"Cheers!" yelled the men who gathered in a tent near the ruins of what remained of the fortress city of Duldera.
They were drinking late into the night as the victory from two days ago matched with the birth of one of them.
"Happy birthday, Henry!" yelled one of the four men there.
"Haha, thanks! It's odd, you know, celebrating a birthday after a battle," said Henry to the three.
The men were already drunk beyond the point of thinking straight.
"If not for your birthday, then for our survival, Henry," said one of them.
A young chap, in his mid-twenties. Good fucking fighter but horrible at drinking.
"Cheers to that, Lucas," said Henry, raising the cup carved by hand from a log. "Ah, I can't wait to go home. I'm tired."
"I bet you are, haha. I heard you got your wife pregnant again. Isn't that the fourth child? How the fuck can you two manage?" asked Lucas as the two other men began laughing.
"We manage. She tends the field and has her mother next to her to help her with the birth while I'm away," explained Henry.
"Man…" began Lucas, letting himself fall on his back, placing his head on his helmet, "How I wish I had a wife like yours. Big boobs, beautiful, calm, not trying to stab you when you hang out with other women."
"If you do not die in a battle, you will die in your sleep, killed by your wife. Why do you go to other women when you know she doesn't like it?" asked Henry.
"Life is too short for me to worry about stuff like that. I jump in every bed I can," laughed Lucas, just as another person entered the tent.
"How about you two jump on your feet?" asked an older man, as he looked at the four sloshed on the ground.
"Commander," saluted the four, barely getting to their feet, wobbling as they stood.
"Y'all look like fools. Did you two dumb cunts forget what you had to do tonight?" asked the commander.
"N-no, sir, we had patrolling to do after midnight, but it can't be midnight yet," stuttered Henry, instantly sobering up.
"Dogs, that's what you two are. It's well past midnight, and nobody is patrolling. Move your asses before I show you two the whip to make sure you never forget again," threatened the commander.
Lucas and Henry rushed around, trying to grab their equipment and leave, but Lucas tripped on one of the men's feet, planting himself headfirst into the ground.
"Fuuckkk," Lucas muttered, getting himself on his knees.
"You have one minute," said the commander to the two, sighing as he turned around and left the tent.
"You two dogs will be patrolling the area between Duldera and the mansion until I see the sun. Only then will you two sleep," said the commander to the two.
"Yes, Commander!" Both men saluted.
"And if I catch any of you taking a break, even for a single damn minute, I will whip you two myself, am I understood?"
"Yes, Commander!" said Henry and Lucas in unison.
"Now get out of my sight before I just whip you for the sake of it," spat the commander, as the two turned around and went on their patrol.
"Fucking old man," muttered Lucas, "I've heard that an arrow from Duldera missed him by a few inches. Damn Noble Bloods… they have everything and are still useless."
"Leave it, Lucas. We got too into it and forgot our duty," sighed Henry, keeping his Iron Line helmet in his arms.
"Tsk, fine. Let's do our job, then," said Lucas sarcastically as they walked through the ruins of Duldera and its surroundings.
Seeing the ruins of the mighty city, they began reminiscing on the multiple battles they fought during the weeks in these plains.
"Man, this city was a bitch to take down. How many rhinos died during the first battle?" asked Lucas.
"All of them. They killed all the fucking rhinos before they even breached a gate. Monsters, the whole lot of them," said Henry, shrugging off the coldness that crept into his bones while remembering that first battle.
"All? Then where did they bring more from?" wondered Lucas, as he kicked a tile from a house, towards the dead body of a small child.
"That Yalan, the king of Ulveth Kingdom, brought more from his side," said Henry.
"Ah, yeah, I saw him on the battlefield once. He fought like a madman," remembered Lucas.
"Mhm," nodded Henry, "saw him as well. Many folks say that we won because of him and his, uh, ideas."
"True, those ugly things scared the shit out of me. I still have nightmares of them. How could he control those, what they were called, Moroi?" asked Lucas.
"Yep, Moroi. The way they ripped men apart made me not able to eat for days. Even now, ugh-" gagged Henry, as he remembered what a Moroi did with a soldier after killing him.
"No need to tell me, I've seen enough of them for two lives," yelled Lucas, stopping Henry from going into deeper details before all the alcohol he so much enjoyed would be painting the already crimson-paved road.
The men, as they walked between the ruins, did not even bat an eye at the dead people or things that were on the ground.
No jewels or coins spilled on the ground would make them even turn their head towards it. They did not care about any of that. The promise they received was a far greater reward in their mind than the cost of all the riches or all the dead people had in their eyes.
One could not help but wonder if the masks that hid their faces also made them hide their feelings.
For no sane human being would be able to walk past the corpses of children, women, and men alike, people who had nothing to do with whatever caused this war in the first place, to be treated like rags, letting their bodies rot on the ground as if they were discarded meat.