The mud of the Black Iron Trenches did not just smell of rain. It smelled of copper and old rot. To a boy of seven years like Huan jo the battlefield was not a place of glory. It was a pantry. It was a wardrobe. It was where you went to find shoes that did not have holes or a belt that was not chewed by rats.
Huan jo crouched low. His breath came in small gray clouds. He moved between the ribcages of fallen horses and the shattered remains of supply wagons. His hands were stained a permanent dark brown from digging through the silt.
He found a body wearing a leather brigandine that looked intact. As he reached for the buckles a shadow fell over him. Another orphan stood there. This one was older and held a rusted short sword. The older boy did not speak. He just lunged.
Huan jo rolled to the side. His hand hit something long and cold. It was a standard infantry spear. The wood was ash and the tip was a simple leaf shape of dull iron.
(The spear is the easiest weapon to pick up. It is just a stick with a point. You don't need to be a lord to understand it. You just put the sharp end between you and the thing that wants to kill you.)
Huan jo gripped the shaft. The weight was balanced. He did not try to swing it like a club. He stepped back and kept the point between himself and the older boy.
(It is the easiest to hold but it is the hardest to keep. A sword has edges. A sword can slash and miss and still cut. A spear only has the point. If I miss by an inch I am a dead boy. I cannot afford to miss.)
The older boy hissed and swung the sword in a wide arc. Huan jo did not blink. He waited for the opening. When the sword went high he thrust the iron tip forward. It was a straight line.
The tip sank into the older boy's shoulder. The boy dropped the sword and fled into the fog of the battlefield.
Huan jo did not chase him. He did not feel pride. He just looked at the spear in his hands. It was longer than he was tall. It kept the world at a distance.
He wiped the blood off the iron tip with a handful of dead grass. He did not know then that he would carry a version of this weapon until the day he died. He only knew that for today he was the one who got to eat.
Huan jo kept that spear. He replaced the wood when it rotted. He sharpened the iron until it was thin as a needle. He became the ghost of the trenches. He was the boy who never let anyone get close enough to touch him.
Huan jo looked at the rusted tip of the spear. He knew it was a lie to call this weapon simple.
(The spear is not as easy as it looks. People think you just poke and the enemy falls. They do not see the terror of the distance. If I miscalculate the length by even a few inches a man with a dagger can slip inside my reach. If he gets close, I will die. I have no shield and no armor. I only have the space between us.)
He adjusted his grip on the splintered shaft. His fingers were calloused and cracked from the cold. He had been alone for a long time.
(My mother was already dead when I was four. She was just another shape in the mud that stopped moving. There was no one to bring me bread or tell me to hide.)
The hunger in those early years was a beast that never slept. It changed a person. It stripped away the things that made someone human.
(I survived off eating human meat. In the trenches you do not look at a corpse and see a person. You see a chance to live another day. You see fuel for your own heart to keep beating. The others called me a monster, but the monsters were the ones who didn't starve.)
He stood up and looked toward the horizon where the Desolate Kingdom's banners flickered in the wind.
(To survive here you have to be sharper than the iron. You have to be longer than the reach of death. If I can keep them at the end of this stick I can stay alive. That is the only law of the battlefield.)