Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Chapter 404: Sea People(1)

Chapter 404: Sea People(1)

Two young men lay flat on their stomachs atop a small, grassy ridge, hidden among the tall, swaying blades that whispered with the evening breeze. From their vantage point, they had an unobstructed view of the the sea-people below .

They could not believe that it could be possible to move through the sea , yet the sight was ahead of them. Great wooden beasts floated upon the water, their pale, square skins catching the wind, and from them had spilled dozens of men, busying themselves with strange tasks. Some dug into the earth, marking the land in neat lines, while others hacked away at trees, their sharp tools biting into the trunks with brutal efficiency that they had never seen.Those same trunks being now nailed onto the ground as if they were tree in a forest. 

Jandari's dark eyes narrowed as he glanced at Torghan, his curiosity turning into something sharper. "You think they come for war?"

Torghan studied the sea-people for a few moments, his gaze calculating. "They don't have enough numbers for that. If they came armed for battle, they'd be dead before they even knew what hit them. We outnumber them twenty to one."

But Jandari wasn't so sure. "Perhaps there are others that are comin-?'' Suddenly, however his sharp eyes scanned the movement below, and then, he saw it—a flash of light, a glint of something unnatural among the people. It wasn't water that shimmered but metal—the shining plates of steel of the soldiers there, gleaming with the light of the setting sun. His heartbeat quickened as he focused on the sight. There was something more here than mere numbers.

"They wear iron," Jandari murmured, his voice low, his words laced with a strange hunger. "Like your father."