"Asag," a calm voice echoed through the dimness of the Legate’s quarters.It was soft and yet hard. "You know this is the only way.No use in head-butting against the truth. A moron can smash his skull against a stone wall as much as he likes, but the wall will not move, and he will be left with nothing but brains in the dirt."

For a long, agonizing moment, the Legate said nothing. He leaned heavily against the cold stone of the window slit, his gaze fixed on the Eastern ramparts where thousands of the enemy had already paid the tithe of their lives.

So many and yet not enough.

It was a bitter notion.

The League could scour the countryside, press-gang a thousand more peasants into service, hand them the rusted spears of the men who had died that morning, and send them back into the meat-grinder.

No matter the casualty ratio, the League remained a mountain while the Bastion was being whittled down to a pebble. They could replenish their losses; Asag could only count his dead.

That day alone they had lost between wounded and dead nearly sixty men.Sixty of them, some of them good, some of them bad and vile. But still sixty spears they could have used tomorrow.

And then the day afterward.

The walls were becoming porous. Soon, they would have to start recruiting from the medical tents, sending men who could barely stand to hold weapon they couldn’t swing.

"Legate" another voice joined the fray.

It came from his second-in-command.He was a loyal and valorous man, and there was naught that could make Asag have him in disdain, he had made his name when the Fourth had been conceived.

Nobly enough when Ghalrim knew of Edric’s appointment, he simply nodded and said he had been a good choice.

The man had returned to duty with a blood-soaked bandage still wrapped around his chest, and looking at they way his mouth distorted into grimace of pain everytime he moved, he seemed only halfway mended.

"I find myself in agreement with his lordship. We simply don’t have the numbers to man the full perimeter. Many are wounded, and those that are not in bodies are in souls.

I say we relinquish the outer stronghold. If we mount the defense at the inner gateway, the terrain narrows. It is a throat we can choke. It will require half the men, and we can use the rest to bolster the other sectors or have them in reserve."

Asag closed his eyes, wishing it were that simple. Ghalrim’s logic was sound on paper, the gateway was a natural kill-box, a place where boiling oil and heavy stones would make a charnel house of the League’s vanguard.

But there was no choice that had only benefits.

The strongholds were the Bastion’s teeth. They were built to deny the enemy a foothold on the main curtain wall. If a stronghold fell, the enemy gained a platform from which to swarm the defenders. To fall back to the gateway was to admit the wolf was already over the threshold. It was a gamble of a limb to save the heart, but if the gateway broke too... well that would be the end of the story.

The end for him, the end for Xanthios, the end of Yarzat. And the start of a tale he didn’t want to be any part of but dead.

"Asag," Lord Xanthios called out, his stare as cold and unyielding as winter snow. "We have fought valiantly. No man living or dead can deny that, least of all the crows currently feasting on the bounty we’ve provided them. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

But we must be honest with ourselves. Most of what we have slaughtered are the enemy’s peasants. We have bloodied some knights, yes, but for every noble we kill, the League finds three more sons of the soil to clog our blades."

He stepped forward, his armor creaking in the silence.

"If an assault like yesterday’s comes again, if another ’No-Hand’ Mers finds a soft spot, it won’t just be a stronghold we lose. It will be the whole damn fortress. I say we cut off the limb and bandage the stump as best we can.Surely we can’t man the walls with dead bastards.

There is no shame in doing what is necessary to survive. If instead of reliquinshing it on our terms, the enemy take it on theirs, and If the men tasked with holding that wall during the rout take pity on the comrades below as the run and open the gates to save their skin, it’s over.

You see it, Asag. You must. We build a new line, we shorten our breath, and we defend what remains with a tighter fist."

Asag finally turned from the window. The light caught the deep lines of exhaustion on his face, bathing him in the soft light that showed only the hardness of his features.

"We have been tasked to hold this place with our very lives," Asag began, his voice a low rasp that seemed to pull at the very air in the room. "It matters not if suns, cocks, bulls, or towers come knocking at our gates, our duty is to push them back into the dirt. If you two, who have bled beside me and fought just as hard, believe this is the path... then who am I to deny your counsel?I am no Alpheo."

He looked down at his bandaged hand, the purple bruising creeping up farther. "That has always been my failing, you know? Letting the fear take the best of me. I spend my nights wondering if it is fear that defines us, struck by its hard edges until we develop our answer to it.

Perhaps we are that, in our own small part , our fears.Big or small as they are.

When we are cut by them, we either fling ourselves back to avoid the sting, or we take up our hammers and try to smooth the edges until they no longer bite. Indeed....

Many times I think what Alpheo would have done if he were here. And every time I reach the thought that he would have roused the men with speech, led them to a sortie until he came back with the bastard head of the Crownless Prince on one hand and the Habadian cunt’s in the other. He always had that....that gift to see the way where there is naught but darkness.To light the way where night once stood.

He would come to us and promise that beyond the night and dark, there will be a morrow more beatufiul than anything we have ever beheld’’

His eyes closed with a smile, but when he raised them once more there was no joy in them.

Alpheo was not there.They had only him, and they would have to make do.

’’But I have no such thing.No answer to our doubts. No torch for the night. We will retreat from the Eastern Stronghold.’’ His good hand closed on his knees , angry at their own powerlessness. ’’ We’ll leave half to man the throat of the gateway and keep the rest in reserve to be used where they are needed."

Suddenly, he snapped his head up, a sharp light returning to his weary eyes as if a forgotten piece of a puzzle had just clicked into place. "What about the small towers? The out-sentinels?"

"What of them?" Ghalrim asked, his brow furrowed beneath his bloodied bandage.

"We built them for a purpose," Asag said, pacing the small confines of the room. "To let the bowmen rain arrows and the levies drop stones onto the skulls below. We cannot drag the towers behind the gateway, that is for certain."

Xanthios leaned over the table, his dagger spearheading a block of hard, pungent cheese. He sliced off a wedge and shoved it into his mouth, the curds disappearing into the thick, wool-like bramble of his white beard. "They are stone and mortar, Asag. They stay where they stand."

"The entrances are narrow, wide enough for only one man at a time," Asag countered, his voice gaining momentum. "They are so small....and besides we have so much rubbles.’’ His eyes clouded as his mind went deep in thought ’’There are two of them flanking the approach. I say we man them. We pack the lower doors with stones, rubble, and every piece of heavy shit we can find until the way in is erased. We give the men inside a month’s worth of grain and water and tell them to hold. They stay there, a thorn in the League’s side.Shooting where they hope to attack."

Ghalrim scratched at his stubbled, salt-and-pepper face, his eyes narrowing as he visualized the idea in his mind. "It’s a nasty bit of business. The enemy will either have to waste days and a mountain of bodies trying to dig them out, or they ignore them and let our boys pick them off from the rear as they charge the gateway. It’ll bleed their time dry, for certain."

"And who is going to man them?" Xanthios then asked, cheese crumbs clinging to his beard like stray snowflakes. "Let’s not mince words. It’s a suicide mission, more hope to see a dog fuck a cat that to see through it. Once those doors are stoned up, those men are as good as buried. They’ll be fighting in a tomb until they have overwhelmed or finished all options."

Asag let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to deflate his massive frame. "I will find volunteers," he murmured. "I always do...’’

A heavy silence settled over the room after that ,all of them aware of the weight of the orders they had just birthed. Asag looked from Ghalrim to Xanthios, his gaze searching. "Are we done here?"

The two men nodded solemnly.

"Then excuse me," Asag said, straightening his dented breastplate where a Ezvanian mace had found nest earlier that day. "I find I need to take a walk.I need to take some air.’’

But as he turned to leave, Xanthios called out after him, his voice uncharacteristically soft. "Make a stop at the nursery. Tell the medics to give you a dram of opium. I see you wincing man. You’re walking like a dog with a broken hip."

Asag paused at the door. He didn’t turn around.He would have desperately wanted some oppium, but there was not enough to go around.

And he had already wasted enough of the plant himself. Could he go back then he would stop himself , he may had got some rest from it , but other dozens upon dozens of men would suffer the long sleep, with pain being the hand to close their eyes.

All because he wanted to have some nice sleep.

"The opium is for the men who truly need it, the ones who won’t see the dawn or need to have knives and silk threat in their stomach or limbs.We got enough of the latter, and too small of doses for the former.Pain is but a guest. It can be suffered. ’’ He sniffed from his nose. ’’Can’t have me drooling and smiling like an idiot in front of the troops besides."

"That, however,’’ Xanthios noticed, with Ghalrim thinking the same but aware of the command’s structure prohibiting him from saying it. ’’ ...doesn’t seem like a pain that can be suffered."