The battle-fever. The blood-drunkenness.

Egil had spoken of it often, usually over a cup of sour wine, describing it as a burning ecstasy that hummed in the marrow, a sensation that brought a man to the very precipice of the ultimate truth, yet always kept him a hair’s-breadth from falling.

Alpheo had never believed it would be his bread to eat.

Yet here he was, wading through the black mire, washing himself in the same river of gore where his soldiers had lived and died for a decade.

Most notably the old fear was gone.

In its place was a terrifying, crystalline clarity. He felt alive in a way he had never been, every nerve ending was a wire of white-hot lightning.

Death was everywhere, keeping him company wherever he looked.Even as he closed his eyes he could feel its cold caress.

It was in the groan of the spear as it punched through a stomach; it was in the hiss of the arrow reaping life from the grey sky; it was in the dagger that closed the distance until the killer and the killed were locked in a fiery, final embrace that came with its steely kiss.

And Death circled Alpheo most of all.

Dressed in his obsidian-black plate, the silver crown-circlet forged into his helm, he was a beacon of shadows. He did not shine, there was no light to catch, but the men of Oizen knew him. They knew the price on his head, and the field was crawling with greedy fools eager to claim it.

A spear clattered uselessly against his breastplate, failing to leave even a scratch on the master-worked steel.

Alpheo didn’t think, he just acted.

He batted the shaft aside with his longsword, stepping in a fluid semi-circle that felt like a dance. With a single swing, he claimed the spearman’s right hand for his sin. The man collapsed, sobbing into the muck, and Alpheo left him there for the other to finish.

His visor narrowed the world to a thin, horizontal slit. As he pivoted away from the dying man, he saw a heavy mace whistling toward his temple. He took a sharp stride back, the iron head missing his visor and his life by an inch.

He lost his footing by sinkin his foot on a wet entrail.Luckily he didn’t fall.

The attacker lunged again and singed with his mace at the out of balance prince. He did again and again as the the steel missed, but jut as the ground was treacherous for the prince so it was for the attacker.

Somewhere in their dance, he stumbled, falling face-first into the slurry.

’’Gods be good.’’The man muttered as he ate the mud

The prince barked a laughter before stepping over the fallen man and driving his sword downward between the shoulder blades. The mail links shrieked and gave way, the blade plunging through to the heart with the ease of a shark shearing through tuna.

He moved past the bloated heap of a dead horse, the stench of its ruptured gut filling his helm. From the red mist,perhaps hiding just right to it, a man appeared, swinging an axe hoping to loop his head off.

The Prince caught the blow on his crossguard, the axe almost claiming his finger while the shock vibrated up his arms, but before the Oizenian could recover and make true of it, the spike of a halberd made way in his armpit.

Alpheo looked up to see a soldier of the Third, weary, blood-streaked, and hollow-eyed, holding the polearm. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

No doubt the man had been in the slaughter for hours.

Alpheo gave him a sharp nod of thanks, his throat too dry for words.He had been in battle too long and hadn’t found a moment of respite for a drink.

Before the soldier could even mouth a response, a gauntleted hand seized Alpheo by the back of the neck as if he were a wolf-pup with its mother. He was yanked backward and pulled deep into a protective ring of white cloaks he had just escaped from.

"PROTECT THE PRINCE FROM HIMSELF!" a voice roared. Belonging to the man Alpheo would have recognized in the deepest pits of all Hells.

Time had lost all meaning, but the sun must have moved, for the pristine white armor of Vrosk was now a paint of gore. He looked as though he had spent the day cleaning a butcher’s shop with his own body.

Bits of grey brain-matter and shards of bone clung to his helm.

Unlike Alpheo, he was not lost in the fever; he was the master of it.

Vrosk never went still. Even as he shouted orders, he caught a sword-stroke on his bracer, parried a thrust, and drove his own blade into a challenger’s throat in three heartbeats of work.

A daring Oizenian men-at-arms lunged through a gap in the white cloaks, his blade seeking Alpheo’s gut.

Vrosk got in the way easy enough.

Two lightning exchanges of steel followed, and the challenger was suddenly on his knees, staring in numb horror at the heap of his own entrails spilling into the mud. Before he could scream, a heavy mace, swung by a faceless veteran of the First, came down like the hammer of a god, granting him the sleep from which there was no waking.

"SURROUND THE PRINCE!" the head of his guards bellowed, his voice cracking like a whip as he cleared a circle of breathing room with a vicious, horizontal sweep of his blade. The pristine white of his cloak was a memory, now a heavy, sodden rag of brown filth and arterial red. "THESE BASTARDS ARE AIMING FOR HIS GRACE’S HEAD!"

The truth of it was written in the mud.

Just as Alpheo’s presence had acted as a draught of fire for the wilting spirits of his Legions, it had served as a beckoning light for every greedy soul in the Oizenian host. Every soldier and sellsword across the line saw not a man, but a golden ticket out of the gutter, if only they could lay his silver-crowned helm at the feet of the Oizen’s prince.

No doubt Vrosk would have preferred his Prince to be a symbol,a distant banner to be guarded behind a wall of shields and sworn steel. But Alpheo had never been a man to conform to the comfortable expectations of his station, even when those would play to his favor.

He stepped forward, pushing past Vrosk’s shoulder, his black armor slick with the dead. He raised his gore-streaked longsword toward the oncoming wave of Oizenian steel.

"THEY CAN VERY WELL BLOODY TRY!IHAVE SET FOOT ON THIS SHIT, I WILL EITHER TRIUMPH OR I WILL DIE!"

That as much as it displeased the head of his guards, seemed to be liked quite a great deal from his men.

"THE FOX BITES!" a scarred veteran of the Third screamed, plunging the end of his halberd into a charging Oizenian.

"LONG LIVE THE PRINCE!" another cried, slamming his shield into a visor and following with an axe swing. "TO HELL WITH OIZEN! FOLLOW THE CROWN!"

"FOR YARZAT! FOR THE PRINCE!"

Vrosk cursed under his breath, his blade snapping out to parry a thrust meant for Alpheo’s ribs. During a momentary lull, he leaned into the Prince’s shoulder, flipping up his visor to let the biting wind hit his sweat-soaked face. His skin was pale, mapped with the grime of the field.

"Your Grace, as comforting as this display of solidarity is, the dream dies with you," Vrosk panted, his breath hitching in his chest. "Get back in the line.Please."

Alpheo didn’t move. He leaned on his sword, his obsidian armor splashed with the grey-black filth of the Lampianis earth-water.

Despite everything a small joke surged in him.

"I find it oddly comforting to be so well-desired. I was an unwanted child, you know? It’s a change of pace to have so many people seeking me out."

Vrosk spat a glob of blood into the mud. "I am sure they are lining up to put a dirk in your throat just so they can weep for your tragic childhood, Your Grace. It’s truly heart-wrenching."

"I have you beside me," Alpheo countered mirth in his eyes. "Need I fear?"

"Only if you stay out of my sight," Vrosk growled, "and in harm’s way.Just as you are doing now."

"I wouldn’t dream of upsetting you, old friend."

With a weary hum of exhaustion, Vrosk slammed his visor back down, the steel locking with a final, metallic click. The reprieve ended as two Oizenian levies surged forward, their eyes wild with green-greed.

You’d think the sight of so many man would be a brake at their ambitions, and yet they were as mushrooms in a loaf of bread left for a month in the sun.

The first met Vrosk’s blade and found his throat opened to the sky. The second, however, dodged the guard and lunged for the Prince, coming within a sword’s length of his lordship.

More exactly the prince’s longsword,which made a scabbard of the man’s entrails.He had very little armor and it showed just by how easily it went it.

An heartbeat later , the prince twisted the blade before wrenching it free, a streak of crimson painting the black mud.

He was kind enough to ease his suffering , bringing the steel down in a crushing overhead blow that pinned the corpse to the earth.

One moment’s later, the respite he had long asked for was there. He took advantage of that to get a drink for his parched throat.

Standing over the body of his past kill, Alpheo found himself pleased and surprise by just how easy it was to kill peasants when one had a sworn guard sorrounding him and the best armor gold could by.

And comfortable too.

Sometimes they were kind enough to cut a man’s down, and letting the prince finish him off behind them.

And yet not all was good.As much as it could be when surrounded with death.

He wiped a smear of gore from his visor, and as he looked past the immediate slaughter, his heart went cold, as the old nightmare came forth once again, scouring whatever happiness the prince could find and letting the old moster in once more.

Far to the north, beyond the churning mass of infantry, a line of grey-white dust began to rise against the leaden sky. It was a low, thick cloud that didn’t belong to the wind, as much as Alpheo belonged there in the midst of battle.

The prince’s blood stilled in his veins. The earth-shaking thrum that lived just beneath the reach of the human ear, making his way, giving the notion to a prince that wouldn’t ever believed it was coming.

It was the second wave.

Fresh heavy cavalry.