-Real World-
Princess Vivi saw him from the city wall.
Koza — her childhood friend, the boy who had once thrown himself in front of danger to protect her — was down there among the rebel army, his feet bound, his hands tied behind his back. He and the men who had followed him were being dragged through the crowd like animals, and the rebels around them were doing things that Vivi had no words for.
"No—" She gripped the stone parapet. "Why are they doing this to him— Koza—"
He had been their leader once. He had stood above a hundred thousand men. Now those same men were taking turns humiliating him, the yellow streams soaking through his hair, washing over his face, and Koza could do nothing — could not even turn away. His hands were bound too tightly for that. He could not fight back. He could not run. He could not even choose to die.
His companions received the same treatment. The men he had promoted, the officers who had trusted him, were pelted with filth by the people they had once commanded. What remained of their dignity was a memory being buried by the crowd.
This was not an accident of war. This was deliberate. The Blackbeard Pirates had taken Koza and his lieutenants in a surprise raid — not because the tribal rebels could have managed it on their own, which they could not. The rebel mass relied on numbers and momentum. In a single decisive engagement they would fold. That was why they needed Teach and his crew, and why Teach and his crew had been welcomed in.
On the wall, Teach was watching Vivi.
He had sharp eyes, and he had found her quickly — the princess in her white robes standing rigid behind the parapet, hands white at the knuckles. He turned to the men around him and said something loud enough to carry.
"Look at our princess." He grinned. "She's heartbroken. You can tell she still cares about him." He let the implication sit for a moment. "A real princess — a country of millions — and she's right there. Don't let her slip away. Once we're inside, let Koza have his turn with her first."
The men around him erupted.
"Kill Cobra and take the princess — all the women in the capital are ours!"
"I'd die happy if I could touch the princess just once in my life—"
"I want to make her watch—"
The words fell out of men who had spent their lives told they were worth nothing, that they were born to dig and thirst and break. Something had cracked open inside them, and what was pouring out was not justice. The promise of the princess — her title real, her face visible on the wall above them — had turned the assault into something else entirely. Morale had never been higher. They could not wait to get through the gate.
Teach surveyed the mob with the calm satisfaction of someone who had planned for exactly this. Ambition in other men did not worry him. He was stronger than any of them, and strength was the only law he had ever respected. What he saw in those hungry eyes was not a threat — it was fuel.
He raised his voice over the crowd.
"Push the traitors to the foot of the wall. Behead them there." He let the pause sit. "Once the capital falls, do not sheathe your swords for three days. Take everything you want with your own hands. Your whole future — wealth, power, everything you were told you'd never have — it's on the other side of those gates. Conquer the city."
The roar was enormous.
Koza and his men were shoved forward, stumbling, dragged to the base of the outer wall where the shadow of Alubarna fell across them. Rebel fighters carrying curved scimitars formed a loose line in front of them. The blades caught the afternoon light.
Koza turned his head up.
He found Vivi on the wall.
There were things he had never said. Feelings he had kept folded away because the time was never right, or the circumstances never allowed it, or he had simply told himself there would be more time later. He looked at her now the way a man looks at something he will not see again, trying to hold the shape of it.
If I hadn't met her when I was young, he thought, maybe none of this would have ended here.
But he had met her. And he had no regrets about that.
The executioner's scimitar rose.
It came down in a single clean arc.
The sound was not loud. The crowd was loud. The blood was immediate — a dark red fan that reached the sand and soaked into it, gone almost before it landed. Koza's head rolled several meters along the base of the wall and left a line behind it in the dust that no one would be able to look at for long.
The heads of his companions followed, one by one.
The rebels screamed. The sight of blood from someone who had been their leader stripped away the last of whatever restraint remained. It also stripped away the last thread of reverence any of them might have held for the king behind those walls. The gesture was complete: nothing was sacred anymore, and nothing would be held back.
The executioner wiped his blade on the sand and walked away without looking at what he had left.
On the wall, Vivi did not close her eyes. She held Koza's gaze until there was nothing left to hold.
I'm sorry, she thought. Koza. I'm sorry.
The strength went out of her legs all at once. She swayed, and only Sanji's hand catching her arm kept her from going over the parapet entirely.
The sun was descending, painting the desert in shades of copper and red. A dry breeze came in from the west. It did nothing about the smell.
The assault began in full.
The siege ladders — dozens of them, constructed over the past several days from timber dragged across the desert — swung upward and clattered against the stone. Rebels surged forward in waves, shouting as they climbed, and the king's army on the walls answered with arrows, stones, and cauldrons of scalding oil. For every rebel who reached the top of a ladder, three more fell. For every soldier who threw down a stone, another took an arrow from one of the dozens of firearms moving through the rebel ranks.
This was not an age of swords alone. Almost every rebel in the assault carried a gun. The king's men behind their battlements were being shot faster than they could be replaced, and the bodies were beginning to accumulate along the inner face of the wall in rows — loyal men to the last, every one.
The standing army of Alubarna had once numbered six hundred thousand. The Dancing Powder incident had gutted it. A vast number of those soldiers had turned rebel. What remained — fewer than a hundred thousand, spread across walls built to hold three times that — was being stretched across too many positions at once. One wall held. Another thinned. A third was already showing gaps.
They could stop the first wave. Perhaps the second. By the tenth, there might not be enough left to matter.
Teach watched from his position in the center of the rebel mass, unmoved. He had seen enough battles to know the calculation of attrition, and the calculation here was straightforward. The weak would die in the opening exchanges. Anyone who survived the fight for the capital was worth considering for his crew. The rest were kindling.
The city gate was his real interest. He glanced in that direction.
"Kill to your heart's content," he said to no one in particular, his eyes fixed on the gate. "The world belongs to the strong — and soon it'll belong to us."
His inside contact would move when the time was right. The arrangement had been made. All he needed to do was wait.
Something good was about to happen at that gate.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~