon the field, trampled by their own companions than had been felled by the enemy. The heavy infantry themselves were batted at like trees in a gale, pushed this way or that as their formations were chewed apart by a seething, bleeding tide of humanity.

With their lines shattered beyond repair, the remaining knights of the Duke set upon the isolated clumps of their counterparts in the Count’s employ as the roar of battle gave way to shouts of challenge and the melee collapsed into dozens of individual duels. While the night’s butchery had been made to great success, the ever glory seeking knights of Brackenweir could resist not the allure of single combat against their peers within the Count’s ranks. The knights and men at arms of the Count were no mere peasants, having in many cases fought in the civil war and possessing a martial background almost equal to that of their opponents.

They availed themselves well in the duels, giving as much as they received, but eventually tired. Being a mere Count, how could the quantity of elite retainers he possessed hope to compare to that of the Duke? Eventually, exhausted by relentless streams of challenges, they had fallen where they stood. No prisoners were taken from among the Empress’s men, for the Duke’s knights knew well the impoverishment of their counterparts. They would never be paid a ransom, and prisoners would only serve to increase the strain upon their already dwindling supplies. Few of the Count’s men had managed to escape, the duels only ever beginning as the outnumbered heavy infantry had been surrounded upon all sides by the Duke’s knights.

Among those that had managed to flee, were Count Stern himself, Sir Jasper, and three surviving knights escorting them to safety. Once they had felt the formation of longbowmen begin buckling, each man had turned tail and fled, knowing that further resistance was futile and fearing for their very lives. Fortunately for them, the Duke’s knights, as starved for prestige as they were, possessed more interest in either observing or fighting in duels of honor, allowing the survivors time enough to gain some distance.

Having fled first, Count Stern and his entourage reached the impeding wagons of the supply train long before the retreating longbowmen. Squeezing themselves betwixt the tightly packed wagons, each of the five men successfully negotiated their way through in a span of no more than a minute. However, it had been a rather tight squeeze within their armor and they had passed individually. There was no possibility that the nearly two thousand fleeing peasants could duplicate their safe passage. Having forced their way through, the Count and his entourage fled north, back towards the protective embrace of the outer city, unkeen in being caught in flight by either their enemies or the men they had left abandoned upon the field of battle.

Unfolding behind the grimly retreating men, was the death knell of Count Stern’s petty ambition. Thousands of screaming peasants, most bearing some manner of wound already, either from combat or from the frenzied retreat, hurtled themselves at the supply wagons. Weakened and exhausted from fighting, and with many left at least partially lame by their injuries, they clumsily tried to force themselves through the narrow passages. Here, even more so than when running through the heavy infantry’s formations, falling meant certain death. With thousands of men trying to desperately force themselves through such tight confines, they pushed and prodded at the men in front of them, pressing forward and trying to compress their bodies to squeeze through with such great force that the pushing mass upon the leaders caused limbs to snap like dried twigs. Crippled, such men fell where they stood, unable to press onward, and were swiftly trampled to death by their fellows. As time passed on, more men so fell and filled the narrow defiles that had formed the only available passages to safety until they became all but unnavigable.

Having satisfied their lust for glory dispatching their counterparts, the Duke’s knights pressed forward, visibly drawing nearer to the frightened mass of fleeing peasants. By that point, only a few hundred men had even attempted passage between the wagons, and of that quantity, not more than one hundred had reached the other side. With their imminent demise swiftly approaching them, the rest of the seething mass of humanity surged forward and into the wagons like water strained through a sieve.

Finding the passages that would have allowed them to pass upright filled by the dead and dying, they crawled beneath, they climbed above, and they even forced their own fellows to the ground so that they could scramble atop their twitching corpses. The scene was filled with cries of fear or screams of suffering and torment. The men beneath the wagons found the space so compacted, especially after the weight of those climbing above forced the wagons to sink into the muck, that they could not press on, save by scraping their backs into rent strips of raw flesh as they tried to force themselves through.

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Those attempting to climb had their fingernails torn and their hands flayed as they fought to secure grips upon the firm wood of the wagons, slick with both rain and blood as it was. The lucky few that climbed atop often saw the safety of the far side of the wall of wagons for the briefest and most beautiful moment, only to be cruelly pulled back down into the roiling human mass by those using them as supports to try and pull themselves up. A few men that had not already cast aside their implements of war in the mad frenzy of retreat availed themselves well hewing into the sides of the wagons. But they were only met with frustration upon finding the interiors filled to the brim with empty barrels and crates of heavy wood. So tightly packed were the containers that they could not be bypassed without removal, a task that was long beyond the capabilities of the frightened mob.

As the Duke’s knights reached the wall of wagons, they ruthlessly cut apart any that remained standing. Eventually they worked their way through the few survivors until they at last laid their eyes upon a scene of utter devastation. Slack jawed, they stood by, paralyzed by a mixture of both awe and terror in equal measure. They did not need to even lift a blade to slaughter the rest of the retreating archers, for the animals had accomplished that particular feat to great effect on their own. A few of the knights, despite long having inured themselves to grisly scenes from decades of experience upon the battlefield, removed their helms and vomited, unable to bear the wretched sight before them.

The wet soil was awash with bodies, each one covered in scratches and blood, in most cases not gained by battle or abrasion against the wood that they had attempted to climb, but in regular clumps of four or five that could have been inflicted only by human fingernails. Beyond the bodies littering the ground were the wagons, similarly damaged as the fallen men, and covered in blood and scratch marks. Betwixt the wagons, underneath them, and even atop them in many cases were more bodies, this time with limbs contorted from unnatural pressures into maddening affronts to the art of geometry. The most horrendous revelations of all, as the knights noted to utter horror and grim acceptance, was the fact that most of the mass of humanity lying broken beyond repair, rent and torn asunder by their fellows in a mad scramble for life, still drew breath. Moaned pains of agony, the pleading prayers of the dying, the broken, and the laughter of those whose minds had departed the world long before that of their flesh filled the air, subjecting the Duke’s knights to a grisly cacophony of vile sound.

Here the knights halted, taking it upon themselves to grant mercy to the broken men before them. They may have been traitors, driven to rebel against their nation’s rightful ruler in pursuit of petty riches and prestige, but they still remained knights. They still retained some twisted sense of honor, despite the steady decline of morality upon the part of the Duke that had so thoroughly infiltrated his army along the long march. Most importantly and despite all, they still remained men of Albion. No matter the civil conflict that they had helped to instigate, they fought for just another claimant for Albion’s crown. The men lying bent and broken, their innocent lives brought to sudden and unbearably agonizing ends, still remained the fellow countrymen of the knights. The survivors of this terrible massacre could not number more than a few hundred. Here the knights would cease their advance, uncaring of the meager handfuls of survivors in the wake of the night’s slaughter, and set about granting the final mercy of the gods to their suffering countrymen.

The Count and his entourage walked, weak and weary from a flight weighed down by their heavy arms and armor. Within the depths of night’s enshroudment, blanketing the earth in an utter darkness so deep it was pierced only by the distant lights of the outer city, the gentle breeze of the wind and clattering of rain upon steel were the only audible sounds. None dared to speak, not after the night’s events, the death of the hopes and dreams of every man present. Not after what they had borne witness to as they fled either, desperate as they were to forget the suffering, dying screams of thousands of men that had assaulted their ears as they broke both their bodies and minds in a desperate bid to escape. They had abandoned those men, left them to die upon the field of battle in fear of their lives, only to leave those men to suffer an unimaginably agonizing fate. Guilt weighed heavily upon their minds, but they could never quell it, never seek redemption. None could ever learn of their cowardly flight from battle. If they attempted to rejoin the survivors for the security of numbers they would be recognized, set upon by wild beasts and torn limb from limb.

No, they could only hope to find succor within the shelter of the outer city, use their positions as officers to get far from the survivors of their band, and eventually to flee the city in shame as well. The Empress would not suffer any of them to live once she learned of their cowardice, and with her personality already so twisted by sadism and hate any death so imposed would be far worse than anything their enraged men might visit upon them. Their tortured bodies and minds would serve as warning to generations of future aristocrats and generals to terrify them into obedience. Nor could they turn to the Duke, for they no longer possessed tribute to offer him, and surely he would show no mercy to any that had shown even a sliver of defiance in the face of his knights.

It was a blessing that, as sluggish as their own pace had been, the peasants following in their wake travelled at a more subdued pace. Burdened by the weak and the lame, they bodily supported one another in their weary retreat, entirely unsuspecting that their former leaders were but an hour’s march ahead. The gentle breeze died as it met the stone and timber wall constituting the homes of the outer city. Safety at last, every man amongst the group thought. Though they could no longer see any light save that of the moon’s feeble gleam, as obscured as their vision was by intervening walls of densely packed buildings, they knew that they would soon return to the comforting lights of the city if they advanced but one mile farther.

The wind was silent and even the ceaseless pattering of the rain seemed to still, as if the world around them held its breath. The men’s breaths caught in their throats as it seemed all they could hear was the sound of their own pounding heart beats. Casting uneasy glances to either side, they neither saw nor heard anything amiss, but with every futile act their breathing grew more ragged, and the intense pounding of their hearts increased in ferocity, until it reached a crescendo. With a sudden clang emanating from the edge of the road before them, every man in the group cast his alerted gaze forward in both fear and terror, brandishing his weapon of choice towards the offending sound.

Sweat beaded down the foreheads of the agitated men, falling in heavy droplets that mixed with the rain, sticking to their eyelashes and obscuring their surroundings even more. From behind a rotting wall came movement, drawing the piercing gaze of five terrified men as what seemed like a dull brown blob stepped into the alleyway, clouded as their vision was by the sweat hotly stinging at their eyes. As they blinked, the thing came into sharp focus. Not brown but red, it was a large and scruffy looking dog with amber eyes. Seeing this, the men sighed with relief, relaxing their guard, eased from the prior tension. It was just a stray dog, likely fed scraps by bored men of the Home Guard. The dog scampered off into another alleyway as it noticed the heavily armored men blocking its intended route. Catching their breaths and calming their still rapidly beating hearts, the men turned towards one another before abruptly stopping.

A loud crash of metal upon stone rang out as a warhammer had fallen from the loosened grip of Sir Jasper, the sudden surprise having made him lose control of his already relaxed hand from the shock. For what met each man’s gaze was but two pairs of eyes, for the group now numbered only three.

“Where are the others?!” The strained voice of Sir Jasper filled the silent void hanging heavily over the group.

“Truly were they just beside me… I didn’t hear a thing…” Returned the mumbled words of the two officers’ sole remaining escort.

Eyes wide open in terror frantically swept up and down the alleyway in search for the missing men. Not a thing moved, not a light shone, and the air was filled with naught but the panicked breathing of terror stricken men. For two men as heavily armed and armored as their guards to suddenly disappear would mean that they had abandoned the group… or had met an unfortunate end upon the blade of an assassin. But to slay such skilled knights and with nary a deathly cry nor the clang of steel upon steel, it would require an assassin of unprecedented skill.

When and where had the two men vanished? Had they been amongst the group until they had been distracted by the dog? Or had the two vanished long before, the group only noticing their absence in the dark because of the dog? Questions rapidly ran through the minds of every surviving man as the group contemplated its situation. Casting gazes about frantically, the men scurried down the alleyway with their weapons pointed in every direction. At even the barest trace of noise, the men would stop and with trembling hands thrust sword and halberd at the offending sound. Several rats had been slain thus, thoroughly skewered for daring to squeak or scratch at timbers, before the men once more began to relax.

“I think the others may have simply deserted my lord. But fret not, for I remain your true servant.” The remaining knight softly spoke in reassuring tones to the Count, having come to his conclusion after long minutes of quiet contemplation.

Upon reflection, their fears had been ludicrous. No assassin could fell two fully armed and armored veteran guards with nary a wayward sound. If a man capable of such a feat existed, he would have been drafted into the ranks of the Empress’s Shield, not spent his days skulking about in the dark like some mere criminal. The missing knights must have lost their nerves at the thought of the Empress’s wrath and fled, unwilling to even enter the city. It did not hurt either, that with their scandalous retreat and abandonment of their lord the remaining guard stood to gain great esteem in the eyes of the Count. The entire group relaxed once more, the tension leaving their bodies as their frightened minds reconsidered the situation with rationality. All until the guard sighted a glinting light, one revealed by his passing in front of a window and blocking the dim light of the moon. There was some gleaming piece of metal inside…

“Assassin!” Screamed the remaining guard as he thrust his halberd through the window and struck the object that had so tellingly reflected the moon’s light.

But what he felt was not the meager resistance of flesh against steel, but that of steel deflecting from steel. He had not struck at an enemy, but at an empty suit of armor sitting upon a stand. It would seem that the building laying at the end of his halberd was one of the storerooms prepared by the Home Guard for use in the outer city’s defense. But before any man in the group could relax, seeing the empty suit of armor for what it was, a curtain shifted in another window set in the building opposite to what had attracted the group’s attention. Much too swift for any of them to react, the massive heavily armored bulk of a man of the Empress’s Shield all but tackled the guard to the ground with the full bodied thrust of his great sword, until the dead man was run through with five feet of dully colored steel.

Reacting entirely on instinct as they confirmed the presence of the assassin they had feared, Count Stern and Sir Jasper fled down the alleyway, desperately trying to place distance between themselves and their pursuer. But it was not to be, charging ahead first as the younger and fitter man, Sir Jasper ran until unexpectedly meeting resistance in the air, tumbling forward onto his face. His visage thoroughly bloodied, the crimson ichor of his life’s blood oozing from a broken nose, he cast a pained gaze down at what had stopped him. A thin metal wire so light that he could not even feel its weight as he lay upon the ground had been lain across the alleyway at thigh height and had caused him to fall. Before his concussed mind could recover enough to regain his feet, the last thing Sir Jasper’s saw was a large stone plunging directly for his prone form and steadily filling the vision of his wide eyes, until it crushed him with deadly effect.

Count Stern could not even bring himself to scream, so overcome by shock was he at the slaughter of his companions. The assassin had borne the burning crown of the Empress, he was one of the Empress’s Shield. They did not tend to act alone, nor were they used as assassins despite their great personal prowess, as the Empress so very thoroughly enjoyed public executions. They could only have been the men assigned as bodyguards to the Lord Protector. Somehow, the Empress’s dog had survived the night’s events with naught but three guards. Damn him!

The Count knew not how, but his plan must have been revealed to the Lord Protector, and now he had come to slay the Count for his treason. The outer city no longer seemed like the safe haven it once was, he thought wearily as his mind was overcome by fear and doubt. Deep down, the Count knew well that running was pointless. The Lord Protector commanded the Home Guard and knew every building, every barricade, and apparently even every window within the shadowy maze constituting its defenses. Perhaps if he had met the Lord Protector upon even and open ground and his guards still drew breath, he would at least possess some chance, no matter how faint it may have been. But alone and helpless, with an aging body unable to match pace with that of men still in their prime, he could only tremble in the dark, afraid. Perhaps if he just lay still in an enshrouded nook, the Lord Protector and his men would push past him in their search, allowing him opportunity to escape.

The Count’s mind still retained that naïve hope for salvation, even as just shy of three hundred pounds of heavily armored bulk leapt down from above. The immense weight instantly brought the Count down so that he fell heavily to the ground upon his back. His breath came out ragged and bloody, crimson flecks of detritus oozing from his open mouth with every desperate wheeze. For an old man with aging, brittle bones the shock had been too great to bear, and his body was rent inside by dozens of painful fractures. His lungs were agonizingly pierced and though he could still draw breath, he felt not his legs for his spine was shattered. From above, the cold and featureless face of a steel great helm stared down upon him, the piercing brown eyes of Nathaniel stabbing through his flesh until he could swear he felt the hateful gaze boring into his very soul.

“Pardon me for dropping in upon you today Count Stern, but it would appear that the time has come for you to pay recompense for your crimes.” A hateful smile laid behind Nathaniel’s helm as he mocked the dying man. His words were met with silence, broken only by the wheezing rasp of a mortally wounded old man.

“I must express my regret that your men had to suffer such a gruesome fate because of your petty ambition. I placed the supply train there to ensure you would not have the strength to defy the Empress, but it seems that in the swiftness of the foe’s assault it led to far more deaths than I had intended. For my part, I will ensure the Empress looks after the families left behind by all of the men who so nobly sacrificed themselves in her defense.” Nathaniel’s tone was sorrowful, but his glare never relented for even the barest moment as he gazed down upon Count Stern, as if he was observing writhing maggots.

“You know, while you were always going to be humbled in this battle, whether by enemy action or my treachery it mattered not, I was prepared to forgive your transgressions. Had you presided over a valiant last stand, or personally led your battered men to safety then we would not be conversing. But not only did you defy the Empress, but you also betrayed your own men, the people whom you swore an oath as a noble to protect with all of your power. I saw everything from afar. Had you maintained order within the ranks, something that should have been a matter of trifling consequence for a man of your experience, you could have repelled the foe or at least guaranteed an orderly withdrawal. But in your cowardice, you fled and caused the unnecessary deaths of thousands. In return for your evil, I do this to avenge your men!” Nathaniel’s armored boot stomped down upon the right side of Count Stern’s chest, caving in the armored plate and collapsing the man’s lung. The weak wheezing of the felled Count approached that of a death rattle as his organs were crushed.

The anger leeched from Nathaniel’s body after delivering the blow. It had been cathartic, and richly deserved for such a snake as the Count, but it was unbecoming of neither himself as an honest man nor that of his high office. The Empress may draw pleasure from such terrible acts, but she was a cruel and vicious creature by nature. It seemed that he had spent too much time at her side of late, to be so thoroughly influenced, and he had let his baser instincts take control of his actions. There was no honor in this, the dead were not present to draw vindication after all, and they would have their revenge enough once the Count joined them. Pity colored Nathaniel’s face as he gazed upon the broken body of the old man. It was time to end this, he had a city to defend, and time was of the essence.

“I hope the gods will forgive you for your crimes, for both your treachery against the Empress and the betrayal of your men. But know that neither I nor the Empress shall ever do so. I grant you the mercy of the gods, may they judge your soul accordingly.” Cleanly slitting the old man’s exposed throat with a dagger, Nathaniel turned and left as the flicker of life faded from the Count’s eyes.