They say a brave man dies but once, and a coward a thousand deaths. To Thalien, that had always sounded like a towering pile of horseshit.

Death is a singular event. The true difference lay in the life lived before the debt came due. For most of his years, Thalien had lived as a coward, though the world called it "filial piety."

He had been a dog at his father’s heel, craving a scrap of Lechian’s approval, molding his spine to fit the rigid expectations of the Prince of Herculia.

When it finally became clear that love was not something he would receive, Thalien stopped begging. He gathered up his rejection and built a nest out of hate. He was proud of that transition, proud to have been the one to pull the curtain back and show the world the moth-eaten cloth his father was truly cut from. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

The banquet that came after he had surrendered the capital was the most memorable feast of his life.

It was the first time he had felt truly brave. It is a simple thing to take a man’s life with a blade; it is a far more exquisite art to watch a man lose the will to live while he still draws breath.

Now, his father resided in a temple, a hollowed-out ghost of a prince, and Thalien made it a point to visit every once in a while. He would sit in the sacred silence, drinking fine wine and tearing into roasted meat while his father watched in impotent silence with the peas porridge the peasants delighted in.

And he had no choice but to host him; no one in Herculia dared attend to the wishes of the "Dog Prince" without the only Prince’s leave, which meant that if Thalien asked the priest of that convent agreed.

His father was the true coward.

He had wanted to bury Thalien in a room of incense and ancient prayers, to turn him into a priest who spent his days whispering to the All-Knower, singing of the mercy of the Weaver, proclaiming of the strength of the Warrior, the justice of the Father, and the power of the Sea-God.

This was a thousand times better. Here, in the mud and the blood, Thalien could make a truth out of that hollow saying: no matter if you are a hero or a craven, Death only knocks once.

The first to die this afternoon was the man on the roof.

He had been standing behind a front pillar wood of the headman’s house, clutching a bow and staying on the lookout. Somehow, word of Thalien’s contingent had reached this backwater, and the invaders, knowing they could never outrun them, had fortified themselves in the hamlet.

It was a pathetic defense.

The majority of the force Thalien led were Voghondai, the Fox’s own lapdogs, but it had been Thalien’s own Herculian turncoats who had given their position away through clumsy scouting. As humiliating as the blunder was, the Voghondai seemed to care little. They were a breed apart, knit together by a bond of blood and loyalty that Thalien could only observe from the outside.

They spoke in their low tongue, gesturing with calloused hands, laughing softly at things Thalien couldn’t understand. There was something alluring about them, a sense of belonging that was as foreign to Thalien as the Voghondai were.

Well actually not Voghondai the Carrion Raven’s agents said they were different from them.

He had never known what it felt like to be part of a family that didn’t want to sharpen a knife for your back.

He released the string, and the arrow hissed into the dark.

The man on the roof had been clumsy, fumbling with a bow of his own to take a potshot at the general lines, but Thalien was faster. The shaft buried itself deep in the man’s belly, not a killing blow, but enough to buck his weight backward.

He lost his footing, sliding helplessly down the steep wooden slope before tumbling over the eaves and landing before the headman’s door.

If the arrow hadn’t finished him, the fall likely broke his neck. He scarcely moved again.

The scent of pine and impending woodsmoke reached Thalien’s nose as he carried off with his task.

He had been given one, a work to tend to: holding the perimeter, choking the foraging parties, and bleeding the enemy’s raiding contingents. They had become more numerous lately, like rats scurrying further from their holes as hunger set in.

He was separated from the main host, though he was kind of happy, that meant the prince trusted him.

Alpheo had given him a mixed bag of auxiliaries and local levies to command. Communications were thin, but the scouts of the Carrion Raven had brought word that the invaders were starving. The Prince’s strategy was simple: deny them the land. Every village in the immediate path had been relocated, turned into ghosts of thatch and timber, forcing the enemy onto long, exposed lines where they were cut down, their limbs and scalps sent back to their camps as a welcoming gift.

He did not know how it was that simply two moons into the invasion they kept sending men to their deaths, were they really that desperate on supply? He had not really that much knowledge on warfare, but he knew food should have been one of the main priority when planning an invasion.

He had, after all, seen his own father rage caused by the famine that had denied him the food to raise an army to lead against the Yarzat prince.

Well, he wasn’t really going to complain about that; the more they killed, the merrier it was.

But still, the land was vast, and Thalien’s men were few. Sometimes, a party slipped through the net.It was inevitable.

And this village was the cost of that failure, it had not been moved in time.

"Nothing for it, my lord. We were simply spread too thin," Ser Malovio offered in reassurance. His black hair fell in two oily waves over his brow as he drew his own bow, tracking the enemy movements highlighted by the flickering torches within the village. "We won’t be able to rescue the locals now. I suppose reprisal is the only ’noble’ thing left to offer them."

Malovio released his string. The arrow arched over the scattered corpses of villagers who hadn’t been fast enough to run.

He was a good knight, he had been in his service for sometime and strangely Thalien felt in his heart he was someone he could open up to.

Though, of course, he had his own peculiarities.

The invaders may have held the village, outnumbering Thalien’s immediate circle he could have called without further disintegrating the net around the land, but they were blind in the dark. They clutched torches like talismans, unaware that the light was merely a beacon for the axes of the auxiliaries. Thalien’s specialists didn’t carry fire.

Whether they saw better in the gloom or simply moved by instinct, the result was the same: the invaders usually died after a single, silent swing of a Voghondai axe.

They were the unit with less men and yet, they did most of the work.

Thalien stayed back, perched in the cool shadows. He had no business in the red chaos of the streets. He preferred the clinical distance of the bow, pinpointing the men illuminated by their own fires and snuffing them out one by one.

When the secondary force of Yarzat infantry and Herculian turncoats flanked the village from the east, the enemy’s resolve buckled. They broke, scurrying back toward the only stone structure of note: the temple. They hoped for the right of sanctuary and they hoped a barred wooden gate would be enough to hold back the night.

And for a time their wishes held true, but just enough for Thalien to think on how to deal with them.Perhaps they would smoke them out or starve them...both would require time and efforts, but it wasn’t as if he could allow them to leave without first paying the bill.

The priest emerged then, his face bruised and one eye swollen shut.There was nothing entertaining or special about him, just the usual run-of-the-mill priest you could find in any village that had more than 50 people.

He stood on the threshold, his voice trembling as he addressed the heralder of the prince’s justice.

He spoke of the sanctity of the house of the gods, of the ancient laws that forbade blood within the holy walls.

Then, he looked at the corpses of his flock, men and women he had led in prayer only that morning, now cooling in the red dirt.

An heartbeat later the old man turned to the nearest soldier and demanded a dagger. With a shaking hand, he drew the blade across his own palm. He stepped just outside the temple doors, splattering his own crimson life across the wood in a frantic arc.

Voice of confusion came muffled from behind that door.

The priest then looked back at Thalien’s men, tears streaming down his battered face, and proclaimed that since a priest’s blood had been shed by his own hand upon the threshold, the house was defiled. The sanctity was gone. The gods had left.

It was free field.

Thalien didn’t need to give the order twice. They grabbed hays and everything that could take up flame and stuffed them in pile ahead of the door.

It was quick to fall to the torch, and the night finally became as bright as day.