Chapter 27 - Camp Followers and Princess Amara (5)

Then I jumped forward, leaving my dead horse to fall down by itself to the grassy ground, where it would feed its lifeblood to the grasses.

Even with the hefty weight of the light, black armor of the princess's personal guard, I shot forward and closed the stretch of ten feet to the first of the enemy soldier. When I was about to land on top of the enemy soldier's horse, I swung my bastard sword in a circular half-arc. Reaver, my bastard sword, slammed into two soldiers, blowing them away like a child throwing his small, unwanted toy away.

It started a chain of reaction consisting of several collisions and two dozen enemy soldiers became heavily injured or were trampled to death by the incoming horses behind them.

By then, the full brunt of our army had collided in a fierce clash against the enemy soldiers, some of whom were still recovering from the collisions. Metals sang while men and women died, screaming their last agonies, a few seconds before the lights in their eyes would forever be obliviated. Horses also screamed, they too dying along with their owners in a life they had never been given a choice to choose.

The air had a stench of shit, piss, and fear, which was made only worse by the all too frequent screams of men and the few women in their death-throes. They came from both sides of the armies.

I ignored all of it, only focusing on my immediate surroundings. I had decided that the advantage was not with the Sendarid army and thus would need to rectify this imbalance, tipping the scales of war back into balance. I would have to get rid of the two thousand enemy soldiers of Laben army.

Amidst the turmoil and close melee of the battle, I was like a large rock in a fast flowing stream. The water split around this rock, desperately trying to avoid this unmovable thing.

I jumped from horses to horses, slamming all enemy soldiers who got in my way. They would fall down like misshaped dolls. I also varied my attacks, slashing at the enemy soldiers, armor and all. A few of the armors, my weapon slashed through completely along with the soldier's body, but for the most part the humans just became crunched inside by their dented and mis-shapened armors, flying off to the direction my weapon had slashed.

Creating holes and havoc at the areas of the enemy army wherever I landed, the Sendarid army I was with soon made short work of the enemy.

Princess Amara was also quickly killing men with precisely aimed strikes at their vitals while a few of her personal, elite guards that were mixed in with the army flanked her sides, always protecting her.

With the combined efforts of these elites and Princess Amara, whose fighting raised the morale of the soldiers, the two thousand enemy army was soon destroyed. There were also dozens of fallen enemies who had not died groaning on the grass in pain. That had most likely been caused by the collisions I had made.

Observing the Sendarid army, I figured that Princess Amara had lost about five hundred of her soldiers, most of them probably the greener ones. The scales of war was now in good shape, six thousand and five hundred on our side and eight thousand Leban soldiers on the other side—that is if the main battle was in a stalemate and no losses had occurred.

I rode toward the princess on a stolen enemy horse and heard her ordering a division of a hundred soldiers to stay and kill the fallen enemies. There would be no mercy given to the enemy so long as she was commander, and I hoped it would remain that way. There would just be less work for me.

She turned toward me and gave me an impressed look. “Wow, you are certainly a person whom I would not want to make an enemy out of.” She gave me a look-over. “You do know, Verath, that you are covered in dirt and blood everywhere, right?”

I gave a shrug, not the least bit bothered by the dirt and blood. My black armor would have definitely made an impressive looking red armor.

She turned to the two captains of the division she had chosen to leave behind for the clean-up.“Catch up as soon as possible to join the fight.” There was a grin on her face aimed at the two captains and me. “You should hurry up before this God of War and my elites kill them all.”

After saying that, Commander Amara turned toward the main battle and shouted, “Now, my good men, let us kill more of these bastards and win ourselves gold, and territory for the kingdom!”

In good spirits, all the men along with a few women soldiers mixed among them cheered.

Once more, Princess Amara rode to battle with me following beside her. She turned toward me and shouted against the noise of the battle and the stampeding horses. “You know what, Verath! I think I would like to keep you as my mistress!” She gave a short chuckle, quite audible since she was more than within hearing distance.

We arrived at the left flank of the main enemy body and I could observe that our main army was hard pressed and many men were already dying. General Seraph, however, was still going strong. She was like a mountain crushing everyone with what seemed to be the largest shield I had ever seen and a wicked weapon that ended in a curve.

Then she was drowned by the tide of enemy soldiers who had finally regained back their courage, confident of their numbers. Quantity over quality came into mind.

Our siege against the left side of the main enemy army started and the spear divisions of our army charged in, the sharp steel tips of their spears punching holes into horses and soldiers.

An enemy leader saw what was happening and quickly split apart his army to deal with the attack.

I will not get into all the details, but suffice to say I jumped right into the middle of the turmoil, finding and killing a few enemy captains and generals I could make out with my dragon sight.

After a long moment passed with the scales of war and balance in the foremost of my mind, the enemy army had been completely obliterated, not one of them left alive; their fallen survivors had also been cleaned up.

The Sendarid army was left with a thousand strong soldiers, most of them the more experienced soldiers and a few dozen which were the personal elite guards of Princess Amara. General Seraph was also nowhere to be seen, so I guessed that she had died when she had been drowned by the tide of enemy soldiers.

The grassland was now littered with the corpses of sixteen thousand soldiers and horses, various metal weapons, and their blood dyed the grasslands red. It was an interesting sight which I had never seen before and I gazed at it in curiosity.

Now, I thought, it was time for the final clean-up.

Without even a moment of warning given, I swung the head off of the soldier closest to me with a longsword I had picked off from a fallen body. Then I killed one more, and then another, and so on, until five Sendarid soldiers, one of them being Princess Amara's personal guard, were dead in just a few seconds.

Then the man who had taken notice of what was happening finally gave out a warning right before I lopped his head off. The head went rolling toward Princess Amara and stopped near her two booted feet, blood flowing down toward the boots.

She had a look of horror and pained betrayal on her face.

Needless to say, the thousand soldiers were no match for me. And though they were experienced and hard soldiers forged by the frequent battles and wars, every one of them looked surprised and their eyes glittered with anger. It also did not help that their beloved princess had been betrayed like this.

They fought till the last man and and two women. And after I had stabbed one woman through the heart and the other man through his right eye with the sword, there was only one woman remaining on the battlefield littered with the corpses of the soldiers of both armies. The woman was Princess Amara.

I had used this sharp longsword in place of my bastard sword as it would kill easier and would leave none remaining alive on the ground with broken bones.

And now this looted longsword was pointed at Princess Amara, commander of one of the finest Sendarid army, known as the Valkyrie of Gold, and the woman I had served under for three long days.

There was a small splatter of blood on her beautiful, tanned face and the structure of it fitted her short, blonde hair perfectly. But the look of deep hatred and anger in her steel, grey eyes made a sharp contrast.

“You monster,” she spatted out, stressing the syllables in the last word. Then her eyes went pleading. “At least spare the camp followers...they are not even soldiers.”

I gave her no response, only meeting her two grey eyes with my own pair of emerald eyes.

And just as I was about to swing the longsword in my hand at her vitals, I felt my gift for danger alerting me of something uncomfortable, not quite far off from the danger I had sensed from the lich, perhaps a few notches weaker, but not more than that.