[West of Cuiviénen. Year 1137 of the Trees. Second Year of the March]
[Selas POV]
Two years since we watched Cuiviénen burn.
Two years since we turned our backs on the only home any of us had ever known and started walking toward something we couldn't even name.
Two years of grass.
The Rhûn steppes rolled out in every direction—flat, brown-gold, endless. Same view yesterday, today and tomorrow, probably, and the day after that, and the day after that until I lost my mind or we finally hit something different.
The other Avari didn't seem to mind. They found beauty in it, somehow—the vast sky, the wheeling stars, the way light moved across the grass like waves on water. They composed songs about it. Pointed out plants I couldn't tell apart. Marveled at streams that all looked the same to me.
I tried to see what they saw.
Mostly I just saw horizon. Always the same distance away. Never getting closer no matter how far we walked.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
Eight months back, I'd started training with the sword.
Every morning, before the camp stirred, while the stars still hung low and the grass was wet with dew.
While in the steppe, I realized that I had not devoted enough time to developing my sword fighting skills. Sooner or later I'd have to meet orcs—and whatever else finds us—at arm's length, and a bow wouldn't always be enough.
If I fall, the march doesn't collapse overnight. Not like cutting a rope. Slower than that—panic spreading in whispers, factions forming around old grudges, discipline dissolving into a hundred separate wills pulling in a hundred separate directions.
A people could survive hunger. Cold. Fear, even.
What killed them was the vacuum left when leadership vanished.
So "good enough" wasn't good enough. Not for me.
Every morning: sword forms. The simplest cuts, repeated until my wrists stopped thinking about what came next and just moved.
Downward strike. Rising cut. Thrust. Guard. Recover. Again. Again. Again…
Sometimes alone in the predawn dark. Sometimes with eyes watching from the edges of camp—warriors who noticed that the Chief no longer trained like a hunter or a skirmisher, but like someone preparing himself for close, unavoidable violence.
My body was changing in ways I hadn't expected.
Years of holding Light inside—Ilvëa's gift braided with my own discipline, maintained so long it had stopped feeling like effort—had done something to me. Reshaped me from within. I was denser now. Harder to exhaust. Faster to recover. Strength came easier, and once I had it, it stayed.
Within months I was flowing through sequences that should have taken years.
Not effortless. I still made mistakes. Still overcommitted, still left openings that would get me killed against someone faster or smarter or just luckier.
But the gap was closing.
Fast enough to matter, maybe.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Year 1137. That evening. Camp]
We made camp the way we always did now.
I found a spot at the edge of the gathering, close enough to watch but far enough to think. Children chased each other between wagons, their games looking suspiciously like the shield-wall drills we'd been running for months.
Women stirred pots over cooking fires, making something edible out of dried meat and whatever roots the gatherers had found. Men sat in clusters, checking weapons, mending torn leather, arguing about tomorrow's route in voices that carried across the camp.
"You're doing that thing again."
Celestia dropped onto the ground beside me. She had a bowl in her hands—something steaming that smelled like it might once have been food.
"What thing?"
"The brooding thing. Staring into the middle distance like you're solving the mysteries of creation." She shoved the bowl at me. "Eat. Balga told me you skipped the midday meal."
"I wasn't hungry."
"You're never hungry. Eat anyway."
I took the bowl because arguing with her was more exhausting than eating. Some kind of stew—wild onions, chunks of dried meat gone chewy from rehydration, roots I didn't recognize. Tasted like exactly what it was: survival food, prepared by people with limited ingredients and even more limited time.
I ate it anyway.
"The scouts found something," Celestia said, watching me chew. "Two days ahead, maybe less. Stream running east to west across our path."
"Trees?"
"A few. Scrubby things, wouldn't make decent firewood let alone timber." She paused, and something in her expression shifted. "But there's more."
I set down the spoon.
"Tracks around the water. Orc tracks."
The stew sat heavy in my stomach. "How many?"
"Hard to say exactly. A large group—over two hundred and fifty, probably. Moving north when they left, away from the stream."
I pushed the bowl aside. Two hundred and fifty in open terrain—we could handle that. Our formations were built for exactly this kind of fight. However, orcs didn't come in neat, countable groups. Where there was one pack, more would follow.
"Did they spot our scouts?"
"No. The tracks were at least two days old, maybe three." Her hand drifted to the knife at her belt—one of Eol's, bronze blade with a stone edge that held sharper than it had any right to. "But they'll come back. It's their water source as much as ours."
I nodded slowly, thinking through positions and angles and the thousand small decisions that would determine whether we lived through this. "Then we need to be ready when they do."
"We're always ready."
"Ready to fight." I looked across the camp—at the children still playing, the families gathered around fires, the thousand small moments of ordinary life happening all around us. "Ready to bury people?"
Celestia didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice was quieter. "Are we ever?"
No. Never.
But the orcs weren't going to wait until we were.
That night, lying awake while the camp slept around me, I made a decision I'd been putting off for too long.
Vertalas would command the engagement.
I'd noticed him early on, back when the training first started. Not the loudest of the bunch. Not the strongest either. But he watched everything—watched and adjusted and figured things out on his own. Picked up concepts faster than warriors twice his experience, and before long he wasn't just learning, he was anticipating. Knowing what I wanted before I said it.
He had the instincts you can't teach, and the patience you can't fake.
Somewhere along the way he'd ended up at my side during drills. Helping run formations when I couldn't split myself in two. Calling cadence. Tightening the lines when they got sloppy. Fixing gaps before I had to point them out. Making sure the shield wall actually moved like a wall instead of a bunch of elves standing next to each other.
So I decided he would become a field commander, full authority, his judgment and his judgment and responsibility. With our numbers, I could afford to let him hold the fight without me holding his hand.
If this army was ever going to be more than an extension of my will, it needed commanders who could act without waiting for permission.
So I would be there. I would fight.
But I would not command.
{ image: Vertalas }

—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[Year 1137. Five days later. The Stream]
[Vertalas POV]
I positioned the forces the night before.
Five hundred warriors spread across the high ground overlooking the stream. Archers in the rocks with clear sightlines. Heavy infantry in loose formation below, ready to lock shields on my command.
My command.
The words felt strange even in my own head. The Chief had made it clear—this engagement was mine.
Am I ready for this?
The question had kept me awake half the night. The Chief had built this army from nothing. He'd invented the formations, designed the tactics, drilled every warrior personally in those early years. Every idea we used came from his mind.
And now he was handing me the sword and stepping back.
What if I fail? What if my orders get people killed?
I pushed the doubt down. Buried it under years of training, years of watching, years of learning. The Chief trusted me. The warriors trusted me. Now I had to trust myself.
Dawn came gray and cold.
"Steady," I said to the warrior beside me. Yalinim—Tatyar, young, sharp-eyed, already thinking two beats ahead during drills. He'd been solid in training. Now his knuckles were white on the spear shaft, his breathing too fast.
"Remember what we practiced," I told his. "Slow breaths."
He nodded without looking at me. His eyes stayed fixed on the grassland below.
I understood. My own heart was beating faster than I wanted to admit.
The orcs emerged from the morning mist like a spreading stain. More than the scouts had estimated—a large mob, maybe a three hundred, moving without formation or discipline. Shoving each other, snarling, weapons waving in every direction.
No coordination. No leadership I could see.
Good. We can use that.
I raised my hand. Held it.
The orcs reached the stream. Some dropped to drink immediately, faces in the water. Others filled waterskins, fighting over position. A scuffle broke out—shoving turned to punches turned to one orc face-down in the shallows while the others laughed.
Closer. Let them come closer.
Movement at the mob's edge. Heads turning. Fingers pointing up toward us.
Too late.
I dropped my hand.
A hundred bows released as one.
The sound—I'd heard it in training, but never like this. A single sharp hiss, then silence, then screaming. The first volley tore through the packed orcs before they understood what was happening. Bodies jerked. Fell.
The stream ran dark.
"Second volley!" My voice came out stronger than I felt. "If lere Avari!"
"IF LERE AVARI!" A hundred throats roared back.[1]
Another rain of arrows. More screams. More bodies.
It's working. The plan is working.
The survivors charged. No retreat, no regrouping—just a snarling rush straight at our position.
I'd expected that. Counted on it.
"Shield wall! NOW!"
The heavy infantry surged forward, flowing together like something alive. Shields rose and locked—edge overlapping edge, gaps vanishing as warriors pressed shoulder to shoulder. Exactly like we'd drilled. Exactly like the Chief had taught us.
"Spears ready!" Yalinim's voice from the line. "First rank—BRACE!"
The orcs hit us like a wave hitting rock.
And broke.
The formation held. Shields absorbed the impact. Spears thrust forward—short, brutal jabs into the press of bodies, then back behind the wall.
Step. Thrust. Recover.
Orcs died faster than they could climb over their own dead.
We're winning. We're actually winning.
Then—movement on the right flank. A handful of orcs, faster than the rest, slipping past fallen bodies where the line hadn't fully closed.
I opened my mouth to redirect reserves.
I didn't need to.
The Chief was already moving.
His sword cleared the sheath in a motion I couldn't follow—just a blur of metal and then an orc collapsing with its collarbone split open. A second folded around a thrust I barely saw. The third swung wild, missed, and the Chief stepped inside the arc and drove the blade home before the creature finished its swing.
Three orcs. Maybe four heartbeats.
I'd watched him train every morning for months. The same forms, repeated until they seemed almost boring.
This was what those forms were for.
No wasted movement. No hesitation. Every strike flowing into the next like water finding its path. The orcs weren't opponents—they were obstacles, and he moved through them like they weren't there.
That's what a true warrior looks like.
The Chief stepped back into the line as shields closed behind him. The breach sealed. The rhythm resumed. He didn't look back, didn't acknowledge what he'd done.
Just another warrior in the wall.
"Left flank!" Celestia's voice cut through from somewhere above. "Archers in position!"
The surviving orcs found themselves caught—arrows falling from the rocks, spears waiting below. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
They broke. What was left of them fled back across the stream, scrambling over corpses, abandoning weapons and wounded.
"HOLD!"
The line stopped as one. No pursuit. No breaking formation.
Discipline held.
Silence settled over the stream. Water lapped at bodies. Somewhere, a wounded orc made noises that cut off when an archer finished it.
I counted my people. Checked the line. Looked for anyone down.
No dead. A handful of serious wounds. Dozens of smaller ones.
Against a three hundred orcs.
It worked.
My hands were shaking. I hadn't noticed until now.
I commanded, and we won.
The doubt from last night felt distant now. Foolish. The Chief had trusted me for a reason. He'd seen something in me I hadn't seen in myself.
I looked across the field to where he stood, cleaning his blade on orc cloth, expression calm as if he'd done nothing more strenuous than morning exercises.
Someday, I thought, I'll be worthy of that trust.
Today was a start.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
[That evening. The camp]
[Selas POV]
Word traveled faster than the warriors did.
By the time Vertalas led his people back to camp—Yalinim at his shoulder, the grim-faced Tatyar who'd become his closest lieutenant—half the Avari had gathered to meet them.
Cheering started before they even cleared the last rise—ragged at first, then building as more voices joined in. Children pushed through the crowd to touch bloodied shields, to stare at warriors who'd actually fought and won.
I watched from a distance, letting the moment belong to the people who'd earned it. Vertalas stood at the center of the celebration, accepting congratulations with the awkward grace of someone who wasn't used to being the focus of attention. His decurions clustered around him, trading stories that were already growing in the telling.
We can win.
The thought kept circling back, impossible to dismiss.
We can actually win against these things. With tactics and discipline.
Relief washed through me, stronger than I'd expected. I hadn't realized how much weight I'd been carrying until some of it lifted.
It didn't last. Relief never did. But for a moment, I let myself feel it.
Celestia found me before the questions could fully take hold. She was dusty, tired, and smelled like sweat and blood—but her eyes were satisfied.
"It's done," she said quietly, stopping beside me. "We caught them at the river bend. Fourteen orcs. None escaped."
I nodded. The decision had been instant, made while Vertalas was still calling the hold. The formation had worked perfectly—but letting survivors flee meant letting them find others. Rally them. Bring them back in numbers we couldn't handle.
Vertalas had done the right thing, keeping the line intact. That discipline would save lives in harder battles to come.
But discipline wasn't enough on its own.
"Any casualties?"
"Scratches." Celestia shrugged. "They were scattered, panicked. Easy prey."
"Good. Get some rest. You've earned it."
She melted back into the crowd, moving toward the fires where voices were already rising in celebration.
I turned my attention back to the fires. Vertalas had noticed me watching and raised a hand in acknowledgment. I returned the gesture but didn't move to join him.
His victory. His moment.
"You should be down there."
I turned. Thoron stood behind me, silver hair catching starlight. One of the first to stand with me at the Sundering. One of the few I trusted without reservation.
"Vertalas earned this. I'm not going to steal it from him."
"It's your victory too." Thoron moved to stand beside me, looking down at the celebration. "Your tactics. Your training. Your vision."
"His execution. His command." I shook my head. "The warriors need to see him as their leader. Not my puppet, not my shadow—their commander. That only works if I stay out of his moment."
"And Celestia's hunt?"
I glanced at him. Of course he knew. Thoron always knew.
"Insurance," I said. "Vertalas made the right call holding the line. But someone had to make sure those runners didn't become a problem later."
Thoron nodded slowly. "You're building more than an army."
"I'm building something that works without me standing in the middle of it." I looked back at the fires, at Vertalas laughing at something one of his officers said. "Commanders who can lead. Hunters who know when to chase. People who understand their roles and trust each other to fill the gaps."
"But you still had to send Celestia yourself."
"This time." I shrugged. "Vertalas will learn. I'll talk to him tomorrow. He held the line perfectly. That mattered more in the moment."
I watched the celebration for another moment.
"That's how it works. Everyone makes mistakes. What matters is learning from them. We talk about it, they don't make the same mistake twice. Eventually they stop needing me to catch what they miss."
Below, someone had started a song—new words, victory words, fitted to an old melody. Other voices picked it up, rough and joyful.
Thoron was quiet for a while, watching.
"You're thinking about what comes next," he said finally.
"Always."
"And?"
I didn't answer right away. The celebration continued below—laughter, singing, the sounds of people who'd faced death and walked away. Sounds I wanted to protect.
"There will be more orcs," I said.
"There always are."
—•——•——•——•——•——•—

{ image: An approximate depiction of the battle.}
[End of Chapter 6]
GLOSSARY
For those who wish to delve deeper. This glossary covers the new terms and structures introduced across Chapter 6.1–6.2.
MILITARY EVOLUTION
The Shield Wall (The Line) – The foundational heavy-infantry formation of the Avari: overlapping shields, controlled spear thrusts, and disciplined spacing. Built to survive open-ground charges where skirmishing tactics fail.
Heavy and Light Infantry – The two complementary arms of Avari warfare. Heavy infantry forms and holds the line; light infantry scouts, screens flanks, harasses, and finishes fleeing enemies.
COMMAND AND RANKS
Decurion – Squad leader responsible for a unit of ten. The first true rung of authority in the Avari army: close enough to correct posture, spacing, and panic in real time.
Half-Century – A mid-sized formation composed of five squads (roughly fifty warriors). Designed as a maneuver element that can wheel, reinforce a flank, or detach without breaking the main line.
Centurion – Commander of a "Century" (two half-centuries). Expected to think in terrain and timing, not duels. The first rank meant to function independently of Selas's direct oversight.
[1] If lere - meaning "For glory," "In the name of glory," or "To glory." A traditional Avari battle cry, similar in spirit to the Protoss "En Taro" from StarCraft.