Erich awoke to the sound of silverware clinking against plates. The smell of cooking food lingered in the air above him, coaxing him out of the pleasant cocoon of his dreams.

  Pain lanced through Erich’s side, drawing a quick hiss from him as he started to sit up. Fresh bandages were wrapped tightly around his body, marking the spots where he had been too slow during the battle.

  He opened his eyes, taking in the familiar sight of the bunk above him in the small wooden barracks that he shared with the rest of the Green River platoon. It wasn’t much bigger than a large room back in the Empire, and the beds weren’t much more than a pile of straw on top of some planks, but it was home.

  “Erich’s up.” Gwen’s dry observation stopped the sound of breakfast. Before Erich had a chance to move much, Harold had appeared next to him, putting one hand on his chest to prevent him from moving.

  A second later Kaden joined him, and the two of them draped an arm over each of their shoulders before pulling him out of his bed. A short, pain-filled walk to the small corner table their group used for meals later, Erich was sitting in front of a steaming bowl of porridge and a side of scrambled eggs.

  The food wasn’t terribly good, it never was, but it was warm and Erich was famished. Gwen kept picking at her food as Kaden and Harold sat down next to him. Their plates were mostly empty, and it was clear that they wanted to talk, but they were able to restrain themselves. Barely.

  Finally, Harold couldn’t wait anymore.

  “Two confirmed kills including a second tier swordsman. That’s a good battle for anyone, but for a first tier like you, it’s huge.”

  “I’m just glad you survived,” Kaden butted in, his deep gruff voice layered with concern. “After we lost Timothy in the first battle, it feels like we’ve just been waiting for the next of us to fall.”

  “None of that,” Harold said. A dark cloud seemed to pass over his face before he quickly dismissed it. “The battle yesterday was a disaster. Frankly, we all should have died. Apparently there were fifth and sixth tier warriors mixed into the attack.”

  Erich set his fork down, face twisting from a spike of pain as he leaned backward.

  “Fifth and sixth tier?” He asked incredulously. “I remember their elites overwhelming our levies and getting past us in a flash, but a fifth tier is absurd. How did any of us survive that fight if cinderborn of that tier were involved?”

  “Supposedly, they were after the major.” Harold’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “You know how the cinderborn usually stay on the defensive, waiting for us to attack their fortresses? Rumor has it that this attack was designed to keep the forces on the wall occupied while an elite team tracked down and killed the major. Without him, our section of the defenses wouldn’t have a mage capable of warding off an enemy attack. People are saying that the reason he wasn’t on the scene countering the cinderborn’s artillery spells at the start of the battle was that he had already received word of the assassination attempt. From what I’ve heard, he found a safe space to hide from the killers while reinforcements swept them from the scene.”

  “I don’t get it,” Kaden said with a frown. “If the goal was to get rid of the major so that he couldn’t use spells to stop an attack, wouldn’t our defenses have been much stronger if he had participated in the battle instead? As long as he sent the rest of the company to support us, we probably could have prevented the cinderborn from breaching the wall altogether.”

  Erich glanced at the door to their cabin. He couldn’t see or hear anyone outside, but Kaden was coming dangerously close to questioning their officers. That wasn’t something done by soldiers that were interested in living a long life.

  “I heard that his safe house was in a brothel,” Gwen interjected, calmly setting down her silverware. “I don’t know whether it’s true or false, but I’m glad that our esteemed leader was able to think on his feet and find a place where no one would know to look for him. Mostly because he told his subordinates to never look for him there.”

  A dark chuckle went around the table. Once again, Erich glanced toward the door. The senses of mages and martial artists were fine tuned to an absurd degree. At the higher levels they could smell a flower from across a field or count the beats of a hummingbird’s wings. No one really liked the elven commanders, but they led the army for a reason. The mages had led an army that conquered the entirety of Hollendil in a decade. At the time, the continent consisted mostly of warring petty kingdoms that couldn’t trust each other enough to put up a unified defense and stop the invaders, but that didn’t change the fact that the elves conquered castle after castle with minimal losses.

  It was a display of dominance that their new rulers made sure that the humans of Hollendil remembered. Every feast day, they were forced to toast the emperor and listen to bards recount the brutal and one sided campaigns in gory detail. As arbitrary as the elven nobles were and as high as they raised the taxes, everyone knew better than to revolt. Every once in a while, a merchant or minor noble would try it only for the mangled bodies of every member of their family to appear on display at the nearest castle a week or so later.

  “Quiet,” Erich hissed. “I don’t want any of you dragged off into the night to answer questions about insubordination at knife point. You never know when the walls are listening in.”

  “Relax,” Harold replied breezily. “Major Thellemas doesn’t use wind magic and he’s far from here. The only way he’d be able to listen in is if he were standing just outside our door right now.”

  The sharp rapping of knuckles against wood silenced the table. Erich, Gwen, and Kaden all glared accusingly at Harold. He sputtered for a second, unable to find a response as the person outside their cabin knocked again.

  “I should get that,” Harold muttered, unable to meet their eyes as he stood up. It was only six or seven feet from his seat to the doorway, but he walked all of them in complete silence.

  Just as he was reaching for the door, it opened revealing the massive and heavily muscled form of Captain Demas. He ducked slightly, slipping past the suddenly frozen Harold to step into the small barracks.

  They sat in silence as their commanding officer looked around. Finally, he nodded, clicking his tongue to himself before he turned and faced them.

  “I was standing just outside your door, but I didn’t hear anything,” the captain said, his expression stern but a hint of mirth dancing in the corner of his eyes. “What were the four of you talking about when I arrived? Nothing too insubordinate or slanderous I would hope.”

  Erich let out a sigh of relief as Harold gratefully closed the door. If the captain wasn’t going to make an issue of the dangerous conversation, then the four of them would let the matter rest. There was nothing to be gained from complaining about a superior officer, even if your concerns were warranted. If they listened, the only change it would spark would be swift and painful punishment of the person foolish enough to bring up their concerns.

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  “We were celebrating Erich’s achievements and recovery,” Harold blurted out. “He’s been stuck at the first tier for a while now, but he managed to bring down two warriors including a second tier swordsman.”

  Demas turned his attention to Erich, and it felt like the man’s gaze was stripping his skin and flesh away to expose the bone and mana pathways beneath. The captain nodded slowly.

  “That is a worthy feat,” the officer mused. “In fact, your team surviving with minor injuries is an accomplishment in and of itself. Of the four martial arts platoons under my command, the Iron Ax’s lost half their number, the Stoneswords are all dead, and the Tempest Spears only managed to survive by running away.”

  “I wouldn’t call our injuries minor,” Harold replied, pointing in Erich’s direction. “All of us got pretty banged up and Erich ended up passing out for a day from blood loss. Given how badly he was cut up, I doubt an ordinary person would have survived.”

  “Minor means that I’m not sending you home due to being crippled in battle,” Demas said grimly. “We’ve seen a fair number of discharges on those grounds in the last twenty four hours, and I suspect we’re going to see a couple more as the hospitals do their work.”

  That brought Harold up short, and Erich didn’t have much to say either. He could still remember the bodies filling the gap in the wall, charnel house of twisted and wrecked limbs in the flickering light of the burning palisade. If any of those men and women had survived, their bodies were beyond repair. They would be sent back to Hollendil where they would live out the rest of their lives in one of the major cities, begging for money until eventually a cold snap, hunger, or a wild dog finished the job that the cinderborn started.

  “Didn’t mean to bring down the mood,” Demas said wearily. “Reinforcements, training and morale are my problem, and it isn’t fair of me to take that out on the four of you. Rather, I was hoping you could help me with the morale issue.”

  Erich glanced at Kaden and Gwen only to get a pair of shrugs back.

  “We lost about half of our company in a night,” Demas continued, a grimace flashing across his face. The other two companies will each be donating a platoon of martial artists and accompanying levies to support us, but that isn’t going to change the fact that the survivors all look like they’ve fallen into hell.”

  That made sense to Erich. His body still felt like he’d thrown it down a staircase covered in razors, but even when it was healed he wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect of returning to the wall. Fighting an entire cinderborn raid and almost dying wasn’t exactly the sort of activity he wanted to repeat.

  “What we need is a hero,” Demas concluded, “and like it or not, I think I’m looking at four heroes right now.”

  “Are you sure about that sir?” Erich asked. “We managed to kill a couple cinderborn, but our group got overwhelmed pretty quickly and the enemy made it past us. It’s not like we took a supply depot or killed an enemy commander. Really, all we did was stand in the cinderborn’s way long enough to slow them down.”

  “Seems pretty heroic to me,” their captain replied. “A lot of people would have ran rather than fight off an attack like that without magical support. Most of those that didn’t wouldn’t have been able to mount any sort of defense. Each one of you killed multiple martial artists, and by my count Harold is at six confirmed kills now. That officially makes him an ace, and it only makes sense to promote an ace.”

  “Martial Artist Sergeant Sammen.” Demas slapped a meaty palm down on Harold’s shoulder. “Martial Artist Lieutenant Griswold from the Stoneswords was my second in command amongst my martial artists, but he died in combat. I know you’re only second tier and the rank of lieutenant is usually reserved for someone third tier or higher, but the way I see it you’re probably only a couple months from advancing anyway. What do you say? Are you willing to step up and fill Shane’s boots now that he’s gone?”

  “Of course!” Harold blurted out happily, only to pause for a second, “but what about the rest of the platoon? They fought hard too. I wouldn’t want to be the only one that got rewarded for a battle that we all bled in.”

  Captain Demas glanced around the room briefly before settling his eyes on Gwen.

  “Martial Artist Envar was your second, correct?” He asked, drawing a nod from both Harold and Gwen.

  “Great,” Demas continued. “She will be promoted to martial artist sergeant, and all four of you will be presented with the order of heroism, third class. I would offer you something more than that, but if I drape too many medals on you someone from headquarters would notice.”

  “And if they noticed,” Erich finished for him, “we would probably find ourselves volunteered for dangerous missions, the kind that don’t leave survivors.”

  “Astute observation Martial Artist Saphir,” the captain replied. “The award ceremony will be in two days, and the Major will be there. Make sure to freshen up a bit in the meantime, and make sure to stop having the sort of conversations that are hard to hear through the walls of your barracks. You’re likely to have a fair number of eyes on you for a bit.”

  With a quick, tight smile, the officer turned and opened the door to their cabin. He stopped in it, looking back as if he was going to say something, but ultimately, he kept his mouth shut, closing the door behind him as he walked away.

  As soon as he was gone, Harold couldn’t contain himself anymore.

  “Lieutenant? Order of heroism third class? Those aren’t the sort of accolades that just every veteran gets. The Captain must be serious about turning us into war heroes to try and rebuild morale.”

  “The order of heroism comes with an extra one year of tax forgiveness for our families,” Kaden observed. “There really isn’t much to spend an officer’s salary on while we’re stuck on the front, but the tax break on its own made the fight and sacrifice worthwhile.”

  Erich winced. Kaden wasn’t wrong. Technically, the Imperial Army was composed entirely of volunteers. The solution was taxes. The empire imposed taxes on fifty percent of every citizen’s gross earnings, more than enough to bankrupt and starve any family. Any family could get a tax break by sending a son or daughter into the Imperial Army for ten years. A levy soldier brought a two year tax break, and a martial artist earned them ten years of grace.

  His family were wealthy jewelers in Burrwood. Erich’s older brother, Jonas, was set to take over the family business, and his younger brother, Finn, was training to be a scholar in the imperial court. That left the duty of military service to him.

  It was a thankless task. The chances of survival were low, and the chances of returning unscathed were even lower, but the Saphir family would be ruined without someone serving in the army, and the duty had fallen to him.

  Erich ran a hand through his dirty brown hair. He knew why too. It was hard not too. His father and all of his wives had the same blue eyes that were common to Hollendil lowlanders. Same with his brothers and his sister. Erich’s eyes were brown.

  His mother denied any infidelity, and his father claimed to believe her, but it didn’t stop Erich from having a rather chilly childhood. Everyone in the family other than his uncle treated him with suspicion, and although he had the benefits of a wealthy upbringing, there wasn’t any real love or support from his family. Even his mother tried to distance herself from him, as if ignoring him would change the color of Erich’s eyes.

  By the time he was eight, the decision had been made. Erich would be the one to take on the family burden and enroll in the army. Luckily his uncle, Ben, had returned from his military service around that time. With Ben’s help he had been able to master the basics of martial arts and enroll in the Green River School.

  He sighed. One more year of tax-free living for his family. Erich barely felt anything for them, so that was hardly the perk for him that it was for Kaden and Gwen who came from smaller clans that they actually cared for.

  Still, he supposed it delayed the inevitable. At some point, his father would ‘adopt’ a poor resident of Burrwood, officially making them a son or daughter for three or four years in exchange for a massive donation of money to their family. Then, that person would be sent to war, likely without the training necessary to become a martial artist. The tax breaks for an adopted child were barely a third as good as a blood relation, but without some sort of forgiveness, practically every business in Burrwood would be ruined.

  His mind flashed back to the nightmare of ruined bodies filling the gap in the wall, and Erich shuddered. As bad as things were as a rank and file martial artist, the life of a levy was a doomed existence. Without the ability to grow and improve like a martial artist, the survival rate of veterans barely changed.

  Half. Every battle, on average, half of the levies died. Surviving a year was a stretch. Five years was an impossibility. A full decade was a joke.