"Name!" the knight asked me.

"Myles."

He shoved a small round shield and a short sword at me.

I tried to grab them but they slipped out of my hands and fell. I scrambled to pick them up. I didn't want to be made an example of like the big guy. I didn't see the look on the knight's face because he was dressed in full body armor. Head to toe.

He moved on to the next guy.

"Name!"

"Richard."

He gave Richard the same weapons he gave me. It wasn't lost on me that our weapons meant we would be fighting in close quarters to our enemies. Darius' enemies. Ted and I had watched The Lord of The Rings more than ten times. Especially The Battle of Helm's Deep. It was awesome. But now that I think about it, the casualty rate for the defenders of Helm's Deep was over ninety percent. Not so awesome when you have to do it in real life.

I didn't want to do this. It was a nightmare. I wished I could wake up back home. I would leave Jackie untouched. Infact, I'd never speak to her again.

"Name!"

"Wesley."

Same weapons.

"I'd prefer a gun," Wesley commented.

The knight slapped him. I saw the look of anguish on Wesley's face. Being slapped by someone wearing armor had to hurt really bad. The knight moved his head closer to Wesley's face, as if daring him to retaliate. Wesley kept quiet. He too didn't want to be made an example of.

The knight gave a sword and shield to everyone in my group. They had arranged us into groups of ten. Our knight was one of many who had come from all the other tents. There were about a hundred of them, one for every group, and all of them stayed with the group they had just armed.

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"Are you going to train us?" Wesley asked our knight, massaging the spot where he'd been hit.

"Name!" the knight growled.

"I told you a minute ago. It's Wesley."

The knight glared at him (I assumed) from behind the helmet. I didn't want to see a repeat of what the bodyguard did to the big guy. Wesley looked straight at the knight, he was really brave. Or he was mad because of the pain.

"Name!" the knight breathed venomously, like a coiled snake that wanted to strike but was holding itself back.

"I told you," Wesley replied, energized by the knight's timid response. "You know any other words or have you been knocked in the head too many times."

The knight didn't reply, but he was looking at him.

"What is that smell?" Wesley continued. "Is it you? You stink."

I could hear the knight's heavy breathing, he was furious, but he didn't attack. They probably didn't want to kill too many of their own soldiers before battle.

"You smell like rotten meat. Do you guys shower?"

"Now that you mention it, he does stink," Richard piped in.

"You could use some Axe deodorant," Wesley teased.

The rest of us cackled.

Gallows humor. Soldiers are known for it. Ninety percent of us could be dead after whatever battle they were sending us to, but for this brief moment, we were laughing.

To be honest, they weren't wrong. Our knight smelled atrocious. And so did all the other knights. Their arrival coincided with the terrible smell. I can't describe it, but it's bad.

"Could you go stand somewhere else?" I asked. "We can't breathe."

The others laughed.

"Name!" the knight mumbled angrily.

"Stinker!" Wesley spat. "There's a name for you. Stinker!"

The knight turned away from us and looked to the front, and so did all the other knights.

Darius was about to speak. Had the knights sensed that their king was about to address them? They all looked to the front at the same time. There was some strange magic at work here, the aura of the king, perhaps long-term exposure to it made you an obedient stooge. Whatever it was, it wasn't going to happen to me. I would kill Darius before that happened.

Everyone was silent. He said, "My name is Darius Rodan. I am the rightful ruler of this realm. I will unite all the kingdoms one by one. That is my destiny. That is my mission. I will unite this world in peace. And you will help me. Ideally we would train you before sending you out to battle, but we lost contact with the last battalion. You will take their place.

"You've been divided into one hundred units. Each unit has been assigned a Captain. Follow your Captains. They will be your guide. Above the Captains is the Commander."

He pointed at another knight who was standing at the front. He had his helmet off. He looked normal, unlike the other knights. There was something dim about the others. It might've been the limited vocabulary. And the Commander didn't look like he smelled like something rotten.

Darius went on, "Listen to your leaders, and fight with all your might. If you win this battle, I will reward each of you with ten acres of land, a house, a woman, and more gold than you can carry."

I could hear cheering. Why were they cheering? Darius didn't say he'd send us home. It was the men in orange. The prisoners. Starting over in a new world as a very rich man must've been very attractive to them. It wasn't to me, I wanted to go home. I had a life in my own world, family, friends, I couldn't stay here.

"You outnumber your opponents twenty to one," Darius added. "Win or lose you'll have a hearty meal waiting for you when you return. (I saw the herald grinning. Why was he grinning?). Good luck."

So they organized their ranks in the decimal system, like the Mongols. Would we vanquish Darius' enemies like the Mongols? There were no horses, not even for the Commander. We would march on foot.

Darius said we outnumbered our opponents twenty to one. What the hell were we going to fight?