In a dry, wind-sheltered riverbed, fifty men of the Raid Battalion lay sprawled in the shade.
Their warhorses were tied to dead tree stumps, busy swishing their tails to drive away horseflies.
A fire was burning in the middle of the riverbed.
Niu Dali, bare-chested, used a captured Helian thousand-man commander's helmet as a pot, propping it over the fire with iron bars.
Milky white meat broth bubbled and boiled inside the helmet. Dehydrated vegetable leaves unfurled in the soup, accompanying several pieces of bone-in mutton.
"Smells good! So damn good!"
The old ruffian Old Zhao swallowed hard. Unable to wait for the soup to cool, he picked up a piece of fat with the tip of his knife and stuffed it directly into his mouth.
Unsurprisingly, the meat was so hot that he kept blowing air out of his mouth, tears almost welling up in his eyes, while he continued to boast indistinctly.
"The night before last... hiss... when we took out that Helian watchtower, my blade here slit the throats of two hidden sentries in one stroke! The blood spurted right into my face!"
The surrounding veterans burst into roaring laughter.
"Give it a rest! If Old Wu hadn't figured out the wind direction in advance, your throat would have been torn out by the Helian dogs long ago!"
"Exactly! You chopped with those two strikes like slicing tofu, but wasn't it only because the fire-thunder pots had stunned them?"
Everyone chimed in to tease him, the atmosphere lively and heated.
Over the past five days, they had acted like a pack of wild wolves on the prairie, taking down four Helian strongholds in a row and seizing over a hundred fine horses.
"When we get back this time, the reward silver from Zhenbei City should at least quadruple, right?" A veteran with half a missing eyebrow counted on his fingers. "I'm going to book a top courtesan at the Spring Breeze Pavilion and sleep with her for three days and three nights!"
"Look at your pitiful ambitions!"
Niu Dali slapped his thigh hard while chewing on a dry, hard flatbread.
"This hit and run tactic taught by Lord Xu is absolutely brilliant! It might be a bit underhanded, but it works like a charm! We're practically walking the Helians like dogs!"
He threw a handful of dry firewood into the fire, making the flames leap high.
"So what if the Helian heavy cavalry runs fast? We don't fight them head-on! We specifically target their isolated merchant caravans and watchtowers. We grab the loot and run, and whatever we can't take, we burn! These past few days, the Helian Right Luli King is probably stomping his feet in anger inside his tent!"
"Hahahaha!"
Rough laughter echoed through the riverbed.
Not far away, Xu Zhan held a piece of coarse cloth, meticulously wiping the blood grooves on his blade.
Hearing their boasting become increasingly outrageous, he frowned.
With a flick of his wrist.
Clang!
The back of his blade struck heavily against a nearby bluestone, sending sparks flying.
The laughter stopped abruptly.
All fifty men turned their heads in unison to look at their commander.
Xu Zhan stood up, carried his sword to the fire, and swept his cold gaze over the crowd.
"You take down four strongholds and steal a few horses, and suddenly your tails are sticking up to the sky?"
Xu Zhan pointed the tip of his blade at the Helian helmet on the ground.
"Look at where we are! We're wandering right under the Helians' noses! We are surrounded by Helian outriders!"
"If anyone dares to get cocky right now, I'll chop off his head to use as a chamber pot!"
The riverbed was dead silent; even the sound of the warhorses snorting could be heard clearly.
The veterans dropped their playful smiles and sat up straight.
They knew Xu Zhan was not joking.
On the battlefield, arrogant soldiers are bound to fail, and those who die fastest are often the ones who think too highly of themselves.
The camp quieted down.
Following Old Wu's movements, everyone's gaze fell upon a corner. A skinny boy was huddled there.
Amur.
He held half a dry, hard flatbread, gnawing on it desperately, even picking up the crumbs that fell on his clothes to stuff into his mouth.
Old Wu sighed, scooped a wooden bowl of steaming meat broth, walked over to Amur, and handed it to him.
"Eat slowly, don't choke to death."
Amur trembled all over, looking up in overwhelmed surprise.
He put down the flatbread, rolled up his tattered sleeves, and reached out with both hands to take the bowl of broth.
His sleeves slipped down.
Two thin, frail arms were exposed to the air.
They were densely covered with overlapping branding iron marks and whip welts, new wounds layered over old ones.
Some areas were even festering, covered in dark red blood scabs.
Old Wu's hands paused.
The surrounding veterans gasped in shock.
"Is... is this the work of humans?" Niu Dali's eyes widened, completely unaware that the dry bread in his hand had fallen to the ground.
Amur flinched and quickly pulled his sleeves down to cover the scars.
Holding the broth, he took small sips, tears pattering into the bowl.
"What are you crying for?" Xu Zhan walked over, looking down at him. "Did you cry like this when the Helians beat you?"
Amur shook his head and swallowed the broth in his mouth.
"You can't cry when they beat you. If you cry, they get annoyed and beat you harder."
Old Zhao leaned in and squatted beside Amur.
"Kid, how exactly did you get covered in all these wounds? Even if the Helians don't treat slaves as humans, they wouldn't torture you to death, would they?"
Amur looked up at the soldiers of Daqian.
He bit his lip and quietly recounted that purgatory-like experience.
"A few days ago, Bayan, the steward of the Right Division camp, was escorting a batch of Daqian glazed cups to the Royal Court."
"When passing through Black Water Ditch, the cart got stuck in the mud."
"The centurion Uliji was afraid the glazed cups would break, so he forced us herdsmen slaves... to lie down under the wheels."
"To use our bodies to pad the wheels."
"Uncle Khar, and Uncle Bagan... they were old, their bones brittle."
Amur's tears ran dry, leaving only emptiness in his eyes.
"When the wheels rolled over them, I heard the sound of their bones snapping. They didn't even let out a scream before they were crushed into the mud!"
"Just to save a box of glazed cups."
"Later, when they reached the Royal Court, the Grand Consort complained about a fingerprint on a cup, so she banished her maid to the North Slope Horse Farm."
"If you go to that place, you don't come out alive."
Amur lowered his head and looked at the remaining broth in his bowl.
"In their eyes, our lives aren't even worth the stem of a cup."
Bang!
Niu Dali stood up abruptly, viciously smashing the half-gnawed sheep bone in his hand onto the ground.
"Animals! Absolute animals!"
His eyes were red, and his chest heaved violently.
"Using living people to pad wheels? I swear I'll twist the heads off these sons of bitches and kick them like balls!"
The veterans put away their smiles, the ease and banter on their faces vanishing without a trace.
They thought of Daqian.
They thought of the refugees who were driven into a corner by corrupt officials and starved to death by the roadside.
They thought of the impoverished commoners who sold their sons and daughters for a few pieces of silver.
Crows are black the world over.
Whether it was the Helian nobles or the corrupt officials of Daqian.
They trampled on the bones and blood of the lowest class, drinking human blood, eating human flesh, and still complaining that the meat wasn't tender enough.
