High above, circling within the shroud of the grey-white mist, the crows drew lazy rings in the air. They cried and cried from the safety of the air , complaining no doubt that the harvest of meat was taking far too long.

They were the only ones with the freedom to scream, and choosing to proceed so.

Others a bit too hasty in their hunger were already down, plucking eyes and tip of noses with their beaks.

Below them, the Hounds were getting on business. Latio stood in the center of it, his vision blurring, his knees shaking as he realised the truth of his station.

"What the fuck do you think you’re doing?" someone barked,the bastard turned his head to see one of the veterans of his army’s killers shoving a younger soldier away from a corpse.

"What? I was just—"

"You’re a green boy, aren’t you? Look at that gash!" The veteran pointed to the red ruin , not on the soldier’s neck where a blade had torn through from ear to ear, but instead just below the temple. Only one ear remained hung by a single thread of silver-grey flesh. "The Prince promised a reward for every ear brought in. One ear per head! That’s the rule. Are you trying to scam the Prince? Are you some treacherous cunt?"

"I didn’t know. I thought—"

"You thought wrong. You know how many would love to see you lose your pelt over a botched count?We got a sea of recruits to choose from! Have you no heart for the unit? No pride?"

"I’m sorry," the younger one muttered, fumbling with a blood-slicked trophy at his belt. "This is my first time... doing it."

The veteran sighed, his anger cooling into a weary, paternal sort of contempt. He scratched the wolf-fur behind his helm as if embarrassed. "Ah, you’ll grow into it. Stop looking so miserable; you’d think it was your ear getting the knife. I forget how green you lot are. Those shiny bastards in Romelia played us a heavy one, we even got time to teach the lot of you properly before we needed to ride because a few cunts saw it fit to bring fire to us.

We haven’t got time for a full lecture on the protocols. Just drop the ears in the common sack afterward; we’ll divide the coin equally no use cheating the count. Now get back to the scalping, I’ll keep on taking the ears. We’re on a timetable."

"Thank you, sir. And sorry..."

"Don’t mention it. It’s a veteran’s duty to teach the new blood; we aren’t monsters, after all."

The older Hound suddenly paused, sensing a gaze. He turned his head , the black fur of the wold gazing down toward Latio, offering a wet, bloody smile that didn’t reach the shadows of his eyes, before stooping back to his work and his world, both so foreign in Latio’s eyes.

He hummed a low tune as he scalped the next man.

We aren’t monsters.

He was growing numb. The shock had bypassed horror and settled into a cold, hollow vacuum. For the ninth time, his eyes drifted over the remnants of the vanguard. They were all gone. Those who weren’t already cold were in the process of leaving, and as he watched the Hounds work, he realized that a quick death wasn’t even a mercy they were willing to give.

The Hounds didn’t even wait for the heart to stop before they began the work. They only delivered the final blow after the ear was taken, simply because it was easier to scalp a man who wasn’t wriggling. They didn’t even keep the bloody thing ; they tossed the hair and skin onto the grass like discarded, red-soaked flowers.

Latio had vomited until there was nothing left but bitter yellow bile at the first. At the second he had spit water, by the third he had nothing. Somewhere between the first and fourth hour of the butchery, he had soiled his britches when a Hound had stepped over him, checking to see if Latio was already taken by the knife before noticing his herald and moving to the man at his side while barking a laugh.

A warm, grey mist rose from around his waist, the steam of his own shame joining the fog of the Zauern.

He had heard of the Hounds’ works, but this ritual of ears and hair was a new kind of hell. It made him gag, but his throat was as dry as the scorched orchards of Oizen. He looked past the mounds of his own men, searching for a single black-and-white surcoat, a single fallen Hound to prove they were mortal.

There were none.

Despair, heavy and absolute, crashed over him.

He couldn’t even bring himself to look behind him, where the broken body of Ser Cleo lay. The old knight had gone down in the first true charge. Latio had tried to lead them, a desperate, suicidal surge for honor, but the javelins had shrieked their deadly whistles, cutting them down like wheat. Cleo had ducked, but a heavy iron shaft had found his belly.

He had died slowly then. Latio knew he had, but he hadn’t looked back. He couldn’t. He had kept his eyes forward, determined to kill just one of them. Just one.

But the gods were cruel. They were demons wearing the masks of men.

And now, as the mist parted, Latio found himself face-to-face with the wickedest of them all.

"That was a good speech, Young Bull. I don’t remember most of it, but I recall it was fiery enough to warm the mist," the Commander said, looking down from his saddle with the contented smile of a master whose hound had finally dropped a mangled rabbit at his feet. "Not as good as the Prince’s, of course. My prince, I mean."

He shifted his weight, a subtle tremor of dark excitement running through his shoulders. "When he speaks, your blood doesn’t just boil; it catches fire. You have to find someone to bed just to burn to get the heat off of you after the bloodydamn battle he makes us do. But yours? Yours was fine for a green princeling....especially that...what was that bit at the end?"

He lightly tapped the iron teeth of his snarling helm, pretending to reach for a memory he surely held with perfect, mocking clarity. "Ah, yes. ’If we are to die, let our iron be turned red on foreign blood.’" He let out a low, vibrating chuckle.

Latio looked down at his own knees, the reason for the laughter staring back at him.

His blade lay in the mud, silver-bright and clean. It was pure out of the forge, its edge unchipped, its surface untainted by a single drop of blood. In the chaos, in the terror, he hadn’t even found the chance to swing it.

He had come south to wage war, and he hadn’t even managed to stain his steel.

That was demeaning....

"You are monsters," Latio whispered, his voice thin and reedy. He didn’t have the strength nor the mental capacity to say anything worth the waste of breath. But he needed to say soemthing.

"The gods... they will punish you for this."

"Always loved that part," the Commander mused, his voice dripping cynicism. "Tell me, how long do the gods usually take? We’ve been at this a while. Most of our ’work’ was on bandits before you arrived, though I fail to see much difference between you and them. We caught you in the same snares, eh?Hands right on the fucking cookie, crumbs all over your mouth."

He spat a thick glob of phlegm into the blood-mottled grass. "Let’s be serious, Little Bull. You’ve earned that much from me. It’s unbecoming for either of us to pretend that your side is some noble host of angels.The very notion is insulting. War doesn’t create demons; it just wakes the ones that were already sleeping in the hearts of ’holy’ men."

The Commander leaned forward, the wolf-pelt on his shoulders casting a long shadow over Latio. "You spit on me for the ears of your men, yet I can hear the ghosts of the villages you burned screaming from your own boots. Whole villages naught but flesh.

You talk of monsters? I recall the reports from the Bastion. I know about your little catapults and what you used to send.

Think of me as the rage of every friend of mine behind those walls, along with those you all trampled in your path.

Glimpse the result of your own handiwork, boy. You are the first to pay the bill, but you won’t be the last.That I promise you. How sweet would be a dinner without bill?But in the end it always comes.

We got a lot of names to cross off the list. "

Latio said nothing. His gaze was fixed on the clean sword at his feet. Just one, he thought, a frantic, pathetic pulse of defiance left in him. Wouldn’t it be right to bathe the blade once this day?And wouldn’t that bastard make a worthy target?

He was close enough for it....

He lunged. His fingers clawed for the hilt, his mind screaming for one last act of agency.

He never managed to swing it.

Rykio didn’t even draw his axe,he couldn’t be bothered, and he had expected it, of course.... He simply swung his armored boot, the heavy steel-toed sabot catching Latio squarely in the mouth. The world exploded into white light, and the taste of salt and copper overwhelmed him.

He fell back.

It was demeaning, and it was not over.

As he lay gasping, the Hounds around him erupted into laughter.

And heartbeat later ropes whistled through the air, coils of rough hemp looping around his ankles and wrists.

A minute later, the Heir of Kakunia was no longer a prince. He was bound so tightly he couldn’t even twitch, trussed up in layers of cord until he looked like a smoked sausage ready for the market. He lay in the mud, staring up at the belly of the Commander’s horse, as the mist of Oizen began to swallow the silence of the dead.

He had no debt that whatever his fate, it wasn’t anything he’d liked to hear, but he was flesh, and flesh was weak.

’’What will be of me?’’

The eyes of the snarling dog looked down like his wearer’s, there was no hate in them, just a bit of contempt.

After a bit of silence the scalper of men and heir of a demon just shrugged.

"I haven’t got the foggiest," he chuckled as if he were holding the biggest of spittle under his tongue. "Eh. Pun intended..."