The funeral bordered on insubstantial. Burying bodies in the desert never works. In the best scenario, the corpse is mu mmified until scavengers find it decades later. As Anubi noted to my pupil, there are almost no microorganisms where the sun doesn’t shine. Nothing is capable of decomposing the body, so it just stays there. Thus, it must be burned.

Even ordering the hundreds of thralls to scrounge up every bit of wood and dry rag that could be found hardly piled up enough to create one man. Still, Lucius had a wealth of human resources to throw at the problem, and the mine had salvageable wood. While the common Giordanan men could only be piled up like cordwood in one of the abandoned mine shafts, with a solemn promise to return with sufficient oil to cremate them, the commander was given proper honors. Laid across a hundred shafts of wood, mostly clubs and spears taken from the enemy, Lucius lit the pyre in silence.

With it burning behind him, he turned to the weary men who had fought beside Nikolai Tolzi. “I am not a priest, nor was I his com mander. I have little right to speak at this moment. I know no rites, no proper prayers. If we were in civilized lands, I would call in a dozen of the priestly class and put them all to work honoring this man as well as those that fell today. We are in a foreign land however. Their ways are simpler than ours.”

Many of the men sneered. In the distance and not even under the courtesy of darkness, the thralls feasted. They ate muscles and picked at bones. Many fornicated in the blood, reveling in the accumulated life while others laughed and sang with no tunes and melodies like children unwrapping holiday presents.

“May I?” Golden said as he strolled up beside Lucius.

The boy nodded, giving way before he thought better of it and added, “He will be avenged. It’s good that those craven shits went north. We can smash them against the sea.”

The crowd threw up their fists and shouted in support while Golden politely made some statements of his qualifications. He claimed to be ordained as a priest of Shepherd, which he technically was. Using soft words, he drew the men in closer to the fire. None of them knew him, so he did not rely on appealing to Nikolai’s memory. The former angel sang. In somber and ancient melodies, he sang of tiresome wars and welcome homes. He sang of longing for family and marching home. The tune was familiar to all present, even if they didn’t know the words themselves.

It was a song of dying and he soon had the whole crowd fighting back tears.

Lucius listened to it from a short distance, sitting upon the remnants of the dropped ley cannon. He brooded until one of the thralls walked up to him and fastened his gaze to him.

There was light in his eyes.

“Leader,” the man said.

“Eat well?” Lucius asked.

“What are they doing?” the man asked, gesturing to the funeral.

Lucius scanned the battlefield, seeing dozens of other wastelanders with new postures to the way they wandered the carnage. “Those men,” he said with a gesture to the Giordanans, “are honoring a hero who died fighting. You’ll learn soon enough it’s normal. It’s the proper way to behave.”

“It’s wasteful.”

Lucius stood up. He was a few inches shorter than the pale-skinned desert dweller. He was stockier though, by virtue of years of tutelage at least in part under Nikolai. The northman had helped beat my pupil’s body into a warrior’s shape and more often than not had been the one to craft our feasts upon the road. When he punched the uplifted savage, he struck hard enough to crack the man’s jaw and his own knuckles.

The man flew back, tumbling across sand and rock. The blow didn’t kill him. The affliction was almost entirely surprise, until he stood back up and tried to speak. Nothing but a wet slur came out of his mouth as he tried to understand.

“There are plenty of cultures to the north, where the sun shines,” Lucius said, shaking his hand out as his stigmata sealed the fractures in his bones. “Some people would define them as two types, cultures of honor and more civilized places, or so they claim. Where law holds hands back from violence. Nikolai Tolzi came from Skaldheim. Those men there came from Giordana. North and south respectively, and yet very, very similar. Both live in almost inhospitable lands. Neither really relies on peacekeepers. They don’t run to the law for help settling disputes. They do it themselves. Reputation is paramount. An insult to reputation is an attack on that person. They respond to attacks as such. It wouldn't be strange for a comment like that to get you gutted and left for dogs to rip apart. Do you understand?”

The man nodded, head down but eyes on Lucius.

“What’s your name?”

The man shook his head.

“What does that mean? You don’t have one?”

He nodded.

“What did your parents call you?” Lucius asked, but all he got was sullen silence. “You people don’t have names then, do you? Did Anubi name those that awoke?”

The man nodded.

Lucius grunted. “How many of you are there?” When the man meekly started scanning the group, Lucius said, “Go find out how many can hold a conversation now and report back to me. I want all of you people, intelligent or not, in line and ready to march faster than the Giordanans. Understood?”

The activity of the wastelanders disturbed the funeral procession merely by proximity. A few more speeches were made but people began to lose interest when the pyre was lit. Not anyone front and center, but those with tasks they had been ignoring. They side-eyed the foreigners and retreated to the protection of their own kin.

Soon though, sixty-two confused folk of the desert had lined up in batches of ten, forming a small contingent along the trampled road that Primarus had left in his retreat. Lucius paced in front of them as he took count, then demanded of them, “How strong are your memories? Do you remember the city?”

Those in front shifted from foot to foot and one said, “I do.” Most others nodded agreement.

“So you remember your god? Anubi?” Again, they nodded. “Did he give you names before you left? I didn’t exactly have the pleasure of speaking with many of you.”

The man Lucius had struck shook his head. “No, he only gave names to those of us… like us.”

Lucius scowled, his mind hazy with anger but he knew better than to take it out on subordinates needlessly. The thought of coming up with so many names seemed more monumental than marching a hundred miles though. Naming a newborn, and these people certainly could be compared to newborns, was the task of parents.

Which made him begin to reflect on the fact that soon, he would be a father. Aisha was still to the north, waiting for him with full confidence that he would be there for her.

Standing before a newborn army, at least the seed of one, he realized just how many reasons he had to charge north. As per Anubi’s and Luigi’s requests though, he knew he should take all of them with him. They would be devout warriors if nothing else.

Before he sidetracked himself imagining what he’d have to do to properly outfit them, to make them true warriors of Vassermark, he made a decision. “Listen up, proper people have two names at the least. Normally, that would be a family name and a given name, but I imagine most of you have no idea who begat you. And even if you do, they didn’t do a good job raising you. What really raised you up was the blood of the fallen. This battlefield was your place of birth. From here out, your family name will be this, Leyfield. As for a given name, you’ll have to earn that.”

The warriors stirred and whispered to one another. They repeated the name, each giving it a slightly different inflection as they turned it around in their mouths and committed it to their souls.

The first Leyfield asked, “What do you mean by earn?”

Lucius pointed to the north. “After we kill those brigands, we’ll be going to the lands in the north, where the sun rises and sets. Once there, every one of you and those still picking over bones will have ample opportunity to take a name for yourselves. You see that funeral? That man was a good man. A respect man and a hero. His name was Nikolai Tolzi. His name will be remembered though his body is ash. Not everyone who dies in war will be remembered like that, no matter what the people in charge say…”

He centered himself before the cadre of warriors and swept his gaze across them. “If you want a given name for yourself, you’ll have to take it in single combat from an enemy. Find them in the battlefield, learn their name, then kill them. That is how you will earn your names. If you follow me, I’ll make that happen.”