He left a few riders to watch the barbarian camp; the handful of scattered riders sent out for help weren't worth bothering with.

Derek had his men clear the field—a dozen or so horses came away unharmed, and the rest would feed the men a few meals of horsemeat.

Then came the heads, taken for merit; the remaining bodies got tossed into a pit and covered over with dirt.

The weapons and leather armor stripped off the dead weren't much to Derek's eye, but they'd still fetch a little coin.

After that, it was a matter of waiting.

His elite infantry company didn't disappoint—the longest-trained of his men, and the one company with not a single outsider mixed in, arrived before the dead of night.

Elite soldiers or not, though, they couldn't be thrown straight into battle.

They made a quick camp, ate a rough meal, and every man rolled into his bedroll and rested where he lay.

The real fighting waited for the next day.

...

Dawn broke.

The barbarians finally argued their way to an answer—or a compromise, more accurately.

Dig in and wait for relief?

They held no real confidence in it at all—and don't mistake the reason. It wasn't that they doubted they could hold for a few days.

It was that they didn't believe anyone was coming to save them.

Anyone with a lick of sense knew that with Locke's counterattack now underway, no one would spare a thought for scattered stragglers like them.

Some had already withdrawn. Those who remained were gambling for a little more plunder.

Derek could hardly have been happier.

Whether the barbarians dug in or abandoned everything and fled, either choice would have caused him trouble.

That indecision, of all things, suited him best.

"Fail to decide when a decision is called for, and chaos follows. Either form up and hold the line, and at least make the enemy pay in blood. Or abandon everything and run, and with a bit of luck, most of you get clear. Try to run while staying, or stay while running, and you get the worst of both. Remember this: whenever you face a moment like this, decide, and decide fast."

Derek made a lesson of it on the spot, though how much stuck would only show itself once this fight played out.

While the barbarians had spent the night on edge, Derek's men had passed it full of fire, every one of them itching to charge in and claim a share.

"Attack. Half of whatever we take today, you keep."

This counted as their true first real battle, and every man here had followed him longest.

Derek knew well enough: however much he might say in ordinary times, nothing landed as solidly as a generous reward right now.

Sure enough, the moment the words left his mouth, every eye in the ranks lit up.

As the elite infantry moved to attack, a handful of cavalry circled the edge of the field, waiting for the moment the barbarians left an opening.

The barbarians had already spotted this Locke force too—or rather, they'd already braced themselves for it.

"I said it all along—if Locke's cavalry has reinforcements behind them, we should've cut our losses and run days ago."

"Holding and waiting works too—at least we take a chunk out of them first."

"Enough talk. They've got fewer men than we do. What's there to fear?"

"And say we beat them—so what? There's a larger force behind them for certain. Drag this out, and the death toll only gets worse."

With the fighting nearly upon them, the barbarian force fell to bickering among itself.

Part of them abandoned everything and slipped off light and fast; the rest stayed put, meaning to beat back the enemy.

Some stood dumbstruck until the infantry company had nearly closed the distance, then scrambled to help.

"Unified command matters. One voice calling the shots might make mistakes—but at least it never ends up like this."

No one needed Derek to point it out; everyone else could see the barbarian command had broken down too.

A handful of tribal chieftains, none able to agree on a single leader—and the end result was exactly this kind of fracture.

A barbarian force that looked larger on paper had lost more than half its fighting strength to it.

The barbarians tipped over their plunder, trying to stack it into some makeshift barricade.

But the elite infantry simply climbed straight over the obstacle.

Even under these conditions, they kept their formation reasonably tight.

Against the disorganized barbarians, the difference was overwhelming.

"Kill!"

Under their junior officers' direction, the infantry cut through enemy lives fast.

Only when the lines met did the barbarians realize these were nothing like the enemies they had faced before.

The elite infantry surpassed ordinary barbarians in raw strength, discipline, and fighting spirit.

Marching in tight formation, armored in leather, an ordinary barbarian could hardly land a blow that mattered.

Once that realization set in, the barbarian ranks fell apart further still.

Derek caught the shift sharply—the disorder, the fraying nerve underneath it.

"Charge!"

Iron hooves thundered.

It was the last straw.

The barbarians, who'd already learned firsthand what Locke's cavalry could do, finally cracked.

The chaos deepened.

And then the cavalry arrived.

A slaughter. What followed was nothing short of a slaughter.

As the knights shouted for surrender, a number of barbarian soldiers dropped their weapons and threw themselves flat on the ground.

The whole battle lasted no more than half an hour before it was over.

The infantry set about clearing the field, binding the surrendered barbarians together.

A quick count of the losses: two cavalrymen down that day, along with a dozen or so elite infantry.

The wounded ran double that again.

And that was with every advantage stacked in his favor, striking with elite troops against a weaker enemy.

Had the barbarians' will to fight held firmer, the casualties might well have run heavier.

Derek rated his own showing as no more than adequate; had the barbarians had a competent commander of their own, they would likely have caused far more trouble.

Still, it counted as a solid opening win—seventy or eighty heads taken, all told.

The prisoners came to roughly the same count.

Everyone else had gotten away.

Derek had no idea how the other thousands had fared, but his own pace, at least, likely ranked among the fastest.

A herald had already ridden off with word of the victory, and Derek stood ready to press on further still.

Count Perez's aim came down to two things: drive the barbarians out, and bleed them along the way.

Sweeping the ground zone by zone—with this one cleared, pressing the advantage was only natural.

The one real worry was pushing too far ahead and slipping out of the Second Legion's reach.

If the barbarians singled him out as a threat, the danger would rise sharply.

But after weighing it, Derek decided to keep pushing regardless.

How was a man supposed to stand out without pushing to the front?

Put bluntly, this was betting men's lives against his own future.

...

For the Second Legion of the Northern Province, Count Perez hadn't bothered building any grand camp.

In truth, he never meant to linger here—it was only ever a temporary halt.

Once every thousand had met its first objective, the whole force would need to keep pressing forward.

He'd drawn three lines across the map.

Cross the last of them, and Ironwall City sat right there.

"Ten days. Ten days at most before we mass everything and strike the barbarian main force."

Count Perez knew perfectly well: drag this out any further, and Ironwall wouldn't hold.

Best to use these ten days luring the barbarian army into motion, and look for the chance to force a pitched battle.

Because the Northern Province's First Legion would be arriving soon as well.

...

Combine both legions' strength, and it would be enough to take the barbarians on properly.

Failing that, they could simply force the barbarian army back by sheer weight.

That would look ugly, though, and do nothing to shake the barbarians' confidence.

Count Perez still wanted to try for better.

Until the herald arrived.

"Report! The Tenth Thousand has completed its objective—over eighty enemy dead, more than ninety taken prisoner."

"How long has the Tenth Thousand been out?"

Count Perez asked the men around him.

"This is only the second day, my lord."

"That's fast. Or does that just mean the barbarians folded that easily?"

Count Perez said it lightly enough, though underneath it he felt real excitement.

"Tell Knight Derek I'm crediting him with the first honors of this campaign." The count rose, paced a circle, and sat back down again. "Have him send the heads and prisoners back. And... give him this next stretch of ground as well."

Once the herald had gone, he turned back to studying the map.

If the other thousand-man commands advanced as smoothly, Perez would have room for a more ambitious operation.

...

Derek received the new order after the heads and prisoners were already on their way.

Derek had never expected to keep all the spoils for himself.

But send the heads and prisoners along, and everything else he'd taken could stay with him—an unspoken understanding, more or less.

There'd likely be a further cut coming his way too, or it would simply convert straight into battle merit.

First blood and a decent haul looked good on paper, sure, but merit at this scale still fell well short of enough.

Derek rested his men one day, left the wounded behind, and pressed on.

His new zone was larger, closer to the barbarian main force, and considerably more dangerous.

Simon rode ahead scouting again, cavalry in tow—only Derek could afford to spend elite knights on work like this; anyone else would never have burned the resource.

"Worse than we expected. At least half the villages have fallen, and even the town's been sacked. A barbarian force several hundred strong is holding Three Rivers right now."

Simon returned with grim news. As they approached the barbarian main force, enemy numbers rose sharply.

Holding an actual town meant they had the basic infrastructure in hand too; a forced assault would cost heavily.

This band also appeared to have unified command. Whatever their skill, they would not be easy prey.

The news hit like a bucket of cold water, snapping Derek back to his senses.

Some of what he'd been thinking before now looked closer to wishful fantasy.

Mercy had no place commanding troops, sure enough—but chew through this hard a bone at the cost of real lives, and then what?

He didn't believe for a second that crushing this band at heavy cost would earn him some reward worth the price.

"Clear the small bands around it first."

Derek chose to pitch camp right beside the larger barbarian force outright.

The barbarians tried, at one point, to strike while the Tenth Thousand's footing was still unsteady.

Unfortunately for them, Derek stood ready and handed them a solid beating, and they slunk off after leaving thirty or fifty bodies behind.

After that, his cavalry squads struck out hard and fast, with elite infantry companies rotating in one or two companies right behind them.

The scattered barbarian bands, thirty or forty strong at most, stood no chance of resisting at all.

The barbarians organized another cavalry push, trying to break the standoff.

But Derek met them with a tight infantry line and forced them straight back by sheer discipline.

The two sides traded blows back and forth, each losing men, and each coming away with a rough measure of the other's strength.

"Where did this army come from? Why are they so much fiercer than anything we've run into before?"

Barbarian chieftain Donik stood atop a low wooden palisade, watching part of the Locke force stare back at him while another part, astonishingly, still found the mood to drill.

Had every clash so far not gone against him, he'd have already led his men charging out by now.

As a chieftain of a small tribe, the Barbarian King had granted him something dressed up to look like a baron's title.

But his people still lived and organized themselves by tribe, out of long habit.

"The Grand Commander's orders are to slow the Locke advance. There's no reason for us to leave the town."

Donik told himself as much, though he'd never once admit that fear had any part in it.

Organized by tribe, his warriors held together far tighter than most—but as their chieftain, he couldn't afford to lose too many of his own people either.

Lose enough, and the tribe itself might get swallowed up by someone else entirely.

The Barbarian Kingdom still followed the old tribal system, unlike Locke, where the Senate guaranteed a noble heir's right of succession.

With the barbarians holed up inside the town, Derek showed no restraint at all.

He kept sweeping up the scattered bands around it while pushing past the boundary of his assigned zone, moving in the direction of Ironwall itself.

North from here, Ironwall lay no more than three days' march away.

The barbarian main force wasn't far off now either.

Barbarian forces were denser in that direction, and more towns and villages had already fallen.

No great victories to speak of yet, but with Locke forces striking again and again, the barbarian high command couldn't simply ignore it.

In the end, all the pressure came down on the barbarians at the bottom of the chain.

Donik charged out a few times regardless, and still found himself with no answer for Derek's smaller force.

As time wore on, the other thousands pushed up close as well.

One or two of them even launched a fierce assault, reclaiming lost ground at heavy cost.

The rest began taking a page from Derek's book, pushing forward and harassing without letup.

The barbarian forces still roaming free thinned out visibly, and even the pressure on Ironwall itself began to ease.

Bit by bit, Derek's own tally climbed past a hundred more heads.

And then... a new force arrived.

"Ollie Palmer. Commander of the Eighth Thousand, temporary First Legion of the Northern Province."

The man standing before him, a baron by title, carried a mild, agreeable air.

He read more like a merchant than a soldier.

Derek sized him up fast enough.

"Baron, a pleasure. I'm Derek von Ferreira, commander of the Tenth Thousand in the Northern Province's provisional Second Legion."

The two exchanged introductions.

Baron Palmer produced Count Perez's order.

"Our two thousands are tasked with taking the town ahead of us, then continuing the push forward."

"To what end? How far are we meant to push?"

"As far as we can manage. Best case, we fight our way all the way to Ironwall's walls."

Palmer clearly understood exactly what that order meant, a wry, pained smile crossing his face.

"Knight Derek, we'll need to look out for each other on this one. Neither of us can afford to fall here."

Palmer saw the move for the risk it was—serving as bait, one wrong step from disaster.

Derek, though, saw more than a little opportunity in it.

"What matters right now is finishing off the enemy in front of us."

His eyes stayed steady. These past days hadn't gone to waste, watching what he had.

He'd already come to understand the barbarian garrison inside the town well enough.

"There's only about five hundred barbarians holding the town, and after a few beatings, morale's run low. A solid push should take it."

Derek spoke with real confidence, and Baron Palmer's face lit up at it.

"Then how about this—each of us takes a direction, we attack together, and try to bring it down as fast as we can?"

Derek was certain of it now: the man genuinely had no military sense whatsoever.

Leave one side of the siege open, never press a cornered enemy too hard—basic tactics, the very first things anyone learned.

Corner an enemy with no hope of escape, and they'll fight to the death—win that fight, and the cost still runs steep.

So Derek offered a gentle nudge instead. "Baron Palmer—I take it you've never served in the army before?"

Baron Palmer lacked experience, but he was no fool. He caught Derek's meaning and answered honestly. "No. In fact, this is the first war anyone in my family has ever fought."

He did not know where he had gone wrong, but he knew enough to leave the work to a professional and learn by watching.

So he said without resentment, "Knight Derek, why don't you take command this time? I hear you served with the Perez Order. This is my chance to see what a Northern knight is truly capable of. What do you say?"