A quarter of all the men that left those caves died when we fed them. They ate, and convulsed, and every night we wondered and made bets on how many would pass away. Some refused to eat all together, thinking the food was poisoned. Others - even with that fear - ate anyway, the need was too strong. It was those who learned to pace themselves that survived. Upon observation by the doctors, after the fourth day, we started to portion properly. That was after a hundred fifty men died.

No one wanted to bury them. And we couldn’t leave them. So we jury rigged a cart to hoist them up a little road in the canyon. Up to a cliff side overseeing a deep patch of cactus at the foot of a steep fall. We dumped the bodies there, upon that growth. Let them rot on the paddles of the vegetation.

They resented us for it. Truth was, it was more for necessity than anything else. A certain hostility had taken over the camps that even Vincent couldn’t subvert much longer. And he had to concede some of his authority to it, which I figured was a good idea. A leader who dismisses the feelings of his crew will eventually meet mutiny. And it was long overdo for Vincent to accept the anger of the Crows. What had now been a long year of war had began to eat away at us. And nearing the end of the week I was beginning to hear talk of leaving, from the few that had claimed loyalists months before. Strange how war changes people. Strange how war changed us.

At the end of the week we had all accepted that it would end. I woke up that night after a good sleep, starting with a casual morning of tea. Of breakfast (bread and sausage and gravy - rations came in early). And of a morning walk around camp. Around midday, after some sparring, I started to secure the weapons I would take. My daggers of course, throwing knives, short sword. The men were chosen long before. Kal and Obrick by my side. Sylas and myself at the lead. There was nothing to gain from the prisoners we’d taken they only repeated the same thing, over and over and over again. Duvall had gone mad - there was mutiny. So on and so forth. Worthless conjecture that didn’t offer us much in our pursuits. So we approached the mouth of the cave with our torches, the way having been cleared. The cave dark - not that night helped.

“Are you all ready?” I asked.

They nodded. I lead into the cave, torch by my side as I walked through. The vague feeling of something wrong in the air like a sticky sweat. A musk in the humid atmosphere. Water trickled down the stalagmites riding up the cave. The rooms expanded and shrunk and expanded. We went around and around into deep halls, an endless expanse. After a while we lost track of back and forth. We came to crossroads. We followed wrong paths into dead ends and back tracked, marking the walls with chalk as we cleared path after path.

“We aren’t getting anywhere.” Obrick said.

“Don’t be so quick.” Sylas said.

He had found the first body. Had pointed towards it, the corpse laying on its side deep into one of the many paths. Kal turned it over. The guts fell out. A rope of them, stretched out from the wound in the corpses belly. Kal jumped. We all took note of the body and pressed forward.

“Maybe it wasn’t bullshit.” I said. “They really did have a little civil war down here, didn’t they?”

“We’ll find out.” Sylas said.

Blood smeared the walls the deeper we got in. We found more corpses diced up into pieces. After a while, there were no more bodies. Only the limbs of them on the wayside down a spiral way through the cave.

“I don’t like any of this.” I looked down to an arm faced paw down. The fingers were broken and crooked. It almost looked alive, as if the hand would spring and the fingers would align and spider-walk down the halls.

“Why are they like this? All cut up.” Obrick asked.

“Maybe it was a warning? Duvall trying to control his army through fear, perhaps?” I said.

We walked down the spiral. Our torches flickering, I lit mine twice on my way down the path. It was a steep stairway - I say stairway though there were no steps, just a road leading deep into hell. That endless dark abyss where we could hear the moans of strange creatures. I took out a blade. Sylas did too. We approached the noises, the ceiling straying further from us and our light glow shining only a few meters past us. The walls were slick and wet and I felt the sweat drip off my forehead. Nearing the floor we saw the heads. We paused. Scalps and skulls and decapitations marked the spiral down in even intervals. Grotesque faces with faceflesh cut and stretched out like curtains. Some with their eyes plucked out. We put our arms against our noses and trekked on. This was the bottom. Something laid here, at the end of the base. I waved my torch and observed the broken tents that were made all about the base of the cave. A small waterfall spilling into a pool where a bucket was tipped over. Several actually, and the ladles moved about and spun and slapped against the lip of the small font. Several fire pits tripped us as we approached the noises at the back of the camp site. Several corpses. Men shredded to pieces, some with their gonads skewered onto tent poles fashioned into spears. Men diced to pieces, the skin and fat sheared off them.

“Weapons out.” I said. Not that I had to. We were all alert and high strung.

Decorated helms rolled on the floor, the plumes at the top of the helmets spinning back and forth from their loosened slits.

We stopped at last at the end of the road. I kicked a helm towards figures out in the dark. I raised my torch and waved at them. Only three figures without any kind of cogent aptitude. The figures moaned and remained bent and crouched, huddled over something.

“Duvall.” I said. “Duvall, we’ve come for you.”

They stopped moving about, these Neanderthals. They raised their heads and turned their striated, thin bodies. Shirtless savages.

Faces stained red. Hands taking grip of organs and flaps of muscle meat. Underneath them, a body laid sprawled, a cut down its epicenter.

“Fuck. Fuck.” I raised my dagger. “What the fuck?”

The figures stood. Eyes wide open.

“Cannibals.” Sylas turned his face away. “By the Gods.”

“Duvall. What’d you do?” I asked. “Can any of you talk, hello?”

They looked at each other. Closed their eyes, stretched out their neck as if loosening a noose. They cleared their heads and stood tall. One of them neared us. Hair long, beard grown out down his neck. Small giblets and stained crusted at the ends of his hair.

“Yes, I am Duvall.” Duvall said.

“What in the hells is this?” I asked.

He stood tall and gripped the bottom of his shirt and yanked it, pulling it into his pants where he tied his trousers. A bloodied shirt, crusted at the spots where he’d spilled human on himself. Duvall walked to the side, all of us had our weapons out. He grabbed a bag and started taking out robes and boots and pants and overcoats. His medals rattling in the bag as he went through the varied clothes.

“That’s enough.” I said.

He rummaged, both hands inside the sack.

“I said that’s enough!”

He stopped, bent head and knelt over the bag. Duvall turned, haggard eyes facing us. A face covered with grayed hairs, hair long and to his shoulders. Crevices deep into his forehead.

“That desperate to stay inside, huh?” I asked. “You ate your own men.”

“And who are you, boy?” He asked.

“Virgil Darko.” I said. “Vice Captain of the fourteenth.”

“And who are you to judge me, Virgil? To judge the househead of the-”

“Of the what? What keep do you have left? What honor?” I stepped up, daggers to my side. “You’ve got nothing left. No family, even. No dream or plan. You’re just a cannibal in a cave, a savage in the dark.”

His eyes paced between the corpse and himself. Face reddened and blushed.

“I got my life. And I got my knife.” He said.

“What?”

“This is all I have to give you, you can make a tombstone out of this cave. But you won’t do it freely.”

“What in the fuck are you talking about?” I asked. “You’ve been here for a few months, so I can understand that your heads a little scrambled but you should really consider your predicament.”

“What’s there to consider?”

“The rest of your army and whatever’s left of your house.”

“Brothers’ in the veil. Father is no more. It’s like you said, I got nothing but the life and the knife.”

“Xanthus wants you.” I said. “Come be taken as a prisoner. Offer your knee, he might let you live.”

“That what you did? Convinced the rest of these cowards of the same?”

We remained quiet. Nothing moved but the water hanging at the end of the stalagmites. The turn and drop and crackle of stones falling from the walls and crashing behind us like hail. Small noises of rolling wooden pails, the crackling of kindle wood. My heart beating in and out in and out in out.

“Did you think I’d be the same type of fool?” He asked. “Begging for my freedom to a mad king waging war with the world? That even in this undignified moment, that I would crumble and become servile for your king?”

“I thought you could be reasoned with. But I should have known that the minute I saw a man’s arm in your mouth that that was beyond us.”

“Like you would know what it means to fight without conditionals. Every breath a deliberate choice and burden to continue for the cause. They knew it - when they offered themselves, they knew the stakes. They knew the price. We all do when we play this game.”

“I-” I felt dizzy, the room warping a bit. There was blood on his mouth, the scent of corpse sweet came up from behind Duvall.

“I know Xanthus will rip my head off. I know he will do it in front of his crowd and parade me around. I know he will kill my army too.”

“You don’t know that though. You just don’t. You can imagine it, but you don’t know.” I repeated and repeated. Water hit the back of my neck and I clasped the wet stain.

“I do, boy. And considering the confidence in your tone, I suppose you convinced them all what you’re trying to convince me.”

"Can't convince a fool." I said. "I can only show you that your men depend upon your forfeit." Duvall spat. He looked to the side of the room.

“The whole east is damned. Xanthus will take it. Change it, kill the culture. Kill the men and women and replace them with his maggot-worm people. It’s already begun, even in you. Tainted by the capital, you are.” Duvall gripped his blade. “The city was always his. I just wanted to hold onto it a bit more, pretend. You know…pretend…”

His arms went to rest on his sides. His head bent down. I wiped the wetness from my neck and eased my shoulders. A stupid mistake.

The minute the tension in my heels eased, he slipped into a sprint. Rushing at me. Bloody faced. Bloody palmed, screaming mad. The draft of death upon him, in his breath as we clashed. His sword stuck in between my knives.

“I’ll grab the rear.” Sylas rushed past me. He jumped upon one of the two men. Kal and Obrick came upon me.

“I’ve got him.” I said. “Go get the other one.”

I kicked Duvall away. He rolled and ran into the dark of the cave, back to his devoured corpse.

“Let me fight him alone. Let me give him that final dignity.” I said. “He and I both want it.”

Obrick looked to me. His eye flinched but he nodded his head. I turned to that dark, sheathing one blade and picking up my knife. The dark end of the room funneling into a single vein in the wall. A road leading to lurked darkness, the gaping maw where the mad laugh of Duvall escaped from.