Sol turned away from the southern clearing and walked toward the secondary clearing near the inner area.
Huddled in the dirt were the three hundred young recruits and unawakened youths who had spent the last day dragging ironwood logs under his brutal discipline. They were the young reserves who had never personally participated in a deep-jungle expedition.
They weren't eating with the wild, loud hunger of the older veterans; they sat in small, quiet clusters, their hands gripping their long bone-spears so tight their knuckles were entirely white. They were terrified. They had heard the scout's shout; they knew a four-thousand-man horde of giants and multi-jointed monsters was coming to erase their names from the Orrath.
They knew they were the fodder… the weak outer shell meant to take the weight of a four-thousand-man horde.
