Chapter 655 (2/2)

Skarch pressed her eyes closed. Randidly’s arrival would be… too late. But she didn’t say that. Instead, she stood and went up to each of her forty soldiers in turn, encouraging them, asking if they had Letters of Vestiment to pass their belongings onto their chosen next of kin. In their eyes, Skarch could see some of the fire that had grown these past few weeks dwindle to nothing.

Mechanically, they began finishing their meal and breaking camp. Everyone knew that this war spelled almost certain death for them. They were foot soldiers. But also, there was an infinitesimally small chance to grasp something great and be a hero. To those second sons of small Styles, such a possibility was too tempting to resist.

“Polish your spears,” Skarch said to her morose crew. They gathered around her in a loose circle as they stood near a copse of trees by the river’s edge. “True, it is not commonly done here in the Spearman School… but I’ll simply say this. None of you would have managed to make it this far without your spear. Consider it a good luck charm. And we will need it.”

After a brief hesitation, the entire squad joined her. With great care, Skarch took twelve minutes to show these people the finer points of spear care. It was peaceful, and in that calmness, Skarch focused only on her spear. On the gleam of the blade, on the weight of the shaft, on the scrawling Engravings that covered the weapon.

Each generation in her family would save their entire life to add even a single embellishment to the spear. So it was in the Spear School. In recent generations, her family had accomplished much to strengthen the spear. But her grandfather was overzealous and added too many conflicting Engravings.

Some of the treasures on the spear still activated, but only intermittently. And the more powerful Engravings…

Skarch sighed. This was why she had been so desperate as to join the tournament. A victory here might earn enough valuables to let her repair the family spear. But to die here…

Smiling, Skarch looked to the sky. To die here was no dishonor. Skarch just hoped that her fellow tournamentees would understand the Spear School well enough to gather her spear for her family.

“We run West,” Skarch announced as the noise of the Zeitgard column's approach became too much to ignore. The squad raised their heads and looked at her.

“...the West is away from our allies.” One thin man said slowly.

Skarch didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. The thin man lowered his gaze and sighed.

They began trotting West and made good time. But within another ten minutes, the Zeitgard had arrived. They were forced to exhaust themselves to catch up, but the weight of numbers meant that there were few opportunities for an average spear user to take advantage of their opponent’s weariness.

Luckily, Skarch was not an average spear user. When she dropped to the back of her group, her spear cut large holes into the Zeitgard lines. The Engraving that lent her power dutifully lit up again and again as she stabbed at the pursuing Zeitgard.

But time and again she would move to help one of her squad members disengage, and at that point, the Wights would launch attacks with ghostly claws and Psychic Poison. She couldn’t be everywhere at once, and one by one her squad was dying.

Some were hit by Psychic Poison and simply collapsed, frothing at the mouth. Skarch preferred those. Although they were surely dead, their deaths were quick and quiet. It was much more disheartening when a warrior withstood the first batch of Psychic Poison only to collapse screaming when they were hit with another.

Skarch couldn’t tell if it was purposeful, but the Wights left these screamers alive, so her squad had to endure the jarring noise of agony as they ran away.

Wights would use small distractions to leap out from behind trees as smaller patrols managed to get ahead of Skarch and her group. Skarch was even struck with a Psychic Poison herself on a particularly rough ambush. Ignoring the dull headache, she smashed three Wights backward. The sound of their bodies breaking and snapping brought her no comfort because she watched a Spectral Claw rip out her subordinates innards.

It was at that moment, almost exactly thirty-seven minutes later, that Azriel arrived like a crimson comet.