The wounded wagons were already moving west when Colonel Alaric Veyne finally left the remains of the Caldris camp.
Behind him, Captain Joren Bale and the strongest soldiers still able to fight had formed a rear guard among abandoned tents, overturned carts, and broken supply crates.
Their orders were simple enough to understand and nearly impossible to carry out for long: slow the Viridian advance without allowing themselves to be surrounded, then withdraw in stages toward the western road.
Alaric had intended the rest of the army to move in organized groups around the wounded, but the force leaving the camp barely resembled the column that had marched east.
Infantry from different companies had been mixed together, crossbowmen carried almost empty ammunition cases, cavalrymen walked beside horses too exhausted or injured to ride, and healers struggled to keep pace with wagons filled beyond their intended capacity.
Officers shouted for men to remain together, but many soldiers could no longer see their original banners through the darkness.
Alaric moved along the side of the road, repeating the same instructions whenever he encountered another confused group.
"Stay with whoever is commanding you. Keep the wounded between armed men. Nobody runs alone."
Some obeyed immediately. Others stared at him as though they understood the words but had forgotten how to follow them.
Hours of fighting had hollowed out the discipline that once came naturally. Men limped while carrying shields. Others supported wounded comrades who should have been lying in wagons. Several soldiers had wrapped blood-soaked cloth around arms or legs and continued marching because stopping meant being left behind.
The sounds from the abandoned camp followed them.
Steel rang in the darkness.
Crossbows cracked.
Men shouted.
Viridian horns remained mostly silent, but goblin officers did not need horns for every movement. The pursuit was already close enough that Alaric occasionally heard short shouted commands behind Joren’s rear guard.
A cavalryman riding beside him glanced backward.
"They are still coming."
"They were always going to."
"How long can Joren hold them?"
Alaric did not answer.
The western road narrowed between a low embankment and an old drainage ditch before opening again farther ahead. Wagons had to pass through one at a time, slowing the entire retreat.
Alaric ordered infantry to spread along both sides so the wounded carts could continue moving without being crowded by soldiers trying to pass.
The arrangement lasted less than ten minutes.
A loud crack came from farther ahead.
The column stopped.
Alaric immediately rode toward the obstruction and found one of the medical wagons leaning violently to one side. A wheel had broken away from the axle, leaving the cart half-collapsed across the road. Wounded soldiers cried out from inside while healers tried to keep them from falling onto one another.
Behind it, four more wagons had already stopped.
"What happened?" Alaric demanded.
"The axle split, Colonel," the driver said. "We cannot repair it here."
"Then move it."
The driver looked toward the ditch.
"It is loaded with wounded."
"Unload them first."
Healers immediately began carrying men from the wagon. Some could stand with assistance. Others could not. One soldier screamed when two men lifted him because his thigh had been wrapped around a shattered bone.
Alaric looked back down the road.
The fighting was closer.
"Put the worst cases into the next wagon. Anyone who can walk, walks."
The chief healer frowned.
"There is no space."
"Make space."
"What do we remove?"
"Anything that is not a person."
Crates were thrown from the following wagons. Spare tools, tent cloth, cooking equipment, and even sacks of grain landed beside the road. Soldiers lifted the most badly wounded into whatever space could be created.
The disabled wagon still blocked the route.
"Push it into the ditch."
Several infantrymen moved to the side and strained against the frame. The cart barely shifted.
"More men," Alaric shouted.
Others joined them.
The wagon moved a few inches.
Then an arrow struck one of the soldiers pushing from the rear.
He collapsed against the wheel.
Everyone froze for half a heartbeat.
Another arrow landed nearby.
Alaric turned east.
The rear guard had reached the bend.
Goblin light infantry was already visible behind them.
"Move the wagon now."
The soldiers pushed again, this time with desperation. The broken cart tilted, slipped from the road, and overturned into the ditch. One healer nearly went with it before another man caught him.
"Get the wagons moving."
The column lurched forward.
Joren’s rear guard reached the bottleneck just as Viridian ranged troops came within effective distance. The captain still had enough men to form a rough line across the road, though several were bleeding and almost everyone looked exhausted.
Joren saw Alaric.
"Keep moving."
"I need another minute."
"You do not have one."
The goblins approached behind overlapping shields.
Joren turned toward his soldiers.
"Spears forward. Give the wagons room."
The humans formed as best they could. Their line was too shallow and irregular to resemble the disciplined wall that had held the field during daylight, but the narrow road reduced how many goblins could reach them at once.
The first contact was brutal.
Human spears killed several Viridian soldiers before the goblins closed, but ranged fire fell continuously around the formation. One Caldris soldier took an arrow through the cheek and disappeared backward. Another dropped his spear when a projectile struck his wrist.
Joren shouted for the line to step backward in order rather than remain until it was surrounded.
For a moment, the withdrawal worked.
Then three men near the left side turned and ran.
An officer cursed and ordered them back.
Two more followed.
Someone farther west saw them running and assumed the rear guard had broken.
The effect spread instantly.
"Keep formation!" Alaric shouted.
Men continued running past him.
"There is no order to run."
One soldier threw away his shield and sprinted toward the wagons.
Another crossbowman discarded his weapon entirely.
A wounded infantryman stumbled while trying to follow and was nearly knocked down by two men rushing past him.
Alaric grabbed one fleeing soldier by the shoulder.
"Stop."
The man looked at him with wide eyes.
"They are through."
"They are not."
"I saw them—"
"Don’t panic."
Alaric shoved him toward a nearby officer.
"Form with him."
The soldier obeyed, but ten others passed while Alaric dealt with one.
The retreat was changing.
It no longer moved at the speed of wagons and commands.
It moved at the speed of fear.
A group of infantry farther ahead began running because they heard shouting behind them. Soldiers around the medical wagons tried to move faster. Horses reacted to the crowd and pulled against their reins. One wagon drifted off the packed road and nearly tipped before the driver corrected it.
Joren reached Alaric again, retreating with perhaps half the men who had been holding the bottleneck.
"The line is gone."
"Then we form another one farther west."
"With who?"
Alaric looked around.
The answer was difficult to find.
The road was full of soldiers, but very few remained in recognizable units. Some still followed officers. Others simply moved west because everyone around them was doing the same. Banners had become separated from the companies they were supposed to represent. Sergeants called names into the darkness and received no response.
Joren caught Alaric’s arm.
"You cannot fix this here."
"I can still gather them."
"Then gather them farther west."
Another Viridian volley landed nearby.
Joren pushed him toward the road.
"I can still get fifty men to turn around. Maybe sixty. That is enough to slow them."
"You need more than sixty."
"No. I need enough that they have to stop and kill us instead of shooting at the wagons."
Alaric stared at him.
Joren gave him no time to argue.
"Go."
The captain began pulling soldiers from the retreating mass by voice and physical force.
"You with the spear, stop running. Shields to me. Anyone still carrying bolts, get behind us."
A few obeyed.
Then more.
Within minutes, a rough rear guard began forming across the road.
Alaric wanted to remain, but Joren deliberately turned his back on him and started arranging the line.
There was nothing heroic about what followed.
It was simply necessary.
Alaric moved west.
The rout continued around him.
Some soldiers left the road entirely and fled into fields where they could move faster. Others entered woodland despite having spent the entire campaign fearing goblin ambushes there. Wounded men who could not maintain the pace shouted for comrades to slow down. Some were helped. Others disappeared behind the crowd.
Alaric began stopping small groups wherever he could.
"Twenty of you stay together. Shields outside. Do not run ahead of the wagon."
Farther west, he found another cluster of men and placed a surviving lieutenant in charge.
"Take everyone who will listen to you. Keep them on the road."
For brief stretches, pieces of order returned.
Then another burst of arrows or a distant shout broke them apart again.
Viridian was not pursuing wildly.
That made everything worse.
The goblins attacked concentrations large enough to resist, fired into groups trying to reorganize, and kept enough pressure on the road that Alaric never received the quiet ten minutes he needed to rebuild a proper formation.
Eventually he gathered around forty soldiers near three wounded wagons. Most came from different companies, but they still had weapons and enough discipline to listen.
"Walk," Alaric ordered. "Do not run. If the men ahead sprint, let them. We stay around the wagons."
One sergeant nodded.
"What if they catch us?"
"Then we face them together."
The group moved west.
For several minutes, nothing struck them.
Alaric began believing they had finally gained enough distance.
Then arrows came from behind.
The first hit a soldier in the upper back.
The second struck the side of a wagon.
Another embedded itself in a horse’s flank.
The animal screamed and jerked sideways, dragging the wagon toward the edge of the road. Soldiers rushed to control it.
"Keep moving," Alaric shouted. "Do not break."
A second volley followed.
Several men ducked behind shields.
Alaric turned in the saddle to judge how close the goblins were.
The darkness behind them was broken by movement and scattered firelight.
He saw small shapes advancing along the road.
Then something struck him beneath the ribs.
For a moment, he did not understand what had happened.
The impact twisted him sideways in the saddle.
His hand went instinctively toward his side and found the shaft of an arrow jutting through a gap in his armor.
A soldier beside him shouted.
"Colonel!"
Alaric straightened through the pain.
"Keep moving."
Blood was already spreading beneath his tunic.
The shaft caught against his arm each time the horse moved, so he grabbed it near the wound and snapped away the exposed length.
Pain flashed through his entire side.
His vision blurred.
"Colonel, you need a healer."
"Later."
Another arrow passed over them.
The soldiers around him tightened their formation.
Alaric tried to look west.
The road seemed farther away than it had seconds earlier.
Sounds began changing. Shouting became strangely distant. The movement of wagon wheels seemed louder than the battle behind them.
He gripped the saddle.
"Stay with the wagons."
The sergeant beside him reached for his arm.
"You are bleeding badly."
"I know."
His breathing had become shallow.
The darkness ahead narrowed until he could see only a small section of road and the shoulders of soldiers moving beside him.
He tried to ask about Joren.
The words came out wrong.
Someone shouted his name.
Hands grabbed him as his body slipped sideways.
Alaric felt himself being pulled from the saddle, but he could no longer tell whether he was falling or being carried. The last thing he understood was that the wagons were still moving west and that the surviving soldiers around them had not stopped.
Then the road disappeared, the shouting faded, and Colonel Alaric Veyne lost consciousness while the remnants of his army continued fleeing into the night.
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