Chapter 1009

Imperial soldiers staggered as the mud swallowed their boots. Shields dipped. Spears wavered. Men tried to step back and found their rear foot sinking faster than the front. Horses screamed as their legs vanished to the knee. Armored infantry sank with terrifying speed, dragged down by the weight of their own protection.

At first, confusion. Then panic.

“Move!”

“I can’t—my legs!”

“Pull me out!”

“Don’t step there!”

“That’s everywhere!”

A captain tried to shout formation orders. The mud took him to the waist. A second later, a Lionsguard archer put an arrow through his throat because battlefield problems rarely arrived alone.

The runic golems suffered too. Not as badly as men. But enough.

Their heavy metal feet sank into the softened earth. Their weight became a curse. Some tried to adjust stance and only drove themselves deeper. Others deployed stabilizing spikes from their legs, which helped for half a second before the ground around the spikes liquefied as well.

Gaius, pale and shaking near the breach, saw that and started laughing. It sounded unhealthy.

“Stupid metal bastards,” he rasped. “Welcome to dirt.”

A younger geomancer beside him blinked. “Should we be worried that you sound like Ludger?”

“Yes,” Gaius said. “Deeply.”

Then he shoved both hands forward and turned another patch beneath three golems into a swallowing pit. One golem sank to the hip. Its cannon arm rose. A northerner mounted on a direwolf hit it from the side.

The wolf slammed into the machine with enough force to tilt it. The northerner jumped from the saddle mid-impact, brought a two-handed axe down on the cannon joint, and tore the weapon half-free before landing badly in the mud.

The direwolf bit the golem’s shoulder and pulled. Metal screamed. The golem toppled. The mud swallowed half of it. The northerner stood, spat blood, and looked at the wolf.

“Good bite.”

The wolf ignored him and tried to bite the golem again. Fair. Across the battlefield, the encirclement faltered. Not broke. Not yet. But faltered.

The imperial front had been built on pressure and timing. Both vanished when several hundred soldiers discovered the ground had developed opinions about imperial ambition.

The Lionsguard did not charge wildly. That was the important part. Arslan had drilled the lesson into them. After the mana potions were used, he considered ordering a full retreat.

Not a panicked one. Not a rout. They had bought enough time… A proper withdrawal. It was the sensible choice. Which naturally made every instinct in his body suspicious of it.

The mana potions had bought them a miracle, but it was a purchased miracle, and the bill was already arriving. Fighters who had been empty now moved with violent, unnatural sharpness, but the second crash would come. It always did. Mana potions shoved power into exhausted channels; they did not repair those channels. They made a dying fire flare bright enough to burn the house down.

Across the battlefield, the remains of the imperial army sank into the muddy quicksand. Men vanished screaming. Some went down slowly, dragged by armor and panic, hands clawing uselessly at mud that behaved more like hungry water than earth. Others were pulled under to the waist before Lionsguard arrows found them. A few tried to grab comrades and dragged both of them deeper.

The battlefield made wet, ugly sounds. Sucking. Slurping. Breaking. Armor disappeared beneath the mud one plate at a time. Shields floated for a moment before tilting and sinking. Spears jutted out like reeds in a swamp made from dead ambition.

Arslan watched it without pity. He had spent enough of that today. Still, not all of them died. The better ones reacted quickly.

Mages blasted themselves free with wind or force spells. Lighter adventurers jumped from sinking patches to corpses, shields, broken wagons, anything solid enough to hold for half a breath. A few knights used enchanted boots to harden the mud under their feet and staggered backward. Runic golems deployed anchors, plates, or simply tore free by brute mechanical force, leaving chunks of their own lower plating behind.

Orleandul escaped.

The pale-armored commander moved across the collapsing ground with infuriating precision, stepping on hardened patches that appeared beneath his boots a heartbeat before he needed them. His armor was stained, his face bloodied, one shoulder wounded, but he remained standing.

Armandis escaped too. Also unsurprising, because fate had apparently mistaken Arslan’s day for a comedy.

The brute commander had abandoned elegance entirely. He swung his massive blade into the mud, using it like a pole to launch himself out of the worst patches while laughing like a man who considered terrain failure a personal challenge. Kharnek tried to pursue him for three steps before Sigrid grabbed the back of his belt and nearly yanked him off his feet.

“Back!” she snarled.

“He is right there!”

“So is death!”

“I can kill both!”

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“You cannot kill mud!”

“I can try!”

“No!”

Kharnek looked deeply offended by the restriction. Arslan would have laughed if his ribs were not currently holding a private meeting about resignation. The plan had worked. Mostly.

The encirclement had broken. The golems had been slowed. The imperial reserves had lost cohesion. Lionsguard and the northerners were pouring back toward the gate in wolf groups, wounded strapped to direwolves, earth squads keeping the mud shifting behind them.

It had worked.

It would have worked better if Orleandul and Armandis had died in the muck. Arslan considered chasing them. Just for a moment. A very tempting moment.

Orleandul was wounded. His spear had been lost somewhere in the battlefield, unless one of his soldiers had recovered it. His calm had cracked. He had names locked behind his teeth, and Arslan wanted those names with a hunger that made his sword hand twitch.

Armandis wasn’t strong enough to defeat Kharnek fast enough. If Arslan pushed now…

No. He stopped that thought before it grew legs. That was how commanders died with better options behind them. He raised his sword and prepared to call the final withdrawal. Then he saw movement behind the imperial headquarters.

Not from the ruined formations. Not from the trapped soldiers. From farther back. From the enemy command camp. The rain blurred the distance, but not enough. A new group emerged. At first, Arslan thought it was another reserve unit.

Then the formation stepped into clearer view, and his mouth went dry. Fully armored soldiers marched from the rear.

Not imperial regulars. Not mercenaries. Not adventurers.

An army in sealed plate, each set of armor polished dark beneath the rain, engraved with angular runic lines that pulsed faintly with internal power. Their helmets were smooth and narrow, visors glowing with cold light. Shoulders broad. Limbs reinforced. Joints layered with overlapping plates that moved too smoothly for normal metal.

And on their breastplates, stamped in silver and black, sat an emblem Arslan had hoped never to see on a battlefield again. The Roderick family crest. Arslan clicked his tongue.

“There you are.”

Darnell, limping beside him, followed his gaze.

His face tightened. “Those are Roderick colors.”

“Yes.”

The Rodericks. Finally back. That meant one less problem for Ludger in the capital. Assuming Ludger was alive. Assuming he had not already found three more impossible problems because the boy collected them like other children collected stones.

But if the Roderick forces had left their holes and committed to Lionfang, then at least they were not inside the capital hunting his son.

Small mercy. Very small. Practically decorative. Because now they were here. And that made them Lionfang’s problem. The new armored force advanced in silence. Not many compared to the imperial army. Hundreds, not thousands.

But every soldier moved like a weapon that had been tuned, oiled, and pointed. Their formation was too clean. Their armor too consistent. Their steps too heavy for ordinary knights and too controlled for simple golems.

Arslan narrowed his eyes. Not simple golems. Men inside armor.

The way they moved suggested trained fighters supported by advanced mechanisms. Reinforcement frames. Mana-assisted joints. Stabilizers. Internal spell circuits. Armor designed not just to protect, but to multiply.

He had heard reports of Verk’s armor. Years ago, Ludger had fought the bastard and forced him to self-destruct his machine. More recently, if Orleandul’s presence and the capital disaster were any indication, Verk had returned with something far more dangerous. Sleeker. Faster. Built over years to kill Ludger.

These suits were not that. Not individually. No single set of armor radiated the same absurd pressure Verk’s newest machine supposedly carried. But as a group? Arslan’s stomach sank. They were too advanced. Too refined compared to what he had heard Verk used in the old days. The Rodericks had not spent the last couple of years merely hiding from shame. They had been improving. Waiting. Studying. Building. Nursing revenge until it grew metal bones.

Now they were ready to fight quality with quality.

Not bodies thrown into mud. Not exhausted soldiers and cheap cruelty.

Darnell swore quietly. “How many?”

“Enough.”

“That is not a number.”

“It is the only one I dislike.”

The first row of Roderick armored soldiers stopped behind Orleandul’s battered position. Orleandul turned toward them, and even from a distance Arslan could read the satisfaction in his posture.

The final trump card. So that was the shape of it. The first ten thousand had been bait. The reserves and golems had been the noose. The Roderick force was the blade meant to cut whatever survived pulling free. Arslan almost respected the layered cruelty of it.

Almost.

Then he remembered the prisoners on the pyres and decided respect could go bury itself.

The armored soldiers spread out. Their backs opened slightly. Thin vents released pale steam. Runes along their limbs brightened. Several raised weapons that looked like crossbows only if crossbows hated tradition and had been designed by someone with a personal grudge against flesh. Others carried long polearms with segmented heads. Some had heavy shields connected directly to their forearms, too large for ordinary men to wield without assistance.

A few carried no weapons at all.

That worried Arslan more. Empty hands on a battlefield usually meant either arrogance or hidden mechanisms. Often both. One of the Roderick officers stepped forward.

His armor was taller than the others, crested helm bearing a narrow black plume soaked flat by rain. A cloak hung behind him, cut short enough not to interfere with movement. Sensible. Annoyingly sensible.

Arslan could not hear what the man said to Orleandul. He did not need to. Orleandul turned back toward Lionfang. Even bloodied, even wounded, the imperial commander managed to look pleased.

The quicksand had ruined his encirclement. The direwolves had saved the retreat. Ludger’s preparations had reached through absence and slapped the Empire’s plan across the face.

So Orleandul had revealed the next piece. A force not meant to drown in mud. A force likely able to cross unstable terrain with mechanical assistance. A force fresh enough to strike while Lionsguard’s potion flare was still active but dangerously close to collapse.

Arslan looked at the battlefield between them.

Mud. Bodies. Sinking soldiers. Disabled golems. Wounded allies. Direwolves carrying the half-dead. Broken barriers. Rain.

The Roderick force began glive over the muddy quicksand...

Straight toward the Lionsguard rear.

Not rushing. They did not need to. Arslan’s jaw tightened.

“Of course.”

Darnell looked at him. “What?”

“They can fly over it.”

Darnell watched the Roderick line move across the mud without sinking.

Then he sighed. “I miss when enemies were simpler.”

Arslan stepped forward. His direwolf moved with him, hackles raised, teeth bared toward the armored army. Behind the Roderick line, Orleandul watched.

Arslan could feel the man’s attention. He lifted his sword.

The blade trembled slightly in his grip. His ruined hand could not hold properly, so he shifted more weight to his right. Mana gathered along the steel, weaker than before but still hot enough to steam rain.

Not enough for another great flame wave. Not enough to destroy the armor. Enough to draw attention. Sometimes that was the job.