The march out of the porcelain metropolis lacked the glory of epic ballads, possessing instead the rhythmic cadence of movement. Once the shadow of the titanic walls was left behind, the world seemed to contract. The road, once a triumphal marble way, transformed into a dirt scar tearing through vegetation so dense it seemed to struggle to reclaim the space occupied by man. Now, with vision operating with almost painful clarity, the swaying of the black carriage ahead was observed. The hybrid animals' paws did not produce the dry sound of hooves; they hissed against the soil, digging in claws that seemed eager for something softer than gravel.
The forest of colossal bamboos swallowed the caravan shortly before noon. Light filtered through the interlocking canopies tens of meters high reached the ground as a feverish, greenish gloom. Inside this vegetal tunnel, silence was a tool of torture. The hundred mercenaries—a heterogeneous mass of men who smelled of despair and oxidized metal—moved with a caution directed not at the forest, but at their own traveling companions. The first discard occurred without warning, at a curve where humidity made the ground slippery. There was no scream, only the muffled sound of metal sliding against leather and then the gurgling noise of a trachea being opened. A medium-height mercenary, whose eyes had spent the whole morning fixed on the neck of the man in front of him, simply thrust his arm with precision. The victim fell to his knees, his hands trying uselessly to stem the crimson cascade staining his filthy tunic.
The assassin did not stop to loot the body. He simply followed the flow of the march, wiping the short blade on his own pants. The body was left behind, an inert mass of flesh that the wheels of the heavy carriage ignored, passing inches from his still-warm face. It was a tactical purge, a financial balance adjustment being executed in real-time. What was most impressive about the progression of that group was the absolute apathy of the elite guards. Wrapped in their mirror armor and immaculate silks, the porcelain figures did not even turn their heads to check the source of the thud of the falling body. For them, the horde of mercenaries was completely disposable, a protective layer that became more efficient as the weakest links were removed. If a hundred men were paid to die defending the wooden chest, the death of one of them only guaranteed that the final gold would be divided by fewer hands. Espetinho walked with a rigidity bordering on panic. The small guide, who previously communicated with expansive gestures, now kept his hands glued to his body and his eyes darting in every direction. He had realized that the "protection caravan" was, in reality, a slow-motion execution arena. Every few kilometers, the head count decreased. Another death occurred under the shadow of a twisted pine: a calculated push that sent an elderly man against the claws of the hybrids pulling the load. The sound of the crushing was dry and final. Again, no one stopped. The march was a gear that admitted no interruptions.
I counted the survivors. Ninety-six. Ninety-three. The discipline of the elite guards was almost supernatural. They did not drink water, did not exchange words, and showed no fatigue. Their spears remained at a perfect angle, and their lizard-horses maintained a cadence that seemed dictated by an invisible metronome. The contrast between the sterile perfection of the protectors and the murderous filth of the protected created a tension that saturated the air.
As the afternoon progressed, the emerald light of the forest began to darken to a deep moss tone. The temperature dropped, bringing a dampness that penetrated the bones. The path became even narrower, compressed by limestone walls covered in lichens that glowed faintly. It was a claustrophobic environment, where the echo of footsteps seemed multiplied by a thousand.
The guard official, whose liquid gold eyes seemed capable of seeing through the wood of the chest, finally made a sharp signal. There was no search for a clearing or an open space; that decision made perfect sense to the guards. A clearing, although it offered comfort, was an invitation for sieges and multi-directional attacks coming from the darkness of the woods or from some mercenary idiot enough to try. The stop order came on a stretch of road where the path was so tight that the carriage occupied almost the entire available width. To the left, a vertical stone wall rose into nothingness; to the right, a steep slope was lost in a sea of thorny bamboos. By stopping there, the guards turned the caravan into a linear barrier. On a closed road, the enemy could only attack from two points: from the front or from behind. The natural bottleneck eliminated the numerical advantage of any attacking force and forced the mercenaries to huddle in a dense and inevitable defensive line.
The men began to settle in the little space that remained between the wheels and the stones. There were no fires for warmth, only the damp cold and the sound of short breaths from men wondering if they would be the next to have their throats cut while trying to close their eyes. Sleep overcame them in a simple manner; after three hours, the guards and the mercenaries all fell asleep, except for a few poor souls who stayed on watch. With thermal vision restored, the world was not black; it was a palette of heat gradients. The peace did not last much longer. Looking up toward the top of the slope, I saw an anomaly. Nearly three hundred meters away, in the impenetrable density of the woods, low and fast heat signatures began to move. They were not random movements. There were nearly a hundred heat points advancing and approaching in a predatory siege formation. The four-legged figures approached with a lack of noise that defied the acoustics of the environment. They were massive creatures, over a meter and a half tall and almost two meters long. From a distance, they resembled giant hounds, but up close they did not look normal at all. The beasts possessed elongated snouts like those of a crocodile, but covered by a thin and dirty fur, with small and fixed eyes that glowed under small horns cut near the top of the head. On their backs, a forest of thorns rose—organic needles as hard as wood that functioned like a porcupine's protection. Their teeth were meat saws, designed not to bite, but to shred muscle fibers with a single movement.
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-Great, I thought.
-It seems the slaughter contract will be settled sooner than I predicted. Fewer mouths to divide the gold means a higher profit margin.. I tried to see the positive side of that situation, if one even existed.
While the other mercenaries still snored or tossed in dreams, I had already cataloged the first ten threats. The attack began without a warning growl. It was a tide of flesh and thorns that collapsed onto the caravan. The first scream cut the damp air, interrupted abruptly by the sound of saw-teeth grinding a sternum bone. A mercenary on the left was caught before even opening his eyes; the crocodile-snouted beast simply tore off his head and part of his shoulder in a lateral lunge.
Chaos set in like a wildfire. Men stumbled over their own wooden spears, screaming the names of gods who clearly were not patrolling that road. I saw one of the mercenaries, the same one who had spent the afternoon sharpening a knife to rob his colleague, be impaled by the thorns of one of the creatures that leaped over him.
-At least he ended as he wanted; he wouldn't have to worry about food anymore. Morbid humor, I know; war messes with people's heads, I couldn't help it,. I thought.
The elite guards, those porcelain figures in blue and white silk, reacted with sterile discipline. They formed a semicircle around the dark wooden carriage, their long-shafted spears gleaming under the moonlight as they pierced the beasts trying to reach the armored chest. One of the creatures leaped in my direction, the thorns on its back vibrating like a sonic warning. I used my reinforced elbow to deflect the beast's snout and, with my right hand, grabbed the underside of the neck where the skin was soft and devoid of protection. I broke the animal's trachea with a dry crack, throwing the carcass against another approaching beast.
-Incompetent. I grumbled, watching two mercenaries try to fight a single beast and end up stabbing each other in panic.
-If the criterion for this job was having a functional brain, most here shouldn't have made it past the city gate.
The smell of pine was replaced by the heavy metallic odor of fresh blood and exposed entrails. The small guide was huddled under the iron wheels of the carriage, his eyes wide with terror as he watched me fight. I kicked the jaw of a creature trying to bite my leg, feeling the impact vibrate through my boots. The beast's skull exploded under the pressure, spreading gray matter over my tactical boots. The closed road, which before seemed like a strategic advantage, became an extermination corridor. The mercenaries were pushed against the stone wall or thrown down the bamboo slope, where more creatures awaited them. The tide of animals did not decrease; they seemed to be attracted by the heat and the noise of the screams. The carriage and the animals pulling it now agitated with the situation, their claws digging into the ground and occasionally shredding some wounded mercenary who fell under their feet. Everything became a symphony of agony. The carnage on the closed road reached its peak when the smell of ozone and burnt meat began to overlap the sickening perfume of the forest. The guards, who until then had observed the massacre of the mercenaries with icy indifference, suddenly abandoned their defensive posture. It was not a heroic move to save those still screaming under the crocodile jaws of the beasts. The guards' long-shafted spears, which glowed with an insulting purity under the moonlight, began to describe arcs of surgical death. They were not fighting the tide of monsters to defeat them, but to open an escape corridor for the dark wooden carriage. The polished-armored officer emitted a silent signal, and the security cordon closed around the hybrid animals. The lizard-horses began to neigh a vibrant and reptilian sound, demonstrating an agitation that could compromise the integrity of the vehicle's axle.
While the surviving mercenaries fought desperately in groups of three or four, trying to impale the beasts on their wooden thorns, the guards initiated the departure maneuver. The sound of the whip crack over the scaly backs of the animals was not just an order to move, but the signal that protection for anyone outside the silk circle had ended. The massive block of dark wood groaned, the reinforced wheels crushing stones and creature remains with a metallic and final sound.
-First-class occupants first; the economy class can deal with the saw-teeth. I thought while punching the skull of a beast that tried to make a snack of my leg.
The carriage gained an alarming speed for a vehicle of that weight. The lizard paws of the hybrids allowed them to ignore the rough terrain of the closed road, pulling with a force that left deep ruts in the damp earth. Despair changed faces among the few mercenaries who still breathed. Realizing the armored chest was leaving, panic overcame the bloodlust against the monsters. Men who seconds before were burying knives in crocodile necks now desperately tried to disengage from the combat to run after the vehicle disappearing into the mist. Espetinho was trying to climb the side of the moving carriage, but one of the guards, without even looking down, used the base of his spear to push the man back to the ground. With a burst, I lunged until I seemed like a human projectile. There was no way to dodge the remaining creatures; my feet, with their boots, hit the ground like demolition pistons, leaving craters where gravel once was. The final screams of the mercenaries who could not break free were muffled by the sound of jaws closing. Those who tried to run and failed were caught from behind, their bodies serving as consolation snacks for the beasts that lost the main course. I managed to reach Espetinho, who was rolling in the mud after being knocked down. Without slowing my pace, I grabbed him by the scruff of his filthy tunic, like a dirty cat. The carriage was fifty meters away and distancing itself, the lights of the thin paper lanterns flickering like dying stars in the mist. I forced my optical sensors to the limit, mapping the obstacles on the road ahead. I saw a group of mercenaries—perhaps five or six—running right behind the wheels, their faces transfigured by terror.
-They think there is room for everyone at the end of the road. I grumbled mentally.
The carriage would not stop. If they did not jump inside or onto the roof of the vehicle in the next few seconds, they would be left behind in a forest that had just been awakened by the scent of a hundred men's blood. As the dark wooden vehicle began its noisy flight, crushing bone fragments and stones against the pavement, the march was now a desperate race for survival. I could not slow my pace to accommodate my friend's short steps; instead, I kept Espetinho hoisted until the small guide managed to stabilize his own legs in the mud of the road. Around them, the scene was one of disposal of the contractors. The polished-armored officer, positioned on the side of the armored chest, did not turn his gaze to check if the survivors were keeping up with the march. The carriage was the only compass of safety in a sea of colossal bamboos and fresh blood.
