We hadn’t won the battle of course, that would’ve been too easy. What I’d fought in was just one section of a much larger beast. When I found that out, when it truly dawned on me just how small a part of the greater whole I’d been seeing, it finally let me realise how great the true scale of modern war was. Tens of thousands of bodies, not just thousands. Entire towns worth of people all moving with the sole intent of killing each other. For any other animal this would have been a migratory event.

  For us and the orcs, it was a disagreement. And it wasn’t over yet.

  “Back!” Morlo roared, his voice carrying over the great battle-sounds so easily and loudly that I knew its volume must have been augmented through magic, “back to the other ranks! Hurry! Before the orcs come back!”

  Well that last part definitely lit a fire under our arses, and all of us were in an instant hurry once it left his mouth. There’s really no organised way to move quickly when you number in the hundreds, as our broken and badly-beaten formation certainly did, but if nothing else enthusiasm—or rather, fear—did the work that strict orderliness might otherwise have managed. We crossed the field fast.

  So did the orcs. They didn’t quite catch us, fortunately, but it was certainly a nearer thing than I’d have liked, and it meant we were all rather scattered once we reached the nearest other body of fighting men.

  Fortunately, things were going a bit less disastrously here.

  This is where I’ll have to step back from my past self for a moment and give you a wider picture of the battle, because to be quite frank the idiotic Kyvaine of yesterday didn’t have the slightest clue what was really going on, and reading things purely on the basis of what he experienced would leave you just as confused.

  Basically, we were fucked. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise for those of you at all familiar with matters of the military. Our cannons were a good equaliser—one the orcs were making good ground on encircling and destroying, I’d note—but the sheer numbers gap was too much. Where our shitty conscripts were convinced to stay, they did well in delaying actions and nothing more. Those were some of our more favourable interactions too.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, we were fucked. There’s only so many options you have against an opposing army composed more or less exclusively of six-foot bodybuilders with more combat experience than the majority of your own men. Particularly when half your soldiers think the enemy is more monster than person, and expects to be torn apart with witchcraft or demonic powers.

  Everywhere you looked in this battle, people were terrified, crumbling, losing. Except in three places.

  There was Morlo’s section, a roaming cloud of death where orcs fell down or were sent flying through the air and burst apart wherever the Thaumaturge turned his arcane powers. There was my section, which had men fighting with an embarrassing amount of spine considering they were led by history’s greatest fraud. Now, you might be asking about the third section—might be wondering about Gruin.

  Let me fucking tell you about Gruin.

  Gruin was insane. Or, to put it another way, Grynkori brains are built differently than human brains, and the behaviour that is normal, necessary and constructive in their society makes you fucking insane in ours. He was a menace on that battlefield who, according to his own account, racked up a total of forty-two kills. This miffed me, as by my own estimate I only managed forty-one—most of those coming from a stray cannonball that I took credit for the effects of.

  Now Gruin wasn’t going out of his way to inspire anyone, he really did just want to kill orcs. And he was having the time of his life in doing it. This, in the end, was what made him inspirational, because as far as all the humans around him could tell he was completely fearless, completely indestructible and racking up enough kills to fill up about three separate mass graves. Wherever his hammer moved, lives ended. Plates of iron caved in, ribcages with them, bones splintered, blood exploded out, teeth went flying like bullets and bodies were thrown down like ragdolls. Each hammer-strike was like a beating of some great war drum, spurring everyone around Gruin into either fear or courage. The reaction depended very much on which side they fought for.

  Of those three petty victories, only Morlo really came close to affecting the overall tide of our battle. That was less because of some crucial location or timing, and more just him being equivalent to a handful of cannons with the ability to move around and change his angle of fire as needed.

  My own served to delay a somewhat significant advance, but did nothing beyond that which affected the wider tide of battle. Gruin’s, though the most impressive in its own way, served to do nothing but delay a trio of enemy regiments from overrunning a single one of ours. His forty-two kills were a legendary figure for any one warrior, but amounted to no more than a hundredth of the forces washing over his hill. He ended up being carried away by the men on his own side after growing too wounded to either keep fighting or resist extrication.

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  As I heard it, he was swearing at them for cowardice even as they saved his life.

  There was heavy fighting and similar heroics all over the place, but none of it made much difference in the grand scheme of things. It isn’t the side with the bravest men who wins a fight, it’s the one whose men are best at killing and led by the smallest idiot. On that day, that was our enemy.

  If nothing else, we were lucky enough to lose intact enough that an ordered retreat was possible, and having done enough damage to keep us from just being run down and torn up by the remaining bulk of our enemies’ forces. As for my role in this, well, you won’t be surprised to learn I was stuck right in with the fleeing men, running as fast as any of them.

  By the time our army had reassembled itself into something more akin to an organised fighting body than a miles-long trail of panicking cowards, the orcs were well out of sight behind us. As was the battleground, as were the damned cannons. We’d lost that day about as thoroughly as any force had ever lost anything.

  Which Morlo took rather more harshly than me.

  “Stupid fucks,” the Thaumaturge snapped, “stupid, male bastards ruining everything just so they can wank themselves off to the damned after-battle reports!”

  His choice of insult struck me as slightly odd, but I was far more concerned seeing the old man march around with fingertips twitching. I’d seen those fingers conjure in an artillery impact every few seconds.

  “What happens now?” I asked, already feeling the mid-fight frenzy of explosive motion and speed turn into the dull ache that always followed. My joints had been pushed to their limit, muscle strained past it, whole body rebelling now that rebellion wouldn’t get it killed. I didn’t think I had another battle in me, not now.

  Fortunately, Morlo seemed to agree.

  “I’ll have to have a chat with that idiot general,” he grunted, “but…retreat to Arvharest seems like our only hope. Maybe the walls there can still turn this around.”

  Maybe? I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  “How can they not?” I snapped. “I’ve seen those cannons, and…” I trailed off at the look on his face.

  “Lad, most of our forces are gone. Some dead, some wounded, but most have just fucked off and deserted. We’re fighting against thrice the numerical disadvantage we were before. Those walls are the only reason we have the slightest hope at all.”

  I actually started crying, but only once I was out of sight. Had to keep up appearances of course.

  Reaching Arvharest was one of the scarier things I’ve ever done, because the orcs were hounding us every step of the way. If we were run down and forced into another fight it would be the end of us.

  Fortunately, the enemy didn’t appear too eager to give chase. That struck me as odd, at the time, but I didn’t think much of it. Can you guess how wise a mindset this turned out to be later on? Don’t bother, you’ll find out.

  Something about fighting just drains the thoughts out of you. It’s a nasty habit that I’d work hard to get over in later years, believe me when I say that mental lethargy has killed far more men in front of me than slowness or weakness. Granted, either of those would’ve been a big enough problem at that point. Men who fell behind were left behind, that’s how desperate our retreat was, and finally returning to Arvharest felt like I was staring at the gates of heaven.

  If we’d been expecting a warm welcome inside, we would have been disappointed. Apparently there’s no love for a defeated army, and little understanding as to how that defeat happened.

  In fairness, it was a completely avoidable one on this occasion. But the peasants hurling abuse at us hardly knew that, now, did they? Didn’t seem quite fair to me at the time. These days I care less about the plight of the downtrodden soldier, most of them are cunts and almost all of them are drooling morons. Back then, of course, I had altogether more pressing concerns.

  Could I slip out of the city before those orcs showed up and burned it down?

  As it happened, no. Morlo prevented me from even having the chance to try.

  “We’re going to fight this battle, and I’m not going to stop killing people until we win.” The Thaumaturge said it all with such confident matter-of-factness that I was almost, very briefly, convinced that I wasn’t going to die. But of course, reality didn’t give up its grip that easily.

  I was left to stew in my fear for a day before Arvharest caught sight of the orcs again, and this time it was a full army of them. Or most of it, at least. I mustered up the courage to view our enemies from a wall, which gave me a clear sight of them and let me soak up their numbers.

  At a glance, I didn’t see any reduction from the hard day of fighting when last we’d met. There were definitely losses, but with so many orcs beating their shields and posturing in one great mass those losses were impossible to see. A fraction of a fraction, taken out of ten thousands. It left ten thousands.

  Those walls were feeling a good deal smaller under my feet as I stared down the mountain of meat waiting to storm them, watched those orcs move and chant just beyond the range of cannon fire. Heard a few over-eager or under-brave idiots fire off shots anyway, waste the iron and powder on denting dirt a thousand paces shy of our enemy’s front rows.

  Such little things, were cannons, when seen over distances like that. I decided to take my leave of the wall before I could witness any more perspective and have my dwindling confidence in surviving the week further reduced. By the mass of other people filing down from them, I wasn’t alone in that sentiment.

  Vara was waiting back at the rooms, looking sheet-white and just staring at me as I entered.

  “Are we going to die?” she asked, throwing the question right at me, “Morlo won’t give me a straight answer?”

  What would an epic hero say?

  “Yes,” I surprised myself by answering. It seemed I’d just run out of stamina for lies.

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