Nina's Discipline

Leaving the Kingdom

Leaving the Kingdom

"Tighten up those lines! Keep pushing! Hold, men! Hold!" Erec's voice projected loudly over the battlefield. Still, it only reached the soldiers in the back. Those on the front lines couldn't hear anything over the clashing of swords against armor, flesh, and steel.

Cursing, Erec turned his horse and directed the roan stallion to gallop down towards the crumbling line. The soldiers struggling to hold their formation were being quickly overpowered by the Gascony squadron that was beating down on them mercilessly.

Erec knew he should have assigned more troops to this group. They were the central group, trying to draw the Gasconites into their territory so that two other squads could flank in around on either side and trap them in a kill box.

However, he had misjudged how many soldiers he would need to put into the center group to keep the lines strong when his force was broken into a third and facing the full might of one being pushed down on them. Even while actively retreating, trying to draw them in closer towards the designated area wherein they would spring their trap, his people were beginning to die too fast.

If the center group disbanded or was overpowered, the two flanking groups would lose the advantage given to them by trapping the Gascony squadron. While being attacked on two fronts was also a difficult prospect, it gave the Gasconites too easy an opportunity to escape.

Barking out more orders, Erec threw himself down from his horse. He passed the reigns off to the man who rode beside him. Rainier was a high knight, many years Erec's senior. He had lost the last two fingers of his left hand in a previous battle of the war. He appeared grizzled and tough, like a bear. He had accompanied the young prince as a wiser, more experienced adviser for the military campaign. Erec was the leader, by birthright, but all of his decisions were filtered through Rainier first.

The older man pulled the horses back as Erec ran forward to join the battle itself. If this squadron needed men, then he would add his body to the fray. He wasn't alone long. Only long enough for Rainier to threw both sets of reigns to one of the many squires that were milling about behind the front lines and join with his prince once again.

Though Erec was more skilled than Rainier, in experience he was far his junior. On active battlefields, it was often the latter that mattered far more than the former. War wasn't at all as neat and ordered like sparring fights in the training hall.

War was dirty, underhanded, and unclean. There was a stink of desperation and blood in the air that didn't exist in carefully structured rooms. When faced with death as the punishment for loss, the men who fought here would rather abandon their morals and stoop to lows that they normally wouldn't condone in less stressful circumstances.

Twice today, Erec nearly had dirt thrown into his eyes. He wore protection for his groin that was often the only thing saving him from severe pain or being made into a eunuch. Grown men spit into his face and pulled his hair like children. They would do anything they thought necessary in order to survive another day. It was a lesson that no classroom would ever have been able to teach.

However, he was still skilled, and he was a fast learner. The dirty tactics of war began imprinting themselves on his memory and his fighting style adjusted itself accordingly. When he pushed his way to the front lines, with Rainier at his back, he was a force to be reckoned with.

After the first battle in Jorives, Erec had puked himself dry. While he had remained mostly calm in the actual fight, once it had finished and the lives he had taken began gripping his soul, he hadn't been able to control the loss of his stomach.

Now, after so many weeks of being here, it almost seemed too easy. It was beginning to worry him, in the dead of night, how little he cared for the lives that he was taking. The face of the first man whose life he had claimed was forever burned into his head. His unknown face crying out in pain, his nameless body lying on ground trampled by an army's worth of boots.