Beneath the Dragoneye Moons: Mandate of Heaven by Selkie Myth

Author:Selkie Myth [Myth, Selkie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mango Media LLC
Published: 2023-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30 - The Han Civil War I

I poked Iona with my toe.

“Come on, we’re just getting started.”

Iona rolled up onto her feet, and quickly scanned the battlefield. Seemingly content at what she saw, she took a knee and started a quick prayer up to her goddesses.

It was good timing. I viewed the battlefield.

The bulk of the fighting was over, and the Chu didn’t seem terribly interested in pursuing the Yan, who were retreating in good order, not routing. They looked experienced at it.

I pursed my lips as I tried to work out my next move. Iona was in good shape. I needed to take care of Auri, but retrieving her juice from my [Vault] would blow a huge amount of mana that I didn’t want to lose right this very moment.

Battles weren’t clean. Death was rarely quick. It was why my presence was such a boon. A spear through the gut and spine was incapacitating, and eventually lethal. That ‘eventually’ could be anywhere from minutes to days, depending on a thousand different factors.

Arrows were a particularly nasty culprit. Arrows in… almost anything really… weren’t quickly lethal. Debilitating, sure. Painful as hell, yes. But unless it was a heart, neck, or good headshot, it was an extended death by slow blood loss.

A soldier was being carried off the battlefield by his buddies, the shaft of an arrow sticking firmly out of his head. It must not’ve hit anything instantly lethal, and he had a slim chance of living if he was seen by a healer quickly enough.

I triaged him as ‘probably getting aid’, ‘too far away’, and ‘plenty of people not getting help right here.’

It was too much to ask that every injured soldier got dragged out of the fighting. That they got medical care and assistance. Far too many troops were just… left there on the battlefield. In the mud, puke, and gore, surrounded by the glassy-eyed stares of those whose souls had already left.

Some of the debatably lucky ones had gotten trampled into the mud, their heads stepped on and forced into the mud time and time again, bringing their head back up for a gasp of air only for another foot or hoof to come down on them, forcing their heads under once again until they choked, suffocated, and died. It was a slow way to go, a miserable way to go, but they were gone, unlike some other debatably lucky fellows with mortal injuries that had even slower, more agonizing deaths.

The sounds changed as the fighting died. Some soldiers got louder, begging for aid from their victorious side, while those on the losing team got real quiet and pretended to be dead.

If they didn’t get any aid soon, they’d be dead for real. It was a gamble born out of sheer desperation, a way to kick the can down the road. A poor scarecrow erected to stave off the final bird.

An idle part of me wondered about their perspective. Crippled, abandoned, slowly going colder in the mud as I bled out.

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