There was no dawn. Not truly. The sky peeled back by degrees but never cleared. Pale light spread like cold butter over the bastion’s stones—enough to cast a shadow, never enough to warm anything. The parapets dripped with dew and tension, both thickest at the northern edge. I stood there, half-hidden by soot-darkened banners and empty gun-carts, alongside men who hadn’t slept.

  The Gustavians were drilling again.

  Their shouts carried over the river like sermons barked too close. Sharp orders in their clipped tongue, the scrape of halberd butts on frostbitten boards, the thunder of boots in practiced rhythm. And always the drums—dozens of them. Short rolls, fast ones, now and again a long, low burst that echoed even after it ended. I’d come to hate that echo. It stayed in the chest like a bruise where no blow had landed.

  The old bridge was gone. I had ordered it destroyed—our cannon fired at the midspan just as the Blemmyes roared their protest. Now what remained was a stinking wound across the river—charred pylons, rope ends, the floating scab of burnt lumber. But they hadn’t withdrawn. They stood on their side like statues with boiling blood, blue-uniformed lieutenants pacing with spyglasses and blue-coated infantry lining the rise above the marsh. Watching.

  We watched back.

  I’d doubled the wall-rotations. Pikes where there had been none in months. Muskets always loaded, even the rust-choked ones. Ammunition tallied like relics. And always—always—the eye of each watchman drifted to the yard, where the Blemmyes made their mourning circle.

  They didn’t chant. Didn’t weep. Didn’t pray like we knew how to name. But they gathered, dawn and dusk, around the remnants of their dead—wrapped in some hide the quartermaster swore didn’t belong to anything in the manuals. They bowed their forms. Their chests—those strange, staring torsos—tilted toward the bundle like sunflowers. Sometimes they sang. A long, low vibration, more felt in the ribs than heard in the ear.

  No one disturbed them.

  Not even the villagers, who kept to the outer sheds, refused the main square unless ordered. Mothers clutched their children. Bakers sent loaves by cart. Someone painted a shrine on the inner wall—Saint Aelia, flame-born and bleeding, her form rendered in ash and goat’s milk. No one claimed it. No one touched it.

  I watched from the upper tower, gauntleted hands tight on the railing. My breath misted out of habit more than cold. Kristoff stood near, steady as ever, watching the Gustavian line.

  “They drill harder than before,” he said.

  “They’re afraid,” I replied. “Or furious.”

  “Afraid of us?”

  “Of something. Maybe the same thing the Blemmyes fear.”

  A sudden drumroll cracked across the river—fast, clipped, martial.

  Kristoff flinched. I didn’t. I kept my eyes on the far shore, where riders had gathered, their mounts stamping frost-rimmed earth. They hadn’t moved. Not yet.

  Behind me, the gate creaked. I heard the cane before the voice—Brandt, tapping out his limp in three-quarter time.

  “You summoned us,” he rasped. “Or the wind did. Either way, we’re here.”

  I turned. Riedel followed just behind him, eyes sharp. Vollmer came last, spine stiff as his coat collar. All three wore formal reds, frayed at the seams, brass barely polished.

  “It’s time,” I said. “We speak plainly before the standoff kills us all. There’s more at stake than wounded pride and burned bridges.”

  I led them down to the strategy hall.

  And overhead, the drums did not stop.

  The war room hadn’t earned its name in years. Damp mortar flaked from its corners, and the oaken table had warped into a slight bow that made all our maps slope eastward, as if even parchment could sense where ruin came from. I let the others file in ahead. Riedel took his usual place without sound. Kristoff stood near the eastern window, hands clasped behind him. Brandt sat heavily, cane propped against his leg, joints groaning louder than his voice. Vollmer remained standing.

  I didn’t sit.

  “There’s no dispatch from the capital,” I began. “No reinforcements, no couriers, no order. That makes this fort our own to command—and our own to lose.”

  No one interrupted. Not yet.

  “The Gustavian line has not advanced since the bridge fell. They dig in. They drill. But they do not test us.”

  “And the Blemmyes?” Brandt said, not sneering, not mocking—just naming the shape in the yard.

  “They’ve made no demand,” I answered. “No movement save mourning. They sleep at the edge of our grain stores, keep their own watch, speak only when spoken to.”

  “So far,” Vollmer snapped. “A hundred of them camped in our walls, and we call that peace?”

  “Better than war,” Riedel muttered.

  “Is it?” Vollmer turned, voice rising. “The bridge is gone, our stockpiles dwindle, and the villagers no longer trust us to keep them safe. Have you seen the inner gate? Someone carved a prayer into the iron—something about the ‘returning host.’”

  I met his eyes. “And what would you have me do?”

  “Send them out. Or better—arm the inner wall. If they turn, we meet it with steel.”

  “You’ll have them turn for certain if you aim muskets at them.” Kristoff said, evenly.

  “There’s truth in that,” Brandt murmured. “My old wars taught me one thing. If you treat a guest like a traitor, he’ll become one.”

  “They’re not guests,” Vollmer spat. “They’re a horde.”

  “They warned us,” I cut in. “And what have the Gustavians said? Nothing. No envoy. No request for parley. Just drills and drums. I’d rather keep the devils I’ve spoken with than the silence across the water.”

  No one replied immediately. The room breathed smoke and tension.

  Then Kristoff spoke.

  “Do we believe them?” he asked.

  The question hung longer than it should have. No one moved. I let the silence stretch, feeling the weight of it press into the timber bones of the room.

  Kristoff turned from the window. “They don’t speak like this,” he said. “Not before. Not ever. Blemmyes were beasts. Cargo. Then laborers. And now? They speak in riddles older than scripture.”

  “Something stirred them,” Riedel murmured. “Something worse than war.”

  “They fear it,” Brandt added. “And that fear made them crawl into our gate without demand or bluster. They came like witnesses, not conquerors.”

  Vollmer scoffed. “And that’s meant to reassure us? If they are truly beasts, then why not split our skulls? Why mourn their dead in full view? Why not seize the stores and throw our limbs on the fire?”

  “Because they know something,” I said. “And because they know we don’t.”

  Riedel nodded. “If they are enemy, they’re the strangest enemy I’ve ever known.”

  Kristoff’s voice was quiet now. “They said a host was coming. From the east. From the forests.”

  “So what stirred them?” Brandt said again. “What made these beasts wake up speaking prophecy and dread?”

  No one answered.

  At last I said, “I don’t know what they saw. But I believe they believe it.”

  Brandt leaned forward. “That’ll have to be enough.”

  That was when the first shot rang out.

  Far off—across the river.

  Then a scream.

  Then another.

  And then—drums.

  But not the measured kind. Not the Gustavian cadence. This was wild, panicked. A skirmish rhythm.

  I moved first, Kristoff right behind. By the time we reached the wall, more screams echoed from the trees, and flashes of musket fire lit the far side like witch-lanterns.

  Then—movement.

  Two figures, breaking from the treeline, running hard and low, mud-slicked and fire-lit from behind. Their coats were torn, stained with swampwater and blood. One shouldered a long bundle wrapped in oilcloth, shaped like a weapon but older, heavier. The other limped—left leg dragging—but his speed never faltered. They moved not like deserters, but like men who had outrun something they hadn’t yet escaped.

  I raised the glass. Saw their faces. These were not strangers. Not cowards either.

  Survivors.

  They didn’t shout for help—they roared for entry. Their words cut through the clamor like axe blows on oak.

  "Gate, damn you! Open!" one of them roared—a voice hoarse with smoke, cracked by rage. "It's behind us! Open or I’ll tear it down myself!"

  From the river’s edge came smoke—dense, crawling—shot through with shapes that didn’t run so much as flinch and drag. Something moved within it. Too low for men. Too tall for beasts.

  The Gustavian line had transformed. For once, every blue-clad back was turned away from our fort. They faced east, not west. Toward the smoke. Toward the brush. Toward the crawling, unseen terror.

  They had formed ranks. Files. Commanded volleys.

  Their muskets did not flicker at random—they fired in practiced cadence. Some advanced by steps, others knelt to reload. Officers moved among them, sabres drawn, pointed in compass directions to turn their fire. It was a wall of men who had seen death before and now chose to meet it.

  For the first time since arriving in this cursed land, I was glad they weren’t pointed at me.

  And the drums—

  They hadn’t stopped. But they’d changed.

  Slower now. Not martial. Ritual. A rhythm like a burial performed by cowards: persistent, reluctant, afraid to finish.

  “Open the bloody gate!” I snapped.

  “Officers to post! Give me sights, keep the Blemmyes under control! Cannons aligned to north and east! All pikes ready, all guns powdered and loaded!”

  Vollmer’s voice cracked over the din. “What the fuck are they fighting? More Blemmyes?”

  “No,” Kristoff snapped back. “Why would they be separate from ours? Why would the Blemmyes on our side hide this?”

  “Who the hell are those ragged scum running to our doorstep?” Riedel muttered.

  Brandt’s cane struck the floor once, deliberate. “Are we at war, Edelmer?”

  I didn’t look at them. I kept my eyes on the eastern smoke, where steel flashed like teeth in the dark.

  “Yes,” I said. “We just don’t know with whom.”

  "Druuums! Battle rhythm!" Brandt shouted from the rampart.

  Now it was our turn.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The drummer boy was already moving—barefoot, eyes wide, sticks clenched like inheritance. It was in his blood. The roll came natural, deep, steady, grim.

  And so, war was truly upon us again.

  Steel rang. Orders flew. Every boot was set to motion.

  The garrison assembled in their ranks across the yard—some still belting coats over bare shirts, others white-knuckled on their pikes, eyes toward the smoke. The guns were manned, ropes taut, wheels braced. Powder reeked like hell let loose.

  The gate opened. The two men stumbled in.

  Sweat cut gullies through soot on their faces. Their brows were blistered raw, steam rising from their shoulders. One of them dropped to a knee, shoulders heaving, his coat soaked in black blood—not his own, but thick on him like it chose him. The other never slowed. His left boot was soaked to the shin in someone else’s ruin.

  “Shut the gate,” said the second, voice stern and final. “Shut it and post every man. You’re out of time.”

  “Who are you?” I asked, stepping forward.

  “Johan,” he said. “This is Elrik.”

  I took them in fully then—what the lamps showed beneath the blood and soot.

  They were dressed for war, yes, but not fresh from barracks. These were men who had worn the same coats for weeks without pause. One's collar was torn where it had been gripped; the other's belt held a knife crusted black. They were soaked through—dripping sweat, riverwater, or worse. The stink of them was scorched leather and death. Their eyes were sleepless. Their boots had seen ruin. Dressed to kill, yes—but they looked like they'd killed too much already.

  Elrik looked past me—past the walls, to where the Blemmyes still stood in their prayerful hush. His mouth parted.

  “You’ve got them here?” he breathed.

  “Yes,” I said. “They’ve warned us too.”

  His eyes darted, wide, as if seeing the breach not in the wall, but in the world.

  Johan didn’t even blink. “Not them,” he growled. “Not this time. We were ambushed in the marshes. Thought it was more of their dead—until the laughing started. We set fire to a gaggle of them in the Emblerwood. Didn't matter. They came through the smoke giggling. It moves wrong. Crook-walked whore-beasts, skin inside out and eyes like pests.”

  Elrik shivered. “They’ve set their eyes on the Gustavian lines. And the fodder north of here.”

  “How many?” Brandt asked.

  Elrik didn’t speak. He only whispered, “Many.”

  No one breathed.

  Not even Vollmer had words.

  Kristoff looked at me. “If the Gustavians aren’t our enemy...”

  I finished it. “Then something worse is.”

  I said nothing more. I turned and stepped onto the northern platform. The bastion gave me height. The smoke was thick. The sky, ruined. But the Gustavian banners still held above their camp, blue in the morning haze.

  I raised my glass.

  And saw them.

  Shades—black, lean, fast as thought. They slipped between tents like oil poured through lace. One darted through a halberdier before he could scream. Another climbed a mast with limbs that bent like a wheelbroken damned. I watched one Gustavian sergeant strike a shadow full in the chest—only to collapse, screaming, his arm cleaved without steel.

  I lowered the glass.

  A moment passed.

  “Cannons!” I barked. “Ready positions!”

  Men ran.

  “Target—east. Front line. Not the Gustavians. The ones in their shadow.”

  Riedel stepped forward. “That’s your order?”

  “My line,” I said. “My shot.”

  I raised my hand.

  “Fire at the enemy!”

  The 12-pounders barked. Thunder cracked. I watched as the shot tore through the black shapes moving in front of the Gustavian ranks—shades blown apart in streaks of tar and sinew.

  And the Gustavians did not turn their heads.

  Our side had been chosen.

  The time for defense was over.

  I turned from the wall and whistled once—sharp, clear, final. The call was known.

  The Gold Riders were already mounting.

  My own horse waited—saddled, iron-barded, restless. I took the reins and slung myself into the saddle, armor creaking, cloak brushing powder-scored leather.

  They gathered in rows—twelve, then twenty-four, then more. Shock cavalry. Wheel locks at the waist. Blades sharpened to hush. Breast plates glinting under the morning ruin, brass buckles catching light like sparks.

  No more patrols. No more parade ground feints. These were killers meant for charge, for weight, for thunder.

  I rode the line. Eyes met mine. No one flinched.

  "Kristoff! Double the cannon shots, aim true! Let the Gustavians know our intentions!"

  "Vollmer, Brandt! Hold the fort! Give our musketmen a good run—they shoot all that moves!"

  "Riedel! We ride! We lead the Gold Riders!"

  One of the Blemmyes stirred.

  It rose from their circle of mourning without haste, as if responding to a bell we could not hear. His eyes were open now—lidless, lucid. Its gait was steady, grave. It walked toward our assembled pack, boots silent on the stone.

  I did not raise a hand to stop him. Nor did the guards. Something in the moment forbade interruption.

  It halted just short of the line, eyes level with mine. Its chest-face turned slightly, as if to catch wind, or scent.

  “So, ye have chosen the path?” it asked.

  “Indeed, sir,” I said.

  It bowed—formal, like a pact was just signed in blood.

  “Verily. God is great. We abide.”

  A shiver passed down my spine. The words were not blasphemous. They were too measured, too exact. Too much like ours.

  What connection can beasts like them have to the Almighty?

  The drums still echoed as I turned from the wall.

  My horse was already being saddled by one of the stable lads—hands shaking, but trained. The Gold Riders were forming behind the lower gate, shoulder to shoulder, blades sheathed, wheel-locks slung. Their armor wasn’t bright—it was dulled from long months of rust and waiting—but it fit well, and it moved with them.

  “Form two columns!” I barked. “Swords loose, powder primed. I want clean lines and no one out of place!”

  They were shock troops, not scouts today. The finest of our bastion, forged for show and left to rot in drills. Now they had cause. Now they had permission.

  Hooves struck flagstone like flint on iron. Visors lowered. Gunpowder caught in the wind like incense.

  I mounted.

  “Let’s show them,” I said, low but clear, “what we’ve saved ourselves for.”

  And the gate began to rise.

  We rode down the path like thunder carved into flesh.

  The bastion fell behind us, its walls still trembling with cannon fire and barked orders. But out here, beyond the stone, in that strip of dying grass and war-torn mud, all sound was dampened. Not silenced—swallowed.

  The world between borders had no music of its own.

  Behind us, we could hear the distant roar of the 12-pounders, their load tearing open the wind with deadly whistles. Ahead, the shots cracked like drowning thunder from the Gustavian lines—and beneath them, something else. Laughter, maybe. Snarls in a tongue no man spoke. A sound not made to be understood.

  Only the sound of hooves stayed true. Rhythm over soil, over rock, over rotting roots. The breath of horses pumped like blacksmith bellows. Sweat sprayed. Leather straps creaked and snapped.

  We rode hard toward the ruined bridge. No task for a man under fire to cross—wood and rope, soaked and half-ash. But for a horse uncontested? A prey-path.

  The Gold Riders soared. We galloped across broken planks and swamp-slick stone. One horse stumbled, caught, righted itself without its rider falling. The swamp hissed beneath us, hungry and mute.

  Then we were across.

  The border was breached. We had crossed into the fire with steel, with powder, and with no promise of return.

  Now, the enemy would see us come.

  We arrived at fire and smoke.

  Tents we had only seen at distance now loomed close enough to touch—canvas shredded, poles splintered, the smell of pitch and blood soaking everything. The drums were louder here, multiple rhythms at war with each other. Gustavian cadence. Panic. And something stranger—off-beat, off-human.

  A line of blue appeared ahead—Gustavian infantry, locked shoulder to shoulder, muskets raised and aimed east. Their volley cracked the air open like a whip made of nails. They hadn’t broken.

  Some turned at our approach. Their eyes went wide.

  “Ride front!” I shouted. No room for confusion.

  We veered, formation veering right like a blade slicing a neck. Horses plunged forward, Gold Riders forming a wedge between Gustavian ranks and the thing they faced. Fifty men on this line, another fifty up the ridge. Two hundred total, maybe. They’d always looked like more, from across the pond.

  And then—we saw the enemy.

  It was not a line. It was not an army.

  It was a movement, a direction, a sound. Clawing. Howling.

  And it was already too close.

  "Shoot!" I commanded. Completely unnecessary—the men had already taken initiative. Muskets cracked across the front, flames biting from barrels, the sharp bark of wheel-locks ringing into the churned air.

  Shapes fell. Too wrong-wrought to name, they tumbled with no cry, only the wet slap of ruin. But some pressed on, clawing, twitching, dragging themselves low with limbs not meant for ground.

  I glanced back at the line.

  Faces—faces I knew. Some were confused. Most were scared. But a few... a few flared with recognition. The new reality had taken root. The enemy was no longer many.

  Two enemies had become one.

  I raised my sword, face to line, riding forth. If they hadn’t gotten my intention by now, no act would.

  Riders darted across the lines like coursing dogs loose from leash. I scanned the field—three Gustavian lines still held near the border, muskets smoking, their boots braced amid broken tents and fallen timber. The dead lay tangled in canvas and stakes. The wounded cried where no aid would reach them.

  Among it all, I saw the dark shapes—fast, shifting, twitching through the carnage like spiders on coals. Too quick to target, too foul to ignore.

  Then—cannons.

  Gustavian make. Light, movable, horse-drawn. Abandoned. Wheels splintered, teams fled or butchered. The barrels faced nowhere now. Useless.

  An idea took me like a fever.

  I pulled hard on the reins and wheeled back to Riedel. “Those guns. We take them. We bring them back. We use their iron, or we die with empty hands!”

  He nodded, no words, already breaking off his half of the line.

  The enemy wouldn’t wait. So we would take what they left behind—and turn it back on them.

  "Cover our advance!!" I shouted—at no one, at everyone. Any command, any ear. My dialect was thick to Gustavian ears, I was sure, but the plea was simple. Urgent. Hopefully, it reached them.

  Ten riders on me. Riedel, at my flank. The nearest guns were still intact—three in all, light Gustavian pieces with broken traces but usable barrels. They could be moved. They could be turned.

  But they weren’t unguarded.

  The shapes were on us. Fast. Screeching. Some crying like infants, others chittering like insects. A dozen or more moved in the grass and ruin, almost hidden by smoke.

  One leapt toward a rider—too fast to shout a warning. The man met it with a sabre stroke, clean and final. The beast gored itself trying to flee, body torn between hoof and shattered rock.

  Other riders fired wheel-locks on approach. The air burst with powder and flame. Some shadows fell—some simply vanished. Smoke veiled their advance, but it didn’t stop it.

  We were in the thick now. Closer to the guns. Closer to the edge.

  And there would be no turning back.

  And then—a rolling thunder.

  The air sucked in, whistled, and snapped with the force of a hailstorm.

  A Gustavian line had fired in perfect unison. I looked around; my men were sound.

  We were always told the bastards were drilled to perfection. Out here in the thick of it, it held true.

  Black limbs, white faces—creatures of ruin—folded and collapsed. Screeches turned to rattling silence. The cries that followed didn’t belong to soldiers. They echoed like a hundred children dragged from sleep.

  And that was our chance to work.

  Three horses readied, men assembling ropes and pulleys. The barrels would move, or we’d drag them ourselves.

  From behind, over smoke and screams, we heard distant shouts. Gustavian—clipped, loud, urgent.

  “Pull the harness!”

  “Christian’s Soul fires true—take him!”

  “Line, hold! Aim! Defend!”

  The camaraderie made me dizzy. Praise I would have spat on but an hour earlier. What a thought. War pulls strange loyalties from tired hearts.

  Then I saw them.

  Fleeing from the Gustavian side—civilians. Women, children, old men. Farmers and cooks and those too soft for blade or powder. They stumbled through broken fences and collapsed tents, guided by the screams behind them and the gunfire ahead. No formation. Just the raw instinct to run.

  The skirmish had outgrown our measure. This was no border clash. This was a purge, and the line between target and survivor had been erased.

  The Gustavians sensed it. Their lines began to pull back—a measured, grim retreat. Orders still rang. Officers still pointed. But the tone had shifted. They weren’t holding ground anymore. They were buying time.

  Wrongborn moved in behind them. Not all at once. Not like a charge. They crawled where the formation thinned. Picked at the edges. Dragged men down into the mud where cries vanished.

  Soldiers on the flanks disappeared. Pikes raised in panic, too slow. One man screamed as something latched to his back and pulled. Another fired blind into the reeds and hit nothing but water.

  It wasn’t collapse. Not yet.

  But it was fraying.

  We gritted forward. The cannon crew cursed under their breath as the ropes dug deep into the bog. Horses sank up to the fetlocks, nostrils flaring. Every step dragged iron and life closer to the edge of breaking.

  The shapes pressed. The cursed enemy could smell the moment—knew when men were burdened, when lines thinned. They struck at the flanks, always. One rider to my right was pulled down, screaming. Another further back—dragged from his horse and lost under the weight of black limbs.

  We were stretched thin, bleeding strength with every step. The ground gave no purchase, only hunger. A wheel jammed. A rope snapped. And still the enemy came—not in ranks, but in waves. Howling, crawling, bounding with laughter that didn’t fit in mouths.

  The human line bent.

  Some men dropped their reins to ready pistols. Others raised sabres blind. A few began to shout prayers, forgetting the words halfway through. I saw one Gustavian turn, eyes empty, weapon gone, hands clutching nothing but steam.

  “Keep moving!” I shouted. “Keep the guns upright!”

  And then, from behind—a sound.

  A beat.

  Singing.

  A low, cracked hymn. A Blemmyic cadence. Ancient and sharp as bone. I turned in the saddle just in time to see them descend the ridge. Tall, faceless, and furious. Maces, spears, the glint of twisted iron. No warcry. Just a song.

  They hit the Wrongborn like a collapsing roof—blunt, total, final. The line bent. The pressure broke. And we—men and metal alike—pushed free.

  On the hill behind us, the Gustavian colors rose again, smoke trailing from a dozen fresh muzzles. The river behind them churned with the crossing of horses, wagons, and the slow, terrified mass of the living.

  Villagers, yes. Fodder, yes. But now they were ours too.

  We circled wide, blood in our mouths, grit in our teeth, guns creaking behind us. We had stolen fire from the teeth of the dark.

  Now came the time to aim it.

  Above us, the cannons still thundered—ours now, not theirs. And beneath their roar came the rhythm we knew best.

  The drums of the Sun Swords.

  Not the clean, clipped Gustavian cadence. Ours was heavier, slower, mean. It dragged in the belly and rose like a curse. Every beat struck with purpose, like boot on bone. It told the field we still stood, still struck, still burned.

  We were not done.

  We would answer now—with iron, and fire, and war made holy by the desperate hands that dared survive it.