Chapter 993

Bodies were everywhere. Some lay still. Some twitched. Some tried to crawl with wounds no one crawled away from.

A man with half his face missing gurgled into the mud, one hand clawing uselessly at the ground as if he could dig his way out of dying. Another soldier knelt with both hands pressed against his stomach, staring in blank disbelief at the slick coils pushing between his fingers. A mercenary screamed for his mother until an arrow punched through his throat and turned the scream into bubbling panic.

For the recruits, it was too much to understand all at once. They had fought monsters. That had been easier.

Monsters were monsters. Beasts. Constructs. Things with fangs, claws, mandibles, ice bones, or whatever other nightmare shape the world felt like throwing at them. Killing those things was frightening, yes, but clean in the mind. Simple. Necessary.

Humans were different. Humans screamed words. Humans begged. Humans looked at you with eyes full of the exact same fear sitting in your own chest. Humans bled in ways that made it impossible to pretend they had never been people.

And the smell… the smell was worse than anything.

Blood carried iron into the air, thick and hot despite the rain. Open guts added a sour, rotten stink that clung to the throat. Smoke from burned shields and scorched flesh drifted across the field in black strips. Sweat, mud, wet leather, old fear, fresh vomit, and shit all mixed together into something so foul it seemed to crawl inside the lungs and stay there.

Death had a smell. Despair had one too. The recruits learned both in the same hour. Some men pissed themselves when they died. Some did it before.

Some shit themselves as blades entered them or arrows found soft places under armor, their bodies emptying in terror while their minds tried to understand that there would be no next breath, no second chance, no heroic final line.

There was nothing dignified about it. Nothing noble.

A man could spend his whole life boasting, training, sharpening steel, swearing oaths to banners and lords, and still die sobbing in the mud with his bowels loose and his hands shaking around the wound that killed him.

That truth spread through the newcomers faster than fear. Honor on the battlefield was a lie. Not entirely, maybe. Not in the clean way philosophers liked to argue.

There were brave people here. Loyal people. People who stepped forward when every instinct begged them to run. People who dragged wounded friends back under fire. People who held shields over strangers. People who died buying others one more breath.

But the battlefield itself had no honor. It did not care who was right. It did not care who had trained harder. It did not care who had a family, who had a promise, who had never wanted to kill another person until this morning.

There was only mud. Blood. Noise. Pain. Despair. And the desperate, animal need to live.

One recruit learned that when an imperial soldier slipped on a corpse and dropped his spear. For half a second, the enemy looked no older than him. Just a boy in armor too large for his shoulders, eyes wide, mouth open, hands raised.

The recruit hesitated. Then the boy reached for a dagger. Brann smashed his shield into the imperial’s face hard enough to break his nose and teeth inward, then Jori’s axe took him in the neck.

The recruit stared as the body collapsed. Brann grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back into line.

“Don’t look at his face,” Brann barked.

The recruit blinked at him, pale and shaking.

“What?”

“Don’t look at their faces unless you’re ready to kill them anyway.”

The recruit swallowed. His lips trembled.

“I—”

“Later,” Brann snapped. “Break later.”

Another wave hit. Steel crashed against shields. Someone screamed. Someone fell.

A spear punched through the thigh of the man beside Tali, and he dropped with a sound that was more surprise than pain. She stepped over him because if she didn’t, the enemy would step through him.

That was another lesson. Sometimes helping had to wait. Sometimes kindness killed more people. Sometimes the right thing was to let someone bleed behind you while you kept the line from collapsing in front of them.

The recruits learned that too. They learned it with every corpse underfoot. With every dying hand that grabbed their ankle. With every wounded friend they couldn’t turn to help because the enemy in front of them had not politely stopped attacking.

They learned that fear made people ugly. Their own fear most of all.

One boy vomited into his own collar, then kept holding his spear because there was no time to wipe his mouth. A girl cried silently while stabbing an enemy under the ribs three times, long after he had already stopped fighting. Another recruit kept whispering apologies with every thrust, not loud enough for anyone else to hear beneath the chaos.

The battlefield did not answer any of them. It only demanded more. More blood. More breath. More strength. More people willing to become a little less human if that was what survival required.

Tali saw it happening and hated that she recognized it. The first real battle always took something. Not innocence. That was too clean a word. It took the lie that the world would make sense when things got serious. It took the belief that bravery felt good.

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It took the childish idea that a person would know what kind of man or woman they were before the killing started.

No.

The battlefield told you afterward. If you survived long enough to listen.

Brann shoved another recruit back into formation and roared for shields to close. Jori cursed as he pulled his axe free from a man’s collarbone. Tali drove her spear into an imperial soldier’s throat and felt the body sag against the shaft, warm blood spilling over her hands.

The recruit beside her stared at the dying man. Tali yanked the spear free and slapped the recruit across the helmet.

“Eyes up!”

He flinched. Then obeyed. Good. That was all she could give him. Not comfort. Not explanation. Just the next thing that might keep him alive.

Around them, the field reeked of fear and death. Men slipped in blood. Healers worked with shaking hands. Wounded soldiers begged for mothers, gods, mercy, or knives. The rain kept falling like it could wash any of it clean.

It couldn’t. Nothing could. By the time the next imperial push began forming, the newcomers no longer looked like recruits waiting for orders. They looked like people who had seen the truth beneath the armor.

There was no glory here. No clean honor. No beautiful death. Only the line. Only the enemy. Only the breath in your lungs and the weapon in your hand. And the terrible, desperate need to keep both for one more moment.

Arslan saw the line shaking.

He also saw the enemy shaking worse. That was the difference.

From the command point near the reinforced wall, with rain sliding down his armor and mud painted across his boots, he watched the battlefield the way a butcher watched where to place the next cut. The Lionsguard front line was exhausted. The recruits were nearly hollow-eyed. The northerners on the right had already turned half-mad with battle joy and fatigue. Healers were cycling through mana faster than was safe.

But the Empire’s forward units were worse.

Their formations had lost shape. Officers were shouting over one another. Adventurers who had charged in for coin were now trying to find safer places to stand. Underworld fighters, all knife-smiles and confidence at the start, had begun drifting backward whenever no one important was looking.

They had expected Lionfang to break. It hadn’t. That kind of failure did things to men. Arslan stepped forward, drew in a breath, and let his voice roll across the wall and field.

“Front line!”

The command cracked through the rain. Heads lifted. Some slowly. Some with the dazed reflex of people who had forgotten the world existed beyond the enemy in front of them.

Arslan raised his sword.

“Fight harder!”

A few exhausted fighters stared like they had misheard him. Then his voice sharpened.

“The enemies are almost gone.”

That landed. Not because it was entirely true. Because it was close enough to become true if they believed it for one more push. Arslan pointed his blade toward the ruined imperial formation ahead.

“They are tired! They are scared! They are looking behind them instead of at you!”

His gaze swept over the front.

“Make them regret it!”

The words moved through the line faster than any horn. Tali heard them first and bared her teeth.

“Squad!”

Her voice was raw from shouting, but it still cut.

The recruits around her turned. Some were bleeding. Some were shaking. One had tears cutting lines through the mud on his cheeks. Another looked like he was standing only because falling required a decision he no longer had the strength to make.

Tali slammed the butt of her spear into the ground.

“You heard the guildmaster.”

Brann lifted his shield beside her, grin ugly and tired.

“They’re almost gone!”

Jori snorted, axe resting against one shoulder as rain ran down his face.

“That better not be one of those motivational lies.”

“It is,” Brann said.

Tali’s eyes stayed on the enemy.

“But it’s a useful one.”

Jori huffed. “Fine. I like useful lies.”

Across their section, the recruits began to tighten formation again. Not fresh. Not fearless. But moving. That was enough.

Brann turned to the shield-bearers. “Close the gaps! If your arm shakes, lock it against the man beside you. If your legs shake, bite your tongue and stay standing.”

Jori pointed his axe at the exhausted attackers ahead. “And if you see one of them turning around, hit him in the back. This is not a tournament. No one gets points for courtesy.”

Tali raised her spear.

“Overdrive!”

A ripple passed through the squad. Mana ignited beneath skin and armor. Not the violent, destructive burst Ludger favored. Not the reckless kind that shredded control for raw motion. This was rougher, simpler, trained into them over long days of bruises, yelling, and exhaustion.

Bodies tightened. Eyes sharpened. Breath deepened.

Then Brann roared, “Vitality Well!”

The second skill spread through them like a pulse of stolen endurance. More like dragging strength up from somewhere deep and ugly inside the body, forcing tired muscles to remember that dying was not yet allowed. Pain dulled around the edges. Legs stopped trembling quite so badly. The recruits’ faces were still pale, but their grips steadied.

Tali felt the surge hit and almost laughed. It hurt. Of course it hurt. Everything useful did.

“Forward!” she shouted.

The line moved. This time, they did not wait for the Empire to hit them. They hit first.

Brann led with the shield wall, driving into the wavering imperial soldiers with a brutal crash that knocked the front rank off balance. Spears thrust over shoulders. Axes chopped into exposed legs. Swords punched through gaps beneath arms and around collars.

The enemy expected another exhausted defense. They got a countercharge.

Tali’s spear took the first man through the throat, ripped free, then snapped low into another’s knee. She stepped over him before he finished falling and drove the weapon into a third attacker’s chest hard enough to throw him backward.

Brann smashed his shield into an adventurer’s face, then pivoted and caught a spear on the rim before it could reach one of the recruits behind him.

“Hit him!”

A young swordswoman obeyed, screaming as she drove her blade into the enemy’s side. Jori moved like a butcher having a very bad day.

His axe came down on a mercenary’s shoulder and split through collarbone. He ripped it free, reversed the swing, and buried the back spike into another man’s jaw. When a third tried to run, Jori kicked him behind the knee and let two recruits finish him.

“See?” he shouted. “They bleed normally!”

“That was never the concern!” Tali snapped.

“It helps morale!”

And somehow, it did. The line surged harder.

The newcomers, half-broken minutes ago, began to remember that the enemy was tired too. That imperial armor still had gaps. That men with banners still screamed when stabbed. That fear could move both ways.