Tyrant of the Ruined Sun

Chapter 69: Hamilcar's Expedition 1

The Southern Army, the dumping ground of the Eclipse Empire's military, where the weakest, most cowardly soldiers are discarded, where the most incompetent officers whose sole qualifications are their parent's names were shipped off to. Where the most lazy, corrupt and inept generals were abandoned.

That was the army that would form the bulk of the invading force of Hamilcar's campaign south of the Hadrian Mountains.

An utterly unacceptable fact for the ancient demon, who finally after a near millennium of torturous peace, has the chance to truly sink his teethe into and savor a long and bloody war.

But nothing, in his many eons of existence could have prepared him for what he saw when he first reached the Broken Gate Fortress, the home base of the Southern Army, as well as the greatest military structure in the south of the empire.

Hamilcar nearly believed that his age had finally caught up with him and that he's beginning to lose his mind, when he saw the absolutely deplorable state of this so called army, that seemed no more than a large collection of common street thugs who lacked any of the dignity and discipline of real soldiers.

The snot noised brats of officers that knew nothing except how to tarnish the honor of the rest of the empire's military as they spent all day either in a drunken stupor as they drank and gambled away all their money, or in the arms of some common prostitute that came to sell their services to them inside the Broken Gate Fortress no less.

But worst of all were the greasy and disgusting balls of lard that resembled pigs more than humans that called themselves generals, and locked themselves in the highest floors of the fortress and wallowed happily in the muddy quagmire of lust, gluttony and greed.

Hamilcar knew that the Southern Army was by far the weakest and smallest of all the empire's forces, but never once had he thought that things have reached an extent, never once had he even read a single report that seemed to even describe a fraction of all the wrongs he found within just an hour of arriving in disguise, to covertly inspect the state of his future army.

Infuriated beyond all reason, Hamilcar along with the few hundred veteran officers he brought with him to act as military instructors stormed the fortress in broad daylight like a pack of starving wolves, beating everyone in sight.

Their fists made no distinction whether they struck young or old, high ranking officer or common soldier, they didn't even care if they begged for mercy, threatened them with their family's name or even cursed them to the gods, they were all ruthlessly beat within an inch of their life.

And so unprepared were the men of the Southern Army that they were caught completely off guard, and within just three hours everyone inside the fortress had already fled for their lives or lay on the floor wheezing through their shattered teeth, while moans of agony leaked weakly from them every so often.

Which only aided in adding further fuel to the fire, which was Hamilcar's wrath.

Immediately afterward, Hamilcar began to vent said anger by whipping them into shape, so that they no longer dishonored the armor they wore and the blades they carried, but he did so to only the ones that could still be molded into true warriors, the ones he deemed too far gone, which included all the generals, most of the officers bar a few and almost one fourth of all the soldiers, he unceremoniously threw away without hesitation, like a farmer uprooting the weed in his land for fear of damaging his crops.

For months he brutally trained them, where even the slightest mistake made was awarded with whips and canes, while major ones, such as gambling or whoring were met with starvation, castration or dismemberment of one or more limbs depending on the offence committed.

And if by chance you were found guilty of the greatest sins of all in Hamilcar's eyes, such as desertion, betrayal, negligence of duty or worst of all, slandering the emperor; immediate execution by beheading was considered a merciful death.

Such was the hellish environment created by Hamilcar to turn these once worthless trash, to savage yet sophisticated instruments of war, who would deliver death or charge towards it without a second thought.

But even though as his army was slowly expanding and forming before him, he still couldn't fully appreciate such a sight because he knew that although he would lead an army of one hundred thousand to the south, if what his imperial majesty said was true about the size of the land of the Murathicus tribes to the south being half the size of the current Eclipse Empire, his current numbers could never truly threaten the entire subcontinent, at most he would be able to maybe secure the northern parts of it, but that was all.

Or so he thought, until a few months ago when a sizable fortune 'fell' into Alexander's hands from a few 'generous' Thalaban merchants. A sizable portion of which, under Hamilcar's instance and Alexander's support, went directly to reinforcing his fledgling forces.

And now six months after first arriving at the fortress, and seeing the near constant stream of almost two hundred thousand black armored men flooding into the Broken Gate Pass, Hamilcar for the first time in months showed a rare satisfied, yet excited smile.

Hamilcar was especially proud of the ninety thousand mortal infantrymen and twenty eight thousand mortal cavalry, which made up the majority of his army, since although they had been ordinary civilians not long ago, he had managed to turn them into a respectable fighting force in such a short period of time.

Yet despite all this, Hamilcar knew that the true heroes of this war will never be them, and instead be the core elite soldiers, which consisted of twenty thousand men from Alexander's personal army, the nine thousand Battle Mages, as well as the six thousand Diomedes Knights, along with the one thousand five hundred Chimera Knights.

Hamilcar could already smell the havoc these few but highly deadly troops would unleash on their enemies the moment he gave the order.

But at that moment his gaze was directed to the rear guard and supply train of the army; specifically at the three special units that shouldered possibly the greatest amount of expectation, not only from him but also from everyone who knew of their existence.

The first of these units to have left the gate before his eyes were as far from the image of soldiers as possible, so much so that they weren't even technically part of the army.

They were the aptly named Bureaucratic Corps, a wide collection of four thousand public and government officials from the lowest post to the highest, and from every field of expertise from judicial to agricultural, all of whom were brought along to manage the soon to be newly conquered land.

The second of these units to emerge were the one thousand engineers and cannoneers of the Artillery Corps, which was of course led by non other than Orhan, whose tasks encompassed the deployment, maintenance and transportation of all of the army's war engines, which not only included the classical but cumbersome Basilisk Cannons, but the newly built Epirus and Hydra cannons as well.

And finally the last of the three and the newest one to be formed, but by far the one with the most expectations placed upon it emerged.

Blanketed in an ethereal red mist, and accompanied with the iron stench of blood, while clad in black plate armor covering every inch of their skin, except their faces, which were adorned with a particularly striking blood red mask depicting howling, blood crazed expressions, that only had two eye slits carved into them, that just barely offered a glimpse of the infernal glare of their unblinking eyes.

The Demonborn, or so they were called by the soldiers who came into contact with them, before they began avoiding them like the plague.

This unofficial name, since they were such a new unit they haven't decided on a name yet, bestowed to them by the soldiers, owed it's origin to Hamilcar's infamous title, the Martial demon, since not only was Hamilcar the creator of their legion, but also the seeming inspiration for their armor, which held an uncanny resemblance to his own.

Such was the army sent by Alexander the Third, the Emperor of the Eclipse Empire to conquer the Murathicus Tribes of the south. Such was the beginning of a decades long war that would eventually engulf the whole world in the ravaging flames of war.

Such was the beginning of what future historians would dub as the Great Southern War.