How foolish they are, saluting the man who sends them to die. They should hate you.
Hell, you want them to hate you. At least then you wouldn't feel like such a con artist, selling them on some false glory in it all.
You walk through the camp in a daze, the world unfocused and blurry around you.
Toward the medical tents.
Next
Contrary to the revelry of the rest of the camps, the medical tents are solemn, full of dying and injured soldiers. Hundreds of them.
Earlier in this engagement, when the rebels shot at your workmen, the casualties were manageable. Now, with the hundreds of casualties pouring in from the battlefield, your doctors are overloaded.
Men are laid in rows outside of the tents, which are all already filled to capacity. Your surgeons are doing their best to tend to those that they can.
You watch this scene from only a few yards away. Getting any closer would require you to literally step over the wounded. You had enough of that yesterday.
But someone catches your eye. Mira, the king's widow, stands amidst the wounded, watching the agony unfold around her. Your sight is momentarily blocked as a pair of doctors lift a limp soldier from the ground and carry him away, dropping his corpse onto a growing pile of the dead.
There's no time for respect or last rites. The dead must be moved for the incoming wounded.
When the surgeons clear out of your way, your eyes fall back upon Mira. And she's moving. Moving toward you.
You sigh.
She approaches and slots into place next to you, her eyes still fixed upon the wounded.
You feel content in making her initiate conversation.
After several seconds of silence, she speaks. "What carnage."