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“How many of us are left?”
"Three hundred and sixteen, My Lord. There may be a few stragglers catching up."
Tesolus gripped the reins lightly. The horse beneath him paced restlessly in a small circle, the armor skirts rustling with a rasping sound. The barding, weighing over a hundred kilograms, would seriously slow their retreat. Under his orders, all the cavalry's horse barding had been gathered and stashed in a dry, shaded, well-hidden cave deep within the forest.
Before leaving, they sealed the entrance with heavy stones and covered it with layer upon layer of soil. Within just a few days, no trace of it would remain visible. This precious armor could thus be preserved for later use.
The wound across Tesolus's forehead throbbed with a dull, twitching pain. A heavy, curved blade had struck him squarely across the brow. Had he not dodged in time, the blow would have split his skull open. Even now, through the gaping tear in his flesh, one could glimpse the pale white bone beneath it, already stained with fine threads of blood. The skin around the wound had turned an unhealthy shade of pale; its condition looked far from good.
The blade grazed his eyeball, cutting straight through his eyelid. Had it landed a fraction closer, he would have lost his vision in his right eye entirely. Most of his other wounds, large and small, had merely nicked the surface of his skin. One ear had been torn half away by a lance. He had finally found the time to properly bind up his wounds. Earlier, to stop the bleeding, he had simply torn strips from the hem of his tunic and pressed the blood-soaked cloth directly against his injuries.
Despite the constant, throbbing pain radiating from wound to wound across his body, he showed no signs of it on his face. Some fierce, overwhelming emotion seized his heart, allowing him to push past the pain entirely.
When they first charged down the hillside, they numbered 1,132 cataphracts. Every one of them was a seasoned, elite soldier capable of expertly handling his mount. Each was equipped with gear worth enough to bankrupt several middle-class households. Wherever they appeared on the battlefield, the enemy's morale suffered a devastating blow while their comrades surged with renewed fervor, charging forward with redoubled courage.
Yet these noble, courageous cavalrymen were senselessly thrown into the heart of the enemy's encirclement for the sake of selfish ambition. Their losses were catastrophic, with only about four in ten managing to escape. As the man to whom these cavalrymen had entrusted their lives, his fury was beyond containment.
From yesterday to today, this short span of time had felt like living through a horrific nightmare, yet he had adapted to it with unnatural ease. In the quiet stillness of the deep night, he found himself reflecting alone. Something about what was happening to him was deeply abnormal. He behaved as though he were a general who had spent over a decade waging war. He was capable of effortlessly leading his cavalry into the enemy's charge and of pulling these men who had placed their trust and their lives in his hands safely out of such a hopeless situation.
None of this was something an ordinary university graduate like Xu Ning could accomplish.
Only the bearer of the glorious black double-headed eagle banner, the general of the Emperor's personal Golden Legion and the Empire's foremost champion warrior, Tesolus Gaius Yarneus, could have pulled something like this off. He'd only pieced all this information together afterward, through careful, roundabout questioning once they'd broken free of the encirclement.
He had no idea who he truly was. The face reflected in the water was unmistakably his own, yet every soldier called him Tesolus. The genuine admiration and reverence in their eyes was impossible to fake, especially after their general had led them out of an encirclement by a tens of thousands-strong army.
He had genuinely become the champion warrior. As the leader of the entire cavalry, he was the first to charge into the dense wall of spears. Yet he emerged with only minor wounds and was still alive.
In that brief clash yesterday alone, over a hundred Hols soldiers fell by his hand. Killing a fully armored heavy infantryman posed no more difficulty for him than wringing a chicken's neck. He knew precisely how to thrust his lance to tear through the weak points in an opponent's armor and how to swing his mace to maximize the force multiplied by his horse's speed. It was as though he had been born a warrior, a natural force of strength.
Even his personality had shifted in subtle ways. No matter how bloody or horrifying the scene before him was, it drew no more of his attention than a stone by the roadside. He could ride his horse over mangled corpses without flinching and calmly swing his blade to sever a man's head, entrails splattering across his face. He was aware of all these changes happening within himself and regarded them with a strange, detached calm.
Yet, this cold, detached attitude toward himself left him feeling troubled and disoriented, an emotion he had kept firmly suppressed, never allowing the slightest hint of it to show through. He understood perfectly well that a leader could never display such vulnerability in front of his soldiers.
...............
"Arka, the general's wound needs proper treatment as soon as possible. The air here is so damp. Give it just a few more days, and the wound will start to rot!"
Arka finally removed his helmet, revealing a square, angular face that matched what one might have imagined beneath it. A long scar ran from the corner of his mouth to his jaw. His features were sharp and rugged, and his hair was cut extremely short, leaving only a thin layer of stubble. His two thick, heavy eyebrows lent him an imposing, formidable presence.
Marcus had suggested this to him. He no longer looked particularly young, sporting a thick mustache and a full goatee. On the outside, he had the bearing of a steady, composed man in his middle years.
"Of course I know that! But where exactly are we supposed to find a physician in a place like this?! Who's going to treat a wound near the eye without a doctor? Are you volunteering?"
Arka appeared visibly agitated. His right hand, the standard-bearer's hand, was tightly wrapped in white cloth. However, a searing red seeped through the bandage, unmistakable against the white. As the general's standard-bearer, Arka had naturally drawn more than his fair share of enemy attacks.
Yet that glorious black banner had never once fallen throughout the entire battle. Even now, as they marched through the forest, Arka carefully rolled up the banner and tucked it safely away in the leather tube strapped to his back.
Marcus was completely silenced by that pointed reply. He had no solution of his own; he had simply voiced his anxiety without thinking it through. They were currently resting briefly in the forest, waiting for the stragglers to catch up. This rest wouldn't last long as their supplies were nearly exhausted, and they needed to reach the nearest human settlement quickly, or these cataphracts, most of whom lacked real hunting skills, would likely starve to death in the forest.
With no other choice, the rest of the group led their horses over to gather around Tesolus, waiting for their commander to issue his next order. They had already sent scouts ahead to reconnoiter the path forward. Barring any complications, the scouts should return shortly.
The sound of urgent hoofbeats rang out, and a cavalryman wearing only chainmail leapt down from his horse.
"My Lord, there are no ambush forces ahead. But we've spotted a village."
Everyone's spirits lifted at once.
"It's a Hols settlement."
As the scout continued speaking, however, the atmosphere quickly turned grim and murderous.
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