The silence that followed the sunset was so dense it seemed to have weight, an invisible mass pressing against the chest of every member of the caravan. I felt this weight more sharply, not just as psychological pressure, but as a result of the failures in my eyes. What I saw now was a gray sea, where the contours of the trees merged with the sky in an amorphous and unstable mass. Every time I blinked, the response time of my artificial retinas seemed to increase, leaving trails of ghost light where there was nothing.
That was when I noticed something different—a sudden change in air pressure and the behavior of the animals. The horses pulling the wagons began to whinny low, a vibrating sound that passed through the wooden planks and resonated. A second later, the sharp sound of something cutting through the humid night air echoed: the unmistakable whistle of a heavy-tipped arrow.
A dry, vibrating impact shook the side wood of a wagon, just inches from the head of one of the men hiding inside. The screams that followed were not of pain, but of terror and panic that had been dammed up for hours, exploding into a cacophony of disordered voices. Someone shouted toward the tree line on the left, while another man in a wagon further ahead tried in vain to whip the horses into an impossible escape through the darkness and rugged terrain.
Through my grainy vision, I noticed figures moving with agility between the tree trunks. There were many of them. The glint of poorly maintained steel reflected in the moonlight. More arrows began to rain down on the convoy. The sound of them hitting flesh and wood was rhythmic, almost mechanical. I knew that in this state, I wouldn't be able to run; my legs could barely support my weight, and my balance was worse than that of an old man without a cane. The only option was static resistance—I would have to find a way to win this fight without moving much.
With an effort, I gripped the edge of the wagon with fingers that, although trembling, still felt like a pair of pliers. I made a gesture, pointing to the opposite side of the road, where some mercenaries were stationed.
Flip this over, I tried to say, but what came out was only a hoarse hiss.
The men looked at me with wide eyes, their white sockets bulging in the dark. It was then that I realized they were not warriors; they were starving survivors clinging to spears that looked more like twigs in their hands. I ignored them—I had no time for their hesitation. I braced my shoulder against the side of the wagon and, with an impulse that demanded every drop of strength I had left, I pushed. The heavy wooden wagon groaned, the planks creaking before giving way. The vehicle toppled onto its side with a crash. The base of the wagon, reinforced with oak beams and scraps of sheet metal, now served as an improvised barricade. Almost immediately, the sound of arrows hitting the bottom of the wagon became constant, a drumming of death that indicated the precision and number of the attackers.
Through the cracks between the planks, I watched the chaos. The caravan was being torn apart. Men ran aimlessly, being harvested by blades emerging from the shadows. I saw one of the bandits, a tall man wearing wolf skins over his shoulders, walking with confidence toward one of the smaller wagons. He wielded an axe that seemed too heavy for someone his size, yet he moved it with a terrifying ease. It didn't make much sense, but this was no time to think about that.
Some fellow soldiers joined the improvised barricade, all of them in shock. One cried quietly, clutching his spear, while the other stared fixedly at nothing, his breath so short he seemed to be hyperventilating. I reached out and grabbed the arm of the man who still seemed conscious, making frantic gestures pointing toward the spear and then to the top of the barricade. They needed to keep the iron tips visible to discourage a direct infantry charge, even if we didn't have the strength to repel a mass attack. I peered through the cracks; the bandits were emerging from the cover of the trees. They were no longer concerned with hiding. I saw how they communicated—short, sharp whistles, a hunting language that echoed throughout the valley. The smell of damp pine was replaced by the acrid odor of smoke and the metallic scent of fresh blood starting to saturate the air.
Suddenly, a figure leaped over the overturned wagon. It was one of the marauders, a youth with his face painted in ash and eyes gleaming with greed. He raised a curved dagger, ready to come down on the man who was crying. Acting on reflex, independent of will, I projected my arm upward. The bandit's blade dug slightly into the slits in my skin and ricocheted after hitting the part of my forearm that was still reinforced, making a dry metallic sound. I used my other hand to seize the attacker's neck and, with a short, violent movement, squeezed with all my might. The sound of his neck dislocating was unmistakable; he fell like a sack of potatoes in front of me.
One down, only about a hundred to go, I muttered to myself, trying to bolster my own morale.
The archers continued their barrage, keeping any attempt at a counter-attack in check. The situation was going from bad to worse. We were filthy, hungry, and terrified, but they were all that remained. I felt a pang of something that wasn't physical pain—it was frustration corroding me from the inside. To be in this state... I was a broken tool of war, watching the slaughter without being able to exert the violence I was designed to deliver.
The darkness around the tree line seemed to close in like a jaw. I focused on a point, a gap in the forest where three more bandits were emerging. I gritted my teeth. If I was going to fall here, on these roads forgotten by everyone, I would ensure this wooden barricade was the most expensive obstacle those wretches had ever tried to cross. The glow of a torch being lit a few meters away caught my attention. The fire danced wildly in the night breeze, casting long, distorted shadows on the forest walls. They were going to burn the wagons to force the survivors out.
The heat of the first torch hitting the fabric of the overturned wagon was the signal I needed. The fire had already begun to lick the dry planks; the crackling of the burning wood sounded like a stopwatch in my ears. Through the curtain of smoke, the figure of the bandit leader appeared, approaching. The man was small, almost insignificant compared to me, but there was something strange about him—in his posture, in the way he walked, and how he carried that axe which was much larger than it should have been for him. The axe didn't look like a tool for heavy impact; it looked as if the metal were an extension of his own tendons, light as a feather.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The only strategic exit was the decapitation of the leadership. If the little man with the axe fell, the rest of the horde—driven only by greed and the intimidating presence of their chief—would scatter or hesitate long enough for the few survivors to flee into the woods while I took out the archers. Without thinking much, I exploded out from behind the barricade. The soil under my boots gave way, leaving holes as I accelerated my one-hundred-and-twenty-kilogram mass in a straight line. The bandit leader reacted in a completely bizarre way. Instead of bracing for impact or retreating before the massive charge coming his way, the little man spun on his heels. He didn't use his body weight to generate torque; he simply spun like a top, without his feet appearing to exert any real pressure on the earth. The axe described a perfect arc, a circle of steel that hummed in the air with a high frequency, defying air resistance. It was an insult to physics. There was no visible inertia, no sign of weight transfer between his legs—only a continuous, floating movement that made him seem weightless.
I had to adjust my trajectory mid-leap. At the moment the bandit's axe descended in a lateral strike that should have sliced a man of this world in half, I used my left elbow as a deliberate shield. The metal of the axe hit the plating, throwing sparks that briefly illuminated the leader's surprised face. The impact would have shattered anyone else's radius, but not mine. I grabbed the shaft of the axe with a hand that felt like a steel claw and, with a sharp tug, pulled the man into my personal space.
The leader tried to break free with an impossible aerial pirouette, kicking my chest to gain momentum. I ignored the kick and delivered a punch with my right hand from top to bottom like a demolition piston. A dry crack preceded the contact of my hand with the leader's shoulder, disintegrating the joint and slamming the man into the ground. He tried to balance himself with the axe—an agility maneuver that seemed to belong to a dream or an ancient legend—but I gave him no time for poetic grace. I was already on top of him before the man could stabilize his center of gravity. With a fluid and merciless movement, I grabbed the leader's head with both hands and squeezed with all my strength. The sound of wet compression and a final snap echoed above the screams of the forest, and his body collapsed, covered in blood and without an intact skull—at least, not a whole one.
The leader's death caused an instantaneous vacuum of command. The archers, positioned on the rise above the road, hesitated for a fraction of a second. That was all I needed. My vision was becoming a blur of white lights; oxygen wasn't reaching the right places, my time was running out, and the pain in my skin was a symphony of agony, but I still had three priority targets. I crossed the slope, running in an aggressive diagonal—slow, but functional. The trees served as momentary shields. An arrow pierced my shoulder, right through the slits in the skin; another grazed my thigh. I didn't slow down; I couldn't. I wasn't going to get another chance like this. I looked at the first archer, a man desperately trying to reload his bow. I grabbed his head and slammed it against a nearby tree; a branch pierced his stomach, leaving him hanging like a piece of meat in a butcher shop. The second archer tried to draw a knife; I ducked and performed a low leg sweep that cleared the ground with the force of a falling oak log. The bandit lost his balance before even understanding what had hit him. While he was in the air, I intercepted him with an open-handed slap to the trachea, slamming him to the ground for good.
The last archer dropped his bow and ran. For a moment, I stopped and watched him disappear into the darkness. I grabbed the arrows stuck in my shoulder, feeling the sting of pain as I tore them out.
Silence fell over the clearing once more, broken only by the crackling of the flames now fully consuming the wagon. I looked at my own hands, which were shaking from the adrenaline dump and the imminent failure of my systems. I turned slowly toward the two men who were still alive behind the remains of the barricade. My vision was competing with an old man's cataracts. They looked at me not as a savior, but as a force of nature they couldn't comprehend—something as strange and dangerous as the forest surrounding them. I felt the first real shutdown; the world went black at the edges, and the sounds of the forest began to fade, replaced by the constant humming of my own heart struggling to keep the blood flowing.
"This is why I hate civilians. Damned ingrates."
The silence that followed was broken not by peace, but by the gasping sounds of the survivors behind the barricade. The two men who had witnessed the annihilation of the bandit leader felt a change. Their paralyzing fear, in the face of the dead leader and silenced archers, transmuted into something acidic and urgent: a thirst for retribution that is born only in the chest of those treated like cattle for too long. Shadows moved among the remains of the other wagons. The bandits who had been laughing before now stumbled over the gravel, disoriented by the sudden loss of their compass of violence. The man who had been sobbing under his thin tunic gripped the handle of his wooden spear, his knuckles no longer white with dread. He looked at a wounded marauder trying to crawl into the darkness of the woods. Without a command, without a war cry, the survivors advanced. They didn't have precision or strength, but they possessed the weight of despair. The first mercenary reached a bandit who had dropped his sword in flight. The spear thrust was clumsy, hitting the thigh instead of the chest, but the attacker's scream of pain acted as fuel. The other survivor joined the attack, plunging his hunting knife repeatedly into the fallen man—a frantic movement devoid of technique, driven only by the instinct to ensure the nightmare would not rise again.
Along the road, other scattered members of the caravan, realizing the wind had shifted, emerged from their hiding places. What followed was a disorganized and cruel hunt. The bandits, now deprived of their psychological advantage, were surrounded. The men of the caravan delivered agony, striking with pieces of burnt wood, stones, and blunt blades. There was no honor in that retaliation. The night, which had once belonged to the predators, was now filled with the sound of pleas being stifled as the victims became executioners under the flickering glow of the burning wagons.
The world around me began to lose its definition, transforming into a collection of smears and noise. Every step I took toward the wreckage of the caravan made my feet feel heavy as blocks of lead, and I could hear a muffled whistling in my head. I stopped before one of the wagons that had not yet been reached by the flames. The smell of raw leather and animal grease was nauseating. I reached out and grabbed a bundle of animal pelts that was piled in a corner. The weight of the bundle, which in normal conditions would be insignificant, made my body lean forward, forcing a sharp jolt of pain through my spine. My fingers, now covered in a mix of dried blood and soot, gripped the rough skin with residual mechanical strength.
I left that wagon behind, dragging the furs with me. My eyes focused on a vehicle further away, a cargo wagon that seemed to have escaped the rain of arrows. it was silent, an island of dark wood in the middle of the chaos of screams and metal still echoing in the distance where the survivors were finishing their bloody work. Climbing into the wagon was a slow and agonizing process. I braced my shoulder against the wood, feeling it creak under my weight, finally managing to hoist myself inside. The space was dirty with dust and remains of dry straw. With the palm of my hand, I began to sweep the floor, pushing debris and small fragments of stone out. I spread three of the bear pelts over the clean planks, creating an improvised mattress. The texture of the fur was coarse, but it offered a promise of thermal insulation I urgently needed. My internal temperature was fluctuating violently. I sat down first, feeling my legs lose sensitivity almost instantly. The hunger, which had once been a sharp pain, had turned into an icy void that seemed to be consuming my organs from the inside out. My mind was clouded, thoughts fragmenting. I collapsed onto the improvised bed. The impact against the furs expelled the air from my lungs in a hoarse sigh. I pulled the rest of the furs over my body, covering the open wound, trying to create a cocoon of artificial warmth. The darkness in the corners of my vision advanced implacably toward the center. My breathing became slow. The sounds of the outside world the crackling of the fire, the wind in the forest, the lament of the men faded away, replaced by absolute silence.
