Leif was grateful.
Given the circumstances, that might have seemed like madness. His left arm hung broken at his side, ribs out of place bit into his flesh with every deeper breath. His left eye, now blind, stole half the night from him and made the return to camp slower than it should have been, and still he was grateful.
Grateful to be a hersir and to be strong, grateful to have been there that night, because everything about it was wrong. There should not have been so many óhreinn so deep within the sacred kingdom, so near the road.
That was why he pressed on with short breath and a broken body, feeling the pain as a succession of dry hammer blows beneath the skin, but never allowing it to take up more space than it should. The profanation that had done that to him was dead. That was enough to keep his feet moving, a greater sacrilegious one, one of the foulest things the night could spit forth.
The fight against the creature had been a disgrace. To watch, had anyone watched it, to take part in even more so. It had been tooth and steel, heresy and miracle and raw brutality on both sides. The beast had been too fast for its own size and too strong for such a thing to have been allowed by the world. Even so, it had fallen.
Leif had lived, and for that he was satisfied. His men would live, the commoners would live, like that the Hird remains.
Soon he sighted the camp.
Even from a distance, with his vision ruined and the night devouring shapes, he saw enough to know the work was not finished. He went back into the camp without slowing, he would not stop until every filth had been washed from the Lord's earth.
His arrival was marked by violence.
The first fallen barely had time to turn its head. Leif reached it from behind, and the axe passed through spine and chest in a single short blow, one second tried to launch its pointed tail at him, he twisted his torso, letting the spike scrape against iron and leather, and crushed the base of the creature's neck with the broad blade. The third came larger, rearing onto its hind legs, Leif stepped into the lunge and opened the thing's throat from one side to the other, and black blood fell.
His presence alone was enough to rekindle what remained of order. The voroirs who an instant earlier had been fighting with the desperation of men holding shut a door that was giving way, found new breath at the sight of him. Not by miracle but by habit, because the sight of the hersir still standing, reminded them what they were.
"The Hird remains!" Leif shouted, as loudly as his wounded lungs allowed.
"The Veil guards!" the voroirs answered. An answer who came with the sound of metal entering flesh.
Leif wasted no time with questions, the formation was stabilizing again beneath the weight of his presence and the renewed will it dragged with it. The rest could be understood afterward.
He pushed deeper into the camp, the place was a slaughterhouse. Bodies lay scattered between wagon wheels, torn tents, and stains of blood that shone black in the wavering firelight. If the Star were merciful, he thought, little of that blood would be fylkirn blood. It was a morbid thought, also a practical one, Leif did not allow himself the luxury of lying to himself.
That was when he saw him. A boy, athletic and still green in the body despite the build, caught in the exact instant between living and dying. A bone spike, larger than the boy's own arm, was coming toward his chest. Leif measured the distance at once, even gathering the most from the little he had left, he would not reach this one in time. Perhaps he would save the other two nearby but that one was doomed.
Until he noticed something strange
The boy's eyes were moving wrongly in their sockets. Not in blind panic, they moved too fast, taking in everything at a rhythm that did not belong to a common body. Leif narrowed his one useful eye, and then the boy moved. He is not fast, Leif knew speed, had seen and used speed more times than could count and this was not that, it was something else, the boy's movement was slow enough to seem flawed, but precise to an absurd degree, ridiculous even. The kind of precision not even many fully trained voroirs would have under pressure, much less an initiate with no field experience.
His body found the only space possible between death and continuance, he came out alive, paying for it.
His right arm was torn away almost to the shoulder blade when the boy twisted his body to escape the main blow and, at the same time, buried his sword in the creature. He did not kill it, not even close, but he delayed the beast. That was enough for Leif, who was already upon the creature. The axe came down in a brutal arc and split it, the opened body fell in two uneven halves into salt and mud.
Leif watched what remained of the fallen for an instant. Then he let his gaze linger a moment longer on the mutilated boy, promising.
But there were more óhreinn to kill and more blood to preserve. He turned back to what mattered.
With him there, the remaining fights lost breath quickly. What had been bloody, barely contained combat became a cleanup, fallen remained scattered, wounded or directionless. Still dangerous, but already condemned.
One voroir smashed the skull of one of the smaller ones against a wagon wheel, another buried a short sword beneath the jaw of a beast trying to drag a woman away by the ankle, leif cut down two more with dry, efficient blows, never allowing any of them near the piles of wounded.
"For the Hird!" some of the voroirs shouted when the last resistance began to break. Leif admired their spirit, but he did not share their triumph. There were too many bodies on the ground for that victory to taste clean.
What followed was the cold work of afterward.
The blood stood out even more as it ran over the holy white of the broad road's steel-salt, opening dark streaks across the purity. He saw a woman fallen near an extinguished fire, as dead as the flames, blue-blessed, Leif recognized her. The body was broken through the middle, hacked apart in pieces.
She had completed voroir training a year before, and had served under his command since then, still young, promising, steady in the field. She had died saving five commoners, a good woman, a foolish death. She was worth a hundred of those she had saved. She might have come to be worth far more, if the Star had granted time.
Now that no longer mattered, Leif held the thought only long enough to recognize it.
Then he forced it down."Burn the bodies. Give them their due rest," he ordered. "And bring me a report of losses." There was no use lingering over what could not be undone. Those who had died, had died with honor, they had died for the only cause that, in Leif's understanding, was worth their lives.
Bodies, or what remained of them, began to be gathered. They were dragged through salt, mud, and the cold of the night to a common point, their armor was removed with care where there was still anything to remove. The dead were laid in the most honorable position the situation allowed.
As for the fallen, the Star's light would deal with them at dawn. It would wash their blasphemous existence from the earth, giving what was good in the world breath enough to stand firm beneath the twenty hours of its blessing.
"Report!" a Voroir called, approaching. The man tried not to look at the hersir's broken body more than manners allowed. He himself was not whole either, there were new holes where there should not have been holes.
"Proceed," Leif answered. His voice remained deep and strong, only a little more dragged than it should have been.
"Yes, elevated hersir," he said. "The deaths number in the dozens. Most were in the center, commoners without training. Of them, twenty-three died in all. Among the common warriors we had fifteen losses, as well as three elevated fylkirn and... two Voroirs."
The last part came out heavier, Leif clenched his jaw, nodded once. He looked around the camp, now reduced to fire, bodies, and survivors in shock. "That is all, brother," he dismissed the man with a short gesture.
There was not much more to elaborate. He understood enough of what had happened, it was not worth lamenting the dead aloud. The dead were at rest, and the shame of losing so many would not be washed clean by lamentation, only by strength.
By being better, by being more powerful, guarding the new blood, as was his role. Until the day he was too broken to carry it out. Or until the day they themselves were ready to guard anything on their own.