Herald of Steel

As Lord Bernard started his long speech, Anoon very deftly had the flagship disengage, before quietly beginning to make toward their new destination- the Royal Harbor, leaving the common crew on the other ship largely none the wiser.

After the great losses they had suffered and the impossible sight of a literal bridge coming down, these men were far more engrossed in what Lord Bernard had to say and sought to soothe their aching hearts with the promises being made.

Furthermore, Lord Bernard had cleverly positioned himself such that the soldiers faced away from the moving ship.

So it was only after Anoon had already advanced quite a long distance that one of the men spotted the ship's sails moving in the opposite direction, and worked to quickly shout,

"Hey! Where are those guys going? Look! Look! They are abandoning us. Those craven swine! Those traitors!"

The loud and panicked call worked to immediately wrestle everyone's attention from Lord Bernard to the ship's port side, where they were horrified at witnessing the other's flight.

"Those bastards! They are going towards the enemy! They betrayed us! They betrayed the family!"

The one to immediately respond to the whistleblower was the loud and energetic Lord Bernard, who made sure to play the part of a shocked and enraged commander, completely masking his true gleeful intentions.

He had of course noticed the ship's movement long before, and counted with bated breath just how long he could keep up the farce before the other side was discovered.

And frankly, he was quite pleased with the amount of ground they had managed to cover before they were finally discovered, as by now catching up to them had turned into a pipe dream.

That however did not stop the rest of the crew from trying, as immediately following the alert came a flurry of curses and horrified shouts from the decks, with a majority of them coming from the Heeat soldiers, who cussed and shouted at the top of their lungs,

" Cowards! Those darned Margraves are all darned cowards!"

"Fuck! They have the general! They have our general! Darned Margraves! Fucking useless!"

"Where is the darned captain? Find the darned son of a bitch! We must follow! We must immediately follow!"

"Quickly men! We have to rescue the general! We have to rescue him at any cost!"

"That's right! The Lord will certainly have our heads if we don't! 'All' our heads!"

"Get the ship moving! Now! No matter what it takes get the ship moving!"

Realizing what had just happened threw the Heeat soldiers into full blown panic mode and many began to haphazardly pace and forth the deck, looking to get the vessel moving no matter what.

"What do you mean the ship won't move!"

And when the captain flatly told them that they were not going anywhere, it instantly made the hot headed soldiers boil over.

At first, they urged the man to get the ship moving no matter what but when the man refused in spite of it all, saying they risked capsizing the moment they moved, one of the more bellicose men suddenly grabbed the lean man roughly by the collar of his tunic and then in a fit of blind passion,

*Clang*, brought out the dagger on his hip before shanking the poor man in the guts.

And it was not just one hit,

Stab!, Stab!, Stab!, Stab!, Stab! for the enraged man moved his weapon wildly, creating numerous deadly wounds on the opposing man's guts, tearing it open and dying his whole arm and torso on the other side's blood.

It was a macabre sight, with meat and broken organ sloshing out of the wound in a sanguinary manner, while the captain who had never seen this coming could thus only widen his bloodshot eyes with absolute incredulity, his mouth spilling all the pooled up blood,

"Aghhhhh!"

Before finally kneeling forward and *thud*, falling to the deck with a dull thwack, bleeding out and dying.

"Bastards! What are you doing?"

Needless to say, such an unnecessary death caused an enormous ruckus in decks, especially among the Margraves part of the troop, who were enraged at the death of their own.

*Clnag*, *Clang*, *Clang*.

Thus many of them quickly took their swords in kind, ready to return the favor.

But if you thought such a display would deter the other side and seek reconciliation, well you would be very wrong.

Because in spite of the heated atmosphere, the man who had committed the deed not only remained unapologetic, but instead, even turned to face the Margraves soldiers defiantly and arrogantly spat in a crude and crass voice,

"Bah! You Margraves are even more of a pussy than that Alexander who chooses to hide behind the walls. You fucking useless whores! Get us our general back now! Or we will have your head! You waste of breaths!"

And as if energized by this energetic speech, he was quickly buttressed by many others in his unit, who joined to chime,

"Yeah! That's right! First, you fail to finish off the enemy. Then you leave our brothers to die on that bridge. And now you fail to protect our general! Even dying would not absolve you of your sins!"

"Heh! Giving you even our animal feed would be too generous. Pigs! Go die!"

That last statement came as a naked threat from the Heeat family, who seemed to promise to starve the Margraves out of their grain once they got ashore.

And it was perhaps this that became the last straw that broke the camel's back for the Margrave troops.

They had already seen fights break off in the other vessels and knew of the Heeat soldiers' behavior there.

And now, facing their unjust accusation and seeing it for themselves, caused these hot blooded men to get riled up too.

"Fucking ungrateful cunts! We should have left you at the bridge!" And it all reached a tipping point when an anonymous Margraves officer loudly shouted out this, turning it into the needed spark.

"That's right! Come men! Let's show them whose land they are on here! Throw these scoundrels off our ship!" Riding on this, another voice instantly chimed up to rally the men around them, and

"Hahahhhhahah!" The popular order instantly gained enormous support from the rest of the troops, and *clang*, *clang*, *clang*, it was like this, with almost a snap of the finger, fighting also broke out aboard the decks of the last Margraves ship.

"Arrrggghhh! Kill these cunts! For the generals"

"Craven dogs! Die!"

"Fuck the Heeat family! Fuck the dukes! We Margraves are not anything less!"

".....wha,... what is…"

All of this had happened so fast, almost in the blink of an eye that Lord Bernard did not have a ghost of a chance to do anything about it.

From the man's perspective, one moment they noticed another ship had defected, the next moment they had just killed the captain, and now they were littering the decks with corpses, wishing to tear each other apart.

The rapid pace of the unfolding events had caught the man completely by surprise and being only a politician with little military experience, he found himself stunned and shocked out of his socks to do anything about it.

The man could only watch the situation go south with a horrified facade, his head empty.

"Stop! What are you doing? Cease this nonsense immediately! I command you! Halt!" Until finally at one point he stepped forward to try and stop the bloodbath, but by then it was already too little too late.

Even with him crying out at the top of his voice, the sound did not even get to diffuse among the first few rows of rows, such as the clamor and din all around.

The fact was, Lord Bernard had little military authority with the men, and had always relied on people like Ser Ballmer and Ser Robert to carry out his will.

But now that his bodyguards were all gone, the softly spoken man suddenly found out that his words meant very little where it truly mattered.

He was unable to break through to these men all of whom were lost in their maddening bloodlust.

'Dammit it all!' And this made Lord Bernard bite his lips in regret.

Not necessarily because of the fight that had broken out, but more so because he knew that such a mutiny under his own command would look very bad in front of Lord Parker.

It was something that could be easily used as an excuse to deprive him of that oh so sweet position.

Lord Bernard could not let that happen.

"I said stop it! We are allies! Stop! Stop or I will have you court…."

Thus, shouting as such, the man decided to get his hand dirty, diving into the huddle of men, wanting to use his bare hands to try and break the melee up.

"Arghhhhh!"

However, not only was it a futile endeavor, but worse, his flashy armor made him the perfect target for the attacking Heeat men, one of whom saw the perfect opportunity to launch a rapid thrust into the man's belly, digging the whole blade into him, and cutting the man off abruptly, as he fell on his knees, clutching his torse and looking at his bloodied hands with shocked eyes.

Let us say no to piracy! Don't take part in a crime! Don't patronize thieves!

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