Prologue
The air was thick with the stench of carnage, a miasma of blood, sweat, earth, and iron that clung to the senses like a malevolent spirit. For nine grueling hours, the symphony of steel had resounded across the field, a relentless din of clashing swords and shields. Yet, as the sun began its descent, the clamor yielded to a more ghastly silence—the quietus of the slain and the dying. The once verdant meadow, now sodden from the heavens’ weeping, had turned a gruesome shade of crimson. Corpses lay scattered like fallen leaves, their lifeblood seeping into the soil.
Amidst the aftermath stood a solitary figure, Jeren of Clodnell, a survivor whose very essence was marinated in the day’s brutalities. His spear, slick with the gore of combat, remained clutched in his calloused hands. His shield, now but a shattered remnant, hung limply at his side, and his gambeson bore the tattered evidence of survival. In truth, Jeren had not stood at the vanguard of the fray, where the dance with death was most intimate. Instead, he had lingered in the periphery, where fate’s touch was a mere whisper.
Now, as he surveyed the macabre tableau before him, a profound disbelief took root within his weary soul. The dead, stripped of their worldly possessions, lay bare and equal in death’s embrace. Rank and riches held no sway here; the looters saw to that with their indiscriminate plundering. Jeren, once the humble progeny of a tiller of the earth, found himself a reluctant warrior in a tapestry woven with the threads of war and woe.
The man stood a head taller than many, his frame a testament to the toils of the earth and the vigor of youth. The battlefield lay before him, a grotesque tapestry of equine and human forms melded into the blood-soaked mire. His gaze swept across the expanse of desolation, akin to a farmer surveying his reaped fields, yet here the harvest was of a far grimmer sort.
The squelch of hooves upon the sodden ground heralded the approach of another—a knight, undoubtedly. Jeren’s eyes, weary from the day’s horrors, shifted just enough to catch sight of his liege, Ser Edmund Ashbourne. The knight’s once resplendent armor was dulled and marred by the savagery of combat. The initial charge had claimed the lives of many a gallant soul, and those who remained had carved their path through a thicket of infantrymen, desperate and defiant.
Ser Edmund’s gaze fell upon Jeren, a smirk playing upon his lips, a cruel mirth in the aftermath of slaughter. “How many of you lot did we lose?” he inquired, his voice laced with a callous levity.
“Nine hundred, sir,” Jeren replied, his voice a mere whisper against the enormity of the loss. “At least, that’s what the war priests proclaim.”
The knight pondered the toll for but a moment. With a flick of the reins, he and his horse strode back to the war camp.
The encampment was a hive of frenetic activity, with war priests moving among the wounded, their chants rising to the trinity of deities in fervent supplication for salvation. The fires, around which both highborn and low gathered, crackled with a life of their own, their flames a beacon of transient solace against the encroaching chill of an unforgiving autumn. The day’s brutal exertions had exacted their toll, and the simple comforts of flame’s embrace and the heady balm of ale offered a momentary remedy to battered bodies and spirits.
Jeren, his throat burning with the ale’s rough passage, sat in the company of a camp follower, perhaps a family member of a combatant. It was then that the dread sound pierced the evening’s fragile peace—the thunderous cadence of countless hooves. A sound that spelled doom, that heralded the return to a nightmarish reality for any peasant.
His heart thrummed a frantic rhythm, a prelude to terror as the camp erupted into chaos. Some scrambled to salvage what meager possessions they could, while others, gripped by a warrior’s resolve, stood firm, weapons at the ready. The enemy’s intent was clear—a merciless counterassault.
The periphery of the camp was soon awash with the cacophony of battle cries and the death knells of the fallen. “Charge!” The command, bellowed by an unseen adversary, cut through the din, a clarion call to slaughter. Panic, a relentless pursuer, seized Jeren, propelling him into flight. He cast aside all thoughts of worldly possessions, his only aim to escape the maelstrom of violence.
As raiders surged into the camp, their torches painting the night with strokes of orange and red, the clatter of chainmail and the grim work of axes played out in a macabre dance. Jeren, his back to the carnage, fled towards the sanctuary of the forest, the trees’ dark embrace his only hope against the tide of war that sought to claim him.
