I surprised myself with how much I had to teach that gang of miscreants, but after the first day my lessons came naturally. After the fifth, they started to actually pay attention, seemed to recognise some value. That much was Vara’s idea—having me regale the stories of just how I’d performed so many ridiculous feats.

  Now this is where my memory fails me. I think I remember telling the truth, more or less. Perhaps with the occasional, reflexive embellishment, and of course with Gruin strategically absent to ensure I didn’t spur him into a murderous rage, but, generally speaking, a roughly accurate account of what had happened. Certainly more so than the accounts I’d heard from third and fourth-hand sources at least.

  But the idiots I was telling them to now seemed to lap it all up. I don’t know if it was some perverse enjoyment they got at the feeling of seeing behind some curtain in the world, but the more ignominious and shitty my heroics were revealed to be, the more enthusiastic and respectful my audience became. It was fucking bizarre, and to this day the only explanation I can think of is that I was such a lying little bastard back then that I didn’t even register how much I was sugar-coating everything as I tried so hard not to.

  However confused I was, I couldn’t deny that the results of this made my training go even better. Within another week, they’d even started to fight better. A mix of me starting them on swords, my own field of expertise, and them having a newfound coordination that just generally greased the wheels of any sort of training. I began to bring them in for extra lessons, actually enjoying the time spent not lying, and they started to attend those extra lessons for some reason.

  Word spread of how we were doing, men spoke to my trainees, and I feared my reputation would come crashing down around me. It didn’t. If anything, it seemed to grow as each of the men under my command kept their mouths shut about what I’d told them, apparently enjoying the act of lying to spread my legend into even more undeserved heights.

  Then it happened, one day. The first actual sight of our enemy’s army just three days’ march from the city. My training ended, as did everyone’s, and the army started preparing to mobilise.

  In all, conscripts included, we had a force of twenty thousand. Not bad for the short notice. Not as good as it would’ve been if the local nobility had lent their own household forces.

  The orcs numbered forty thousand. Those were the estimates, at least, and looking back on it, with my current experience in eyeballing armies both bigger and smaller, I’m inclined to say that it was about right. Forty thousand orcs who were bigger, stronger and in all likelihood more combat-experienced than our defenders.

  My big question was where they even came from. Seeing so many gathered in one place, it seemed suddenly ridiculous that they had the ability to feed themselves. Orcish digestive systems aside, though, I had more pressing concerns than that, as Morlo soon told me.

  “We’ll be meeting them on the field,” he explained abruptly.

  I took a moment to process that. This whole time I’d been comforting myself with the thought of fighting behind thick walls and strong fortifications.

  “Why?” I asked, quite reasonably I thought. More reasonably than the man telling me I’d be fighting on a fucking field against twice my number deserved.

  “Politicking,” Morlo grumbled, “the idiots in charge of this city seem to think that their cannons are good enough that they don’t need to use the walls, and they don’t want to have thousands of orc corpses shitting the place up once the fighting is done.”

  I was stunned.

  “They want to make the city’s cleaners have an easier job,” I echoed, “so we’re fighting twice our number in an open field?!”

  Morlo met my eye and grinned.

  “It’s not hopeless,” he noted, “just a bit trickier.”

  “A bit fucking—” I bolted for the door and got less than two steps before my legs locked up and fell out from under me. I landed hard, kept trying to crawl away and was promptly stopped by what felt like every molecule of air in Anglyn pressing down on my back at once.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” the Thaumatuge said happily.

  “You’re trying to kill me!” I barked, which Morlo just chuckled at.

  “If I was trying to kill you, you cowardly little fuck, I’d just squeeze a bit harder than I am right now and have it done much easier than this. No, you’re not going anywhere because I’m going to make sure you survive this. Then, I’m going to boost your already-growing reputation with it, and then you’re going to start advancing into high society, bringing us more influence, making money, and starting a chain of events that will actually help this shithole country do something to combat…” He trailed off, and I suddenly got the impression he’d said too much, “well, regardless, I have big plans for you and they don’t involve death.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Well, that about squeezed the remaining fight—or, rather, flight—out of me, and I just whittled away the remaining day or so in a perpetual misery. My only break to the state was when Vara ended up asking me, for some fucking reason, about what she thought our chances are.

  ++”Apparently, it still hasn’t occurred to this idiot that it was because he had tens of times my experience in life or death struggles back then, and had already shown me as much.”++

  “Not bad,” I lied through my teeth, “we have cannons, that matters a lot.”

  “I don’t want your bluster, Kyvaine, what do you actually think? From your experience?”

  I hesitated at that.

  “The professional soldiers are basically all that matters here, the shitty conscripts will get in each other’s way more than anything. At best they’ll tangle up an enemy assault and buy more time. If we win it’ll be because those cannons actually are as good as the engineers say, if we lose it’ll be because we get overrun with sheer numbers.”

  Apparently, field artillery could do a lot of damage to enemy armies over a battle. But I had only third and fourth hand accounts to go off that, and knew personally how shit such hearsay was in regards to accuracy. If it was at all trustworthy I’d already be cleaning the orc leader’s blood off my sword and fucking Princess Maryn.

  Surprisingly, Vara actually appeared comforted by my answer though. That was nice for her, but left me to more or less suffer by myself as Morlo remained perpetually busy and Gruin seemed to grow more happy by the day as we came closer and closer to combat. Then, eventually, there were no more days left. We received the word that it was time to engage our enemy, and the army departed.

  I have to say, if nothing else I was getting a novel new experience from marching with them. There really is nothing quite like the sight of a true army on the move—and this one, I would later learn, was rather small as far as they went. The orcs remained where they were, then actually fell back at our approach.

  “Don’t want to fight us here,” Morlo grunted, “looking for better ground. Smart.”

  I didn’t want them smart, though, I wanted a nice horde of slobbering savages to get minced with ease. Wishful thinking on my part, if I’d ever even dared to wish for it.

  We trudged out along the hard ground and amid the cool air, a breeze snagging at clothes as we went. My armour felt heavier than usual, like it was trying to warn me out of the fight by hauling me back. Morlo, of course, was having none of it, simply glaring my way and keeping me faced forwards.

  Then, within the day, we reached our battleground. A relatively flat face of the earth, it had a set of hills on our end, where the cannons were mounted and the infantry squared up, while one flank was lightly covered in trees.

  Ah yes, the cannons. Let me tell you about the cannons. I’d never seen one up-close at this point, and here I was suddenly finding myself right next to more than a score of the damned things. Arvharest really could churn out guns, it had to be said.

  Great black-bodied lengths of iron, thick and long, their mouths pinched tight to better choke the explosions born in their gut. They looked impressive enough, but that didn’t convince me of our chances. Not for all the hours we set up camp and awaited the remainder of our enemy to arrive.

  Arrive they did. By the thousands, by the tens of thousands, an endless tide of grey and green bodies covered in jagged metal and wielding great blades. I shivered at the sight of them.

  So did Gruin, but for different reasons.

  “There’s so many!” he roared with a grin, “so fucking many! I bet I kill twenty—no, FIFTY! War is fucking great!”

  Well, it was nice to see him having fun at least. It worked wonders on the morale of everyone around him if nothing else.

  “Here we go,” Morlo grunted, as orders started running out and men began to move. I, fortunately, was not locked into the chain of command this time, which meant I got to malinger on horseback with the general staff and watch everybody else die instead. Our side started to advance.

  Pike squares made up the bulk of it, and I can tell you now watching them in action was entirely different from the cruder, less modern assembly of men I’d fought in myself. They seemed to edge towards the enemy, clumsily grinding along the field at an agonizingly slow pace as our cavalry took to the hills and our gunmen slowly moved through the pike blocks.

  The orcs responded in a somewhat predictable way, heading on in great lines. Compared to our pikemen they seemed fragile to me, confusing, but Morlo cleared that up by cursing.

  “Stupid bastards have experience fighting guns,” he growled, “look at that. Lines. One rank thick, which means cannons won’t tear through as many men and the gunners won’t have as high a hit-rate. Understand?”

  I didn’t. Not until black powder ignited and cannonballs started to fly.

  Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of magic. Shit, I’ve explained plenty of those experiences on account of Morlo’s power already. It’s scary stuff. But there’s something about cannons, about modern artillery, that just…gets you. Here is nature, not perverted but utilised. Conditioned, tamed, channeled. Here is the world bent to the will of man, not through anything unnatural but simply by the application of knowledge.

  A mile away, orcs died. Their bodies just burst, popped like blisters as balls of iron cast too fast for me to even see smashed into them and kept going without even slowing. Plate armour meant nothing, skin and bone less, they were barely more of a barricade than the air.

  That was when I saw the line formation’s use, because if those orcs had come at us in great squares as our own pikemen did the casualties would have racked up impossibly fast. Each cannon shot would have killed several, maybe a half-dozen or more.

  But they were coming on in line, which meant their losses were limited, their numbers holding steady. And it was only once they started to approach our own infantry that they began to close into boxier formations.

  “Idiots,” Morlo snapped, “should’ve had the cavalry charge and force them to do it sooner!”

  But we hadn’t, and now the battle had turned into a contest of infantry with the numbers several times against our favour.

  “Come on,” Morlo roared, urging his horse on and calling mine to follow with a gesture, “we need to help!”

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