“Bhagat, where’ve you been?”

A man stood under the shade of a tree wearing a concerned expression, a hand on the pommel of his blade and another on his hip, the faint wind tidying up his hopelessly messy hair as stray leaves rested upon his head. The armor gave him an extra girth that made him look like a chubby nobleman, but who’d complain? After all, extra layers of armor could still save skin.

Bhagat approached, glancing over at the dancing branches. “Bro… I mean… Param, I was out for a walk. Found a great pond and a nice tree. Hell, it’d make for a great picture.”

“Huh?” Param raised an eyebrow.

His smile stiffened. “What? Something wrong?”

“Yes… there is… multiple things…” Param straightened himself. “What the bloody hell happened to you? And I’ve never heard… how do you say it?”

He tried pronouncing the word a couple of times. “This… ‘Baa-row’ in my life… and what do you mean by a… picture? What the hell is a picture?”

“Oh.” Bhagat scratched his head. “You know how… drowning in blessed water lets you see a soul from another pla—

Param raised his hand, cutting Bhagat off. “Stop. You know those are myths right? Sides, only the priests in Surajpur have that water. There’s no way it could exist here of all places.”

“… alright then…”

“And what’s happened to your speech? Usually you speak with much more formality… but now…”

“Sometimes you’ve got to loosen up on your tongue.” Bhagat stepped along the branches scattered, walking towards the camp. “We’re at war Param, and I’m not going to lose to a couple of these bloody fucking crows.”

“Huh?” Param let out. “Bloody… fucking… crow? I’ve never heard you say it like that… but I like it…”

The two entered the camp to see some men standing guard along the perimeter, others sleeping and a final few conversing and eating whatever animals they had killed in the early morning.

“Have the scouts returned?”

“I assume not.”

Bhagat glanced towards the makeshift horse pen. Indeed, a few horses were missing from the stall. More than there should’ve been.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath. “Some men deserted.”

“Huh?” Param raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”

Bhagat pointed. “At most we have four scouts. Then why have we lost six horses?”

It took a moment, but Param’s expression soon turned grave.

“You’re… right…”

Bhagat placed a palm on his forehead. “We have less than a hundred men, against about 200. Zander’s their leader, so we have to watch out for a brazen push. How will we do this?”

Bhagat closed his eyes. A faint breeze rolled, caressing his rough skin.

“I’m piss out of lu—

“Scouts!” shouted a man on watch. Immediately following his words were horses neighing, their hooves hitting the forest floor. The dull, suppressed noises faintly growing louder with the sharp cracking of twigs and branches that came with each stomp. Four horses broke from the forest shadows, galloping to a halt. One by one, the scouts got off their horse and tugging at their harnesses, led them to their pen.

“Param.”

“Yes?”

“Get everyone organized. We’re going to discuss our next steps.”

“Wait!”

Bhagat turned.

Param had an eyebrow raised. “Usually you just make a decision and the men follow, what’s so different now?”

“The fact that there are deserters should raise an alarm Param. Sides, I’d rather use the opportunity to rally the men then for them to be uninformed of my intentions until the last second.”

“Isn’t that a bit unnecessary?”

“How so?”

“Well…” Param seemed a bit reluctant. “You’re a magic practitioner.”

“And what? You thinking wielding aura is the only qualification for being a leader?”

“Well, no… but it does make you the strongest.”

“No it does not. My aura isn’t even that pure. Even a Kashari Taal could be stronger than me and by the way, being a magic practitioner doesn’t mean I have a right to be an absolute douche of a leader.”

A mix of complicated expressions overcame Param. Maybe saying ‘douche’ was a bit too… confusing?

“If you say so…” Param ended his wave of expressions with a confused frown. “I’ll get everyone ready for you in a moment.”

“Thank you.” said Bhagat, before turning his gaze to the approaching scouts. “How was the reconnaissance?”

“Well young master Gahkh—

Bhagat waved his hand furiously. “Forget these formalities Vishar, they take up too much of our time. Just ‘Bhagat’ is fine.”

“But, mas—

“Nope. Just my first name is fine.”

The scout recoiled, feeling a bit tense.

“If you wish… Bhagat…” the man said awkwardly. “The Afraaris seem tired out, like they’ve been on a forced march for so long. They also don’t have many men standing watch at night. Perhaps fifteen or twenty, but nothing more than that.”

“Anything else?”

“Their leader seems to be losing patience. We could hear screams and shouts all through the early dusk hours.”

“I see… how was their camp?”

“None of us could get too close but the Afraaris don’t seem… accustomed to the forest setting.”

“Well of course, they pick up Afraari men from the deserts to fill their ranks…” Bhagat nodded, himself staring blankly in deep thought. “Good work, stick around for the gathering and then you can go get food, water and some rest.”

“Yes Bhagat.”

The skinny man stayed put, along with the other three scouts.

“Everyone! Gather!” shouted Param, his voice firm. The faint mutterings from before had all but died down, as the remaining men all gathered around. Some knelled, others stood straight. But Bhagat couldn’t help but thank the Gods, at least they weren’t cowards to run away.

“Param. Map.”

“Right here.”

He unfurled the map on the dry ground, using small stones to anchor it in place.

“Thank you.” Bhagat crouched down, extending out his hand on a large tree on the map. “Currently we’re here.”

He then moved the hand to the plains outside the forest. “The battle happened two days ago here.”

He again moved his hand back to the large tree, then tracing it a little lower. “Here the enemy resides.”

“Young master, with all due respect, what do you wish for us to do with this information?” asked a man on the fringe.

“A perfect segway into my plan, my esteemed warrior.”

Ignoring the feeble whispers, Bhagat stood back up, grinning. “We’ll win against these crows in battle.”

The warrior raised his eyebrow, skeptical. “How?”

“Easy, we’ll just piss them off.”

Now it was another warrior’s turn to bathe in the confusion. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll have our scouts blast warhorns. While warhorns are blasted, the scouts will pick off some of the watchmen, that way their numbers are dwindled before they reach us. When they’re whole army is up and about, lead them towards us. There’s a river up ahead and we can use it to separate our two forces, using bows to pick them off one by one.”

“You wish to aggravate the Afraaris?” the man asking seemed stunned. “Is that not a bit rash?”

“The noise is meant to snap their men awake. The reason why we’d want to engage them at night is because their crows can’t pick out positions that well in the darkness. All we’ll need to do is lead them to us and rain arrows and use spears to hold them back. It’ll be a new-moon today anyways, so the added darkness will help us not get spotted easily. It’ll also throw them off.”

He then moved his finger above the tree, along a narrow river. “We’ll fight them along here.”

“Won’t they know there’s a river up ahead?”

“Well, if I were an Afraari lord I’d not care about the forest because who here would pay their plethora of taxes? They probably haven’t surveyed this section of the forest since they got here.”

“But what if the enemy had sent a crow for backup?”

This made Bhagat pause.

“I doubt they’d send a large force to attack us. Perhaps another fifty men, nothing more nor less. After all, they’re probably cocky as hell from their “glorious battle” with Lord Gahkhar and the others, retreating back to Faran’s castle to get another slice of meat to satisfy their damned stomachs. If a general asked for reinforcements against a smaller force it’ll be seen very unfavorably by their lords, with their barbaric traditions and all.”

Despite the answer, the men seemed tense, their expressions reserved yet their eyes troubled.

“Hiding behind a river… is this not just? We should be fighting them face to face on the battlefie—

“And get butchered to death and forgotten by history? Trust me pal, that’s a stupid proposition. Less than 100 men up against around 200, you’d be a fool to suggest that. Sides, we aren’t even Prussian space marines…”

An awkward silence ran through the men.

“What are… Prussian… space marines?” asked Param.

Bhagat waved his hand, dismissive. “Don’t need to know, it’s nothing to care about anyways.”

Though the idea did give him pause for a moment.

A voice came from the left. “Well, what do we do when we win?”

“Well isn’t it a bit obvious?” asked Bhagat rhetorically. “We’ll loot their bodies and equip more men.”

Some men seemed visually displeased with the idea.

“Oh no no, we won’t strip them naked, that’s definitely a no. We only want their blades and any loose pieces of armor, nothing more.”

“Wouldn’t that be desecrating the dead?”

“Perhaps, but what we’d be doing is a bit more civil than the Afraaris piking Sudhist heads.”

“Bu—

“Look, even the Mabhabsas’ looted the dead in the Epic of Azaad even though they were virtuous. Why can’t we do the same?”

His frank question brought blank expressions from the men, with only the faint gust disturbing the men’s silence.

“They drew a set of rules for warfare. As descendants of those great warriors who strove for just goals, we’ve got to follow their lead! To forge a be—

“Many Haraans here in Azaad had Kaashari ancestors who’ve lived during that era even before they embraced their faith, yet they don’t follow the rules of war. The Afraaris, being Haraans themselves, don’t seem to have a care of decency for the people they butcher up. When the Mahabsas entered the capital along the Kahaanee, their city was nothing more than a ghost town, every would-be citizen butchered by their own forces during the war.”

The silence swept the men. At the very least, Bhagat was convincing.

“In this war, our goal should be to defeat the enemy by all means necessary. This is a total war. Forget what’s fair and righteous. Our first goal after defeating them should be dragging them to trial before the Sudhist Creator and Kashari deities. Sure, this deviates from the Mahabsas, but we must shed ourselves of these rose-tinted lenses if we are to cut through the injustice that is so prevalent here in Lohaan, and in all Azaad. Hiding behind honor and the true way of living will wield no results, only backwardness.”

“Are you telling us to turn our backs on the words of our deities and ancestors?” asked the skinny scout from before.

Bhagat shook his head. “Vishar. What the deities preach and what our own five teachers strive for is an ideal world. On this forsaken Earth, can they really expect us to achieve this jewel of an existence?”

“Should we not be striving for this ideal world? Didn’t you always say that we had to fight with honor? With fairness? What’s happened now?”

The men seemed confused. The past him and the new him seemed to have contradicting ideas that he’d mysteriously reconciled in some way or another. Though he couldn’t tell them all that.

“I’ve come to a realization that nothing in life is fair, yet what we consider fair shouldn’t also mean honorable. The better tactician shouldn’t be made to fight in the plains when he knows he has the advantage defending by the nearby mountains. That’s our situation now. We have the advantage, so now it’s up to us to seize it. To use it to our advantage. Sides, we all believe in Karma, do we not? What’s one bad thing if its outweighed by the many good things we do?”

The men seemed conflicted, turning to one another to guide their discussions.

“Perhaps… he’s right…”

“But the scripts!”

“The scripts were nothing but the tales of the Ancients… It means nothing to us now.”

Faint whispers zipped through the crowd.

“If you think that is the way,” said a tall man, breaking the tenuous banter. “Then as a servant of Lord Gahkhar, I must follow your wisdom as the next head.”

“You’re the strongest of us all master Bhagat. And you are learned,” spoke another. “If you believe this path is right, then let us walk along it.”

“I’ve pledged my life to Lord Gahkhar’s cause, so long as you follow his spirit I shall fight on, until the day the lotus in the mud blooms under the monsoon tempest.”

Others nodded. It seemed they were all on board.

Bhagat straightened his figure. Another wind blew by but this time the cold didn’t bite into his skin. Perhaps it was the pride, or perhaps the feeling of overturning his piss poor fortune, or perhaps it was something more.

“This journey won’t be easy. The lords of Lohaan have given us an impossible ultimatum.” Bhagat stood on the nearest fell log, glancing over to the men below him. “Take back the East before the end of the year or die trying. Sure, we might all end up dying or living through the same fate as Lord Gahkhar and the others, but there’s still a sliver of a chance a —brilliant star in the dense mist— to win what was once ours. We shall extend our hands and grasp that star in our two hands.”

He straightened his figure, the metal of his blade singing into the wind as he drew it straight towards his men. Their eyes seemed ablaze, their determination as strong as his.

“Give me your word, and I’ll give you mine. Give me your hands and I’ll give you a weapon. Give me your blood and I will give you freedom.”