Chapter 16: XCVI — The March

  The air was stale and metallic, thick with sweat, oil and misery. And the side of Kayode’s neck stung.

  “Next!” the soldier called.

  And Kayode was stepping forward.

  The armory distribution section—which was just a table, a chair, and a cluster of soldiers holding weapons—did not resemble anything he would have ever called an armory.

  The man seated at the table got to work all the same. “Name?” he asked.

  “Nathan Bal,” Kayode told him.

  And the man scribbled ‘Nathan Pal’ down on the paper.

  He was motioned to step forwards, and when he did so, they handed him his weapon: a single chipped spear. And then they were calling the next person forwards and motioning him to get into the next session.

  Kayode inspected the arms he had been equipped with.

  [Re?ic]

  Name: Practical Edge, Standard — Kalórin Issue 556-B9

  Type: Spear

  ?ier: E

  ──────────

  [Material(s)]

  — Dirt? G?nt?i?e Stee?

  — R?lic Stone (E)

  ──────────

  [Bound Skill(s)]

  — E?ge-S?a?k (I)

  ──────────

  Ah. An Absolute piece of junk, then.

  It was the same rank as the Southern soldier’s short-blade he’d carried back in Ezeria, but that was where the similarities ended. That weapon had at least possessed honest flaws—poor balance, an awkward grip, a blade that fought the hand rather than working with it. All things that were bound to happen when an army had to concede ergonomics before mass distribution.

  This was different.

  The Practical Edge felt wrong the moment he lifted it. The shaft was rough and inconsistently weighted, the balance drifting just enough to punish imprecision. The spearhead itself was worse. It would cut or pierce once, maybe twice, before the metal began to chip, warp, or fail outright under stress.

  It wasn’t built for sustained fighting. It was built to be used, quickly, and then replaced—whether that meant the weapon breaking, or the man holding it dying first.

  These weren’t corners cut for efficiency, they were cut by people who didn’t care whether the men issued these spears lived or died.

  And now Kayode was one of those men.

  In the distance, just beyond the walls of Kalórin, Kayode saw the Levy Pole standing high and proud. Its confident red and green waving in the air, and reminding all under its effects to not stray far.

  “You—blue stripe,” a soldier barked, already pointing past him.

  Before Kayode could ask what that meant, a hand shoved him sideways into a line of armed men. Someone slapped a strip of dyed cloth around his upper arm and moved on without looking back.

  He started to raise a hand to ask a question—then stopped. He didn’t have one that mattered, and even if he did, no one here would answer it.

  “Guess you’re with us now,” came a voice.

  It belonged to an old man standing beside Kayode, carrying the same issued arms and wearing the same strip of dyed cloth around his arm. “Name’s Pokes,” he said, extending a hand.

  Kayode took it. The grip was warm and rough.

  There were other men to either side of them, Kayode counted sixteen in total. He recognised one of them from the Guild Hall brawl, a woman with a purple bruise to the side of her face and a mean glare. She, like everyone here, looked like she did not want to be here.

  Not too far away a man was breaking down sobbing, and next to him was a young boy—likely not even beyond his sixteenth year—comforting the man.

  All bore the Levy marks on one side of their necks.

  “You seem to be handling this well,” Pokes said, humming.

  “I could say the same about you,” Kayode told the old man.

  “Well, it’s not my first time,” the old man said with a shrug, as if it were just another day. “You wouldn’t have even been an erection in your dad’s cock back then. It was during the Sword’s War.” He paused, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “The Sword Saint himself,” Pokes said. “Saw him cleave a mountain in two.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Kayode inhaled slowly. “So you’ve been taken twice?”

  Pokes shook his head. “No. This is the first time I’ve been pressganged.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Last time it was my son. I joined up to keep the lad safe—ended up a whole other block away when he got killed.”

  The laugh came again, thin and brittle. Kayode could taste the bitterness underneath it.

  “I’m… sorry for your loss,” Kayode said.

  “Mm.” Pokes nodded once. “Funny thing is, all anyone remembers the Sword Saint for now is beating his wife to death and offing himself.” He smiled, tired. “So I reckon I got the last laugh in the end.”

  “I reckon you did,” Kayode nodded back. Hollow.

  Pokes was quiet for a moment, gaze drifting past the levy lines, and past the walls of men ahead. “If I’m lucky,” he said, almost amused, “this’ll be the last march I ever take.”

  “Announcement! Announcement!” came a voice from the front. A man stood atop a raised podium, dressed in fine military-threaded robes rather than armor, a scroll unrolled in his hands. His eyes swept the crowd without lingering on any one face. “Men and women of the—” His gaze flicked briefly to the parchment. “—Levy.” He smiled, practiced and thin. “The Crown thanks you for your bravery, and for your willingness to return a fraction of His Grace’s favor through your indefinite service. And in continuation of that same kindness, I am pleased to inform you that distinguished service may be reviewed for early discharge from levy obligations.”

  Early discharge. That sounded like the only way out of this that didn’t end with Kayode losing his head, one way or another. He turned to Pokes. “How often do people earn release?”

  Pokes laughed. “Enough to keep the rest of us idiots trying.”

  ###

  The march began quickly, and rest was nowhere to be seen.

  Kalórin fell farther behind them with each step and soon vanished entirely, swallowed by distance and dust, leaving only the sight of an army stretching ahead and behind.

  Kayode guessed there were perhaps five thousand in all—long lines of spears, wagons, and men, with banners snapping in the air. Not just the Grand Duke’s.

  House Dolapo, House Faloye, and House Kingswell flew proud banners as well.

  Major vassal houses. Two had been founded generations ago by bastards of the Great Houses—men later elevated into nobility and given lands of their own. The last, House Kingswell, was a native House that had been quicker than most to see how the tide was turning during the Kingdom Maker’s conquest, and backed the winning side.

  There were a few others besides—border lord banners and the thinner colors of minor houses, alongside the more modern symbols of mercenaries. And, of course, there was the symbol of the Church: two triangles flanking a single dot.

  Kayode doubted the Divination Church had sanctioned any of this. A month from now, the Grand Duke would officially be at war with Duke Adegbite—brother of the àj?? Prime of the church.

  That did nothing to stop the march.

  The soldiers did not interact much with the levies, seeing them as far beneath notice or acknowledgement, which made learning their destination that much harder for Kayode.

  Still, they were only human; bored, tired, and careless. They talked to each other if not to him. So Kayode listened.

  From what he could piece together on the first day, they were marching on the Barony of Silia. More specifically, its baronial seat: the town of Ohorin. Two days away.

  As Kayode had heard it, Baron Arthur Veyne had crossed the Grand Duke by refusing to commit men unless payments were rendered for the civil war. He was unlikely to have been the first Baron to make such a demand, and just as unlikely to be the last. From what Kayode could remember, The Grand Duke held no personal grievance against Arthur Veyne at all.

  Which meant this response had nothing to do with the insult.

  This army was being brought down on Silia to make an example—one meant for every noble who might think to deny the Grand Duke his demands.

  It was terrible news for Arthur Veyne. But for Kayode, it carried a different weight. They weren’t marching to win a war; they were marching to enforce a certainty.

  There would be no desperate charges, no drawn-out sieges meant to test resolve. Ohorin would fall because if it was not going to fall, if there had been any chance at all of it not falling, then it would have never been attacked.

  Which meant this was not meant to be a hard fight. It was meant to be an unequivocal victory.

  Kayode’s theory was all but confirmed when the town was within sight and he saw that save from the few natural defences it held, it looked completely unready to survive an assault from this many men.

  Soon they were told to make camp, and Kayode’s second night in the Grand Duke’s army was a slightly more optimistic one than the first.

  ###

  “Levies to the front! Levies to the front!” a soldier barked, and bodies surged forward.

  Kayode didn’t move. He was already in position: tenth row from the front of the entire army, not just the levy line.

  The elite forces—house troops and knights who had once held the vanguard—were now tucked safely behind the mass of bodies that made up the levies.

  The sight dulled Kayode’s budding optimism somewhat.

  Ahead, beneath the morning sun, men stood along Ohorin’s ramparts. Archers at the parapets. Below them, outside the gates, tightly packed blocks of spearmen and shield-bearers waited in formation.

  Among the blocks of defenders outside the gate, banners flew in uneven numbers—some bearing the Baron’s colors, others the lesser sigils of houses sworn beneath him, clustered where their men stood.

  They were as eager to fight as the levies were to not. The difference in attitude was simple.

  The levies would fight to stay alive.

  The men of Ohorin would fight for their lives—and for their homes, their families, and the town behind them.

  The men of the levy seemed to be feeling this as well. The man who had been crying before was now throwing up. The boy that had once comforted him seemed far too transfixed on the army ahead to notice anything else.

  Even the Adventurer lady, who once affixed the world with a challenging glare, tried and failed to stifle trembles. “I had a shield and a sword, you know…” she whispered. “They took them off me and gave me this bullshit,” she hissed, hands tight around the spear. “Said it was ‘commandeered’… to be given to someone more… fitting.”

  Only Pokes seemed unaffected, an almost eager grin on his lips as he gazed at the enemy.

  “Men! The time for battle is nearly upon us!” came a voice, booming and reverberating all through the battlefield.

  Its source was an Ayédán man, adorned in an older, traditional cut, though burdened with an excess of feathers and gemstones worked into his attire. The badge at his breast marked him as a Lord Marshal—Lord Marshal Babajide Henry Dolapo, if Kayode was remembering correctly.

  He was one of the many figures who swarmed around the Grand Duke, eager for praise and favor, and willing to do almost anything to earn it.

  As usual, Kayode had nothing to offer such men, and so he had always been invisible to him. But he’d watched them.

  The Lord Marshal carried on. “Behind that wall stands an oathbreaker. And defending him are men moved only by greed and self-interest. They would cut clean through your daughter’s belly if they thought gold lay inside it—bash your baby’s head against stone if they believed even a single coin might fall out. And if we do not send them to the mud today,” his voice hardened, “then one day soon, they will do exactly that.” And then he drew in a sharp breath. “So you shall advance, press forwards, lay the enemy to waste, kill their dreams and crush their souls! Defend your people and your children! For the Grand Duke!”

  “For the Grand Duke!” the army roared back—and not just the soldiers. The levies too.

  Kayode saw both the Adventurer and the man who had been vomiting moments earlier pump their spears into the air.

  [Skill: Borrowed Courage — Negated by Vessel of Stone III.]

  “Charge!” the Lord Marshal roared.

  And they were charging.

  They roared as they ran, faces twisted as if nothing in the world could quench their thirst but the blood of Ohorin’s men.

  And then arrows fell.