Even Gods Must Fall - Christian Warren Freed Page 0,40
becoming as great a king as his father had been.
Rolnir nodded. “Fair enough.”
Nothing else needed to be said. All three looked inward as their thoughts gradually shifted back to what they hoped was the last stage of the campaign.
Horses snorted as they strode through calf-deep snows. Aurec’s pathfinders, Mahn and Raste, had taken a platoon forward to scout out the nearest major roads in order to facilitate the army moving faster. They’d been in Delranan for less than a full day and were already thirty leagues into the kingdom’s interior. Most of the roads were cleared, a dual-edged blade if Aurec had ever seen one. Clear roads meant enough columns of infantry or cavalry had already gone by, heading east, or the local villagers had gone stir-crazy from being trapped within their homes over the course of the unusually long winter. Either way it was a risk he needed to take. The drive west couldn’t afford to be slowed down, not with the end goal almost in sight.
Aurec’s real fear was that the discipline of the army would break down the longer the campaign lasted. Men would want to return to their homes as those repressed worries came to light. Each would be thinking of their own families at this point. Aurec sympathized with them, for he lamented Maleela’s loss every night. A small part of his mind whispered that she was already dead, forgotten on some desolate stretch of Malweir he’d never heard of.
He’d ridden at the head of the five-thousand-strong column deep into the night and was borderline exhausted. Youthful exuberance was all but lost on the new king. He should still be sowing his wild tendencies, not burdened with the worries of the crown and a kingdom. Aurec missed his father, for that was the logical destination for all of his worries. The pain of seeing Stelskor’s beheaded corpse continued to war within Aurec’s heart and mind. Yet the longer the war dragged on the more he felt less than the day prior. His nerves were numbed. His mind was hardened by brutal statistics and casualties reports.
He seldom saw faces, recalled names. Each soldier in uniform was a number. A statistic. The impersonal nature of his position left him hollow. He needed more than the war was willing to give back. Already he felt old, used up. Thoughts of a warm bed and belly full of properly cooked food, not the meager rations the army cooks prided themselves on producing once a night, mocked him through the chaos of battlefields. The war continued to change him on fundamental levels. Some were positive while most reduced his opinion of what a ruler should be. No one being should have the ability to decide who lived or died. No one. Yet he was co-commander of nearly twenty thousand soldiers, many of whom weren’t going to go home alive.
It had taken many long nights before Aurec came to accept that casualties were an awful part of war. He despised losing troops in combat, but recognized they were almost necessary. War was the most brutal, twisted event any race could endure and it was entirely too common. His faith in the gods decreased daily, for what omnipotent beings responsible for the creation of the world would so casually allow their creations to wholesale slaughter one another?
Aurec turned inward. His thoughts centered on bringing as many of his soldiers home as possible. The war dominated his dreams. Thinking about anything else merely served to distract him from what needed his attention. Men were willing to die under his banner, proudly wearing his colors on their armor as they waded through the slaughter of others who might once have been friends. It was a grizzly task.
Mahn rode in a short time later, out of breath and red faced. His eyes harbored a nervous twitch that led Aurec to believe their easy march was about to end.
“Sire, we’ve come across tracks. A lot of tracks. We’re not alone out here.”
Aurec’s frown was concealed, thankfully, by the night. He couldn’t stop from looking left or right, though. “Are you sure they’re not ours?”
The question was almost foolish, a desperate grab towards answers he hoped weren’t what Mahn said next.
“They’re Goblin prints,” Mahn confirmed.
“Goblins? How? We all but destroyed them in Rogscroft,” Aurec protested. “There’s no way they could have gotten here before us.”
“I don’t know, sire, but after these last few months I’d recognize their prints blindfolded. All I can report is what I’ve seen.”