Chapter 8: When a Battlefield Craves a Story
Outside the front gate of House Vance's estate, the sharp reek of blood mixed with burnt axle grease and battlefield mud, hanging thick in the air.
Ten heavy iron-plated carriages had pulled to a stop in a long line. Their frames were carved with deep sword gashes and scorched black from magical fireballs. Exhausted guards with matted hair and tattered armor unhitched the reins one by one. Wounded soldiers, chests and thighs wrapped in bloodstained bandages, stumbled down and collapsed onto the granite steps.
Lucian was hiding behind a large maple tree not far off. The ten-year-old had only meant to slip out in the chaos and check whether the caravan had brought back any cheap magical ore from the border — something he could buy up for his own experiments.
But the scene in front of him was strange enough to stop him in his tracks.
Normally, whenever the trade caravan made it back from a brutal run to the frontier, these rough mercenaries would immediately start cursing loudly, demanding hard liquor, splitting their bonus pay, and loudly trading stories about the girls at the local inn.
But today, the entire courtyard sat in a silence unsettling enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck.
More than thirty hulking men, faces scarred and bandaged, had gathered in a circle around the stone steps. No one was drinking. No one was cursing. Every bloodshot, exhausted pair of eyes was locked on the man sitting at the center — a one-eyed veteran, his left arm missing from the elbow down.
Resting in his one good hand was a book, its spine falling apart, its vellum pages curling at the edges and stained with dried blood and black mud. It was one of the first printed copies of Elegy of the Nameless Knight — Volume One.
The one-eyed veteran cleared his throat and began to read, his voice hoarse and trembling with emotion:
"...A blizzard can bury the body, but it cannot smother the fire in the heart. A true hero needs no gilded medal from an emperor, for the scar across his chest is the only proof he needs — proof of every long night he stood guard over the dawn, alone..."
A choked sob broke from somewhere in the crowd.
A guard well over two meters tall, a sword scar running from forehead to chin, raised a rough, callused hand to cover his face. His broad shoulders shook as tears ran freely between his fingers. Around him, the other soldiers started sniffling too, wiping their noses on filthy sleeves, their eyes brimming with bitter, tragic pride.
Frozen behind the tree, Lucian went stiff head to toe. The blood drained from his face, then his face went even paler, like he'd just swallowed a spoonful of chili.
Cringe. Cringe on a soul-tearing level.
Lucian clutched the front of his shirt, toes curling against the ground in the throes of a full-body psychic spasm.
He remembered that line perfectly. He'd written it the summer he was six, on a stifling hot night when a swamp mosquito flew into his room and left an itchy red welt right in the middle of his forearm. Too annoyed and too itchy to sleep, he'd tossed off a snide line about "the itchy scars of a long night" and dressed it up in inverted High Elvish grammar to make it sound suitably poetic — purely to farm experience points.
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Who could have guessed that a bitter throwaway line about a mosquito bite would end up, in the hands of a one-eyed veteran on a battlefield, becoming an anthem that saved the souls of men standing at death's door?
Unable to stomach this bizarre scene for one more second, Lucian stepped out from behind the maple tree, hands in his pockets, putting on the innocent curiosity of a rich kid wandering over to see what the fuss was about.
"What's got everyone gathered up like this?" Lucian tilted his head, pointing at the ragged book in the one-eyed man's hand, keeping his tone deliberately offhand. "What's so great about this trashy book that's got you all sitting here crying?"
The air around him froze solid.
More than thirty pairs of eyes, sharp as razors, snapped toward him at once. The scarred giant let out a low, guttural growl, his hand dropping to the hilt of the dagger at his hip on pure instinct, glaring at the ten-year-old with bloodshot fury.
"What would a rich brat know about anything!" the scarred soldier snarled, the muscles in his face twitching with rage. "You were born in silk, eating dragon-butter cake, sleeping on goose down. How could you possibly understand what it feels like watching your brother die right beside you with no coffin to put him in?"
The one-eyed veteran raised a hand and held the scarred soldier back. He looked at Lucian with a look somewhere between pity and contempt — the look of a man who'd crawled out from a pile of corpses.
"Young master, you're a Sword Emperor's son. You wouldn't understand. To the nobles in the capital and the generals up top, our lives are nothing but numbers on a chessboard. They send us to the front to soak up arrows, and when we come back missing an arm or a leg, they strip our military status and don't give us a single copper for it."
The one-eyed man cradled the book against his chest, trembling, stroking each torn page like he was handling the single most sacred thing he'd ever owned.
"This book's author... this great, wise Nameless one... he's the only soul on this earth who understands our pain. He knows we don't fight for the emperor. We fight for the ones we left behind. This book is the only thing keeping the rest of us sane — keeping us from putting a blade to our own throats during those long nights guarding the graveyards out there."
Lucian stood rooted to the spot.
Looking at the torn strips of black cloth these men had tied around their sword hilts — the mark of those calling themselves the "Heirs of the Nameless" — looking at their bleeding wounds and the desperate, unbroken faith in their eyes, every trace of Lucian's earlier mockery and playfulness drained away completely.
A brutal truth hit him all at once: he'd written this story out of nothing but greed for System points and pure laziness. But to these men, ground down by a merciless world, those throwaway lines had become the one lifeline telling them their existence still meant something.
"I... I understand," Lucian said quietly, his voice dropping a register.
"No, you don't," the one-eyed veteran said with a thin, bitter laugh, turning his back on the boy without another glance. "Go on back to your warm room, young master. Don't go defiling what's sacred to poor men."
The guards huddled back together, listening as the next lines were read aloud beneath a sunset the color of blood.
Lucian quietly stepped back, turned, and walked briskly toward the main house.
A cold shiver ran down his spine. If these hardened, practical border soldiers had already worked themselves into this kind of religious fervor over the book, then in the great cities — packed with millions of idle young nobles and dreamers — how far had his father already pushed this fever?
"I can't just sit at home anymore," Lucian muttered through clenched teeth, fists tightening. "Tomorrow, I'm going to the central bookshop myself and find out exactly how big this mess has gotten."