Chapter 89: Side Story 7 – Al-Shan Four Generals: The Steel-Winged Tiger of the East

"When the coup broke out, the fact that the dragon and phoenix general supported it had not surprised me. Those two had close ties to the old nobility that supported the usurper. Neither had the Turtle-Serpent general's capitulation to the rebels surprised me. Salman had always been a pragmatic man first and foremost. As for the Winged Tiger general, she was one whose support of the usurper surprised me the least, for why would she not support her own father-in-law?" - Halmout Mansoor, Prime Minister of the Al-Shan Empire.

 

Al-Shan Empire, Shan-Hu island, winter 668 FP.

 

For Asahim Haroone, eldest and only grandson to the current Emperor of Al-Shan, everything has gone to shit of late.

 

In the past eight years, the rebellion led by the runaway survivor of the royal family's main branch who survived the coup by chance back then had blown up into a full-fledged civil war. And his was the losing side of it.

 

By now, the only islands still fully under the emperor's control was Shan-Hu, their gateway of trade with the mainlands, and Al-Shan itself. Hadj-al-Zafreed nominally still sided with the emperor, but the three governors there had turtled themselves in their fortifications and refused to answer the emperor's call to sally forth.

 

At least they occupied a portion of the rebels who had to keep them under watch.

 

He himself, along with his father, the first prince of the empire, Mahmoud Haroone, and his mother, Rasheeda Taufiq, the Steel-Winged Tiger General of the east, had led thirty thousand men - half the emperor's remaining armed forces - in the defense of Shan-Hu island. This time, they caught the rebels on the move as they approached by sea, and their entire fleet had set out in a bold move meant to cripple the rebel force before they could converge.

 

Hundreds of ships, both large and small, sailed out from the harbors of Shan-Hu and headed northwards, where they judged the rebels most likely to arrive from. If the information they received was right, the rebels intended to pincer the island from both the north and the south, and should they manage to defeat one prong of the attack prematurely, to beat back the second would be far more doable.

 

After three hours of sailing from the port, their lookout in the crow's nest signaled that he had seen enemy ships, and sure enough, before long Asahim could make out specks that were their sails in the horizon. Both his parents gave a grunt in satisfaction at the same time. It sometimes still made him feel a bit off to see his father, who was sixty-two and looked his age, stand beside his mother who looked not a hair out of her thirties. But then again, his mother was a half-elf, and actually nearly a century older than his father.

 

As a quarter-elf himself, he looked barely out of his teenage years, despite his actual age of thirty-four. Something that had made him quite popular with the women in the capital.

 

Their lookout signaled that the enemy fleet seemed to have noticed them, and had made an attempt to turn tail and flee. His parents quite naturally gave the order to chase, and after another two hours where the winds favored them, their ships came close enough with the rebel ships to engage them in combat.

 

Arrows were nocked and fired from both fleets, while soldiers with shields covered the archers from the enemy's return fire. Some larger ships like the one Asahim himself was on turned and aimed their on-board catapults, and flung heavy stone balls soaked in pitch that was set alight just prior to its flight.

 

The rebel fleet of maybe a hundred ships ceased their escape attempt as they were overtaken, and turned to take the fight to them instead. Several ships rammed each other to mutual destruction in the chaos, while for the rest arrows were abandoned as soldiers boarded enemy ships and fought each other in melee.

 

Asahim and his father remained on their ship as they commanded the chaotic melee, while his mother had leapt to a nearby enemy ship with her two sabers drawn. Her magic formed another dozen sabers that flew behind her back and moved with her mind, and even from his ship Asahim could see how she annihilated the rebels on the ship she boarded with contemptuous ease.

 

That was when their plan - and the battle - went to the shithole.

 

While they were occupied by the chaotic melee, the imperial fleet had not noticed that two more detachments of the rebel fleet had flanked them, and now they were about to hit them from the sides. To make things worse, the new detachments flew a flag proudly, a flag that both Asahim and his father recognized and dreaded all too well.

 

A flag that depicted a sea serpent coiled around a shark in gold, over a black background, with red trim. The flag that was flown by Lady Sada Niesha, formerly the High Admiral of the Imperial Navy, who had disappeared shortly after the coup along with the Empire's cadre of space mages that was led by her husband. She had never openly shown any hint of herself before this, but with her flag out in the open, there was little doubt left.

 

Mahmoud attempted to have parts of his fleet turn to meet the new enemies, but their current opponents doggedly pressured them at the cost of their lives. The rebel fleets that flanked crashed into the sides of the imperial fleet, and quickly amplified the chaos of the melee.

 

Command over the fleet had broken down, and before long Asahim found his ship also engaged in boarding action from the enemy's side. Fortunately his large ship had a multitude of troops in it, amongst which were his parents' personal guards, which were among the best-trained troops in the Empire.

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He watched in satisfaction as a platoon of the personal guards went and pushed the rebels off the port side of the ship. Another small rebel ship had latched on by that time, but he deemed it to be of no consequence. Such a small ship only carried fifty men or so at most, and what could those do against his ship?

 

He was wrong.

 

A tall white haired figure leaped from the small ship to his. Within moments, the personal guards who had been so close to expelling the rebels off his ship were scattered before a crescent-bladed halberd wielded by the figure. Most of them perished with their bodies separated into multiple pieces, while others pulled back with fear obvious on their features.

 

The figure, a woman now that he had a closer look, strode forward. Soldiers that tried to stop her were dispatched efficiently by swings of her halberd, as if she had just mowed some grass. Asahim knew that things would go badly if their morale kept being ruined by the woman, so he gathered up his courage, drew out his sword, and let the rest of the personal guards in an attempt to stop the woman's rampage, and ideally kill her to raise morale.

 

He hadn't heard his father's panicked shout for him to stop.

 

Nor did he knew what hit him.

 

The next thing Asahim knew, he laid against the main mast of the ship, with no feeling on the lower half of his body. He looked down and gasped at the sight of the gruesome gash on his abdomen, and the disgusting piles of intestines that had slipped out from the gash. With trembling hands he tried to stuff the intestines back into his body, as his bleary eyes took in the battle that still raged around him.

 

He blearily saw how the few remnants of his personal guards fought the woman, and was torn asunder by her strikes, as if they were children who fought an adult. His father had charged the woman with a bellow of rage, but his old body stood no chance whatsoever, and the woman sent his head flying with a single strike. By cruel chance the head landed near Asahim, who locked eyes with his dead father's head, whose features were locked in rage.

 

His mother arrived with a scream and he felt hope bloom in his heart. Surely his mother, the great general, could handle this rebel woman. After that he would be brought to a healer and all would be well… except for father. But shit happens.

 

Asahim watched in joy as his mother slashed and skewered the rebel woman with her flying sabers, as he thought the fight decided then and there. His joy turned to disbelief, then horror when the rebel woman struck back at his mother as if she felt nothing. Despite a dozen sabers that pierced through her body. Fortunately his mother managed to escape the strike with only a shallow wound across his nose bridge.

 

His mother conjured another dozen flying blades, as she found the blades that already skewered the woman refused to budge when she tried to pull them out. Her attempt to change their shape to strike her from the inside failed when the woman's mana overpowered her own, which was little surprise.

 

Asahim watched with increasing horror and despair as his mother skewered the woman with another dozen blades, then another dozen. All of which the rebel woman took in stride and downright ignored as she pushed his mother back.

 

After the fourth set of blades, his mother had run low on mana, and the rebel woman pushed her back hard. One strike of the halberd his mother failed to block severed her left arm, and the distraction from the pain gave the rebel woman a chance she did not waste. As Asahim watched with horror, the rebel woman swung her halberd in a backhanded strike, where the beak-shaped backside of the weapon struck his mother's head, and crushed it like an overripe watermelon.

 

Bits of blood and brain rained over the area, and the last thing he saw before he gave in to despair and darkness took him was how his mother's headless body wobbled for a moment, before it fell like a lump of flesh to the deck of the ship.

 

Then Asahim Haroone knew no more.

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