Albert watched them moving through the trees—shadows slowly resolving into men. Faded blue uniforms, dented helmets, faces that hadn't seen a razor in weeks. They walked in loose formation, but even that was too tight for this path. Cliff on the left, river on the right. A natural trap.
He counted their breaths from fifty meters away. Could hear the tramp of boots on damp earth. Could smell sweat and iron and something fouler—old wounds left untended, perhaps.
Thirty meters.
Behind him, forty men waited. Albert didn't need to turn to know they were trembling. He could feel it in the held breaths, in the faint clink of equipment shaking in unsteady hands.
Twenty meters.
The lead Leandria soldiers halted. A knight—thick-mustached, raised his hand. His eyes swept the forest. His lips moved, issuing orders.
Albert read those lips from this distance. "Careful. They're somewhere."
Yes... We're right here.
Ten meters.
The knight stepped forward. Three paces. Four. His gaze fixed straight ahead, toward the bush where Albert crouched.
He stopped. Stared. Albert stared back. Didn't move. Didn't breathe.
The knight frowned. His hand moved toward his sword hilt.
NOW.
Albert exploded forward. No war cry. No battle scream. Only movement. Only a body launching from behind the bush like a serpent that had waited too long for its prey.
The knight's mouth opened—perhaps to warn, perhaps to shout—but no sound emerged. Because Wurzel had already found the gap at his neck, sliding through flesh like a hot knife through butter.
Blood sprayed in the morning light. The knight fell with eyes wide open, still wondering what had just happened.
"CHARGE!"
The shout came from Kurt's throat, shattering the silence. On left and right, Albert's forces erupted from hiding.
But Albert was already moving. He shot into the enemy column like an arrow. Wurzel danced—a slash to the right, a soldier lost his arm, screamed. A thrust to the left, slipping under an armpit, finding the gap in armor. A spin, a low cut, a knee opened, bone flashing white before blood flooded over it.
He didn't think. His body moved on its own.
Behind him, group one slammed into the enemy flank. Impact—wooden shields, iron, flesh. Screams. Orders shouted in the same language but different accents. "Form ranks! FORM RANKS!"
But there was no time for formations. This path was too narrow. They crowded together, blocking each other, their spears tangling in trees and their own comrades' bodies.
Albert kept moving. Pushed deeper into the column. Five steps. Ten steps.
A Leandria soldier appeared before him—young, face full of fear, spear trembling in his grip. He thrust.
Albert sidestepped. His left hand caught the spear mid-shaft, yanked it, snapped it with a twist of his hips. The soldier stumbled forward, and Wurzel met him in the solar plexus.
The soldier fell with bulging eyes. His lips moved, forming a word that never finished. "Mother..."
Albert was already past. He didn't hear, wasn't interested—he only focused on killing as many enemies as possible.
To the left, Luise's group struck from the river side. He caught a glimpse—her armor wet, sword glittering among the spray. Luise moved like a dancer, each slash followed by a falling body. Blood sprayed across her armored form. She didn't wipe it away.
Behind them, group three—the reserve—began moving. They didn't attack directly. They cut off the escape route, blocking soldiers trying to flee back across the river. Their spears stabbed from behind, merciless.
This wasn't a battle. This was a slaughter, just as planned.
Albert reached the middle of the enemy column. Around him, chaos. Ahead, Leandria soldiers still tried to push forward, shoving, shouting, unaware of what was happening to their vanguard. Behind, group three had already sealed the exit.
In the center, Albert stood atop the corpse of the first knight he'd killed, blood running down Wurzel's blade, dripping onto the earth.
For a moment, the world stopped.
Two Leandria soldiers spotted him at the same time. They exchanged a glance—brief, meaningful. Then they attacked together.
One from the left, axe raised. One from the right, sword thrusting.
Their movements synchronized, as if they'd practiced this a thousand times. The axe descended. The sword lunged.
Albert moved backward—he wouldn't repeat the same mistake.
Not retreating—leaping back, body arching like a bow. The axe passed before his face, its wind brushing his skin. The sword stabbed where his stomach had been a moment before, piercing empty air.
He landed, knees bending, then launched forward again to the left. Toward the axe-wielder.
The man was still in his swing, off-balance. Wurzel slid between his ribs, puncturing a lung. He made a sound—like a scream without lungs—then fell.
The second soldier had already turned, swinging his sword horizontally. Albert ducked. The blade passed over his head. He stepped forward, inside the man's reach, and thrust downward into his thigh.
The soldier screamed, his knee buckling, dropping him to the ground. Albert stood over him, meeting his eyes. Blue eyes, wet, full of pain and fear and fury.
The man gripped his sword with one hand, trying to raise it.
Albert stomped on his wrist—bone crunched audibly. The sword fell. The soldier howled.
Albert raised Wurzel. And in that moment, he saw something in those blue eyes. Not just pain. Something else. A question. "Why?"
Albert paused. One second. Maybe two.
"Why?"
He had no answer. No time to find one.
Wurzel fell. The soldier crumpled, throat opened.
Albert was already moving again, leaving the body behind.
***
"POINT A! FALL BACK TO POINT A!"
Luise's voice cut through the clamor. Albert heard it from a distance, like an echo. But his body was already moving before his mind processed the command.
He turned, running through the scattered corpses. Strange faces. Blue uniforms. Green uniforms—one of his levy, eyes still open, mouth agape.
Twenty meters. Past the bend.
Behind him, panicked shouts. "THEY'RE RETREATING! AFTER THEM!"
Groups one and two were already moving, slipping between the trees, vanishing into the underbrush.
The surviving Leandria soldiers began to pursue, but hesitantly. They'd just lost a third of their force in ten minutes. They didn't know what waited beyond those trees.
Albert reached the rally point—a natural hollow behind a small hill, hidden from the path. He dropped to the ground, chest heaving, lungs burning.
Around him, his soldiers began arriving. One by one. Faces red, sweat-soaked, smeared with blood—their own, the enemy's, impossible to tell. Their eyes were empty or wild or staring into distances that weren't there.
Luise came last, dragging a levy wounded in the thigh. She set him down, then dropped to her knees beside Albert, gasping.
"My Lord... how many..." She panted. "How many did we lose?"
Albert calculated quickly. Numbers spun through his head. Group one: thirty-seven returned from forty. Group two: thirty-one returned from thirty-four. Group three: twenty returned from twenty-two.
Total returned: eighty-eight. Eight dead. Ten wounded—those still fit to fight, maybe seventy.
Only levy had died; the men-at-arms were merely wounded. By this measure, the plan had succeeded. Acceptable losses.
He told Luise. The woman nodded, doubled over, trying to steady her breathing. Behind her, the river flowed softly, indifferent to the deaths that had just occurred on its banks.
"The enemy?" Luise asked after a moment.
"Fifty, maybe sixty left." Albert stared toward the path, invisible from here. "They won't advance again today. Too frightened."
"But they'll come tomorrow. With more men."
"Yes."
They sat in silence, listening to the sounds around them—moans from the wounded, quiet sobbing from someone, low commands from men-at-arms beginning to reorganize their ranks.
Albert pulled a leather pouch from his belt. He lit it with trembling fingers—the sulfur matches were gone, he had to use flint, striking five times before the flame caught.
The first smoke entered his lungs. Harsh, warm, familiar.
He closed his eyes.
Behind his lids, images spun. The enemy soldier's face. His own men's faces. And among them all, his own reflection. Staring back from a puddle of blood. Empty green eyes. Nothing there at all.
"I'm still here," he whispered. "I'm still..."
He didn't know how to finish that sentence.
The world spun again. Sounds returned. The smells of iron, flesh, and damp earth.
Albert opened his eyes.
Luise was watching him. Those violet eyes—usually sharp, alert—were soft now. Perhaps she was just tired.
"Are you all right, My Lord?" she asked.
Albert looked at her. Behind Luise, the sun was climbing higher, piercing the canopy, casting lines of light across the blood-soaked earth.
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "But I can still fight. That's what matters now."
Luise nodded. Didn't ask further.
They sat there, among the ancient pines, on ground wet with blood and dew, and allowed themselves to rest.
The second battle was over... many had died, and more would die as time wore on. With each passing moment, Albert slipped further into becoming who he'd been in the past—a machine. A war machine, suffering damage deep within its core.
He smoked his cigar down to nothing, letting the ash fall to the earth among the unburied dead.
Beside him, Luise kept watch. She didn't speak. Only sat in silence, keeping Albert company.