Chapter 997

Inside, chaos had found a roof.

Maps covered the main table. Some were soaked. Some were marked with blood because no one had found enough ink fast enough and apparently the world had become that kind of place. Runners moved in and out, delivering reports. Yvar was not present, which made every paper stack look vaguely offended by the lack of proper organization.

A few faces tightened.

Outside, the wounded kept screaming. Healers kept burning through mana. Civilians kept carrying water, cloth, and the half-dead. The town moved like a body with too many wounds and one stubborn heart.

Arslan had once wondered whether Ludger was preparing for nightmares that would never come. Now the nightmare had arrived, and the only reason Lionfang still breathed was because a ten-year-old boy had been more realistic than all the adults around him.

Arslan’s lips pressed into a hard line.

“Naive,” he murmured.

Darnell glanced at him. “What?”

Arslan looked at the map, at the marked walls, at the fallback routes his son had drawn months ago with small, careful hands.

“Nothing,” he said.

But it was not nothing. It was the taste of blood in his mouth. It was the sound of wounded people surviving because Ludger had refused to believe peace was safe. It was the knowledge that Arslan had underestimated not his son’s fear, but the world’s cruelty.

Inside the meeting room, Arslan found the people who had enough authority to make the next disaster worse.

Kharnek was there, first of all. That was impossible to miss.

The northern chieftain stood near the far wall with his arms crossed, shoulders hunched, and jaw working like he was chewing through a bone made of bad decisions. His fur cloak had been burned in three places. One side of his beard was singed. His forearms were wrapped in fresh bandages, though the way he kept flexing his fingers suggested the wounds annoyed him more than hurt him.

More importantly, there was a red handprint across his left cheek. A very clear one. Large enough to be Sigrid’s. Hard enough that even Kharnek’s thick northern skin had decided to remember it.

Sigrid stood beside him, expression flat, arms folded in a mirror of his stance. Unlike her husband, she did not look like she wanted to charge out of the room and personally bite a machine in half. She looked like she had already considered doing that, judged the plan beneath her standards, and chosen violence of a more domestic and efficient variety instead.

Maurien was seated at the table, cloak damp, hair tied back, face as sharp and unpleasantly calm as ever. The master wind mage had one hand wrapped around a cup of something steaming, though he had not drunk from it. His eyes followed Arslan as he entered.

Gaius stood near the maps, dirt still under his fingernails and mud up to his knees. His face was pale from mana exhaustion, but he remained upright through what appeared to be spite, habit, and perhaps a poor understanding of how bodies worked.

Yvar sat with ledgers, loose parchment, and three different ink pots spread before him like he was trying to defeat the war through accounting. Considering the current state of things, Arslan would have accepted that as a legitimate strategy. Darnell entered behind Arslan and closed the door. For a moment, no one spoke.

The sounds outside filled the room instead. Rain. Footsteps. Groans. Orders. Wheels dragging through mud. The muffled chaos of a town that had survived and was now dealing with the inconvenience of not being dead.

Arslan looked at Kharnek’s cheek. Kharnek glared back.

“Before you ask,” Sigrid said, voice calm, “yes.”

Arslan raised an eyebrow.

“He needed it,” she added.

Kharnek’s glare shifted toward his wife. “I did not need it.”

“You were about to start another fight with the man keeping your warriors from dying in a trap.”

“I was arguing.”

“You were one breath away from grabbing him.”

Kharnek bared his teeth. “I was not.”

Sigrid looked at Arslan. Arslan looked at Kharnek. Maurien took his first sip from the cup. Gaius suddenly became very interested in one of the maps.

Yvar, wisely, kept writing. Kharnek’s mouth twitched.

“I might have considered it,” he muttered.

Sigrid nodded once, satisfied. “And I considered that your skull was too thick for words.”

The room absorbed that. Then Darnell snorted. It was quiet. Barely a sound. Still, in that room, it landed like a thrown stone.

Kharnek pointed at him. “You are injured enough already, Darnell.”

Darnell lifted his uninjured hand. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Arslan walked to the head of the table and placed both hands on the wood. The brief flicker of humor died as quickly as it had come.

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They could not afford much more.

“Report,” Arslan said.

Yvar’s pen stopped.

The young scholar looked up, and for once, there was no nervous rambling waiting behind his teeth. No stack of explanations trying to escape. Just exhaustion, numbers, and the particular expression of a man who had counted too many names that would not answer roll call again.

“Accounting for the last battle,” Yvar said, “Lionsguard has lost around two hundred members.”

The room went colder. No one moved. Even Kharnek’s anger seemed to pause, as if the number had stepped into the room and demanded space. Yvar swallowed, then continued.

“That includes confirmed dead and those unlikely to survive the next few hours. Some may still pull through if the healers can stabilize them, but…” He looked down at the parchment. “I would rather not give false hope based on poor mana reserves and worse luck.”

Arslan nodded once. The number entered him without drama. Two hundred. A town could say two hundred quickly. A commander could not. Two hundred was a wall section left undermanned. Two hundred was names on training rosters. Two hundred was patrol schedules rewritten. Two hundred was empty chairs, unpaid debts, unfinished jokes, children asking why someone did not come back from the gate.

Two hundred was not a number. It was work. Bloody, ugly work.

“And wounded?” Arslan asked.

Yvar’s fingers tightened around the pen.

“Another two hundred are too wounded to keep fighting. Not all are permanently crippled. Some will recover in days. Some in weeks. A few…” He inhaled. “A few will need better healing than we currently have available.”

Gaius rubbed his face. Maurien’s expression did not change, but his eyes lowered slightly. Kharnek’s arms tightened until the muscles in them stood out like ropes.

“And captured?” Arslan asked.

Yvar looked at another sheet.

“Current count is forty-eight confirmed missing after the golem retreat. Based on witness reports, likely around fifty. Maybe more if some of the wounded were dragged away before anyone noticed.”

“Fifty,” Kharnek said.

The word was not spoken loudly. That made it worse. It came out low and rough, dragged over broken stone.

“Fifty of yours,” he continued, looking at Arslan. “Carried away by imperial machines while we stood there.”

Sigrid glanced at him, but did not slap him again. Not yet. Arslan met Kharnek’s gaze.

“Yes.”

Kharnek’s nostrils flared.

“Do not give me a calm yes, Arslan.”

“I gave you the true one.”

“That does not make it better.”

“No,” Arslan said.

Kharnek’s eyes burned.

For a moment, the room could feel the old northern way pressing against the walls. Rage. Blood debt. A charge through fire because standing still felt worse than dying. The kind of instinct that made warriors terrifying in close combat and dead in organized war. Sigrid stepped in before the silence became another argument.

“If rage and brutal swings were enough to win battles,” she said, voice hard as winter ground, “We northerners would be kings of the world.”

Kharnek looked away. She did not soften.

“We are not.”

That landed heavier than a shout. Sigrid turned her gaze to Arslan.

“My husband knows this. His blood forgot for a moment.”

Kharnek grunted. Sigrid’s eyes shifted back toward him. He stopped grunting. Arslan would have enjoyed that under almost any other circumstance. Almost. Maurien set his cup down.

“The enemy expected pursuit,” he said. “That much is obvious.”

“They retreated too cleanly,” Gaius added, voice rough. “No panic. No confusion. The golems changed objective the moment our line exhausted itself. Kill enough to break structure, take enough prisoners to force emotion, retreat before our reserves could organize.”

Yvar nodded. “And their fire attack against the northerners was meant to slow, not destroy. It bought distance.”

Kharnek’s jaw flexed.

“They used us,” he said.

“Yes,” Maurien said. “They used your courage. Very rude of them.”

Kharnek’s glare snapped to him. Maurien looked mildly bored.

“What? Would you prefer I call it stupidity? I’m trying to be diplomatic. It feels disgusting, but I am making the effort.”

Darnell coughed into his fist. Sigrid’s mouth twitched once. Kharnek stared at Maurien for several seconds, then looked away with a growl.

“Wind mage talks too much.”

“Only when surrounded by people trying to die heroically.”

“That is not talking less.”

“No. But it is accurate.”

“Enough,” Arslan said.

The word was quiet. Everyone stopped.

He looked at Yvar again. “Torvares forces.”

Yvar’s face tightened further. That was answer enough before he spoke.

“Bad,” he said. “Very bad.”

Arslan waited. Yvar adjusted one of his papers, though it did not need adjusting.

“Half of them are gone.”

Darnell closed his eyes. Gaius muttered something under his breath. It sounded like a curse, a prayer, or both. Efficient use of language.

Yvar continued, because stopping would not improve the facts.

“They held longer than expected, but they took the worst of the second and third enemy pushes. Their commanders tried to keep cohesion, but once word spread that Lord Torvares was still behind enemy lines…”

He stopped. Arslan’s fingers pressed harder into the table. The wood gave a soft crack.

“Continue.”

“Darnell is having a hard time keeping their morale steady,” Yvar said. “They know their lord is not in Lionfang. They know he was wounded. They know Lady Viola escaped the capital with him, but they do not know where she is now. They do not know if he is alive, dying, captured, or already dead.”

No one needed to say what that meant. Soldiers could endure many things. Hunger. Rain. Fear. Bad orders. Even defeat, sometimes. But uncertainty about the person who bound them together? That was poison. Slow, quiet, and very good at turning discipline into panic.

Torvares soldiers did not fight for coin alone. They fought for a house. A name. A stubborn old bull who had protected his lands long enough that even cynical men respected him. If they believed he was dead, some would break. If they believed he was captured, some would demand reckless action. If they believed Lionfang had hidden the truth, resentment would rot the alliance from the inside.

Arslan looked at Darnell.

“You were with them?”

Darnell nodded. “For part of it. Their officers are doing what they can. The veterans are holding. The younger ones are fraying. Every hour without news makes it worse.”

“Any desertions?”

“Not yet.”

“Attempts?”

Darnell hesitated.

Arslan’s expression sharpened.

“Three,” Darnell said. “Stopped before they reached the outer stores. Not traitors. Just scared men trying to find their lord.”