Eleven years had passed since the trenches. The boy who ate what he could find was now a man who decided who else got to eat. Huan jo stood at the edge of a ridge overlooking the Desolate Kingdom's supply line. Behind him sat forty men and women. All of them were orphans. All of them carried spears.
(A sword is a luxury for those with a name. A spear is for those of us who started with nothing. It is a long reach. It is the only thing that keeps the cavalry from trampling us into the mud.)
He looked at his hands. They were scarred and thick. The spear he held now was not the rusted scrap from the mud. It was heavy oak with a steel head he had taken from a dead captain three winters ago.
(If the tip breaks I am dead. If the shaft snaps I am dead. I have spent every waking hour for a decade making sure this stick does not fail me. My men do the same. We do not fight for a king. We fight because if we stop we starve.)
A scout crawled up the ridge and signaled. The supply wagons were entering the kill zone. There were no drums or horns. Huan jo just stood up and leveled his spear toward the valley.
(The distance is everything. I have to keep them exactly six feet away. Not five. Not seven. Six feet is where I live. Five feet is where I die.)
The Scavenger Battalion moved in silence. They did not scream battle cries. They saved their breath for the thrust. As the first wagon rounded the bend Huan jo stepped out of the treeline.
(People think a spear is just a poke. It is not. It is a lever. It is a pivot. It is about using the ground to put your whole weight into a single point of steel. If I do it right the armor does not matter. The rank does not matter. The heart stops before they even see my face.)
He lunged. The steel head punched through the lead guard's throat.
The skirmish was over in minutes. Huan jo walked through the wreckage. He did not look at the faces of the dead. He looked at their boots. He looked at their grain bags.
(I am eighteen. I have killed more men than I can count. My ribs have been broken four times. My lungs burn every time the wind turns cold. I am tired of the taste of blood.)
He sat on a crate of stolen salt and wiped his spear. The metal was stained.
(I want a bed that is not made of wet grass. I want to wake up and not have to reach for a weapon. But the Desolate Kingdom is coming with their main army. Their Commander is not a boy with a rusted sword. He is a man who knows the spear as well as I do.)
The blood on the oak shaft was still warm. Huan jo did not look at the bodies littering the supply path. He looked at the next line of infantry. They were professional soldiers but their hands were shaking. They had seen him move.
(They see a man. I see a series of distances. They think they can overwhelm me with numbers but they can only ever reach me one at a time. The first one dies at six feet. The second one dies as I step over the first. It is just math.)
A sergeant in heavy plate stepped forward. He tried to scream a command but his voice broke. Huan jo did not wait for him to finish. He stepped into a lunge. The spear head found the gap under the man's helmet before the sergeant could even lift his shield.
The soldiers behind him began to back away. The clatter of their shields hitting the dirt was the only sound in the valley.
"Tha... thats him! That is the Spear King!"
One of them turned and ran. Then three more. The panic spread like fire through dry grass. They were screaming for their lives not because of a monster but because they realized they could not even get close enough to swing at him. To them he was a wall of invisible stabs.
(Spear King. It is a heavy title for someone who just wants to sleep. They fear the weapon because they do not understand that the spear is the only thing that kept me from being a corpse ten years ago. I do not kill because I am a king. I kill because I refuse to go back to the mud.)
He watched the last of the unit disappear into the trees. He did not chase them. He had thirty kills in under ten minutes. His shoulder was screaming and the old wound in his thigh was throbbing.
(I am efficient. That is why they are afraid. Most men fight with emotion. They fight with anger or pride. I fight with the cold calculation of someone who has already been dead. Every thrust is a piece of my life I am trading to stay here a little longer.)
He leaned his weight on the spear. The wood was solid. It was the only thing in the world he trusted.
(The Desolate Kingdom's main force will be here by dawn. Their Commander will not run. He will see the thirty bodies I left here and he will know exactly how I move. I am tired. My hands are starting to cramp. But if I drop this stick I am just a war orphan again.)
He began to gather the discarded grain bags from the wagons. He needed to feed his men. If this was going to be their last night alive they would not die on an empty stomach.
Huan jo sat by a small fire that gave off no smoke. He sharpened the steel tip of his spear with a whetstone. The sound was a rhythmic scrape that filled the silence of the camp.
(Tomorrow I will meet a man who has never had to eat human meat to survive. He will have a spear made of fine steel and a shaft of polished mahogany. He will have techniques taught to him by masters in clean halls. I only have myself.)
He closed his eyes, but he did not sleep. He just waited for the sun to rise one last time.