Chương 249: 249：Betrayed and Abandoned

"Chief, the brothers can't hold out much longer." Sangho, the second-in-command, strode over, his grip tight around two heavily chipped iron blades. He was a fierce and seasoned veteran who had lost his left eye to a stray arrow during yesterday's skirmish. Now, the socket was haphazardly wrapped in a filthy rag, dark blood still seeping through the fabric.

"Seventy percent of our spears are broken. The boulders we used to crush them were exhausted ages ago. Right now, the men are literally ripping the bones from the dead to use as clubs!" Sangho fiercely hurled one of his broken blades to the ground, his face contorted with boundless, suffocating rage.

"Those son-of-a-bitch regulars from the Ironpeak Duchy! They shove us to the very front to act as their meat shields, yet they won't even issue us a single decent suit of iron armor!"

"Shut your mouth, Sangho. Complaining won't stop an Orc's axe," a voice interrupted from behind a nearby barricade. It belonged to Rike, a young warrior born to wilderness hunters. Years of navigating the rugged forests had gifted him with preternatural senses. Right now, Rike was painstakingly restringing his battered longbow. The freezing conditions, combined with hours of relentless shooting, had left his fingertips cracked and torn. Dried blood crusted beneath his fingernails.

"I have exactly three arrows left in my quiver." Rike pulled the remaining shafts from his coat, inspecting the arrowheads with a heart-wrenching calmness.

"I'm a hunter. A hunter never complains that the winter is too cold, nor that the prey is too fierce. I just aim and loose. As long as I draw breath, these three arrows will pierce at least three Orc throats." Talon listened to their exchange, his heart wrung with agonizing sorrow. He knew all too well the injustices his brothers had suffered. Born into poverty on the steppes, they were openly despised by the southern nobles, branded as nothing more than uncivilized barbarians.

"Brothers," Talon began, his voice hoarse. He looked around at the warriors shivering in the howling blizzard, their knuckles white around their shattered weapons.

"The Ironpeak Duchy looks down on us. They deny us rations, they deny us armor. But we do not stand here for those fat, bloated nobles!" Talon surged to his feet, thrusting a finger toward the endless mountain range at their backs, pointing toward the vast human territories to the south.

"Behind us lie defenseless civilians! It is the land where our kin reside! If we fall back, the steppes will be reduced to scorched earth! Our mothers and sisters will become slaves to the Greenskins! We are warriors of the Eternal Sky! To defend this realm, we fight until our final breath!" His impassioned declaration echoed through the blizzard, reigniting a fiery, suicidal resolve on the warriors' faces.

Yet, in the midst of this poignant respite, a figure suddenly tumbled into the snow-choked trenches—a man caked in freezing mud and soaked in gore.

"Barlow! It's Barlow! He's back!" Several warriors cried out and rushed forward, digging the half-frozen youth out of the snowdrifts. It was Barlow, the young soldier who had been ordered to risk everything to break through enemy lines and seek reinforcements from the rear encampment.

"Barlow! Where are the reinforcements? When is Commander Cedric's heavy infantry legion arriving? Where are our rations and arrows?!" Vice-chief Sangho grabbed Barlow by the collar, his face twisted in desperate hope as he roared the questions. Barlow suddenly coughed up a massive mouthful of black, coagulated blood. He weakly opened his eyes, tears mixing with the mud on his face as they streamed down his cheeks.

The news he brought back was a nightmare—one that would plunge this isolated force entirely into the abyss.

"There... there are no reinforcements..." Barlow gripped Sangho's forearm tightly.

"The magical communication arrays in the rear valley were destroyed by Orc assassins days ago. I pushed through hell to reach the Ironpeak Duchy's second line of defense..." Barlow broke down sobbing, his body shuddering violently.

"They... their main camp has already packed up! The regular heavy infantry legions retreated thirty miles back! They withdrew behind their own fortified inner walls... They didn't even leave a single messenger behind to warn us... They... they ruthlessly abandoned us!" Boom! The revelation struck like a physical blow, ruthlessly hammering into the heart of every Steppe warrior. For a moment, even the howling wind seemed to hold its breath.

"They left us to die... Those bastards left us to die!" Sangho stumbled back two steps, threw his head toward the sky, and unleashed a harrowing, grief-stricken roar.

"They treated us as disposable pawns from the very start! They want to use the lives of three thousand of our brothers to slow the Orcs down! They used us to buy time for their own cowardly escape!" No reinforcements! Retreat cut off! No arrows, no boulders, not even a single grain of rye flour for resupply! The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. The entire mountain pass was instantly shrouded in a silent, tragic despair.

It was an absolute, inescapable death trap! In a corner of the battlements, a thick-built man sat leaning against a frozen corpse. His name was Wolgarr. Wolgarr was inherently stingy—a man who would beat someone bloody over half a stale ration—and more than anything, he harbored a profound, deep-seated terror of death. At this moment, hearing the death sentence of having no reinforcements, his hands trembled uncontrollably.

Shaking, he fished a shriveled leather flask from his coat, popped the cork, and took a massive gulp of the cheap, snow-water-diluted ale inside.

"Fuck... If I knew I was gonna die here, I wouldn't have bothered hiding those two copper coins in my boot yesterday..." Wolgarr cursed, greedily swallowing the harsh liquid. Miraculously, as the cheap alcohol burned through his veins, his violently trembling hands began to steady. His eyes completely bloodshot, he smashed the empty flask against the stone wall, violently drew his heavily chipped cleaver from his waist, and erupted into a hysterical, furious tirade:"Come on then! You Greenskin animals!

Even if I die today, I'm chopping off a few of your heads to trade for ale in the underworld!" He was using manic bravado to forcefully suppress his primal terror of death. Beside him, the boy who had brought the grim tidings leaned against the wall, crying silently. Barlow was only sixteen years old. Just three months ago, he was nothing more than a scrawny boy who had ignorantly joined the army with his tribesmen—all for a small sack of rye flour and a naive desire to see the outside world.

He had always been timid. When he first enlisted, he hadn't even dared to fight back when veteran soldiers stole his only intact boots, leaving him to cry barefoot in the freezing snow. But now... Barlow stared at his own hands—hands that had gripped a spear day and night until they were covered in thick calluses, hands that had even lost the tip of a pinky finger to frostbite.

He listened to the heavy, ragged breathing of the older warriors around him, his mind flashing with gruesome images of his kin burning alive in seas of fire. Beneath the grinding wheel of war, his cowardice had finally been crushed to dust. Silently, Barlow picked up the broken shaft of a spear left behind by a fallen comrade. Using his stiff, freezing fingers, he bound the weapon tightly to his own wrist. He wiped his tears. A ruthless, bloody resolution—far beyond his years—settled over his youthful face.

"I'm not scared anymore... Ma... I'm not scared. I'm going to die here with my brothers." These were living, breathing men of the Steppes. They were flesh and blood—they felt fear, they harbored greed, they possessed a desperate thirst for survival. Yet, in this do-or-die moment for the human defensive line, in the very instant they were utterly betrayed by their allies, the deepest, most primal valor in their souls fully awakened!

"Entire army, heed my command!" Talon's deep, commanding voice shattered the suffocating silence hanging over the ramparts. Gripping his notched greatsword and dragging a wounded leg, he limped step-by-step to the absolute forefront of the mountain pass. He stared down at the dense, swarming horde of Orcs regrouping below. He looked back at the unyielding faces of his barbarian brothers illuminated by the firelight—men who had been stripped of all hope of survival. Infinite sorrow gnawed at Talon's heart.

He agonized over his failure to provide his brothers with sturdy armor, tormented by the fact that he couldn't even give them one last full meal. But he knew that as their leader, he had to become their final, unbreakable pillar of strength!

"Our reinforcements are gone! Our rations are gone! Our arrows are gone!" Talon viciously plunged his greatsword into the permafrost. Standing tall and imposing, he unleashed a deafening roar:"But we still have our lives! We still have the unbreakable spines of Steppe warriors! Today, there is no stepping back!" His eyes completely bloodshot, Talon pointed at the battlements beneath his feet and swore his final blood oath:"As long as we draw breath, this pass stands! If we fall, the pass falls!

I, Talon, shall not take a single step backward! Who will ride with me to death?!"

"We follow the Chief unto death!"

"Slaughter the Greenskins! Until our last breath!" Moved by Talon's rallying cry, Vice-chief Sangho threw his head back and laughed maniacally, raising his broken blades high. Wolgarr exhaled a cloud of alcoholic breath, his features twisted into unmatched ferocity. Young Barlow gripped his splintered spear, screaming with unadulterated killing intent. Rike the hunter silently nocked his final arrow to the bowstring.

From top to bottom, the three thousand battered remnants of the army erupted into a suicidal war cry that pierced the very heavens!