I closed his dead eyes dispassionately, their familiar gaze meaning nothing to me anymore. I dropped to my knees and covered my head before the air hit me, then stood up just in time to block a sword and stick my own in the assailant’s belly. His foot caught, he folded backward, and he was dragged screeching beneath the shield. The shuffling of men barely containing their terror, the growl of an officer demanding, ‘steady.’ Boom, boom, boom; went the war drums, the chant of some horror accompanying it, a beast of a hundred-thousand mouths and twice as many eyes, limitless and inevitable. It was hard to hear over all the jubilant commotion. “You didn’t…”
“No. It was too much! My knuckles were white with tension, the tendons in my hands standing high in an effort to bring him closer to me. PRIVATE FREYTIAN
“This one’s a front-line man; see the patch on his shoulder?” A voice from somewhere said. We went rigid for an eternal moment, merging as a singularity of ecstasy cresting the wave, seeing nothing,