A breathless night had consumed the Broken Coast war camp. Hundreds of grey tents were assembled around the small settlement of Barrowtown to house and treat those that had survived the battle that day. The air was grim, thick with sorrow.
Both of Eos’ moons, Rea and Ixo, were in the sky, but their light could barely pierce through the sea of clouds. Ixo had shattered into millions of pieces when it collided with Rea long ago. The millions of ghostly-white specks and the intact crescent of Ixo shot out diagonally across the night sky, brighter than stars.
Soldiers in the war camp huddled around campfires to escape the bitter cold and to find some comfort with their comrades.
Most did not utter a single word.
King Ulmer Stoneheart had sent an assortment of healers, surgeons, and herbalists from the capital of Shadowshore with haste several days earlier. They had arrived just in time, but they were met with an appalling number of injured men.
Barely any of the soldiers had made it out of the battle unscathed.
Tomas and Rilan sat against a rough log beside a small fire by themselves towards the edge of the war camp, poking and prodding at their lukewarm stew that had been given to the men.
Tomas picked out the pieces of meat he spotted in the broth, tossing them into Rilan’s bowl.
“Still not eating any meat, hey?” Rilan asked.
Tomas shook his head. “Nope.”
The images of his father slaughtering those lambs played in his mind any time he saw meat being served. It had bothered him so much when he was a lad that he had promised himself never to eat any meat again.
“Well, you’re not really missing out on much,” Rilan said as he attempted to chew the rubbery meat. “Tastes like shit anyway.”
Tomas drank the warm broth, tasting the onions and carrots and sprinkled salt. Elsewhere, he could hear Chantry priests praying with the mortally wounded before they were to transcend, reading them the 12 Laws and passages from the Words of Power.
“Never thought I’d be so eager to go back home,” Rilan said, slurping his stew.
“Anything is better than this place,” Tomas replied. “It’s not at all what I thought it would be like.”
“Well, what were you expecting, Tommy? A quick massage from our comrades after a nice day of gentle skirmishing in the fields?”
A soldier stumbled past their campfire, clearing out his sinuses with the sounds of a dying man, before spitting on the ground next to them.
War was unlike anything Tomas had wished for.
No honour, no bravery, no excitement. No chivalrous knights fighting valiantly with clean, glistening armour.
War was loud, messy, and terrifying.
“I miss Old Bertha’s bread,” Rilan said.
Tomas smirked. “I thought you hated Old Bertha’s cooking?”
“Oh, it’s awful. Still miss it though.” The boys chuckled. “In fact, I’d rather eat one of Simple Sammy’s infamous meals than spend another night out here eating this shit.”
Tomas laughed. “Oh, Creator, I forgot about Simple Sammy.”
“Remember? He’d always go looking for bird’s eggs in their nests, and then eat them raw? Shell and all?”
Tomas gagged. “Don’t remind me!”
“Wonder what ever happened to him,” Rilan wondered. “He just up and left one day, didn’t he?”
“I don’t really remember, to be honest. He did so many strange things. When he did go missing, I didn’t take much note of it. If anything, it was a relief.” The boys reminisced for another moment.
“Simple Sammy, wonder where you are now?” Rilan said, looking at the stars above.
The boys could not help but picture home. Brittlepeak had little in terms of extraordinary qualities. It was so small that it didn’t even have a chantry, though some would consider it a picturesque and quaint place. The mountains surrounding the village, the pine woods, the river where he and Rilan would fish together.
Tomas had never seen the beauty there, though. Brittlepeak had always been a prison for him. People died young in Brittlepeak from an array of mysterious diseases. Tomas’s mother had been one of them when he was just a boy.
Rilan slurped up his lukewarm meal with a grimace, before leaning in closer to Tomas with a smirk on his face. The wind howled around the boys like a ghostly moan. The chill made Tomas quiver; he tightened his jacket around him.
“They say Barrowtown’s haunted, you know?” Rilan whispered in a purposefully lower tone.
“Oh, is that right?” Tomas said, rolling his eyes. “Quit trying to scare me, it isn’t gonna work.”
“No, no. I’m serious.”
Someone was howling off in the distance. A dying man? Someone having a wound tended to? Tomas did not know, and did not want to know.
“Heard some of the other soldiers whispering about it in line for our supper,” Rilan continued. “The locals say the spirits of the dead buried in the barrows walk these lands at night. The barrows can only hold them during the day. They leave the entrances open each evening to let them out.”
As Tomas thought about it, he realised the entrances to the barrows buried beneath the rolling hills did have their entrances left open.
Could Rilan be telling the truth?
Tomas brought his shoulders to his ears to fend off the bitter breeze and looked around at the gloomy camp. A low fog descended over Barrowtown, only adding to the haunting atmosphere.
Tomas made sure to not let Rilan see as he focused on soldiers and healers and workers, studying their faces, and ruling out any ghostly apparitions that may have infiltrated them.
It’s just a story. It’s just a story.
Tomas stared at Rilan’s bloody bandage, realising it was still moist. “Are you gonna get that looked at?”
Rilan glanced up, away from his stew, towards where a group of nurses were holding a man down as a surgeon uses a bonesaw to amputate a man’s mangled foot. His screams were so loud. He failed to fight them off as the bonesaw sliced.
“Not right now. It can wait.”
Tomas nodded; others needed the healers’ attention first. Tomas recalled seeing what was left of the Barrowtown battalion heading back into town only a few hours earlier. He never wanted to see that much widespread agony ever again.
A boy missing an eye.
Another had had his ear bitten off.
Men with their guts hanging out and limbs cut off.
The images were seared into Tomas’s mind. Even when he closed his eyes to escape them, all he could see were their faces and their wounds.
He visualised the man he had killed, seeing him clear as day. His green and black armour and his organs spilling out. He could hear the moans as he lay dying.
Tomas clenched his teeth, trying to avoid the anguish.
All his life, he had grown up hearing stories of how glorious war was. Knights riding into battle atop their graceful steeds to defend their people. The magnificence of defeating your foes and returning to your bannerlords having won to receive the highest of praises.
But Tomas had never expected this level of carnage. The smells. The sounds. All the pain. He knew those who had died would transcend to the æther, to be reborn again in the afterlife, but he failed to see beauty that came with it.
Tomas sighed, putting his bowl down and sinking his face into his hands. And yet here I sit unscathed, while they suffer and die and get devoured by crows. All because I was too scared to fight properly.
Tomas looked over at Rilan. His friend was in a clear amount of pain. Perhaps I can be useful now?
“Let me have a look at it, at least. We don’t want it going rotten or anything.” Tomas was direct in his statement; he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
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Rilan appeared unsure but nodded anyway. He felt something needed to be done, too.
Tomas peered over into the rucksack he had brought from home. He rummaged within it for a second before pulling out an old bottle of old ale. He was careful not to let any of the other soldiers walking about spot it, lest it become a communal drink.
Rilan chuckled. “And where on Eos, my good friend Tomas, did you get that?”
Tomas popped the cork off and took a swig of the cool, tangy drink before handing it to Rilan. “Grabbed it from father’s stash before we left. Figured we’d need it more than he would.”
Rilan laughed as he took a sip. “Right you were, Tommy, right you were.”
“Drink up before anyone finds it. You are gonna need it for the pain.”
Rilan’s face went from a smile to a frown. Tomas carefully began to unwrap the makeshift bandage as Rilan sculled the ale.
The bleeding had stopped for the most part, but the wound was left open and grotesque. Nothing about it looked clean or easily fixable. Tomas sneered at the sight. Rilan looked the other way to avoid emptying his stomach.
“Well,” Tomas began, “I don’t think it’s gonna be growing back soon.”
Rilan chuckled and sneered in pain, spitting up some of the ale. “Piss off.” The two laughed.
“We have nothing to clean it with, so I think we need to burn it. Unless you are willing to give up the rest of that ale?”
Rilan belched as he finished off the drink, tossing the bottle backwards over his head with a smile. “Fuck no.”
Judging by his attitude, Rilan was already feeling the effects of the drink.
Tomas went over and grabbed a clean dressing in amongst the healers’ supply boxes, as well as a small dagger and a bottle of honey. Most of the salves had already been used on others. He placed the tip of the blade into the fire. Once it was hot, Tomas took it out, and studied the wound again.
Rilan laughed nervously. “This is gonna hurt, isn’t it?” he muttered. His speech was becoming slurred.
Tomas sighed, before getting an idea. “Do you remember that time, when you and I were playing in the creek back home and we came across that troll living under the bridge?”
Rilan scrunched up his face in confusion, but before he could even work out the logic behind the insane question, Tomas had pressed the flat tip of the red-hot dagger onto the open wound.
It hissed like a snake, and Rilan jolted, shrieking in pain. It was over in an instant.
“Tomas, you complete arse!” Rilan cursed out loud. “Creator be damned!”
Tomas opened the bottle of honey and poured it over the cauterised wound. “Careful now, Rilan. Don’t want no spirits hearing what dribbles out of your foul mouth.”
“What the fuck, Tomas? A fucking troll?!”
Tomas smirked. He knew making up something crazy would distract Rilan long enough to use the hot dagger.
Rilan brought his hand up to his face, eyeing the sticky honey over the blackened wound. “Why honey?” he asked, licking one of the drops of the sweet liquid that had run too far down the side of his hand.
“I remember mother teaching me about it before she died. I would have only been four or five at the time. She used it to help heal an infected bite from a cryptspider that had snuck under my blanket one night,” Tomas explained.
“Well, no matter, it’s a nice, tasty way to end my moment of suffering,” Rilan said, exhausted. He laid back down beside the warmth of the fire, wrapping a bandage around his hand. “Thanks for that, Tommy.”
Tomas sat down against the fallen log, taking a spoonful of his soup and swallowing it whole to avoid the pungent taste on his tongue.
※
The bitter western winds began to pick up as the night grew darker. Tomas made sure that he and Rilan’s tent was appropriately pegged into the soil so it wouldn’t blow away.
Tomas boiled some stream water over the fire in an old pot he had found lying around, something warm for them to drink for the cold night ahead.
Tomas heard some commotion nearby as he sat with the bubbling pot. He looked through the sea of grey tents and noticed Captain Gharland. With him was a bunch of other men in well-made armour and expensive clothing. One of the higher-ranking officers was the field lieutenant, Britus.
Following the group were a couple of Anai squires of half stature lugging scrolls, documents, and saddlebags, scuffling like shadows in their masters’ wake. Tomas could make out the slave tattoos on their arms even from a distance.
“…we lost eight-hundred men on the field today,” Tomas overheard one of the lords say. He had thick eyebrows like bushes, a bulging stomach and wore a nobleman’s cloak. The lord was struggling to catch his breath as they walked. “Not a commendable number, but admirable nonetheless considering the alternate possibility. Watching the battle from afar was quite the spectacle. Were it not for your quick thinking with the cavalry-”
“Lord Jonys,” Gharland interrupted, turning to face the sizeable nobleman, “shouldn’t you be returning to Shadowshore? I’m sure the king could make use of your skills there.”
The stout Lord Jonys smiled, obviously not picking up on the sarcasm in Gharland’s voice. Lieutenant Britus pretended to rub his face when he was actually sneering.
“Captain, you flatter me!” Lord Jonys tittered. “But I was sent at the request of his majesty King Ulmer himself as a representative of the royal family in these trying times, to be the eyes, ears and voice of the king for the Barrowtown garrison.”
“Well,” Gharland hissed, “if King Ulmer wants a taste of war, then maybe he should be here on the battlefield instead of you, or instead of I.” Tomas swore he saw the Captain’s moustache twitching.
Lord Jonys appeared even more perplexed, as if he had never been talked down to before in his life. “Th-the king cannot be everywhere at once, Captain Gharland,” he stuttered. “We have reports of Imperial landings across the entire northern coast of the kingdom.”
Tomas realised that Lord Jonys had an image to uphold. The other commanders, officers and soldiers were watching and listening intently. The king’s representative on the field of war could not be talked down to in such a way, but it seemed like Captain Gharland cared little for the illusion of public image.
Tomas was transfixed and couldn’t keep his eyes away. “His majesty, King Ulmer, has many pressing issues to attend to,” Lord Jonys continued, a frown spreading over his face. “D-daily courts to hold, feasts and gatherings with the court. And now, with these poxy invaders from the west on our shores, he has a kingdom to defend as well.”
“And yet here I am, in the mud and the blood and the sweat and the tears of this ‘poxy invasion’,” Gharland spat, pointing his finger to the ground before pointing south with an angry swing of his arm, “and back home our king sits, safely on his throne of stone, in his walled-up city, up in his high keep.
“All the while you insist on being a thorn in my arse as I try and defend this shithole. I’m sure you see where my frustrations lie, Jonys.”
Lord Jonys stood with his mouth agape.
“Ser!” a soldier in chainmail shouted from nearby, running up to his commanding officer. Behind him came a rabble of conscripts, cursing and shouting. Tomas could see trouble brewing. He looked over to Rilan, but he had been sound asleep for a while.
“What is it?” Gharland requested.
“Ser, we have a situation. These men are threatening to-”
One of the conscripts hurled a fist-sized rock in the direction of the group of high-ranking personnel. It hit Lord Jonys straight in the jaw. A trail of blood ran down his neck and he stumbled from the impact.
“Cunts!” one of the conscripts spluttered.
“You selfish bastards!” another shouted.
One brandished a dagger.
Before they could cause any more damage, the guards were on them, restraining them. They resembled rabid dogs, fuming and spitting. The crowd bellowed in anger. Others gathered around to see what all the commotion was.
Lieutenant Britus drew his sword, pointing it towards the rabble. Lord Jonys cowered, looked side to side with fear, his hand pressed over his wound.
Captain Gharland stood perfectly calm.
“You killed my brother! You let him die!” the man with the dagger spat, directly in Gharland’s face. The crowd roared. They wanted answers for their sacrifice.
“Why should we be out ‘ere fightin’ someone else’s’ war?”
“You will pay!”
The man who had the dagger was the iratest of them all. His greasy hair hung over his face in thick strands. The two guards holding his arms behind his back could barely keep him under control as they struggled to free the weapon from his hands.
Tomas peered over to the fat lord who had taken the rock to the face. He began pointing his finger at the protesters. “How dare you! I will have your head for this!”
Gharland gestured him back and marched up to the rest of the rabble with a fierce gait, his hand on the pommel of his sword. Lieutenant Britus followed.
“Have you no respect?” Gharland barked. “Have you no discipline? I saved your lives, you ignorant fools. Were it not for me we’d all be corpses in that field, food for carrion.”
The crowd shouted back uproariously.
“Liar!”
“You used us as bait!”
The man who had lost his brother growled like an angry bear. “You son of a bitch. We were pawns in your little game!” The crowd roared in support. By now it seemed more soldiers than not were standing up to their superiors.
Dozens had gathered around, forming a circle. Guards from across the war camp raced over to try and keep the peace.
Tomas had never seen anything like it- so many levies and low-ranking soldiers, barking and spitting at their superiors like it was nothing. He was perplexed.
“Your king sent us to defend our lands. You are next to worthless, the lot of you,” Gharland hollered. “The one time in your lives where you are summoned to do your duty, and this is how you act? Let us not forget that without our stand today, those Akurai bastards would be burning down your homes, raping your wives and daughters, enslaving your sons, and stealing all of your possessions.” Gharland’s voice was strong; it carried out over the masses despite the uproar against him.
“We were bait. We served nothing more than to bring your glory!” the greasy-haired man yelled. He spat in Gharland’s face, a miscoloured globule of saliva landing on his cheek.
In an instant, the atmosphere of the camp shifted.
With a sudden swing of his sword, Gharland had removed the head of the greasy-haired man. A geyser of arterial blood cascaded into the air.
The crowd went silent as the decapitated man fell to the ground like a pile of rocks, his head rolling away.
“Anyone else care to disrespect me?” Gharland hollered, wiping his face.
The anger in the crowd died down. They were stunned by what they had just seen and how fast it had happened. Even Lord Jonys had taken a step back in shock.
“Everyone, get back to your tents right away, lest you suffer the same fate as this gutless traitor. Guards,” Gharland gestured at the rabble that his loyal soldiers and the king’s guards had already restrained, “have these men hanged at once for treason.”
There was a roar of fear as the rebel levies began pleading with Gharland and their captors.
“No, it wasn’t us!”
“Please, I have children at home!”
“We did nothing! Wait!”
Gharland strode away with his commanders and the king’s representative in tow as the guards shoved the begging conscripts towards the edge of the woods surrounding the war camp. Lieutenant Britus directed his guards to help restrain the rabble.
Tomas looked on in horror, but he said nothing. What could I do? I would be hanged as well. Best keep my head down.
The guards threw nooses around the branches of a huge oak tree, tying them around the necks of the struggling traitors.
Their resistance was fruitless. Their hands were bound behind their backs.
The men weren’t even dropped.
The guards simply pulled the ropes taut from one end with the conscripts’ necks on the other. They were pulled into the air by the rope, their free-hanging feet flailing.
Before long, a dozen men were hanging by the branches of the looming oak tree. The wood groaned from their weight.
Tomas couldn’t keep his eyes away. He had never seen a man hanged before. It looked far worse than what he imagined.
Minutes passed. Some of the traitors shook and writhed. Others had their swollen tongues sticking out of their mouths and blood-saturated eyes. Tomas could smell shit- one of them had defecated in his trousers.
Tomas took a deep breath and focused back on the fire before him, trying to swap those horrific images with something else.
The dancing flames, the bright coals, the rising smoke.
All the while, he could feel dead eyes gouging into his head. From those hanging, or the spirits who were said to walk these lands, Tomas was unsure.