As If God Were Asleep

Alfred Richard

As If God Were Asleep

EP1. The Accursed Mountain

The Book of Tzeentch

If a historian sees what’s happening in front of my eyes, he will record it “as if god is asleep.”  I stand on the terrace wall of Palazzo del Fede, gripping the pitted iron of my halberd, my breath shallow in the salt-wet air.  The sky, which had been lifelessly grey since dawn, now smolders at the edges, not with fire, but with some ungodly color, like ink mixed with bile. Below the ramparts, the city’s heart stutters. You can hear it. You can feel it. Screams, too far to make sense of, echo from the harbor. 

It was an odd day from the beginning. Not just because the fleet was arriving, but because nothing felt right. The air, the silence, even the birds were absent. We were told a Leonian fleet was embarking at the harbor this morning. We hadn’t heard from Leon in a month. My adjutant  Avito, said Lord Fernandico, head of the anti-Isabella faction, had turned to plaguecraft in his rebellion. Avito, whose father-in-law was Leonian, liked to think he understood their politics. It made him talk too much, especially when the news was bad. Then the harbor guards lit the beacon. Orders from Signore came down. “Put the men on high alert.” But none of us knew what would come for us.

It was not long before the bells tolled. Not for prayer. Not for mourning. But for blood. The Leonian bastards had come ashore. “To arms!” I bellowed, my voice scraping against the wind. My men turned to me, faces drawn and ashen. They had heard the same tales I had that the Leonians fielded the finest soldiers in all of Occidens. And now those soldiers marched under rotting banners. ‘Why would the Leonian bastards send troops to us?’ Foscari had knelt to Leon decades ago, after the Fourteen-Year War,  a war so soaked in blood that even a crying babe would fall silent at the sound of its name. ‘Has the bloody Isabella heard of the separatists are at large since the disconnection?’ I was concealing the fear. A single glance at the harbor was enough. The fleet was vast, monstrous, and I trembled with fear I could not name.

“Condottiere! You must raise the men and march to the harbor!” The dispatch rider came to me breathless, clutching a sealed message in his trembling hand. “Is it the Leonians?” I asked. “Aye… Condottiere, it’s urgent!” He replied, his face pale as chalk.
“What are their movements? And what did the Signore command?”

“They’re butchering the townsfolk like heathens, Condottiere. And the Signore sent an embassy. They murdered them. All of them.”

“Then those Leonian swines know no law.”

And then, the screams reached the garrison camp, crashing over the stone like a wave from the blackest sea. I clenched my jaw. If the Signore’s seal meant nothing to them, then nothing would.

“Sound the bell.”

“You, take this seal. Find the Black Pike Company and bring them to the harbor. Tell them to meet at the St. Nicolas Cathedral.”
I turned to my men and roared:

“The White Company, form ranks! Spears and arquebuses at your sides, we march to the harbor! Spill their blood for every child they’ve slain!”

The enemy’s banners rose with the sun, and by the tenth hour, their boots had blackened the harbor stone. Thirty minutes later, the square before St. Nicolas Cathedral became a sea of steel. Each bore two banners, one bearing the Lion of Saint Mark, sigil of the Republic of Foscari, and the other their own colors: the White Company’s standard stitched with silver and pale ash, the Black Pike’s marked by a sable field and crimson pikehead. They stood opposed yet united, mirrored on the stone like pieces upon a chessboard, white and black, order and reckoning, the quiet before the storm.
“Corrado! In God’s wounds, what is this madness?!”Matteo growled, stepping into the square.

“The Leonians have struck again, haven’t they?”

“For what cause do they seek to plunge their blades into this living city?”

“Let us find the answer, and may God judge their fate.”

Beneath the pounding of the marching drums, my heart beat faster with every step.

Yet as we neared the harbor, even the drums could not drown out the screams of men. It was like a vision of the Inferno just as Dante once painted in verse. Leonian soldiers were thrusting their spears into the bellies of the helpless, not to kill, but to plant writhing worms beneath their flesh. They didn’t scream as they died. They writhed. And the worms, God help me, the worms burrowed into them like seeds into soil. Some didn’t even fall. They just… changed. And then they turned their spears on their own. Our men were brave and the finest I’ve ever led, yet not one of them moved from a shock. They stood as if carved from stone, their courage drowned by what lay before them. Even though my men had gone pale, the Leonians were paler still, white as gravecloth, their eyes sunken and dull, like salted fish left too long in the sun. “Raise the white flag,” I said. “If there’s any soul left in them, they’ll halt.” The dispatch rider did not make it halfway across the square. One of them impaled him through the chest, and the rest screamed and fled. The Leonians laughed not like men, but like creatures bewitched, as if black sorcery stirred beneath their skin. Even the word ‘human’ felt too generous for what stood before us. They did not feast for hunger nor for blood, but to plant what they carried.

Soon after the rider fell, the Leonians moved in formation not like beasts, but like men.“Ready your weapon!”  I roared. The harbor rang with the fear of my men and the screams of fishmongers and merchants. But soon, it was drowned beneath the rhythm of Leonian footsteps. Few arquebushers fired the guns in terror without the sergants’ cue.
“For God’s sake! Fire at my mark!”
Panic swept through my regiments like a plague, in a place where God had closed His eyes. Gunfire cracked, and the air thickened with smoke. ‘God’s blood! We are losing the line!’
“First line, loose and step back. Second line, fill the gap!”

Enemy lines peeled like an onion slowly, but steadily. Corpses sprawled across the stones, and yet it was the foulest stench of blood I had ever known, like something already rotting
“Reload on the wheel! Keep it moving!”

The White Company danced a broken Saltarello out of rhythm against the unholy invaders for a good amount of time. Worse still, behind the dense gunsmoke, the Leonian soldiers advanced like a Bassadanza of death, tripping, deliberate, and grinning with blasphemous joy.
“Jesu mercy… has he abandoned us..?” I whispered.
‘They feel no pain, no fear.’ Awe surged through me, but I steeled myself and barked the order:

“Fall back to the second line!” 

“Pikemen, hold the front line, staggered formation! Arquebusiers, fall back into the alleys, reload, and wait for my signal!” The arquebusiers stumbled aside, smoke clinging to their faces, eyes wide with something they wouldn’t name. In their place, the pikes marched, hesitant at first, boots dragging, but the steel tips dropped all the same. As the Leonians pressed forward, the pikemen stood not without fear, but without breaking. The Black Pike Company remains the finest fighting force in all of the Valmeria peninsula. Yet, they were broken in the Fourteen-Year War by Leonians. But they were not shattered. The Black Pike learned from Leon’s discipline and design forged something sharper. Now, with Foscari behind them, they return. And the debt will be paid. Pike for pike. Fire for fire. The roars of the Black Pike Company rolled across the battlefield, and their allies, even the gunfire behind their back could not penetrate their battle cry. Yet against that courage came the soulless, dragging themselves forward, impaling hearts with their pikes, grinning as if death had left them one last joke to tell. Even the Black Pike began to falter as the battle dragged on. “Dear God! They do not fear!” someone screamed from the front. “Join us,” hissed the Leonian, giggling widely, his breath like a tomb, his voice like rot. They were forsaken, truly.

However, Black Pike didn’t just grow thicker pikes. They grew sharper hands. They trained men with short swords and shields not to break the enemy front, but to crawl under it. They’d learned how the Leonians’ famous pike wall marched and how to cut its ankles.
“Corrado, the line’s shaken. We need the Falcinieri!”
It seemed all but certain that the Black Pike Company would be swallowed by the forsaken’s terror at any moment.
“Matteo! Time to show them your teeth. Release the Anklecutters. Regroup the line and prepare to fall back.”

The drummer rolled a pair of tight beats. On cue, the anklecutters surged forward, shields low, Falcione drawn. They didn’t aim for hearts. They aimed for the knees. For tendons. For the machinery of movement. Where once the forsaken walked, they now crawled into a broken tide, buying the living time to take a breath. However, it wasn’t enough to block the Leonians’ advancement.
“Bring me riders, we’re falling back to the palace. Civilian evacuation must begin now!” I handed the sealed message to the riders. I turned to Avito,
“Form a spearhead. With the finest and bravest men. Buy us time, keep those bastards from reaching the palace. May Jesu save you.”
Avito nodded and replied,
“May Jesu save you.”
We left him there, Avito and the brigade who stayed with him. They did not fall into formation. They braced themselves in blood and dust. 

I kept running. I had to. But with every step, a question clawed at me: how do you stop something that does not bleed, does not break, does not fear? I had led men through sieges, through famine, through fire. But nothing in all my campaigns had prepared me for this,  a war where the army would not fear, where no line held longer than a breath. We had trained for arrows. For blades. For pikes and walls and treachery. Not for this. Not for whatever the hell Leon had sent us. I looked back once, not long, just enough to see the faltering line, the glint of steel in Avito’s hand, the motionless shapes advancing through smoke. I had ordered him to buy us time. But I had no idea how much time there was left to buy. 

How long had it been? An hour? More? The sun was now directly overhead, burning down on our helms like judgment. Then, at last, the bell of evacuation rang. We had reached the palace, and Signore Alessandro della Bravura came to meet us. He was a little clumsy, not in thought, but in presence, yet no one doubted the kindness in him. His faith was sincere, and his love for God was evident in every word he spoke. He was not made for war. But he cared. And in times like these, that counted for more than steel.
“By Jesu… you made it. I feared thee had fallen,” he said, holding my cheeks, his gaze shifting between me and Matteo’s sweat-stained faces.

 “It is good to see thee alive, Condottieres. Truly.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Matteo and I replied with our chins down.

“What news from the front? I heard my envoys were slain, and civilians as well. Why have they come, do thee think?” He asked, fear in his eyes.

“I have no excuse, Your Grace. They came ashore with steel in hand and made no distinction between soldier or child. As for why… I am still searching for an answer. But if I had to name it?” I paused. “It felt like Satan or something worse was controlling them.” It was a hellish vision as if God Himself had sent them to punish us.

“Come inside, Condottieres. Thine soldiers look exhausted. We’ll speak further within.”

As we entered Signore’s office, he lit the candles and drew back the curtains over the tall window. Through the glass, we could see them, the Leonian soldiers, marching toward the palace with brutal precision. Despite their savagery, there was method in their movement. A tactic. A plan. “Now,” the Signore said, his voice low and ragged, eyes fixed on the creeping tide beyond the window, “tell me what must we do to ride out this trial?” Matteo and I looked at each other for a while, then Matteo opened his mouth.
“Your Grace, the harbor is under their control. The enemy numbers nearly a dozen regiments, mostly pikemen, supported by arquebusiers and a few pistoliers. They are double what we command. We must send the riders and light the beacons and call our allied cities to arms.” “But,” Signore sighed with anxiety. “… will they even come?” He didn’t look at us when he said it. Just stared out the window.

He didn’t need to explain what “they” meant. The lords of Lazio, fractured, proud, and cautious, had lived under Leon’s shadow for too long. A whole generation had grown up not under the banner of Lazio, but beneath the lion’s paw. To some, the colors of Leon now felt more familiar than their own. And so we called for help, not knowing whether we were asking them to save a city… or to betray a memory. I knew that kind of silence. The kind that waits not because it does not hear but because it does not yet know whose side it wants to be on. I caught my breath and replied,
“Yet God has shown us a mercy: they brought no cavalry.”

“If we hold the palace long enough and strike their supply line with our cavalry, we may drive them back to the sea before their reinforcements arrive.”
Signore turned his body to me and said,
“But we can’t shelter the citizens for long. We haven’t prepared for war in years. We must begin evacuating them to the nearest cities or, at the very least, request supplies from the other lords”
He sighed and asked his attendant, “How many can we shelter them?”
“Only a few days, Your Grace,” one of the attendants answered softly.

“Three at most, if only the granaries hold and that’s without fire or panic.”
Signore turned back again, rubbed his forehead, and paused.

“Tell me plainly… can they encircle us?”

“Four to five regiments would be more than enough to encircle the Palazzo del Fede entirely, Your Grace.”

Unlike the other keeps, the Palazzo is a marvel of architecture,  grand, elegant… and defensively weak. We trusted the sea too much. It was our natural wall… until now.

I ran a hand across my helberd, staring past the candlelight and into the smoke-thick sky beyond the window. A full encirclement was only hours away. Five regiments. Too few to defend, too many to keep fed. I could feel the pressure crushing in from all sides, not just steel, but time, and silence, and the weight of lives. We couldn’t hold the palace forever. But perhaps we didn’t have to. If we split the forces now, kept three inside for the defense, and sent two out, broken into companies, stripped to what they could carry, they might just slip through the gaps before the noose closed. One group to escort the civilians and Signore himself to allied ground. Another to strike the Leonian supply lines and draw blood where they least expected it. The palace would fall eventually. But not before it bought time. Not before it left a scar. I turned to Signore, my voice low, resolute. “Your Grace, I have a plan. But first, you must leave the city. Take the civilians with you, under Matteo’s escort, and make for your estate at Monte Silevo. From there, send word to the neighboring Signores. Call for aid while we still have time.”
Montel Silevo lay some thirty leagues eastward, quiet hills, clean air, and grain enough to feed a siege twice over. It was not built for war, but it would hold the people. Better that than leaving them here to be pierced by those blasphemous worms, to writhe and change as the Leonians had. I had seen it with my own eyes, how a man did not scream as he died, only shuddered as something else took hold of him. To lose a soldier is war. But to lose what makes him human? That is something else entirely.
The sun had begun to sag above the eaves, and somewhere two streets down. Perhaps twenty rods southwest of the Palace, the first gunfire cracked. Our advance irregulars, scattered in threes and fives, had struck the Leonians in the alleys and courtyards. Not to break them, that was beyond hope, but to slow them. Distract them. Bleed them by the inch. The first line of resistance had begun. And soon, the blood began to gather. The bodies of the fallen Leonian soldiers and twisted townsfolk alike, piled together, tangled in a red tide. You couldn’t always tell which was which anymore. Armor or apron, soldier or beggar,  once the worms took hold, they danced the same. It became a river of the dead, a procession of limbs and slack jaws and open wounds, flowing street by street like the passage of some blasphemous pilgrimage.
No sooner had the Signore departed than we gathered around the city’s parchment map. The first lines had not yet been tested, but the air already tasted of iron. We had studied the city like a scripture. We would not fight at the walls. We would fight in the veins of Foscari, in the markets and backstreets, in stairwells and bell towers. Three regiments held the central district with orders to yield slowly and bleed every step. One stood hidden along the noble quarter’s arcades, guarding the Signore’s escape path. And the last, the fifth, was mine to command directly, a reserve inside the Signore’s palace. Before we broke, I turned to my sergeants and said quietly, “If you find one of those worms, alive, trap it. Bring it to me if you can. We need to know what it is we’re truly fighting.” Then I called for a dispatch rider and handed him the seal. “Send for the cavalry. All of them.” I leaned back over the map, dragging a gloved finger along the road to the harbor. “Tell the captain: split the force. Half are to circle wide and scout the harbor’s rear. If the enemy has overextended their supply line, I want to know before sunset.” I tapped the alleyways between the districts. “The rest are to fan out and strike with the regiments, keep the Leonians off balance. No charges. No glory. Just pressure.”

In the alleys, we placed our firelines. At the corners, our pikes. And behind them, the Falcinieri waited, blades drawn, eyes sharp, shields low. But the Leonians did not hesitate. They did not scatter. They came on in lockstep, spears leveled, heedless of volleys or fire or pain. As if death itself had taught them discipline. Where they met our lines, they broke them not with force but with inevitability. Yet in each street, in each narrow passage, a fight still burned. The pikemen held their angles. The anklecutters darted between corpses and cartwheels. After a breathless lull, the first line began to waver. Shields dipped, steps faltered, and a crack rippled down the formation like splintering glass. “Fall back to the second line!” came the shout from the sergeants, hoarse and urgent. And then came the drums, slow, thunderous, undeniable, the cadence of retreat rolling down the stone like judgment.

The second line did not break, not immediately. We had mapped its corners to form deliberate blind angles, knowing the alleys and courtyards better than the dead could. Arquebusiers, left behind in flanking windows and colonnades, turned the narrow ways into firetraps. For nearly an hour, the Leonians faltered not stopped, never that, but slowed. Staggered. Confused. Their advance became uneven. Predictable. We bought time with blood, and they paid it back in corpses. By the time our lines were fraying at the edges, when every man fought as if dragging the weight of the dead behind him, we heard it hooves when the sun light hung loose upon the sky like the deceased. The cavalry had returned. From the balcony, we saw the Leonians pause… then fall back at the exact moment without any order or drum. Not in panic. In formation. A disciplined retreat. Their rear held by lines of arquebusiers and pistol-wielding footmen, buying time as efficiently as we had done. We did not pursue. We were too tired, too thin. We pulled our second line tighter, gathered the wounded, and reloaded the pikes.

The streets were red now. Slippery with blood, heavy with limbs. The rats ran boldly in the open sunset. Then the riders returned from the other flank. They had struck the supply roads near the harbor. Crates torn open. Tents overrun. And among the spoils, one sealed box, unlike the rest. Inside: the worms. Alive, writhing.
“Condottiere! We secured the thing!” cried Captain Lucenzo Varra, dismounting fast enough to stumble.
His gauntlet was slick with blood, but in his other hand, he held the sealed box like it carried salvation or damnation.
“You did well, Captain,” I said, taking the crate from him with both hands. I glanced between Lucenzo and the thing he carried, a slow grin pulling at the corners of my mouth.
“They were mad for it,” he muttered, still catching his breath. “Frantic. I lost few good men just prying it loose. I don’t know what it is… but whatever’s in there…, it wasn’t made by God.”
“Their sacrifice will not be in vain. I swear it, by the Holy Virgin herself.” I turned my eyes to the crate, the smile gone from my face.
“Now… we need to find out what in God’s name this damned thing is good for.”
Night was nearly upon us, and the sun no longer shone as if God Himself had closed His eyes. “Bring the men,” I called, standing in the courtyard. And soon they came. Shackled, barefoot, blinking at the dying light. The condemned. Rapists. Heretics. Murderers. The ones the palace dungeons had not forgotten, and no one had come to claim. The soldiers obeyed, though not without bitterness. Some spat curses. Others struck too hard. They peeled back the sinners’ skin, not to punish, but to place the thing beneath it. The worm. One by one, the damned convulsed. Their bodies seized. Their backs arched like bows. Their limbs spasmed as if answering a music only the dead could hear. Then one of them stilled. Slowly, his eyes opened, and something else looked out from within. 

“At last, we meet face to face. I have waited long for this moment,” one of them said. The voice spoke through the man’s mouth, but it did not belong to him.

“You bound yourself to my Realm, Condottiere. To defend its name. To widen its glory. Now, the time has come to honor that vow.”

I stepped forward, halberd in hand.

“I’ve never seen your face nor oathed to you,” I said. “Reveal yourself!”
The rapist, pale as snow, let out a laugh that curdled the air. high, thin, and wrong. He turned to me, wide-eyed, lips twitching in something between a grin and a sneer.
“I’m your queen, Condottiere, Corrado,” it whispered.

“Isabella. Did you forget the oath you swore to Leon?”

His voice cracked midway, rising into a pitch that scraped down my spine like rusted iron.

It was no longer human. A chill slid down my spine, slow and cruel, like ice drawn with a knife. My grip tightened on the halberd without thinking. I wanted to speak, to curse, to strike, but for a breath, I did nothing. And I did not know if it lied.

“I command thee: take once more thy place as High Seneschal of Valmeria, as thou didst in ages past,” came a voice, not from the first, but from the prisoner beside him. I stepped forward, fury rising.
“Enough! What witchcraft is this, Isabella!? How do you speak through the bodies of the condemned?”
“Courageous. Determined. Cold of mind, even before my armies. You impressed me, Corrado,” it hissed. The voice was like Satan whispering through broken glass. I sneered, faint and cold, not for pride, but for the insolent boldness of their flattery.
“In what blighted name of a false god hast thou unleashed thy butchers upon this land of faith?”
And then the others lunatically laughed. One by one, the rest of the prisoners rose, eyes white, mouths moving in unison. The rapist stood foward me and they chanted.
“We are Judgment. We are Redemption. We are the Hand that cleanseth the sins of the Redeemed. We are Salvation, and we have come to gather the sundered and corrupted mind of Man into one unbroken Will.” Its laughter followed, dry and broken, scratching along the stone walls like vermin in a crypt. I shouted:
“I offer no mercy, nor shall I parley with tyrants. Before the oppressors of Leonian and Frankians set foot upon our native soil, we were ruled by justice, free will, and sacred faith! Now… the hour has come for the liberation of Lazio and Valmeria.” The rapist came close to me and recited.
“What Valmeria and the realms of Occidens have stood upon is but a house of sand. Cease thy foolish pride, you called justice. Countless souls have perished beneath the banner of free will, yet when God was found therein? Only the idle games of lords, priests, and nobles, preening upon a broken stage of the cruel reality. God hath abandoned thee. Now we are the true Order. We are the Justice. We are the Faith.”

The queen had a point. Too many poor souls had perished beneath the banners of sugar-coated rhetoric, and all it had ever brought us was division and ruin. We had witnessed it firsthand. During the Fourteen-Year War, Alessandro’s father rose to power by betraying the republic and siding with the Leonians, all under the name of justice. Though Alessandro himself was a man of good heart, the throne he now sat upon was built upon the blood of Foscari’s own people. I could not deny her words.

“Thy good friend Matteo and thy Signore have failed in their defiance. They have bent the knee to me, as his father did to my father before, and pledged their service anew. There shall be none left to aid thee. Soon, all of Lazio and Valmeria shall lie within my grasp. Yet still, I would not harvest so noble a soul as thine. I would see thee stand beside me as High Seneschal of Valmeria once more.”

At once, I drew my sword and cleaved the rapist’s neck clean through. And soon the body collapsed, the blood gushing forth like the fountain of Santa Croce, red, sacred, and profaned. Then he stopped moving. “Enough of deceptions! This is our answer,” I barked. The others did not flinch. They only smiled, twisted, wide, as if the pain were shared between them. As if they all felt it. As if they all welcomed it.
“I laud thy steadfastness. Ere long, I shall come unto thee at the Palazzo del Fede,” spoke the severed head of the rapist, and then it fell silent, as stone.
“These things… they are not humans…” one of my men whispered, his face gone pale. The words clung to the air like smoke. And then, like a spark in dry straw, the fear spread. Eyes shifted. Grips loosened. A silence fell, not of discipline, but of dread. Soon we heard it, the low beating of drums, the shrill cry of trumpets, a circle of steel tightening around the palace like a noose. “Dissect the prisoners,” I barked to my men, my voice cutting through the gathering dark. I turned without waiting for an answer, striding up the worn stairs to the balcony of the Palazzo del Fede. Beneath me, the city of Foscari slept fitfully, unaware that before dawn, blood would be its only language.

Beneath the moonlight, serene, yet cold, we saw them: a tide of Leonians and the corrupted citizens, torchlights in hand, surging toward our second line like a living wave. Smoke soon rose from the harbor, thick and black, curling against the stars. It was the message from our cavalry: The enemy reserves are on the move. They were gathering for a great assault, no doubt. A signal from their Queen: no more games. The first ranks of the enemy charged, their boots thundering against the stones. But when they breached the barricades, they found only a handful of decoy soldiers waiting. “Now!” roared the sergeant. Our men hid inside the alleys, rolled forth barrels packed with powder and pitch, lit them, and hurled them down into the midst of the advancing dead. The first blast tore the night apart. A roar of flame and smoke engulfed the vanguard, splitting their ranks into two burning rivers. The pikemen advanced, pikes leveled with ruthless precision, driving into the heart of the trapped forsakens, while the arquebusiers behind the barricades unleashed volleys of gunfire, drenching the infernal corridor in iron and flame.
“Fire at will!” yelled the sergeants. The forsaken turned their hollow, gleaming eyes upon me at the balcony and cackled in unison, a sound more mockery than mirth. “Such brilliance, Condottiere,” they sneered, their voices dripping with venom, “was this truly the best thy vaunted mind could devise?”
The flames of the barricades sputtered low, and our arquebuses grew quieter with each volley, not for lack of courage, but for lack of powder. We rationed the shots now. One charge for three men, and no promise of more. Beyond it, the forsaken gathered. Slowly. Patiently. I gritted my teeth and watched them from the balcony of Palazzo del Fede. Their lines were broken, scattered, lacking the keen edge the Leonians once had. No banners waving. No captains shouting formations. Just a slow, hungry tide, closing in by sheer weight of bodies. There was a time they moved like wolves, I thought. Now they move like worms, relentless, mindless, but crude. Their Queen, I knew, had cut too deep into her own flesh, purging and burning until little remained of the old discipline. The Forsaken still obeyed, but like a hand that had forgotten how to hold a sword. And yet… Even a dull blade can kill if it is heavy enough. At the first cracks of dawn, they surged. They did not strike the barricades directly. They slipped through alleys, through drains, through broken houses. Some carried fire. Others, just bare blades and hungering hands. 

The second line held for a time. Arquebusiers fired blindly into the smoke. Pikemen stood fast at the crossroads. Falcinieri struck low and cruel at the knees of the charging dead. But the powder was gone. We had no more to give. The barricades smoldered into embers. The fires guttered. And under the heavy grey light of a false dawn, the Forsaken climbed the barricades. One company broke first. A line of young pikemen, no more than lads from the outer farms, threw down their weapons and fled toward the palace gates, shoving past the sergeants who tried to hold them. “Hold, damn you!” the sergeants screamed. But the boys did not hear. Or perhaps they heard and chose. The Forsaken came after them, not in a charge, but in a slow, remorseless drag. Clutching. Dragging down the stragglers. Driving the worms into wounds before the bodies even cooled. 

At the crossroads near the west courtyard, Sergeant Ercolano made his stand. Sword drawn, bloodied from brow to heel, he rallied the survivors. For ten more minutes, he held the way with pikes and scraps of wood and bare fists. Until the Forsaken swarmed him, and his cries were swallowed by the smoke. Other sergeants died like him, back to back, blades flashing, dragged down by hands they could not number. It was not a retreat anymore. It was a collapse. Some of the wounded crawled, howling, toward the palace doors. Some were hauled away by the. Forsaken, kicking and screaming, until they, too, fell silent and rose again. And yet… we are still alive. For now.

They broke faster than I had hoped, but not faster than I had feared. Those outer lines had been manned by what strength we could muster: the youngest recruits, farmers with borrowed pikes, townsmen with trembling hands. Brave. Stalwart. But no match for the horrors that crawled through the smoke. The real fight had yet to begin. Inside the palace walls, the core of our forces, the Black Pike veterans, the White Company arquebusiers, the Falcinieri waited, bloodied but unbroken. We had not planned to win the outer wards. We had only planned to make the Forsaken bleed for every stone. Now, at last, the heart of the storm would meet the blade we had sharpened for it.

The Forsaken came at us like a black tide. Across the broken moat, they laid down ladders, crude but many, bridging the stagnant waters with desperate speed. Their bodies, half-burnt and yet unyielding, swarmed the causeway. “Man the falconets!” I shouted from the battlements. The gunners, soot-streaked and bleeding, jammed the last rounds of grapeshot into the muzzles. “Steady… steady…” growled the master gunner. At the blast of my horn, the falconets unleashed a final fury. The air split with iron shrieks. Ladders shattered into splinters. Forsaken toppled into the moat, limbs spinning. The stink of burnt flesh and black powder smothered the cold morning air.

Still, they came. Hand over hand, shoulder to shoulder, they clawed up the remaining ladders toward the battered walls. The first Forsaken crested the parapets, shrieking and jabbing with broken spears. “To blades!” I roared. Steel clashed against rotten mail. The battlements erupted into a savage melee, pikes and halberds splintered against the armored bulk of the dead. Our men fought like devils, screaming prayers and curses alike into the grey sky. Then came the signal. I seized the crimson-dyed standard, snapped it high above my head. A single, piercing note sounded from the bronze war-horn. Across the fields, hidden beyond the outbuildings and market ruins, the cavalry answered.

The last of our riders, a battered hundred, surged forth in a tidal wave of hooves and fury. They fired pistols skyward with a thunderous crack, then lowered sabers and firebombs. “Ride them down!” came the scream. The charge struck the rear of the Forsaken like a hammer upon glass. Bones shattered. Heads split. For a moment, just a moment, the dead wavered. But they were learning. The Forsaken captains, clad in half-shattered plate and crowned by writhing worms, barked guttural orders. The Forsaken reformed with inhuman speed, pikes lowered, arquebuses raised. The cavalry smashed into a wall of pikes. Men screamed. Horses screamed. Blood sprayed in great sheets across the blackened stones. 

Down the palace, Forsaken arquebusiers opened fire, smallarms cracking, smoke pouring from broken arquebus barrels. Some Forsaken fell to friendly fire, but more of my men did. Still, we fought. On the walls, blood made the stones treacherous. We grappled with Forsaken infantry, blades hacking at armor fused with flesh. Twice, I led counter-charges with the reserves; twice, we drove them back a few paces. Yet each time we surged, they yielded only enough to draw us deeper into their trap. The Forsaken fought not as men but as a tide: giving where we struck hardest, crushing where we faltered. Their ranks closed like a wound behind our charges, severing the way back. Smoke thickened the air until every breath was a ragged, bloody rasp. We fought blind, deaf, half-drowned in the stench of gunpowder and gore.
But it was like trying to cut water with a knife. The Forsaken flowed over the broken stones, heedless of arquebus fire or blade, pressing forward in a relentless surge. Soon, they reached the gun emplacements, where the last of our gunners and pikemen stood shoulder to shoulder, fighting not for ground, but for every second they could steal. The crews, some barely able to lift their loading rods, hurled powder horns and ramrods like clubs, driving back the first Forsaken with desperate blows. Men fought atop the falconets themselves, using the cannon barrels as makeshift bastions, stabbing downward with pikes and broken spears. Smoke choked the air, stinging eyes and turning friend and foe alike into writhing silhouettes. Again and again, the Forsaken surged up the ramps and platforms, clawing at ankles, dragging men down screaming. Still, the gunners held. A sergeant slammed the butt of a broken musket into a Forsaken’s skull and roared for another round to be loaded, though no powder remained. At last, the weight of the dead overcame them. One by one, the falconets fell silent, their crews butchered where they stood or hurled from the walls into the blood-soaked moat below. And then, with a roar that shook the stones themselves, the last barrel of powder, hastily barricaded against the enemy, was struck by a stray torch. The explosion ripped through the western battlement, flinging bodies and masonry into the sky, leaving behind only a smoking wound in the defenses where once men had stood defiant.

All around me, my men, my last, their armor battered, their faces hollow with exhaustion but unbowed. I turned and caught sight of a young herald crouched near the stairwell, his tabard torn, his hands trembling from smoke and blood. “You there,” I barked, my voice cutting through the clash. The lad flinched but scrambled to his feet, staggering through the rubble to my side. “Gather a detachment,” I commanded, keeping my voice low but fierce, “twelve to fifteen of our fastest men. Break through the rear lines if you must. Reach Matteo and the Signore at Monte Silevo. Tell them all you have seen the Forsaken, the worms, the fall of the harbor, the breach of the palace. Leave nothing unsaid.” I stepped closer, gripping his shoulder with a bloodied hand. “Take the surviving prisoners too. Force them if you must. Our only chance lies in unearthing the enemy’s true weakness. They must know before the dawn breaks.” The herald’s mouth opened, then closed again. His face paled beneath the soot and grime, his eyes flickering to the roaring melee behind us. “But, Condottiere…” he stammered, “the way is it’s almost”
“No time for fear,” I snapped.
“There will be no second message if you fail. Go.”

For a heartbeat he hesitated, the enormity of the task weighing on his thin frame. Then, swallowing hard, he nodded once, sharply. “Aye, Condottiere. I will carry it. I swear it.” Without another word, he bolted into the smoke, rallying a handful of survivors even as the palace shook under the next assault. I watched him vanish into the chaos, a thread of hope fraying against the tide of ruin and then, sword in hand, I turned back to the wall where death awaited.

I drew my sword. The blade, once ceremonial, now notched and stained, caught the grey light. “Condottiere, please!” cried Sergeant Milo, blood running from a gash over his brow. “You must escape with the herald! We can still…” I looked at him, at all of them, broken but unbowed, their faces set in grim defiance. And I made my choice. “No,” I said. “If this is where Foscari falls, then we fall with her.” There was no time for speeches. Only the clash of steel and the roar of Forsaken horns. Even if we fell here, it would be enough. The herald would carry with him the living proof, the prisoners, the damned, the Forsaken who had abandoned reason, who had surrendered the divine gift of free will. That sight alone would be enough to unsettle the lords of Lazio. They would hesitate, yes. They would bargain, delay, weigh the odds as lords always do. But when the news reached them that Foscari had fallen, yet that I had dragged half of Leon’s cursed legions down with me into the grave, they would stir. They would rouse themselves into a coalition, a reluctant, desperate alliance to avenge what was lost. They would come not out of loyalty, but out of fear and self-preservation. It would not be an easy pact for the Signore; the lords would demand concessions, perhaps even strip him of his birthright. But no matter the price, Lazio would stand united once more under a single banner. 

We looked at each other, silently, as if we stood at our own tomb. This would be our last stand. Our last fight will be shoulder to shoulder, brothers-in-arms to the bitter end. We knew it would not matter. We knew it would change nothing. And yet we raised our swords, because it was what we were born to do, because no man chooses the fate given by God. The pike wall crumbled beneath their weight. Milo was the first to fall, a pike burst through his flank, and he dropped without a sound, still clutching his sword as he slid to his knees. Then Captain Varra went down, rallying the arquebusiers one last time before a volley tore him backwards into the rubble. Sergeant Bellano, refusing to yield an inch of the parapet, was surrounded and dragged screaming into the Forsaken mass, his voice drowning beneath their hissing. One after another, brothers-in-arms who had shared wine, shared prayers, were cut down like wheat before the scythe. Yet still we fought. Even as the line shrank, even as the wall trembled under the enemy’s weight, we fought for an hour. 

They came for me last, as if savoring it. I struck and struck until my arms shook and blood blurred my vision. I no longer knew how much time had passed, seconds, minutes, lifetimes. My arms trembled; my swings grew soft and slow, more gesture than threat. I was not afraid of death. No, it was what might come after death that gripped my heart with cold fingers. Better a clean end by my own hand than to fall into their grasp. Better the silence of the grave than the twisting mockery of their hive. I raised my sword, turned the blade inward, and with what little strength remained, I tried to strike my own neck. But hands seized me rough, clawed, unrelenting. They battered my helm from my head, drove me to my knees. Laughter, dry and shrill, filled the air as their blades kissed my skin, carving shallow cuts, mocking me. 

“The hero of Foscari, now you kneel to your queen” one hissed, pressing a writhing worm toward my neck. “Let us make thee one of us.” I clenched my teeth, twisting against them, but there were too many. Then, a boy’s voice, shrill, desperate, pure. The Forsaken around me jerked back as if struck by unseen whips. They clawed at their faces, shrieking, staggering into one another. One dropped his torch and howled, “Corrado, what foul sorcery is this?!” I blinked, stunned, as their ranks convulsed, chaos shattering the unnatural order that had carried them this far. “Find him!” One of the Forsaken shouted in pain. And then a hand, firm and warm, seized my arm. “Condottiere! Now! We must fall back!” It was Luca, Milo’s younger brother, soot-streaked and bloodied but alive, dragging me to my feet. His voice cracked with urgency. “You must live to bear witness to tell them what happened here!” 

For one heartbeat, I hesitated, torn between the broken dead  around me and the living hope in his eyes. Then I stumbled after him, fleeing through the shattered halls as the Forsaken writhed and shrieked behind us. We plunged into the darkness of the old cellar passageways beneath the Palazzo del Fede, Luca half-carrying me when my legs failed. My whole body shook; the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. Above us, the palace groaned and burned, the city crumbling. We did not look back.

And then, light. Pale, cold, but pure. We emerged at the foot of the eastern bluff, where the broken vineyard clung to the stones. The sun was rising, gilding the wreckage in harsh gold. And beneath it, waiting in the morning chill, was Matteo. Our city had fallen, but we had not. Not yet.

Author: AlfredRichard

AlfredRichard