The breach in the walls of Meghri-Berd opened like a mortal wound. In the first minutes of the assault, the Uruk-hai had struck the fortress’s weak points with brutal precision: iron-reinforced black battering rams, ladders hurled by colossal beasts, and a torrent of dark warriors climbing like a plague. The Armenian defenses—watchtowers, stone parapets, and the ranks of Siuni archers—collapsed under the weight of the avalanche. The air reeked of smoke, blood, and volcanic sulfur carried from distant mountains.

  The local forces’ defensive line was overrun. They had been at peace for so long that their soldiers lacked skill in close combat, let alone the discipline to follow orders. Worst of all, the officers were also overwhelmed, trying to improvise plans on the fly.

  But then he emerged.

  Vartan the Reckless —or Vartan the Indomitable, as they called him in the taverns of Syunik and in the mercenaries’ camps— launched the counterattack. Two double-bladed axes gleamed in his calloused hands, one in each fist, and a savage smile split his weather-beaten face. From the moment the Uruk-hai broke through, it was this old man who held back the tide. A living legend among the clans, a man who loved war the way others love wine: with devouring passion and a natural gift for slaughter. Where others saw chaos, Vartan saw glory.

  He stood two meters of pure, aged muscle—a towering mass that time had sculpted rather than eroded. His long hair, now silver and matted with dust and blood, fell over shoulders as broad as fortress gates. Scars crisscrossed his chest and arms like maps of forgotten battles; his eyes, still fierce, burned with the fire of someone who had seen death so many times he no longer feared it. His armor—rusted plates of Armenian iron mixed with hardened leather—creaked with every step, but it never slowed him. He was an old bull, but an old bull that still charged.

  “Come, you sons of bitches!” he roared, his voice booming over the clamor. “Glory awaits us at the edge of your swords!”

  Behind him rose his men. The Company of the Sons of Bitches: barely five hundred bastards, renegades, exiles, and madmen alike. Their banner was a rabid brown dog on a yellow field, waving like a challenge. They were not noble nakharars with gleaming horses nor immortal Persians in golden armor; they were street wolves, mercenaries who had sold their loyalty for gold and the promise of a good fight. But those bastards were tough. Tougher than Armenian steel, tougher than the stone of the Zangezur mountains. They had held impossible lines before: against desert bandits, nomadic tribes, even winter itself. And now, against sixty thousand Uruk-hai, they would not retreat—and they were delighted.

  Vartan spun his axes in a wide arc, the metal whistling through the heavy air. The first Uruk that approached—a brute with yellow tusks and riveted plate armor—caught the edge across the throat before he could raise his curved sword. The head rolled, and black blood splattered the ground. Vartan didn’t pause; he advanced like an avalanche, chuckling between his teeth.

  “Come on… come!” he shouted again, his voice a thunder echoing through the ruins. “Show me what you’ve got, pigs! Let the Aras River run black with your rot!”

  The Sons of Bitches answered with a collective roar. Swords, spears, maces, and improvised bows rose. A hot-headed young man with a long lance charged to the old man’s right, smashing orc shields with furious thrusts. Elsewhere, a vengeful southern archer loosed arrows from an elevated position amid the rubble, each shot finding an eye or a throat. The clash was brutal: metal against flesh, screams against guttural grunts, blood against blood.

  It was hard. The Uruk-hai were an endless tide, disciplined under the distant command of Uglúk, pressing forward with crude pikes and axes. But the Sons of Bitches were just as hard. Every meter they gave cost a dozen bodies. Vartan, at the center of the storm, spun and slashed, his axes a lethal blur. One Uruk clawed his shoulder; he answered by splitting its skull in two. Another flanked him; Vartan dropped it with a kick that caved in its sternum.

  For a few glorious moments, the breach was held. The indomitable old man and his five hundred bastards formed a wall of rage and steel. They wouldn’t win the war that day—perhaps not even the battle—but they would make the Uruk-hai remember the name of Vartan the Reckless. And as the blood flowed and the axes sang, the old warrior thought, with a manic smile: This is what I live for. Glory in the chaos. Death with style.

  The line held with the arrival of more mercenaries and soldiers who decided to make their own blood costly for a chance at saving their children and wives. The population fled through the northern gates.

  Vartan broke through the ranks with a speed that belied his centuries of existence. His axes—always dirty, always old, edges notched from countless battles and stained with blood that never fully washed away—suddenly shone with a silvery, almost divine glow. It was a subtle radiance, like moonlight reflected on blessed steel, something few had seen in person and many believed mere legend. But there it was: the mark of the ancient heroes, the touch of the thunder gods, the guardian deities of Armenia.

  Few remembered—or had lived to tell—the Great Death of nearly 150 years ago, when the northern hordes and the cruel ice clans had tried to erase Armenia from the map. Back then, a younger, rawer, angrier Vartan had been the wall that did not break. They said he had killed a hundred enemies in a single night, that his laughter had drowned the screams of the dying, that the fields had run red by his hand. That Vartan had been one tough son of a bitch, a mountain bastard who knew neither fear nor mercy. And now, with at least 400 years behind him—or so the veterans muttered around campfires—he remained the center of his people’s defense. Armenia needed him again, in this dark hour when the Uruk-hai threatened to devour everything.

  The old man advanced like a living storm. Each swing of his axes was a lightning bolt: one severed throats, the other split shields and bones with equal contempt. The Uruk-hai, disciplined and ferocious, hesitated before him. It wasn’t just brute strength; it was experience carved over centuries of carnage. He knew exactly where to strike for the fastest bleed, where to plant his feet for maximum lethal force, how to use the weight of his two-meter frame to shatter three with a single push.

  “By the thunder gods!” he roared, his voice a thunderclap echoing over the breach’s din. “Come face me, hear my roar and weep!”

  The Sons of Bitches followed without hesitation. A spearman charged at his right flank, long point lowered like a battering ram, shattering orc formations with thrusts that cracked armor. An archer from the elevated rubble loosed arrows that found eyes, necks, and exposed joints; each shot precise and vengeful. A swordsman with a curved blade spun among the bodies, slicing tendons and wrists with fluid motions. A burly axeman wielded his double-bladed weapon on the other side, carving gaps in the enemy lines with downward blows that split helmets like walnuts. The line reformed around the old man: five hundred bastards against thousands, but with Vartan at the center, it seemed possible.

  A colossal Uruk-hai—a captain in black plate armor with filed-point tusks, who had been part of the vanguard that shattered the city’s few competent forces—charged him, swinging a crude axe twice his own size. Vartan didn’t retreat. He pivoted on one foot, let the blow whistle past his wounded shoulder, and countered with a downward arc that cleaved the enemy weapon in two. The second axe rose in a backhand, opening the brute from groin to sternum. The creature dropped to its knees, gurgling black blood. All in under ten seconds.

  Vartan stepped over the corpse without looking, pressing deeper into the dark tide. The silver glow on his axes didn’t fade; it seemed to feed on the slaughter, as if the spirits of the ancients had decided to lend him their strength once more. He wasn’t immortal, not entirely. He bled, he panted, and time had stolen some of his youthful speed. But his will was unbreakable. He was the indomitable, the reckless, the hero Armenia summoned when all seemed lost.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The breach trembled. The Uruk-hai pushed, but Vartan and his dogs made them pay dearly for every inch. For a few eternal minutes, the four-hundred-year-old warrior held back the apocalypse with dirty axes and a smile that promised more death. And in his mind, as he cut and laughed, there was only one clear thought: If I fall today, let it be with style. Let the bards sing of this for another four hundred years.

  The battle roared. Armenia resisted. And Vartan the Indomitable still stood.

  .

  .

  Zinvor lay in his bed, as always. Another day. Another damned day.

  He had barely opened his eyes when the servant entered, followed by the usual maid. As every night—and every morning—he had no control over his legs or anything below the waist. He couldn’t move by will, not even the most basic bodily functions. He sighed deeply, a resigned sound that had become part of the morning ritual. The maid, with the quiet efficiency of someone who had done this hundreds of times, cleaned the mess from the bed without meeting his eyes. Then they bathed him, dressed him in clean but humble clothes, and settled him into the reinforced wooden chair that served as both throne and prison.

  In his room outside the main mansion, the guest house was his home—a tolerable place, yet it felt distant from the family that should have given him love, respect, or interest. Only food and his servants.

  An hour later he was “ready.” Ready to face a world that no longer wanted him near.

  He was the family mistake, the silent burden everyone avoided mentioning. He preferred to eat alone in his room; at least that way he escaped the awkward stares, the heavy silences, the forced smiles. He began reading another book—probably the most learned person in Meghri-Berd, perhaps in the entire Siuni clan. His mind, intact and sharp as a dagger, devoured ancient texts, European, Persian, even Chinese engineering treatises, maps of fortifications, and chronicles of forgotten sieges.

  For days he had obsessively reviewed the city’s plans and its underground infrastructure. He had found the flaw long ago and warned of it in a letter no one read carefully. Meghri-Berd’s drainage system had been built by a genius… with a stupid weakness. The sewer network ran on a gentle slope from the high cisterns toward the Vorotan River, but in the lower sections—especially beneath the artisans’ quarter and the eastern walls—the conduits narrowed and formed pockets of trapped air. Organic waste decomposed slowly, releasing methane (swamp gas) and traces of hydrogen sulfide. Without proper ventilation—no escape chimneys or high grilles to let the light gas escape—the methane accumulated in closed chambers and poorly designed siphons. It was denser than air in some spots, but pure methane rose and concentrated in the low ceilings of the galleries. Any spark—a fallen torch, a blacksmith working near a grate, even lightning in a storm—could ignite everything. Five years earlier there had been a minor explosion in the southern sector: a section of wall cracked, several workers died burned or asphyxiated, and the stench lingered for weeks. No one understood—or wanted to understand—that a proper ventilation system was needed: vertical stone or bronze pipes to carry the gas to the surface, far from flames and noses.

  No one except him.

  And now the battle had begun.

  The Uruk-hai hammered the walls. The muffled roar reached his room: shouts, battering-ram impacts, the whistle of arrows. His family had fled to safe towers or the nobles’ escape tunnels. They left him behind. A burden. Dead weight in a crumbling fortress.

  “Damn it… damn it…” he whispered, clenching his teeth.

  He decided to fight. To die on his feet… or at least try.

  He had nothing. His arms, still strong, dragged across the cold stone floor. He crawled—or rather dragged himself—like a wounded animal. Four meters took him half an hour of brutal effort: broken nails, elbows scraped to bleeding, sweat mixing with tears of rage. He reached the low table where he kept a table knife, a simple iron blade for cutting bread and fruit. He gripped it like a legendary sword.

  He couldn’t reach the good weapons hanging on the wall: the ceremonial lance, the short bow, the curved sword his late mother had given him before the accident—the only woman he loved, and he swallowed the tears for her; a man doesn’t cry.

  He stretched his hands, but they were too high. Too far. Too humiliating.

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his dirty hand. And then he cried. First silently, then harder, with sobs that shook his useless torso. It was the first time he had cried. Not purely out of self-pity, but for everything: fury at his treacherous body, hatred for a family that abandoned him, grief for his dead mother, contempt for a city that ignored his warnings, for a world that had reduced him to this. Born without the power to walk… he had never known what it was to be free.

  But in the midst of the weeping, something shifted. The knife trembled in his hand, but his mind remained sharp. He remembered the plans. He remembered the gas pockets. He remembered that the explosion five years ago had been small… because there had been only one spark. If someone—someone with courage and nothing to lose in terms of legs—could reach the lower sewers with a torch or incendiary arrow…

  Zinvor dragged himself across the cold stone floor of his room, every centimeter a torment his body wasn’t used to enduring. The muscles in his arms trembled under the dead weight of his lower half; it was the first time he had used them this way. Sweat soaked his forehead, mixing with the dust and grime of the floor. He breathed in ragged gasps, lungs burning.

  “Come onnnnn…” he shouted at himself, voice hoarse and broken. “Come on, I can do this… damn it!”

  He cursed himself under his breath, a litany of insults that fueled him: against his useless body, against the gods who had forsaken him, against the family that had left him behind like an old sack. Each word was another push. But exhaustion caught him like a slow, heavy wave.

  Then he heard silence in the main mansion. For the past hour it had filled with Uruk-hai who began looting everything. And now came heavy footsteps, hobnailed boots striking the cobbled corridor. The distant roar of battle still echoed, but these steps were approaching. Fast. Determined.

  Zinvor instinctively reached for his knife. He had dropped it a meter back when the handle slipped from his sweaty fingers. He cursed silently, stretching his arm backward, but he couldn’t reach it. He had no strength to retreat or advance. He lay there, face down, heart pounding in his ears, defenseless.

  The door burst open.

  “Hey, kid, what are you doing?”

  The voice was deep, gravelly, like stones dragged by a river. Vartan entered.

  The old man filled the entire doorway. Two meters of muscle hardened by centuries, now even more imposing covered in black Uruk-hai blood: thick splatters on his chest, arms, and face, drops running down his long silver hair. The axes hung from his belt, still dripping. He breathed heavily, but not exhausted. His fierce eyes swept the room in a second, assessing: the young man crawling, the fallen knife, the overturned chair, the scattered books.

  Zinvor looked up, eyes red from effort and recent tears. He said nothing at first. Just panted.

  Vartan stepped inside and kicked the door shut with his heel. The noise of battle muffled slightly.

  “You’re not fleeing,” the old man said, more statement than question. He had seen many eyes in his life, and those were not the eyes of a loser. “You’re going toward something. Where to, boy?”

  Zinvor swallowed. His voice came out weak, but clear.

  “Toward… the sewers.” He nodded vaguely toward the floor. “There’s gas. Methane. It builds up below. One spark and… boom. The Uruk-hai are entering through the eastern sector. If the lower section explodes… it cuts their advance. Burns their guts.”

  Vartan tilted his head. A slow, almost amused smile spread across his bloodied face.

  “And you thought you’d do it alone? With a bread knife and crawling like a worm?”

  Zinvor clenched his teeth.

  “I don’t have legs. But I have a head. And I know where the gas pockets are. No one else does. Or no one cared to listen.”

  Vartan let out a short, rough laugh, like stone scraping steel.

  “You’re one stubborn son of a bitch, eh? I like it.”

  Without further ceremony, the old man lifted him with one hand—as if Zinvor were a light bundle of weapons, far too light—and slung him over his right shoulder, settling him firmly but not roughly. The young man’s inert body hung along the warrior’s broad back, Zinvor’s head level with Vartan’s bloodied shoulder. The smell of black Uruk-hai blood filled everything: metallic, acrid, sticky. But the old man didn’t seem to notice.

  “Though if you know how to set the whole city on fire,” Vartan continued as he began walking with long, sure strides down the corridor, “it would be more useful to me than just blowing the eastern part… The city has already fallen.”

  Zinvor felt the rhythmic motion of the giant’s stride beneath him. The world tilted and swayed from this new height. For the first time in years, he wasn’t on the ground. He wasn’t crawling. He was… moving. And though his pride burned as much as his muscles, something inside him ignited: not blind rage, but a cold, sharp clarity.

  He raised his head as much as he could, voice still trembling but gaining strength with each word.

  “Then let’s do it right, old man. Not just the eastern part. All of it.” He paused, drawing a deep breath. “The gases aren’t only in the lower sewers. They seep through ancient cracks in the walls, through old aqueducts no one has repaired in centuries. There’s a network of forgotten tunnels beneath the noble quarter… connected to the main cisterns. If we set fire there, we don’t just blow a breach: we turn Meghri-Berd into a torch visible from Lake Sevan. The Uruk-hai will enter… and either run out wrapped in flames, or never come out at all.”