I knew well all the men before me. I had shared the field with them and that meant we were all brothers forever.

“All these years we have fought, for the most part with reason in our heads and valor in our hearts. I have come to know now, in these later years that it is all for nothing.”

“General?” Zinn stepped around the table and stood before me like a child being told Erebos is not real and there is no Twilight Fairy.

“What are you saying, sir?” Haldavi shattered the sweet moment with Zinn. The rest of them asked the same without speaking.

“When the suns sets on the battlefield, the victorious gone to revel, the vanquished consigned to chains, what is left? The dead and dying carted off, then what is left?” I drew my sword and thrust it through the rug into the dirt beneath, my audience gasped.

“The wind through the sticky red grass, the bloody brook babbling, that is all that remains.” My eyes bored holes through their skulls. “Aspire to be greater this one time with me. One last time.”