From the massive sprawl of the camp followers’ slum of tents and shelters came a wailing dirge—a broken chorus of thousands of voices, the sound a chilling reminder that war was always a thing of grief. In some military headquarters back in the Empire’s capital of Unta, three thousand leagues distant, an anonymous aide would paint a red stroke across the 2nd Army on the active list, and then write in fine script beside it: Pale, late winter, the 1163rd Year of Burn’s Sleep. Thus would the death of nine thousand men and women be noted. And then forgotten.
