The days bled into one another, consumed by the rhythmic labor of a host preparing for the battle to come. Scouts were flung out in every direction, their horses lathered and gasping as they watched for any sign of the Oizenian host splitting to catch them in a pincer against the riverbanks.

Basil would have liked to say they didn’t have the number but reality told a different tale.

He had sat in his father’s councils and heard the tally: the Oizenians sported five thousand men, and some more. They held a three-to-one advantage in the saddle, boasting a forest of lances that could trampling them into the silt. The Habadian and Ezvanian princes might have fled the field, but they had left their steel behind to bolster Sorza’s ranks as they went to the door.

As things stood, they were outnumbered in spears and overwhelmed in horse. To give battle on a plain like this felt like madness; to do so with their backs to a deep, fast-moving river was a suicide pact.

His father had truly meant for this to be their stand.Possible last one.

He hadn’t believed it until the bridge went up in flames. The wood had crackled and hissed as it collapsed into the Lampianis, cutting off the only path of retreat they might have had. There was only one way out now, and it lay through the heart of the enemy.

They had spent the days hammering that reality into the minds of the levies. His father didn’t use speeches; he used the river. Between rounds of work, his father would casually select twenty men from every hundred, bind them with hempen rope, and cast them into the current. Most, hailing from mountain villages or dry plains, went under instantly, their eyes wide with the terror of drowning. Only when the remaining eighty were white-faced and trembling would Alpheo have the gasping men hauled back to shore.

"A man will fight like a beast when he is caged like one," Alpheo had remarked to the Lord of Epirietoli. "Cut away their path back, and the only direction left is forward. Death shall be our spurns, madness our sword." That apparently had pleased the man, for he had made an hum of agreement.

Basil knew his father was no fool.

This wasn’t just a psychological ploy; it was the foundation of the entire engagement. In every battle before this, Alpheo had commanded the better steel, his Legions standing firm where lesser men broke. Now, the math had turned cruel. Of the four thousand who had marched, only twenty-eight hundred remained after the butchery at the Bastion, as a glorious defence it was, it had been costly. Even with the thousand Kakunian rebels in tow, they were a patchwork host.

The third above all had received the worst.

Of the 250 a legion would sport, unwounded only 105 remained, with another 10 to recuperate somehow before battle.

That had been the result of all the sallies they had led between the walls,being the most veteran unit int here, they had been used as the sponge to close every gap they had between units, and yet each time they did and succesfully repelled advances, they also took the blunt of the river for that.

What they had at hand was the result of that abuse.

The Legions could not be the sword this time. They had to be the shield, the iron linchpin that held the center while the rest of the army struggled to breathe. They would offer the victory, but they would not be the ones to grasp it. It was a first for his father, a gamble that required every man to be more than he was.

Seeking to settle the restless energy in his own limbs, Basil left the command tent and began to walk through the camp.

The atmosphere had shifted. The idle talk of loot and home had died away, replaced by the grim, mechanical sounds of war.

Words had gone around and the Oizenian host had been sighted along the road east of them.

Soon the war’s day was to come.And with it the end.

He passed groups of men sitting in silence, honing their spearheads with whetstones until the edges gleamed like silver in the twilight of a full moon. The scent of the emerald grass was pleasant and thick, mingling with the heavy damp smell of the churned earth of their labor.

The common soldiers huddled in the open, while the knights had raised their peaked tents. Further back, the pavilions of the lords rose like silken houses. Even now, with the shadow of Oizen looming, Basil couldn’t help but gape at the sheer scale of the host his father commanded. There was a dark, intoxicating pride in knowing his father’s voice could summon such a forest of steel.

True, the Oizenians may have had more, but they were dealing with his father.

Still, the camp was certainly not a place of comfort. A gibbet had been erected in the center of the road, its crossbeam heavy with a body that swung and swayed in the breeze.

A cloud of ravens took flight at Basil’s approach, their wings beating as they left behind a face half-pecked into a red ruin. A board hung around the corpse’s neck, the word Deserter chiseled into the wood.

Basil stared at the dead man’s boots, wondering if he were Kakunian or Herculean. He was likely not of the Yarzat mainland; the units from the home provinces remained as fresh and iron-willed as the day they were born.

"Our young princeling should get used to the sight of death," a voice rasped "It is no kindness, I assure you, for a prince to have a slow hand when dealing it out. Ruthlessness is for the state naught but mercy.

The man was a deserter; have no pity for him, for he had none for his brothers. Had he not turned tail at night to scamper off into the countryside like a common thief, he would not be hanging there for the crows to feast upon."

"I see you’ve stopped your sniffing, Ser," Basil muttered, not bothering to hide his distate for the man "Perhaps you would take that as your cue to also start making a point?"

He turned toward Ser Rodry Longspear. The knight had just arrived to relieve Ser Tham Badfoot from his post, his white cloak as pure as the man’s soul was rotten black. Basil far preferred the company of Ser Tham or Ser Miro; they at least held their posts with a shred of decorum. True, they could get rowdy with the dice, but that was as much Rodry’s fault as theirs, he was the sort of man who turned every watch into a den of betting and bad influence.

"My mama always used to say a good scare would send all ailments away," Rodry muttered, his eyes flickering toward the gibbet and the swaying, tattered corpse. "That was probably why so many died back home in the village from the common cold one season. We always thought it was because the village’s little monster wasn’t monster enough to frighten the fever out of ’em." he chuckled at his own jest.

"It didn’t make you so craven that you’d wet your britches serving as a bodyguard for my father’s envoy, I hope," Basil jabbed.

It was a jest, for Aron had testified that the knight had been the first to bray steel and the last to lower it in the Oizenian camp.

"Perhaps being told the plan beforehand would have been better," Rodry countered, his voice turning a bit dry. "They took the lot of us into custody while Ser Aron was brought before the Crownless Prince. He may have been an envoy, but we were certainly not. Death wouldn’t have been a very unexpected gift in that tent, you know? Just a quick tilt of a blade and we’d be as stiff as your swaying friend over there.No need to leap up and embrace me as I came back from peril, the prince would be wrought with me if his son got a sprain hugging for his favorite knight."

Basil offered no answer. Instead, he kept his feet moving through the muck, sidestepping a pile of dung left by one of the many destriers being saddled and trotted around.

It wouldn’t have been a pleasing gift either if they gave him the sword, but he wasn’t about to give the man the satisfaction of hearing it.

"You know, your Grace," Rodry said, trailing half a step behind like a persistent shadow, "I have the feeling I am not high in your sympathies."

"I wonder how such a thought ever managed to cross your mind," Basil replied. "And please, spare me the dry wit. It’s not as if I sent you to your grave. This is the South, Ser Rodry, not Romelia. Envoys aren’t likely to be harmed, and neither are their guards. Here, at least, we still know the proper way of things."

Before Rodry could put word to that, a sudden erupting roar of shouts from their right cut the conversation short. Rodry sighed, a weary, rattling sound as if he knew what it was already.

"The men are at it again," he grumbled.

Basil shoved his way toward the edge of a congregation of soldiers. In the center of a muddy ring, two men were grappling, their faces purple with rage. Before they could truly draw blood, four men from the crowd lunged in, dragging the combatants apart by their armpits.

If only they would turn such brawl to the enemy instead to themselves.

"I have got a goat back home!" the first man shrieked, his legs kicking uselessly in the air as four arms pulled him away by the arms and legs. "Perhaps I’ll present it to you, so you don’t got to kidnap it, fuck it, and marry it without my consent, aye?"

"I’ll plaster my foot so far up your face you’ll be tasting my boot for a week and shit nails for a month!" the second man roared back, straining against the arms of his comrades. ’’No one call me a thief and keep his head!No one!Call me that again!Come on!I dare you motherfucker!’’

’’And I double dare you to make true of it, goat fucker and goat stealer!’’

The men holding them back were shouting just as loud, their voices frantic. "Hold your tongues, you fools! You’ll get the lashes if the see you! You want your backs flayed before the Oizenians get a turn?Or maybe you hope in a rope?"

Basil stood on the edge of the circle, watching the spit fly and the hatred burn in their eyes. These were the men who were supposed to stand in the tall grass, back to back, holding the line against a tide of steel.

Suddendly the man who had been screaming about the goat suddenly wrenched an arm free and lunged, his weight carrying both of them down. They rolled in the muck, fingers clawing for eyes and throats, while the onlookers moved in a frantic, swearing circle.

"Want to know why so many are at each other’s throats, little prince?Shouldn’t we be all allies to one another?" Rodry asked as he went for a dagger from his belt..

Basil didn’t turn to look at him, but he could feel the knight’s grin. He looked at the fighting men, watching as more soldiers piled onto the heap to drag the combatants apart before a sergeant arrived with a whip.

Basil hated giving the man the satisfaction of an audience, but he grew curious.He watched a fist connect with a jaw, leading to some amidst crowd to cheer, as clearly not all were hoping to see the two apart and were craving for some entertainment.

"If you must know," Rodry continued, as he went picking at a fingernail with the point of the dagger as he parted a rowdy smile, "your father had a bit of a play in it."