For such a quick engagement, there was a surprising amount of cleanup. That was always the case with battlefields, though. Anywhere that a large number of people die was a place where the undead could rise. According to my father, leaving a horde of potential undead on the backline of a war or a need to divert resources for cleanup was a viable strategy in war. It was a bit distasteful, but cremation was needed to cleanse the dead. This was also likely why the local farmer had enough money to barricade his house. Cleansing the dead regularly would imbue the fields with an extra helping of life every few growing seasons.

For now, it left the sickly sweet smell of roasting meat and burned hair in the air. It was a familiar smell to anyone involved in combat. There was the added disgusting smell from the burning of whatever grime and foulness goblins coated themselves with.

While it was interesting, I had seen cleanup like that before. What was genuinely drawing my eye was the mage who was masquerading as a wagoneer. Something about his appearance was clamoring in my ear, but I couldn’t pin down what it was. He was undoubtedly distinctive. The pure white hair and beard combined with unlined face, and vigorous movements, and full shocking white smile, made a strange juxtaposition. For now, he was ignoring me and napping on the wagon in his usual spot.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the injured guards and the cleanup while I made myself useful, watching the surviving goblins bring down their camp. My counterpart was an old and wrinkled grey goblin standing at the closest edge of the field. He held a dead animal in one hand, something close to the rat-like creature they sacrificed before the battle, but this one had scales and bony plates instead of fur. In his other hand, he held something white that branched oddly. Belatedly, I realized that he held some object formed of tied together bones. I had no clue what it was, but I knew it was some kind of threat involving a magical Skill; that, or a bluff. For a few seconds, I daydreamed of discovering all the odd and weird Skills that the different monstrous races must have that were just out of reach from the civilized races. Then I remembered the orgy of violence and sex from the night before and wiped that daydream away.

Whatever magic the goblin shamans used, it was not like the Mages. Nor was it like the Shamans of the Northmen, the Seekers of the Undermen, or the Greenspirit of the Forestfolk. What little I had seen of the goblin’s magic was focused on sex, sacrifice, and violence - a fitting style for the horrible little green creatures.

While the dead on the field were cleansed and burned, the injured were cared for. Snowy hovered around Mother Tin while she worked. The scratchy and annoyed voice of the Mother rolled out over the protest of the lightly injured. She had been unable to save a pinkie finger of Private Baker, the guard with [Storytelling]. Somewhere in the chaos of the fight, he managed to catch the tip of a halberd blade on his own weapon’s staff. He was lucky that it was only the one finger injured and that he didn’t lose the whole hand or even the arm. He wasn’t sure where or how it had happened during the fight, and we would likely never know, but the loss of the finger had come as an even bigger surprise to him when Mother Tin couldn’t heal it. He had been under the impression that the Healers could heal anything short of a head wound or old age. She had quickly disabused him of that idea.

There were a few other minor injuries - strains, bruises, scrapes, cuts, and flesh wounds - but there were only two other serious injuries. Private Jerra, one of the few women, and odder still, one with the darker skin tones native to the Eastern side of the Kingdom, had suffered a gut wound. Most of the goblins used stone tools with a sprinkling of scavenged rusted weapons. Private Cord was unlucky enough to have a goblin with a relatively new and sharpened blade catch him below the armpit during the scuffle. Mother Tin had only barely been able to close the wound and stop the bleeding. Neither were dying, but Jerra was still lightheaded and weak from blood loss while Cord remained unconscious.

Besides those recovering and those cleaning the field, most of the guards were resting with heads down or avoiding eye contact as they ate lunch. Those who had managed to earn a Skill during the fight were pretty blatant, with their chests puffed up like birds. I had worried about this before I gave my speech the night before. I could have likely just disabused the guards from their superstitions about Skills and managed to improve their Skills. Instead, I chose to go the extra distance and provide actual training like I would for a client instead of just information. The peasant superstitions around Skills were so prevalent that just saying that Skills didn’t improve through rote practice would have been enough to have me earn my keep. But, I couldn’t let that be it. Openly teaching and educating people about Skills was what I had always dreamed of. I couldn’t allow it to sit with just the essential information.

By my rough count based on the number of smiles, some of which would be lies to avoid the ‘shame’ of failing to gain a Skill, I was guessing that some twenty guards earned Skills this time. That was around what I would have expected for the first battle of a Culling. My speech was helpful, but it was too-little-too-late compared to their weeks of slacking off standing guard in the fortress or refusing to practice with anything but a half-assed nature. The mistaken idea that all that was needed for a Skill was practice had been coursing through them. They looked at the combat specialists and thought that the Skills made them that way, never realizing that they had those Skills because they were already driven and capable.

At the sound of Snowy’s approach, I glanced back but returned my eye to watching the goblins. I doubted that they would do anything, but keeping a blatant lookout would preclude them from trying.

“Josh,” Snowy said while she trudged closer to me. I thought she was going to lean on me for a moment, but the armored woman straightened and put her hands behind her back in a rest position. It didn’t take [Acting] to see she was trying to hide her feelings. Snowy probably expected my usual silence, but this was something I was familiar with.

“My father used to drink on the nights that the dreams came for him. He said that it helped with the faces of those he couldn’t save but made it worse when it came to the ones he had to let die for the mission,” I said while not turning away from the goblin across the field. From the exhale, it almost seemed like I had sucker-punched Snowy. No, it was worse, I doubted that I could have winded Snowy with a punch.

“Father wanted me to follow in his footsteps, become a mercenary, lead a troop, and gain fame as a combat specialist. I’ve got more Combat Skills than most. I can’t do it, though. Two years ago, I led a troop on a mission as the last part of my training and lost three men. One of them was an old friend of my dad’s. He should never have died in that fight. He should have been able to handle it himself, but he was ended from one moment of inattention and an orc’s lucky arrow. I once thought I would create the best mercenary troop in the Kingdom. I would use my Skills in training to give them the best Skills. We would become unstoppable,” I said as I clenched my eyes closed, gently leaning until my shoulder bumped into Snowy’s metal-clad arms.

“I’m not a leader of men. It’s not what I want or something I’m good at. I like teaching. I like learning Skills, and I like teaching them to others. But, I’m not a leader,” I said, then turned to face Snowy and ignored the moisture in her eyes.

“You can lead. Everyone out on that field knew that you were there and would do what you could to keep them alive. That it wasn’t possible to keep everyone alive is beside the point. You’ll see, they’ll follow you into the next battle as well,” I said.

There was silence between us, Snowy leaning on me for a minute before she stood straight again. Patting my shoulder, she gave me a half-smile and walked back to her men. I turned to watch her as she moved toward the Captain - patting a shoulder here, nodding to another, pausing to hold a word with Mother Tin as she hovered over someone. Snowy might have had problems with certain social situations. Still, when it came to combat and everything around it, she far outstripped me.

Half an hour of watching later and the goblins finally bundled up their tents and moved back into the forest. The stench of their fires and the waste they left on the outskirts of their camp remained. The farmer would have his hands full cleaning the disgusting field, but that wasn’t our concern. No, the Captain made it clear that we would spend the night, resting and recovering, and then we would move on to the east. There was an outpost in the forest a few days ride - meaning a week at our speed - where we would stop to resupply. A few raids into the woods for bandits and to clear away some monsters and any other goblins, and we would finally return to the city. I was already eager to escape the travel and return to my little home and my disrupted routines.

I planned to give nightly discussions on Skills and training. I would miss that. But I would still be able to help the guards. Hopefully, once I had their training smoothed out, I could return to taking commissions.

Eyeing the resting Mage, I approached the wagon and the bench seat I had been unwittingly using next to my Guild’s sworn enemy. He had more than one chance to cause problems for me, but he hadn’t. There was no reason to assume he would act now. Even if the logic was sound, I couldn’t avoid feeling a slight tension in my guts as I levered myself up and tried to flop down on the hard wooden seat casually.

Opening one bright eye, the Mage gave me a raised eyebrow look then closed his eye again. Scratching at his beard for a moment, he reached over to his belt pouch and drew out a sealed letter. At his sudden movement, I tensed, remembering the staff he pulled from that bag, but my tension left when he drew out the letter and held it out to me.

“Here you go. Just to save you some time: The Mages were told to jump off a cliff by the Baron. Politely. The Alchemist Guild as well. Then they both tried to get the King to intercede. I’m not sure what happened there, I don’t care about the court, so I don’t have any ears there. I do know that the King told them to piss up a rope. Again, politely. Somehow the two jackasses in charge got together, and I’ve been ordered to ‘deliver a letter of rebuke from the Alchemist’s Guild.’ So consider yourself rebuked,” the mage said while twirling one finger around in a casual air, never opening his eyes to look at me. While the movements were relaxed and he seemed unconcerned, I had [Meditation] active and could see little wisps of what I assumed were mana hovering around the Mage. It looked like a swarm of semi-transparent bees, and it felt like those bees were watching my every movement.

Ripping open the letter, I scanned through the flowery language, ignoring the precisely and subtly described insults, until I reached the meat of the issue.

“They’re throwing my ‘Master’ out of the Alchemy Guild and blacklisting me from most of their herbal suppliers?” I growled out as I read the pertinent bit.

The fake-relaxing mage nodded and said, “Yeah, like I said. Jackasses.”