"I already told you, Harlin, I am not getting back into bed. So prepare my armor for me," Justinian demanded, his voice still retaining a slight quaver of weakness, which irritated him to no end.

  "Milord," The valet said, dropping into a bow from the front of the tent, where he was attempting to bodily block the exit from Justinian. "You are still recovering and require more bed rest. The medicos have said that you should not str—

  "I am well aware of their recommendations, Harlin; however, now is not the time for resting. I have endured my forced bed rest because, until now, nothing has happened. But now the camp is abuzz with pre-battle jitters, and I am not going to sit out the fight."

  The servant still looked like he was going to stubbornly refuse the command, but the tent flap was thrown open, and Gilbert walked in."Give up, Harlin." The knight sighed, "His father has called for him. There is no way that you are getting him back into his cot."

  A frown appeared on the valet's face for the smallest moment, then he bowed at the waist, his voice filled with resignation, "I will prepare your armor at once, milord." Popping up and quickly walking to the corner of the tent, the servant quickly began moving the armor from the mannequin it rested on and laid it out.

  Turning his eyes away, Justinian asked, "What's happening?"

  "Why do you think I know?" Answered the knight, a look of innocent bewilderment on his face. "I am but a simple knight, at the beck and call of his superiors as they decide his fate on their whims."

  "You are also a friendly chatter who will weasel information out of a rock if you are in the mood to do so."

  "Well, I never!" Gilbert gasped, feigning outrage before a cheeky smile split his face. "When did you get to know me so well?"

  "Oh, I don't know, some time in the last couple of decades, I might have noticed a thing or two."

  "Ahh, yes, that makes sense." The knight muttered, nodding to himself at some revelation. "Even the dimmest fires will reveal a thief if they spend enough time lurking around it. I should keep that in mi— Ahh! Okay, okay, no need to shove ice down my back. You know that joke was old the third time you did it as a teenager, right?"

  "I don't know. It has a classic appeal that never seems to vanish. Anyway, news, now."

  "Fine, fine." The knight muttered while a tendril picked up and flicked away a small piece of ice from his neckline. "Anyway, there isn't much news, at least none that is confirmed and can be trusted. The Kin are making another push down the switchbacks, and it is going as normal. The only thing that has happened recently is that a few centuries and a squad of knights was sent out to rescue the idiot savant scanner. If I had to guess, the legatus and Lord Fridgia are expecting that the Kin have finally made it down the plateau, and are readying the legion for an imminent attack."

  "That is faster than I expected," Justinian muttered as he stood and lifted his arms, allowing his servant to slip his gambeson over his head before moving to strap on his plate.

  "You mean faster than you hoped," Gilbert said, his voice distant with dark memories, though his words caused the high noble to give a begrudging nod of agreement. "We both saw what they are capable of. Making a flight of stairs isn't all that impressive."

  "It would be a long flight of stairs."

  "Size doesn't matter in this case." The knight dismissed with a wave of his hand. "With their warband, throwing tens of thousands into the effort wouldn't make that much of a difference to their forces. And their… mana. Well, the amount of that energy they have access to has to be staggering."

  "What?" Justinian had a look of shock on his face as he spoke, causing the knight to throw a suspicious look at the high noble. "That's surprising. I never thought you would admit that size isn't everything. Are you finally coming to accept your deficiencies?"

  Shock overwhelmed Gilbert's face, and then he threw his head back and laughed. Wiping tears from his eyes, the old friend walked up and clapped the other man on the shoulder, "Have you finally taken the stick out of your ass and loosened up your back?"

  "Near death tends to do that, I hear."

  At the words, the knight grew serious, and his eyes dropped down to the right shoulder of the high noble. "I knew that you were hurt pretty bad, but I didn't think that it was that bad."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "The wound wasn't bad, but the mana… It's like a poison. The longer it's inside, the more it eats away and corrodes your body. If you don't force out all the foreign energy all at once, it just keeps growing and becoming stronger. Healers couldn't really help, and I'm not sure that anyone of a weaker level than a high noble would have survived, especially with how long I left the wound untreated."

  "So what I am hearing is that if I ever take a similar wound, I am to stop and immediately purge myself?"

  A smile appeared on Justinian's face, "Yes, if you can. I'm not sure someone like you can figure out such a complicated process without your head exploding."

  "And here I was feeling sorry for you." The knight huffed, turning and walking toward the tent flaps. "Guess that's on me for doing something so idiotic."

  As he reached the entrance to the large tent, Justinian's Valet slapped him on the shoulder plate, and the noble jumped in place, confirming that everything was sitting right before looking at the older man and giving him a nod of thanks. The only reply was a low bow, to which the noble turned and strode away, squaring his shoulders, "We all make mistakes, Gilbert."

  The knight only gave Justinian a cocky smile as he held the tent flap open, letting him duck unimpeded through the hole and into the overcast world. As he expected, Justinian was in a small island of calm within a sea of chaos and shouts. His resting place might have been a noble's tent, but that didn't suddenly mean that the slightly thicker cloth was stopping all of the clamor of a rousing legion, though it did ever so slightly muffle the commotion.

  From a quick glance around, Justinian knew that Gilbert's guess about a full mobilization was correct. While no part of the step could exactly be called a hill, some parts of the wide, wind-swept, and rock-strewn land could generally be called a bluff, and the center of the camp where Justinian was located was on such a spot.

  He could see the figures of every legionnaire within the wider camp dashing around to join up with their mustering centuries before those centuries moved out to join their cohorts. In their wake, the campworkers moved like a horde of ants, packing up part of the camp and clearing an area for the wounded, while also ensuring that a single fire wouldn't be able to burn everything down. While they worked, other campworkers could be seen fetching water, preparing food, and checking on the wagons, in preparation for the all too unlikely event that the legion could flee.

  A single night and a walk down the side of a cliff were enough to entirely change his father's, and thus the legions', stance on their strategy. There might have also been the tiny detail of the hundreds of thousands of armed Kin standing above them, but who was counting them? No one, because Justinian had never met a single person who had wasted the time to count that high.

  The Kin, while different from beastkin, still had the not-so-comfortable trait of being exceedingly persistent, with the endurance to back up their enthusiasm. Within an hour of the legion moving away from the switchbacks, a flood of tens of thousands of wolves would be rushing to envelop them.

  The 14th Legion could reach the switchback to the first step in slightly more than a standard day of fast marching, but that would still take far too long. It was possible that they could leave a portion of their forces behind to hold the switchbacks, but that would be condemning them to death.

  Worse, and more to the point, no one could agree on the number of people that would have to be left behind to ensure the rest escaped. The final straw, making the decision all but impossible to consider, was that it was agreed that if the legionnaires were going to hold long enough, they needed the knights, and perhaps High Lord Fridgia, to remain behind to assist them.

  The nobles might be able to get out afterward, but it was a significant might. And a might wasn't good enough when talking about the survival of a century of knights and a high lord. Another central issue was that there was a massive problem they would have to face once they arrived at the switchback. How the hell were they going to make it down them, cross another plateau, and march down another set of switchbacks to reach the vineyards after losing a third of their number?

  No, attempting any kind of retreat would spell their destruction, so the only other option was to dig in and hold, hoping for the nebulous, and by no means guaranteed, salvation of senatorial legions coming to kill them. The effect was that what started out as a temporary camp at the bottom of the cliff face was well on its way to becoming a respectable fort.

  The main camp had four twenty-foot towers anchoring its corners. In between them were stone ramparts that consisted more of ground-up gravel than earth, given where they were, and were just waiting for the engineers and knights to shape them into actual battlements. But that wasn't the end, as outside were three layers of trenches, the source of the piles of stone.

  Jutting out from the corners of the camp and running all the way up to the base of the cliff face were two more sets of trenches, trapping the switchbacks in something of a flat-topped triangle. And in that area were three cohorts, positioned around the switchbacks, taking their shift from beating back the persistent bastards seeking a way down the said slopes.

  However, Justinian didn't think that they would be there for long. Not from being pushed back, as that was all but impossible within the confines of the slopes, and especially not without the Kin suffering staggering losses that they seemed unwilling to suffer, but from whatever caused the detector to send out an alarm and flee.

  Turning, the high noble strode through the camp, looking casual and unconcerned as he passed legionaries and campworkers rushing about on their own business. Though every time he passed one, he ensured he slammed his fist to his chest and looked them in the eye.

  Walking up to the command tent, Justinian entered without slowing and took three steps before coming to a stop and facing his father, as he asked, "Where do you want me?"

  His father turned from where he stood, his hand clasped behind his back, and looked his son in the eye before saying, "Sorry, Justinian, you are going south."

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