War was nothing like I had imagined.

  Before I ever took the field, I had pictured glorious charges, duels between great warriors, the clash of steel ringing out like a song of legends. I had imagined the poetry of battle, the honor, the valor, the fierce brotherhood of warriors standing together.

  What I had not imagined was standing in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield, watching our own warlord tear through the enemy ranks like an angry bear with a greatsword, while I tried not to vomit into my helmet.

  Because Korrak the Red Blade—our Korrak, the man I was supposed to follow into battle—was not a man at all.

  He was a force of nature.

  And war, as it turned out, was not poetry.

  It was absolute carnage.

  The battlefield was a screaming, chaotic mess of blood, steel, and men making noises no man should ever make. The charge had been swift, our shield wall had held, and now it had broken down into what our older warriors called the real part of the fight—where formations no longer mattered, and it was just a storm of killing.

  We had the advantage.

  But the enemy had numbers.

  They had pressed hard, pushing us back step by step. I had just recovered from my third near-death experience when I heard it.

  A deep, bellowing roar.

  It wasn’t a battle cry.

  It wasn’t words.

  It was just a sound.

  One that made the enemy hesitate.

  And then, through the bodies, through the blur of swinging weapons, Korrak arrived.

  I had heard the stories.

  Everyone had.

  Some said he had once fought an entire company alone and won.

  Some said he had beheaded a man with his bare hands.

  Some said he could kill five men before the first one even hit the ground.

  I had assumed these were exaggerations.

  They were not.

  I had never seen a fully armored man physically lifted off the ground by another man’s swing before.

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  But that was the first thing Korrak did when he entered the fight.

  The poor bastard had his axe raised, was ready to strike, and then Korrak’s greatsword caught him across the midsection and sent him flying backwards into two of his comrades like a thrown log.

  Korrak didn’t stop moving.

  Another enemy came at him with a spear.

  Korrak sidestepped, grabbed the shaft, and just… kept walking, dragging the man behind him like a farmer pulling an unruly calf by a rope.

  When the man refused to let go, Korrak simply swung the spear—man and all—into another fighter hard enough to send both of them sprawling into the mud.

  Then he stomped one of their heads into the ground before moving on.

  I almost dropped my sword.

  The fight changed after that.

  The enemy, who had been pressing forward so aggressively before, suddenly weren’t so sure anymore.

  And Korrak?

  Korrak waded into them like a man harvesting wheat.

  I had seen men fight before.

  I had even seen great warriors, soldiers with flawless technique, well-trained and disciplined.

  This was not that.

  This was destruction.

  A sword swing that took off an arm and a shield in one blow.

  A backhanded strike that shattered a helmet like it was made of clay.

  One man had the audacity to try and stab him in the back.

  Korrak, without even looking, spun and grabbed the poor fool by the throat, lifted him over his head, and physically threw him at the next man running toward him.

  The sound they made when they hit the ground together was not encouraging.

  At some point, I realized I had completely stopped fighting.

  I was just watching.

  I wasn’t alone.

  Several of my fellow warriors—**men who were supposed to be hardened killers—**had also paused mid-battle to watch our warlord absolutely ruin every man within ten feet of him.

  At one point, one of our shield-bearers nudged me with his elbow and just muttered, "Hells, he’s in a good mood today."

  A good mood.

  I swallowed hard.

  What did he look like when he was in a bad mood?

  The enemy had lost their will to fight.

  That much was obvious.

  What had started as a battle was now a full retreat.

  Not a tactical retreat.

  Not a fallback to regroup.

  Just pure, desperate, every-man-for-himself panic.

  I saw one man throw down his sword and run straight into the woods, not even looking back.

  Another dropped his weapon, lay down on the ground, and started pretending to be dead before he was even wounded.

  And Korrak?

  Korrak wasn’t even chasing them.

  He wasn’t roaring in triumph.

  He wasn’t barking orders.

  He just watched them run, as if this was simply how battles were supposed to end.

  When it was over—when the last of the enemy had either fled or died—the battlefield fell into a strange silence.

  I stood there, gripping my sword, trying to process what I had just seen.

  Korrak was already cleaning his blade on the tunic of a fallen enemy, completely ignoring the fact that he was drenched in blood.

  At some point, one of the older warriors approached him, hesitant, as if unsure whether to speak.

  "Victory is ours," he said, carefully.

  Korrak grunted.

  That was it.

  That was all he said.

  Then he turned and walked away, presumably to go find something to eat, completely unfazed by the absolute carnage he had just inflicted.

  I stared after him for a long time.

  Then I turned to the older shield-bearer beside me, who had clearly seen this before and was completely unfazed.

  "Is he always like this?" I asked.

  The older warrior snorted, wiping blood off his shield.

  "Boy," he muttered, "you should’ve seen him ten years ago."

  I swallowed hard.

  And, for the first time, wondered if I should have just been a fisherman instead.

  Korrak sees your admiration.

  And he hates it.

  He is not a hero. Not a legend. Not some specter that walks between myth and reality, meant to be whispered about in awe. He does not care for the songs, the stories, the drunken retellings of his deeds that twist and swell with each passing tongue.

  If you had stood before him, clutching your reverence like a fool clutching a dull blade, he would have only stared. And then he would have walked past you.

  Because to Korrak, it was never about glory.

  It was about the hunt.

  And if he still lives, it is only because there is always another chase.