Callum 

It was time to run rampant.

I lifted my sword and spurred on my horse with a guttural cry. The roar behind me of hooves and men echoed my call, there was no longer a need for quiet and hiding. We were a well-honed cavalry moving with one voice and one intent. 

I set the pace down the hill, slowed by the softness of the ground, but fast enough. The timing had to be precise. Horns blew from the wall of Breccia announcing our arrival. They came late, which was in our favor. The Marquis would have little time to react to our cavalry and even less to defend against the Gruffallops. 

It left a nagging worry like a buzzing insect flying past my ear. While the Marquis of Breccia was known as a bit of a dunce, the Earl was a man of planning. Would he allow himself to be found so flat-footed? Was I leading us into a trap of the Earl’s making?

I had no evidence of a trap. Everything had been planned down to the smallest detail. That it was unfolding smoothly left no logical reason to change it. 

We carry on. I assured myself.

I leaned low over my horse’s neck and watched the gruffallops as they reached the fallen tower. Their big woolly bodies leaped from stone to stone climbing with greater skill and speed than I had anticipated. The ride looked much less smooth for their riders who bucked about with every leap like fleas upon their backs. They fell out of sight on the other side of the wall. 

Trust and luck were all that stood between me and my vengeance on Verbodine.

This would be it. This would be my success. After today I can put down this burden.

It took under ten minutes to reach the gate. I called for a halt just out of the range of arrows and stones pitched from the wall's few defenders. My jaw clenched as I stared at the portcullis and willed it to rise.

My horse pawed at the ground, frustrated from being stopped. A well-bred and trained warhorse he was strong, wild, and loved the race and dance of battle.

“Give it time, lad.” Jaspar, always on my left-hand side, spoke low and calm. 

I listened to every shout and clang of metal from the fortress, trying to gauge the vanguard's success. The portcullis’s thick bars of wood and iron made it difficult to see inside the gate to what we faced beyond it. 

Behind me, the collective tension of nearly forty knights and men-at-arms ready to fight felt like a burning fire against my back pushing me forward. I readied myself to call for the second plan of action when the portcullis shifted. It raised a few inches before falling back down with a resounding clang. 

I can’t fail. Not again.  

With a grating sound of metal scraping across stone. The portcullis rose slowly, revealing the spikes at its base that lifted higher one crank at a time until it winched into place. 

The vanguard had done it.

“Shields up!” I called out lifting my own to defend my head against whatever they would throw at us.

I led the cavalry forward with another cry that echoed behind me through the mouths of many men ready for battle. 

I spurred my horse through the gate. Heavy rocks and arrows poured down from above, but nothing got through my shield or past my mount's armor that could not easily be shaken off.

Inside the walls, the fortress of Marquis Breccia was in chaos.  

I had expected to face resistance. Arrows, swords, and pikes, and a sea of armor moving towards me in undulating waves. 

However, this went far beyond my expectations.

To ride into the mighty Fortress of Breccia and find a nearly open road with only a few men who, like a doe before a hunter, stood still and wide-eyed unsure if they should run or stand their ground.

Nine men in raggedly pulled-together bits of armor and weapons were all that faced my force of forty.

This was not a siege it was a massacre in the making.

Six of the men fled as fast as their feet could take them, scurrying to find shelter in the ramshackle village that made up most of the outer bailey. 

Three chose to fight and fell without much effort.

Cyman, part of the gruffallop vanguard, saluted with a cocky shrug from the doorway of the gatehouse with a corpse at his feet. A small contingent of my soldiers broke off to join him. They would clear the wall around the gate and defend our exit.

Only a foolhardy few Breccia defenders approached as we pushed forward. Like tumbling stones, they came down off the wall on foot and with ill-fitting armor. They looked like farmers playing dress-up against my battle-tested knights. They lacked discipline, leadership, and training; and were pushed back or brought down as easy as strawmen. 

The sensation of flesh and bone giving way beneath my blade would leave a heavy stone of guilt in my belly when the day was done. But, we needed to move quickly, with neither the time nor manpower to take prisoners. There was no choice left but to cut through what did not flee. 

Breccia relied on its wall. Its thick stones piled deep and high had protected the fortress for three centuries. The Marquis had relied on it to protect him. Its few defenders had made ready for a longer siege defending the wall against an enemy attempting to climb it. 

I had poured through maps, scouting reports, and historical accounts of the many unsuccessful raids upon Breccia. It had seemed an impossible task to get past the wall without too many losses to be acceptable. Until, with a copious amount of liquor in the punch-drunk hours of the night, Remi made a joke about riding gruffallops.

It was a stupid and improbable plan and somehow it was working. We had overcome the impossible in ten minutes. 

Reason would lead a man to stop protecting a place once it was lost. To prioritize living instead, but reason was uncommon in the heat of battle where emotions and fear ruled behavior. 

Staying calm, adjusting plans with the flow of battle, and keeping in mind the efficiency and efficacy in any situation was how I built my reputation and earned the trust of my men. 

It was the singular advantage of my curse. 

Fifteen years ago, the Marquis of Breccia brought the Earl of Verbodine and his guest to my home introducing them to my father. They stayed for two days of shared dinners, stories, and the kinship of lords of neighboring lands. On the third day, we went hunting. Verbodine, without provocation, killed my father while the Marquis watched on with a smile. When I cried Verbodine’s Weaver Witch placed a curse on my thread cutting off my ability to feel so I could not even mourn my father’s death. 

In one afternoon I changed from a child to a dull monster in a world drained to monochrome. Everything became numb and only partially felt. Even physical pain dulled into a whisper. I knew when I was hurt, ill, too cold, or too hot, but I did not suffer from it. Aware, but numb.

It made me a master of the battlefield. Able to ignore wounds and keep fighting. It kept me rational when others crumbled. It kept me cool and focused when dealing with court politics. And it kept me at a distance from everyone around me. 

“To the keep!” I called. 

Clear and focused, I set a faster pace forward. The fortress was ours. Only the capture of the Earl and the Marquis was left.

A spear, aimed at my side, pierced out between two buildings. I swiped up with my sword from below the haft sending the point of the spear up until my sword caught under its metal tip. With an easy thrust, I sent it flying out of the hands of my assailant. I looked back to see a kid on the ground, shocked but unharmed and much too young to play this game. 

Sending the farmers was bad enough. The Marquis would pay for sending children instead of his knights to face us. 

Beside me an arrow bounced off Jasper’s pauldron, leaving only a scratch. Octayvo, my best-mounted archer, made quick work of the offender on the wall. 

The resistance within Breccia crumbled by the moment. Until we faced only the backs of them fleeing from our approach. 

Our pace increased up the narrow road of the outer bailey. Buildings encroached on either side, making good hides for defenders, but none appeared. Wary faces peaked from behind corners and doorways but after the first fifteen minutes of one-sided fighting; few contenders were willing to test their luck. We rode up the spiraling hill to the inner bailey in half the time I had planned for and primarily unscathed. 

Still no sign of knights or a defense. Were they huddled inside the keep defending only their lord while the men and women of the fortress sacrificed themselves? Where were Verbodine’s contingent of knights? He never traveled without them.

It was a cowardly defense. It ate away at some bit of humanity left deep inside me. How could someone who could feel empathy do this to their people?