The morning crept slow across the frostbitten valley, the sun barely daring to show itself beyond the overcast hush. The snow wasn’t falling hard, just enough to cling to the edges of armour and melt into joints like biting icewater. I stood in line with my kin, gauntleted hands flexing pointlessly against the haft of my maul. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I couldn’t feel much at all, honestly—not fear, not fury. Just the familiar hum of pre-battle emptiness. Like standing on a frozen lake, waiting for the crack.
To my right, Gwethan adjusted the strap on his shoulder plate, muttering a curse about the fit. He was the only one of us who still smiled before the slaughter. He caught my glance, scoffed, and nudged me with his elbow.
“Think she’s still got the dress on?” he grinned.
I huffed through my nose. “You’re lucky the Matriarchs didn’t see you smilin’ like that. They’d have skinned your cheeks off.”
He chuckled. “Let ‘em try. They didn’t take the vows. I did. And by gods, Dafydd—she glowed.” His voice lowered, soft with a kind of reverence that had no place on a battlefield. “Only seven days ago. Seven. And now I’m out here with you dogs.”
I didn’t answer. Not right away. Just looked at him.
He was only twenty. My age. Still had the smooth cheeks of a boy, despite the scars. The Matriarchs had called him the morning after his wedding feast—tore him from his new bride and sent him south under the Fen Harlech banner like every son before him. We were bred for service, sold to lords like warhorses. Marriage changed nothing. Love, even less.
“You’ll see her again,” I offered, hollowly.
“Of course I will,” he said, eyes sharp on the horizon. “That’s what I’m fightin’ for.”
Behind us, the King's banners fluttered. Red silk with a golden sunburst. A hundred foot soldiers behind, two hundred more spread across a staggered crescent. His knights were atop the slope, their horses snorting steam into the sky. I remember wondering how many of them had even seen a real fight.
We were the forward wall. The hammer-point. Thirty of us, Fen Harlech-born. Our matriarchs had chosen us by scar-count and silence. No warcries. No drums. Just a quiet line of thick-necked giants with broad shoulders and dead eyes. We were bred for this.
The order came. A single horn. Low. Flat. The sort of sound that didn’t echo, didn’t soar—it just hung in the air like a threat. We began our march, slow and measured. My legs already ached, stiff from the cold, but I felt nothing. Not fear. Not courage. Just the weight of the maul and the knowledge that we had to hold. We always had to hold.
The enemy surged from the other side of the vale, their line a patchwork of northern sellswords, chain-wrapped brutes, and fanatic pikemen with eyes too wide for men still sane. The moment we broke the ridge, the world erupted. Arrows screamed past us, some finding gaps in armour, others glancing off bone-plated shoulders. A cousin beside me fell without a word, an arrow buried in his eye socket. No scream. No twitch. Just a sudden absence. The wind carried no cries, only the snap of bowstrings and the crunch of boots on ice.
We collided in a groaning crash of steel and bone. Mauls shattered ribs, swords sang, and screams bloomed like fire from the snow.
I remember a gap opening beside me—just half a second. Gwethan turned, stepping in to close it, shield raised.
And then silence,
A long-handled spear came flying—maybe thrown, maybe driven through the chaos—I’ll never know. But I saw it. Every damn detail.
It pierced clean through his breastplate. Up. Through the mouth.
His jaw split wide in shock, the iron bursting from the back of his neck in a spray of red steam. His eyes locked with mine for one dreadful instant. Then his body slumped, sliding slowly down the shaft until his knees hit the snow.
I don’t remember screaming. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just roared.
My maul crushed the first man’s chest inward, the next one’s skull split like a fruit. Blood frothed in the snow. The smell of piss and iron rose like steam. I moved on instinct—shoulder checks, knee strikes, swinging upward into soft throats. One moment blurred into the next. Every time I looked left or right, someone I loved was bleeding. Or dying. Or gone.
I remember the moment the lines broke.
Not ours. The King's. Behind us, screams started rising—panicked, frenzied. Our allies were routing. Our flank was collapsing. Knights fled before the enemy even reached them. The sound of galloping hooves retreating echoed louder than the clash in front of me.
I turned, teeth grit. "They’re leaving us," I growled.
A cousin shouted back, telling us to keep fighting.
And so we stood.
Ten of us left. Then seven. Five.
A sword slipped beneath my ribs. I felt it—dull, not sharp, like someone driving a shovel into wet soil. I kept swinging. Another caught my thigh, I stumbled. Blood flowed. My vision blurred. But my body didn’t stop. It couldn’t. I’d been trained too well. Whipped into form, forged for obedience. My Matriarch’s voice whispered in my mind even then, "Die with your back straight, Dafydd."
I don’t remember falling. Only the cold. And the white. I fought until there was nothing.
When I awoke, it was quiet.
The snow had stopped.
The field was red and grey and still.
Bodies littered the ground like broken dolls. My kin… twisted, shattered, half-covered in snow. I sat up with a grunt, blinking blood from my eyes. My maul was still in my hand. Frozen to my grip.
I found them—my brothers, my cousins. I called their names. No answer.
Gwethan’s body lay slumped where it had fallen, the spear still planted like a cruel flag in the earth.
I buried him first.
I buried my cousin with my own hands.
I dug their graves. Thirty mounds. Thirty stones. Thirty names scratched into bark with a blade that had gone dull. My arms burned. My wounds throbbed. I didn’t care. I had to bury them. I had to be useful. It’s what I was made for.
I did not cry.
There was no strength left for that.
Only silence. Only snow. I believed I wasn't supposed to live that day,
I felt guilty. Like I wasn't supposed to be here. I only wish they'd taken me instead of Gwethan.
