The sun hung in the sky like a malevolent, white-hot eye, its gaze so intense that the very air above the dusty plain shimmered and wavered, as if the world itself were a poorly rendered painting. The temperature, a blistering forty-plus degrees Celsius, was a physical presence, a weight that pressed down on the parched earth and the men who stood upon it, sapping the will and baking the skin. It was under this merciless glare that what would later be chronicled in the badlands as the Battle of Cinder Town began—a conflict that, by the grim standards of this broken world, deserved the title 'epic'.
For the scattered tribes and scavenger clans within a hundred kilometers of the settlement, a skirmish involving a hundred souls was considered a major war. The force now arrayed outside the makeshift walls of Cinder Town was ten times that number, a horde whose very size spoke of a desperation so profound it had temporarily united rival gangs in a common, avaricious purpose. This unprecedented alliance, this throwing of every last chip onto the table, had a single, glittering cause: the wells. Four deep, miraculously abundant wells of clean, sweet water, brought into being by the seemingly bottomless resources and inexplicable luck of the man they called Harry Potter Michael. Without this prize, a prize so valuable it was worth the collective gamble of every warband's entire capital, even the formidable Black Hand gang could never have mustered such a host.
The logistics alone were staggering. Marching and fighting under this murderous sun required double the usual rations of food and water. Days, even weeks, had been spent in联络 and assembly, time that yielded no scavenge, no profit. If Cinder Town had remained the dusty, impoverished hamlet it once was, sacking it would have been a net loss. But to fail now, after such an investment? That would mean the utter dissolution of many of the participating gangs. They were committed, backed into a corner with no retreat. And so, there were no feints, no probing attacks, no sophisticated flanking maneuvers. The strategy was as brutal and direct as the climate: a massive, head-on assault. A human wave. Those who died were unlucky; those who survived would win the right to drink their fill, to perhaps even know the bizarre, luxurious sensation of washing with the Lord's pink, powdered soap.
On the wall, Harry Potter Michael squinted against the glare, his mouth dry as the dust stirred by a thousand advancing feet. "A hundred meters… ninety… eighty…" he muttered, counting down the distance using a line of whitewashed stones placed at ten-meter intervals. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, panicked drumbeat against the slower, deeper thrum of the war drums from the raider host. Along the parapet, his guards stood with bows drawn, the strings taut with tension. They crouched behind a haphazard wall of sandbags, their knuckles white on their weapons. Not a single arrow would fly without his command.
The enemy archers had no such discipline. At a hundred meters, a ragged cloud of projectiles arced into the sky, darkening the sun for a moment before whistling down onto the defenses. Thud. Thud. Thwack.Arrows embedded themselves in the sandbags with dull, percussive impacts. A sharper sound, a muffled grunt, came from Michael's left as a guard took a shaft on his shoulder. The modern stab-proof vest beneath his tunic stopped the point, but the kinetic force was brutal, knocking the man back a step. Similar grunts and curses echoed along the line. Michael clenched his jaw. It was agony to wait, to take this punishment without reply. But he knew the limits of his new weapons. The front ranks of the raiders carried shields—crude things of wood, but reinforced with strips of scavenged steel. At this range, even the finest modern bow would struggle to penetrate.
Finally, the leading wave of screaming, sun-maddened men crossed the fifty-meter line. Their faces were now clear, contorted with a mix of rage, heatstroke, and greed.
"Now! Loose!" Michael's voice emerged as a strangled shriek, not the commanding bellow he had intended.
As the word left his lips, he pulled the release on his own compound bow, a weapon touted as 'user-friendly.' The arrow flew with a soft thrum, its trajectory anything but friendly. It sailed high over the head of the porcine-faced raider he'd aimed for, described a graceful, idiotic arc, and plunged downward, pinning the foot of a large, unfortunate member of his own Night Crew to the ground. The man wore a faded, incongruous Nike sneaker, now thoroughly nailed to the wooden planks of the wall-walk. A roar of pain and surprise erupted, entirely different from the battle cries.
Michael stared, dumbfounded, a hot flush of pure humiliation creeping up his neck. He had a powerful urge to simply vanish.
But a miracle occurred. To his guards, the Lord's shot was not a wild miss; it was a display of preternatural accuracy, a deliberate act of marking a high-value target they had all overlooked. A ragged cheer went up. "The Lord marks their leader!" someone bellowed. Their spirits, instead of breaking, soared.
And then, the real volley began.
What followed was a masterclass in the difference between a novice and a professional. Michael watched, his own failure momentarily forgotten, as his guards went to work. Some were artists of death, their arrows slipping past shield rims to find throats and eyes with cold precision. The fiberglass shafts, a marvel of his world, punched through leather and flesh with terrifying ease. Then there was John the Minotaur. The massive warrior wielded a heavy recurve bow, its draw weight so immense the wood groaned in protest. He didn't so much shootas firea ballistic missile. An arrow meant for a shield didn't just pierce it; it shattered the wood, tore through the thin steel plate, and impaled the man behind it, the force lifting him off his feet. The first volley scythed down the front two ranks of the assault, perhaps fifty men falling in a chaotic tangle of limbs and screams.
In any normal raid, such losses would have broken the attackers' will. But these men were expendable, a currency spent by chieftains watching safely from the rear. A deep, blaring horn sounded from the enemy center, a sound of cold indifference. Without hesitation, the next wave charged forward, their boots trampling the writhing bodies of their comrades.
The fifty meters disappeared in a frenzy of movement. His guards managed perhaps three shots each before the horde was upon them. The ditch, lined with vicious cactus spines, was the next obstacle. The raiders solved it with a brutality that turned Michael's stomach: they seized their wounded, those still crying out, and used them as living bridges, hurling them onto the sharp barbs to create grisly pathways. A dozen more lives were spent, and the defensive ditch was neutralized.
"Throw the axes! Molotovs now!" Michael yelled, his voice finding a shred of authority. His guards discarded their bows, drawing the heavy hatchets from their belts. A storm of spinning steel flew from the wall, crunching into the densely packed mass below. Dozens more fell, clearing a temporary killing zone. But the tide was inexorable. New raiders filled the gaps almost instantly. After two volleys, the axes were gone.
The ranged fight was over. The real, bloody, intimate work was about to begin. The remote attacks had been devastating, costing the enemy two or three hundred men—a glorious tally by any measure. But it wasn't enough. The sheer, overwhelming numbers pressed on.
His hands shaking so violently he could barely hold the Zippo lighter, Michael finally managed to ignite the rag wick of a glass bottle filled with gasoline and rubber. He couldn't blame his fear; the chasm between modern bravado and the visceral, meaty reality of ancient combat was a mile wide and bottomless deep.
Clutching the sputtering bottle, he risked a glance over the sandbags. A cat-hybrid raider, agile and fierce, was already scaling the wall, a knife clenched in his teeth. He moved with a fluid, predatory grace, needing only a few handholds. As the creature launched himself upward, Michael, acting on pure instinct, hurled the Molotov.
It was not a good throw. It was clumsy, panicked. But it was effective. The bottle shattered directly on the climber's head, dousing him in flaming liquid. The figure became a shrieking torch, plummeting to the ground where he rolled in a frantic, horrifying dance. A wave of heat washed over Michael, carrying with it a smell that would be seared into his memory forever: the distinct, nauseatingly familiar scent of roasting meat.
Bile surged in his throat. His stomach clenched, threatening to revolt. To be sick now, in front of his men, would be a defeat far worse than any lost arrow. Desperate, he bit down hard on his own lip, the sharp, metallic taste of blood flooding his mouth, a personal, private pain to anchor himself against the overwhelming horror. He swallowed convulsively, forcing the sickness down. There was no other choice. A man could discover a shocking capacity for endurance when the alternative was certain death, not just for himself, but for everyone who depended on him.