Chapter 40: 40: Siege (2)
The chaos at the open gates had already sown panic among the civilians. People who had stepped out into the streets froze at the sight of dozens of armored knights lying dead or dying in pools of blood. Shouts of alarm rose, and the crowd quickly scrambled back into their homes and shops, slamming doors and shutters behind them.
Harley and Vernox stood at the head of their forces on the third road leading toward the palace. The princess had already galloped off with her own detachment toward the central route, her voice still ringing in their ears: "The other Tower is being taken care of. They’ll come by surprise behind the outpost!"
Vernox, leading nearly a hundred battle-hardened warriors, glanced sideways at Harley. A feral grin split his face.
This was the first time in a while that he had seen Vernox smiling. So Harley was quite freaked out.
"Shall we?"
Harley gave a single, quiet nod. No battle cry left his lips. While the men around him roared with bloodlust, Harley’s mind was already drifting ahead—to the dragon that waited somewhere beyond the castle walls. He tightened his grip on his sword, imagining the beast on the same monstrous scale as the drake once controlled by the mad pirate Ragnar.
’If it’s anything like that... I’m going to need more than skill.’ He steeled his resolve.
"Harley!" Vernox barked, snapping him back to the present.
Ahead of them, a solid wall of knights advanced in tight formation, black banners snapping in the wind. Their shields locked together, spears leveled like a bristling hedge of steel. Behind them rose the small mountain, and atop its peak stood a gray castle overlooking the entire modest kingdom like a crown on a village.
The kingdom itself was no grand metropolis. Barely five thousand people called it home. It was at most a glorified village with walls. But the number of knights charging down the road toward them was still daunting.
"Do we really have to fight?" Harley muttered under his breath.
Vernox heard him anyway. "Our goal is just beyond there. We have to do this!" He raised his black sword high, the dark blade seeming to drink in the light. "Charge!"
A thunderous roar erupted from nearly a hundred throats as Vernox’s warriors surged forward like a tidal wave. Harley moved with them, silent and focused, his white cloak fluttering behind him like a banner of winter.
Vernox was the first to act. There was a wall of knights with shields and spears in front, so he leapt up into the air, crossing five meters easily. With a swing of his sword, he released flames upon the knights below, making them scramble.
Harley slipped through, cutting the neck of a knight who was still patting out flames.
Vernox was a storm of violence. He slammed into the knights’ front line like a battering ram, his black sword sweeping in wide, brutal arcs. With each swing he shattered shields, cleaved through armor, and sent men flying backward into their comrades.
He smiled as he fought, whispering the verses of his artifact under his breath that made his strikes heavier and his movements faster. Knights crumpled around him, their formation buckling under the sheer ferocity of his assault.
Harley danced through the chaos like a ghost. Where Vernox smashed, Harley slipped through gaps, his blade flashing with lethal precision. He ducked under a spear thrust, rose inside a knight’s guard, and drove his sword up through the seam beneath the man’s helmet. A twist, a pull, and the knight dropped. Another knight swung a heavy mace—Harley spun away, his white cloak swirling, and opened the man’s throat with a backhand cut. He moved from one target to the next without pause, never staying in one place long enough for the knights to surround him.
Together they dismantled the formation. Vernox’s raw power broke the shield wall apart, while Harley’s speed and surgical strikes exploited every opening. Knights who tried to reform their ranks found themselves flanked and cut down. Screams of pain and the wet sound of steel meeting flesh filled the air. Blood sprayed across the cobblestones as dozens fell in rapid succession.
Within minutes the disciplined advance of the black-flagged knights had dissolved into a desperate melee. Bodies littered the road. The surviving knights began to falter, some trying to retreat uphill toward the castle, others simply breaking and running.
Vernox laughed wildly, his armor splattered crimson. "Keep pushing! Don’t let them regroup!"
Harley said nothing. He simply wiped his blade on a fallen knight’s cloak and pressed forward with the rest.
---
Later, after the main clash on the road had been won and the path toward the castle lay mostly clear, Harley broke away from the main force. He had spotted the prison wagons and cages near the base of the mountain—captives taken during the kingdom’s recent crackdowns, rebels, villagers, and political prisoners alike.
He moved quickly, cutting down the few remaining guards with efficient, quiet strokes. Then he began freeing the prisoners one cage at a time, slicing through chains and locks with his sharpened blade.
The freed men and women stumbled out, blinking in the daylight, many of them wounded or half-starved. At first they stared at the carnage around them in stunned silence. Then their eyes fell on Harley.
He stood there in the midst of the bloodied road, his long white hair streaked with sweat and a few flecks of red, his white cloak—once pristine—now stained at the hem with dirt and blood. Yet the fabric still caught the light like fresh snow. His striking purple eyes glowed faintly with residual battle energy, calm and otherworldly against the violence surrounding him.
One of the prisoners, an older woman with graying hair, fell to her knees.
"An angel..." she whispered, voice trembling. "The gods have sent an angel."
Others took up the cry.
Harley froze mid-step, sword still in hand. He blinked at them, genuinely bewildered.
"I’m no angel," he said quietly, voice calm but firm. "Just a man here to help."
But the prisoners would not be dissuaded. Some reached out to touch the hem of his cloak as if it were a holy relic. A young girl clutched her mother’s hand and pointed.
"Mama, the angel saved us..."
Harley sighed, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand. His purple eyes flicked toward the mountain path where Vernox and the others were already pushing onward.
"...We don’t have time for this," he muttered, but there was no real anger in his tone—only mild exasperation. "Come on. Get moving."
Still, as he turned to rejoin the fight, he could hear the whispers following him like a prayer:
"The white angel... he came for us..."
"The angel with purple eyes..."
Harley shook his head and broke into a run, white cloak billowing behind him once more, leaving the freed prisoners to stagger toward safety while he headed back into the fray—toward the castle.
