Chapter 1

If I could choose to forget just one thing from today, it would have to be this gods-awful smell. When the other levies talked about the horrors of war and what sort of hell we were throwing ourselves into, no one ever mentioned this stench. If I knew about this, I might’ve stayed on the farm. Probably not, but I might’ve.

How long have I been out? What is this smell? My head is killing me. The left side of my face hurts badly and I think it’s swollen. I open my eyes and I see nothing. I haven’t gone blind have I? Why do my legs feel so heavy? The back of my head is throbbing. It feels like someone took an axe and tried splitting my skull in half. What happened to me? I try to sit up but I can’t. Something on top of me moves away from my struggling just a bit letting a tiny ray of reddish light shine through the crack. It looks like it’s dark out now or the sun might’ve just set. At least I can see a bit more now. Holy fuck that’s Thomas’s face. That’s Thomas’s very dead face, right in front of me. I grit my teeth as hard as I can, suffocating the scream in my mouth. This doesn’t stop me from pissing myself though. I cover my mouth with my left hand as well. Dear gods my hand reeks.

Dozens of thoughts rush through my mind but the only one that gets through is a memory of Thomas squatting down beside me and patting my back as I vomited from the marching a few days ago. The tears start and I can’t stop them. I can feel my chin quivering from my left hand but I dare not make a sound. I look into Thomas’s lifeless eyes and my eyes are drawn to the bloody gash across his neck. The poor man. Although, his lifeless eyes and the vacant look on his face look somehow peaceful. No more pain, no more suffering, just serenity. The hell am I thinking?

My line of thought is broken when thudding sounds come from afar. They’re getting closer and I think I know what’s making those rhythmic thuds. The realization sends shivers down my spine and the tears start again. When did they stop? The thudding keeps getting louder until I hear someone shouting, “Back to the camp! Leave the bodies! The moon is…” The horseman’s voice trails off as he rides his horse past where I’m hiding. Following the shouting, I can hear people all around me cursing and then quickly leaving as well. I hold my breath. I didn’t realize there were this many people this close to me. If I didn’t stop myself from screaming… my whole body starts shivering.

I don’t know how long I should wait. I don’t hear anything around me anymore and the last noise I heard was over five minutes ago. I want to move. I want to get away from all these bodies. I want to get away from this stink. But every time I start to move, my body freezes and I picture a soldier standing next to this pile of bodies, just waiting for me to come out with a sword in hand. It takes me a few minutes to fight off my own imaginations, but I eventually manage to turn myself over onto my stomach and start crawling out. It’s difficult. There’s a body directly on top of me and it moves every time I move, mortifying me. When I finally manage to crawl out from the pile of bodies, I stay on the ground, looking around. I’m lying directly in the dirt right now but there’s sparse grass all around me. It’s actually much brighter than I expected. There are trees in the distance, surrounding this small clearing. Even though the sky is already dark, I can see pretty clearly all around. Must be the torches.

There’s a lit torch on the ground in front of me. It’s starting to burn the grass around it, but the fire hasn’t spread far yet. It must have been dropped by one of the soldiers who left. I grab the torch and I slowly get on my knees, frantically looking around for any sign of the soldiers. I think it’s safe. I hope it’s safe. I get on my feet and I look at the pile of bodies where I crawled out from. All the bodies are piled on top of each other, creating a rather gruesome mound in the middle of the clearing. Every corpse is dressed in simple linens, with only a few being able to afford leather boots. There are so many faces I can recognize.

We weren’t soldiers. I realize that now. Even if we called ourselves soldiers and told ourselves we’d change our fates using the blades in our hands, we were just deluding ourselves. Just farmers playing make believe. Lord Aldore and his flowery words couldn’t change us into soldiers. Am I a slave even in death? Dark feelings flood my mind as I notice more corpse mounds scattered across the field. How many died here today? Many of them were fathers. Some of them were brothers. All of them were sons. Leaving the farm was a mistake.

Looking at the ground, I see numerous unlit torches beside my mound. Shivers go down my spine as I realize how close I was to being burned alive. I can feel my legs shaking but I don’t have the time for this. Next to the corpse mound is a small pile of weapons. Well, our weapons to be exact. Most of them are farmers’ tools like hoes, hand scythes, and pitchforks. I can even see a shovel in there. Who brought that? I shouldn’t be judging since I stole Augustine’s kitchen knife and brought it here. Picking up a woodcutter’s axe, I quickly put it back down realizing I’m overestimating my own strength. I wasn’t the weakest among the levies, but I’m definitely not strong enough for this axe. I pick up a small hand axe and swing it through the air a few times. The wooden handle feels comfortable in my hand and the iron axehead doesn’t look too worn either. This will do. I wonder if Lord Aldore died. If he did, is his body around here somewhere? His sword would be a blessing for me even if it’s a bit heavy. What else do I need?

May the gods forgive me for what I am about to do. I find one of the bodies in the mound wearing leather boots and quickly undo the laces before plucking them off of his feet. I’m so sorry. The current linen wraps covering my feet are not going to cut it moving forward. The boots are much too big for my feet and are covered in blood and other dark liquids but I can’t afford to be picky here. Actually, what are these black splotches? Giving them a whiff I instantly vomit stomach bile. I haven’t had food in a while it seems. The burning sensation in my throat reminds me that some things are better left unknown. However, this discovery lets me know that I’m currently covered in blood and shit. My shirt, my pants, and even my hair. I suppose I was at the bottom of the corpse mound. If I lost my sense of smell for the rest of my life right this moment, I’d be alright with it. But why is there so much… Ah, I remember. Some of the levies tasked with digging and cleaning the latrine pit were complaining about the smell and then someone mentioned you’d shit yourself when you died and it’d be much worse than cleaning the latrines which sparked an hour long argument among the boys regarding shit. Good times.

My clothes are absolutely filthy but I don’t think there’s going to be a better option for me. It looks like the majority of the bodies in the mounds were killed by a slash or stab to the body, ruining the clothes. I want to leave but where should I even go? Wait a second. I think I remember what happened now.

It was during the afternoon and we were marching east away from Vilnau toward one of the forested regions on the eastern coast of the peninsula. I was in the middle of the column when I heards screams. Everyone around me stopped moving and quickly became a giant, confused mess. I bumped into the person in front of me while the person behind me knocked me over. Thank the gods Alain was right next to me and pulled me back to my feet. Right as I was about to thank him, one of Lord Aldore’s attendants, I think it was Sir Serra, rode by us on his horse screaming, “Enemy attack on the left! Group up and fight together! Show those Ribierian bastards your courage!” If we weren’t panicking before, we were panicking now. An enemy attack? Here? How in the thousand hells did Ribieria manage to get soldiers on our peninsula? We’re supposed to be in the complete opposite direction of the warfront. I wasn’t the only one losing my mind.

Every person around me tensed up when they heard Sir Serra’s words and a lot of them, me included, started thinking about running away. Unfortunately for the levies on the left side of the column, they didn’t have a choice. Ribierian soldiers swarmed out of the forest on our left and started slaughtering everyone in front of them. That’s right, slaughtering. This wasn’t a fight. There weren’t even that many soldiers rushing toward us and we probably outnumbered them twice over. But they immediately showed us how we were different. They were much better equipped than us, all of them were covered in leather armor and some even had leather helmets, all of them were wielding iron swords or spears and some of them even had wooden shields. However, the difference between us wasn’t just in our equipment, I think it was a difference in mindset. Like a natural difference between a hunter and its prey. In this situation, we were nothing more than livestock to them.

The bastards unlucky enough to be stuck at the forefront of the attack were quickly put down by the enemy’s weapons. We had about 150 levies when we left Vilnau and within the first five minutes of the attack, we probably lost more than 10 men. Those soldiers taught me a lesson I won’t forget: soldiers don’t use farming hoes. We were just farmers playing soldiers. When everyone saw the overwhelming difference, we stopped playing soldiers as well. We went back to being powerless, scared farmers. Alain shook my shoulder and woke me up from my despair. “We need to leave. Get back to the rocks where we had breakfast this morning.” Before I could respond, he already ran off.

I’m not one to ignore good advice. Right after he left, I turned around and started running too. The rocks he was talking about were these huge stone boulders scattered around a small clearing that all of our friends chose as a spot to eat our wheat gruel. It was back where we began our march this morning. Before I could get too far however, a Ribierian soldier tackled another levy in front of me, pinning him to the ground.

The soldier and the levy were grappling with each other, trying their hardest to prevent the other from using their weapons. A small group of levies, me included, stopped running to help. Right, help. We were afraid, we wanted to help but no one wanted to get involved and become the next target. We all looked at each other, having what seemed like full on discussions with our eyes. If you hit him first, I’ll back you up and start hitting him too. No, you first, you have an axe, I have a hoe. Hurry up and save him, he’s going to die and it’ll be your fault. Why does it have to be me? You do it. I stood there, merely a few feet away holding Augustine’s kitchen knife, trembling like a newborn calf. I despised myself at that moment. Why would I run away from Augustine’s farm if I was just going to stay a coward for the rest of my life. I should have just stayed and let him keep hitting me. At least I’d still have a roof over my head, some straw to sleep on, and his leftovers to keep myself fed. But when I thought back to my dreams, I knew I would never be satisfied with being a slave my whole life.

What ultimately did it was seeing the levy’s face. It was a kid, just like me. We talked a few times and he mentioned how his mother was sick and he answered the recruitment drive in Vilnau because that was the only way he could earn enough to pay for her treatment. Or at least that’s the story I made up for him in my mind. We did talk a few times but it was always about girls. The kid’s 15 winters old and all he can think about is tits and ass, he’s a mess. But he’s a mess I know.

Call it a moment of bravery for my sake. It was just a moment where I shut off my brain and built up enough stress and anxiety that I lost my mind for just a moment. But what a glorious moment it was. Running forward, I stabbed Augustine’s kitchen knife at the back of the soldier’s neck, right in between what his leather hat covered and what his leather vest covered, and I missed. Can’t really blame myself on this one. I’ve never used a weapon on another person before. Also, it was a kitchen knife. Though I did miss, the knife still pierced the back left side of the soldier’s neck and borrowing that momentum, I kept pushing the knife forward until the tip ripped itself out of his throat, the sensation from my hands feeling familiar. Blood burst out of his neck and for a moment, I felt like a hero. I did this. I saved this kid and he’s going to survive and earn enough money to save his mother. Then that moment was gone. I probably, definitely, should have made sure the soldier was dead before celebrating. Also, I’ve never seen blood spurt out like that from a person before and overestimated how much blood actually came out. I also didn’t notice the shield strapped onto his left arm. The next moment, the soldier got off the levy and slammed into my face with his shield. I collapsed onto the ground, holding the left side of my face, tears welling up in my eyes. Before I could get back up, I felt an intense pain in the back of my head and that’s all I can remember.

Holy hells I was lucky to survive that. Where was that exactly? It’s a bit difficult to tell since there’s a drastic difference between this clearing in the day and night but all of that should have happened right over… there. Right in between two small corpse mounds next to a tree. I see a body there. It’s different from all the other bodies because it’s covered in leather. Excitement wells up in my heart and I run over to what I believe is the dead soldier. Please let there be a sword here, please. I check around the body carefully and to my disappointment, the sword is gone. If they had the time to pile up the bodies in preparation to burn them and to also pile up our weapons, they must have had the time to recover their own weapons. I wonder if he has anything else on him.

Flipping over the body, I’m astonished to see a huge gaping gash on the left side of this corpse’s neck. Oh, this is him. This is the guy. I knew there was no way he was going to survive such an awful injury. Feeling an odd and possibly misplaced sense of accomplishment, I notice the shield still strapped to the body’s left arm. Not a sword, but good enough. It looks like a simple round wooden shield with metal plating covering the shield’s edge all around the shield. In the center of the shield, there’s a piece of metal protruding out. I wonder what that’s for. The back of the shield has one leather strap and a metal handle following the strap for a better grip I suppose. There’s a pretty sizable crack near the bottom side of the shield that extends all the way towards the center. This is probably the reason why the other soldiers ignored collecting it. I’m able to shimmy the shield’s strap off the body’s arm and I hold the shield by its handle. It’s a little difficult because I’m trying to hold the torch and the shield with one hand. I’m also going to need all his leather armor. He’s much bigger than me and I doubt I’ll fit into the armor but it’s still better than what I’m wearing.

I prop up the body into a sitting position and right as I’m about to start taking off the leather vest, the body moves.