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x The horn sounded low and long, tearing through the still night.
Samwell had not been asleep.
He sprang up and shouted, “Form ranks!
Form ranks!” The first moments dissolved into confusion.
Men lurched awake, grabbed shields, stumbled, cursed.
Then the ranks formed around him.
Order had been the heart of four months of training.
Repetition had driven it into the men until discipline became something close to muscle memory.
In the pale moonlight, Samwell could already see dark shapes moving in the passage into the valley.
The wild men had taken the bait.
Once the horn told them they had been discovered, they no longer bothered hiding.
Harsh howls rose from the dark and echoed between the valley walls, startling birds from the trees and beasts from sleep.
They frightened the camp as well.
There were too many voices.
The night hid their numbers, but the sound made them seem like thousands.
Could the line hold against that?
Samwell stood on the earthen mound at the valley mouth and watched the black mass rush toward him.
His heart was calm.
The calm surprised him.
In his previous life, he had wanted such steadiness and never truly possessed it.
After crossing into this world, it had come to him at the strangest moments.
Before killing Carter, he had hesitated.
Afterward, he had felt fear, sickness, and panic.
But when Carter hung before him and Todd Flowers came charging through the dark, Samwell’s hand had been steady enough to finish the act.
Now it was the same.
Before the battle, he had lain awake worrying that Todd might betray him, that he had misjudged the wild men’s strength, that four months of drilling might prove a joke, that he might die on an unnamed mound before he ever took part in the wars to come.
Yet when the enemy came, all of that fell away.
One thought remained.
Hold.
“Loose!” At Samwell’s command, the soldiers shoved the prepared stones and logs down the slope.
Thunder rolled.
Stone and timber crashed through the first wild men at the valley mouth.
Men broke beneath them.
Screams rose.
Bone, blood, and dirt scattered in the moonlight.
The first blow tore the wild charge apart and gave the raw soldiers a breath.
“Shields!” The front rank slammed their broad wooden shields into the earth.
The men behind them stared over their shoulders at the wild faces rushing upward.
Fear was there.
Fear belonged there.
But they did not move.
Their comrades stood behind them.
Their lord stood behind them.
For four months, Samwell had not taught them a hundred clever techniques.
He had taught them a few simple movements, repeated until there was no room left for thought.
Stand together.
Move together.
Obey the order.
On their own, the recruits were full of flaws: stiff, clumsy, slow to adapt, too rigid by half.
In formation, they became something else.
Even Samwell did not fully understand what a disciplined line could mean in a war of cold steel.
Tonight, in the depths of the Red Mountains, that rough new army would show its first teeth.
The impact came.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Many in the front rank squeezed their eyes shut and dug their boots into the earth.
The shields held.
That was not surprising.
The shields were only wood, but the wild men’s weapons were worse.
The mountain tribes had few proper smiths.
Iron blades were rare among them.
Most carried stone hammers, wooden spears, bone knives, teeth, and crude axes.
They were also charging uphill.
Samwell watched coldly.
“Spears!” The spearmen behind the shields thrust through the gaps.
Steel points drove into flesh.
Again.
Again.
After several rounds of thrusting, the first wild men in the passage had thinned badly.
“Blades!” At the third order, the last rank drew long knives and short swords, moved through the spears and shields, and hacked down the wounded and staggering men at the front.
Before the next wave struck, the blades withdrew, the spears settled, and the shields locked again.
Again and again.
Shield.
Spear.
Blade.
When the first group began to tire, Samwell gave the next order.
“First group back.
Second group forward!” The valley mouth was narrow, and Samwell had divided his men into three groups before the battle.
Each held the same mix of shields, spears, and blades.
Each knew the same motions.
Shield.
Spear.
Blade.
Plain.
Repetitive.
Almost dull.
And brutally effective.
The fight had not lasted long before bodies covered the slope below the mound.
Even the recruits seemed shocked by the harm they had done.
They were still green.
They shook.
They made mistakes.
But leather armor covered their bodies, high ground favored them, the narrow valley protected their flanks, and Samwell stood close enough for every order to carry.
With each rotation, each kill, each survived impact, they grew steadier.
Blood soaked their hands and coats and washed some of the newness from them.
This was how veterans were made: simply, terribly.
Fight once.
Kill once.
Live.
The men Samwell had recruited from the docks of the Mander were undergoing that change before his eyes.
As the night wore on, their motions grew cleaner.
Shorter.
More certain.
No matter how fiercely the wild men charged, they could not break the thin line at the valley mouth.
They left only bodies behind.
The smell of blood filled the valley.
At Samwell’s command, the men on the mound began to move like a single war engine.
Men died to feed it.
Blood slicked its work.
The enemy’s fear became its first true banner.
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS TheDevotedReader I hope you enjoyed this chapter.