By all the gods, I hope they have enough sense to not attack us again. Bartold may be a greedy pig, but he is neither an idiot nor insane. He must realize that even if they win, only a handful of them will be left to plunder whatever valuables they hope to find here, he thought grimly as he walked from the stable toward the palisade.

  As he strode across the square in front of the gate, he couldn't help but listen to some of the animated discussions going on among the people.

  "Is anyone else coming to tell the people at the inn the good news?" asked a male voice he recognized as Gerhard Drill, their town's brewmaster.

  “What good news?” asked a resigned female voice that he couldn’t immediately place.

  “Yeah, I have no idea what good news you think you can bring, Gerhard,” another slightly higher male voice chimed in.

  That must be Paul Brenner, our ever-pessimistic butcher, it’s a shame that he’s right this time, thought Albert, who had stopped without noticing.

  “Yes, yes, you don’t have to tell me how bad it all was, thank you very much, I saw it myself. But I also saw how they withdrew, so we won, and we should tell the people in the bar that, God knows what’s going through their heads right now,” replied Gerhard, somewhat perplexed.

  “Won? Now take it easy, just because they withdrew doesn’t mean they gave up,” replied the woman critically.

  “Well, what else could it mean?” asked Gerhard, surprised.

  “That they are planning something,” said Paul shortly.

  “Yes, Ivar also said that we should be careful and that he thinks the attack is not over yet,” the woman pointed out.

  Of course, Vera Brenner, Paul's wife, I didn't think of that right away, it's good that they are both still alive, he thought happily, although shortly afterwards he realized how strange it felt to be so happy about such a simple fact.

  It seemed to him as if one was happy that the sun came up in the morning, it shouldn't be something to be happy about but the world had gone crazy in the last few hours.

  I wonder when the sun will come up again, he asked himself somewhat nervously.

  “Oh, come on, Ivar is just paranoid because of his time in the Capitol. It's almost part of his job. He also claimed last year that one of boys would die at the rodeo or break his leg and everything turned out fine,” Gerhard said, laughing briefly to underline his point.

  "Maybe, but compared to the rodeo, the stakes are a bit too high for me not to be a bit paranoid. Besides, someone broke their arm at the rodeo and Theodora just patched it back up straight away," Vera replied seriously.

  "Can't you pessimists just be happy that you're still alive? I know... knew a few people who can't say that anymore," said Gerhard wearily.

  After a few moments of silence, Paul finally spoke up again.

  "We are happy, Gerhard, and because we want it to stay that way, we're assuming that they'll attack again and we're getting ready. And you should do that too," Paul finally explained after some hesitation.

  "I'm just saying that... oh look, there's Albert over there, Albert here! Could you please explain to these doomsayers that we've won," called Gerhard in his direction after noticing him.

  Pretending not to have heard the brewmaster's call, Albert continued on his way, his eyes fixed on the palisade.

  Horst Schlurfer, that was our Gatekeepers name, good God, how could I forget his name, the man is the only one who ever managed to get banned from the happy dwarf, it suddenly flashed through Albert's mind, and he couldn't help but smile slightly.

  And now he's dead, the thought continued of its own accord, and his smile quickly gave way to a furrowed brow and guiltily twisted lips.

  You shouldn't laugh at the dead.

  "They'll give up, they just have to, I've never seen anything like this water before."

  "That can't have been normal water. Theodora must have mixed something in it."

  "I didn't look, but I can't get the screams out of my head."

  "The worst thing was the smell; I swear I'll never touch meat again."

  Albert overheard some other conversations as he climbed up the palisade.

  This time, however, he did not stop to listen or to think about who it was, he simply wanted to get away from them.

  He simply did not want to hear the content of these conversations.

  He had forgotten the smell for a moment because he had too much else on his mind, and now he involuntarily rubbed his nose at the memory.

  After spending some time looking for Ivar he eventually found him, bent over the palisade starring to the distant figures of the dragons men

  Silently he walked up to Ivar and stopped next to him looking at the outlines of their remaining enemies.

  He briefly considered whether he should try to strengthen his senses with magic but decided against it.

  For one thing, it was quite risky for untrained people to play around with their sensory organs, and for another, he would rather save his strength for Grotar knows what else they were plotting over there.

  Also it would mean seeing the burned up bandits again and he simply did not want that.

  “And have you seen anything interesting?” he finally asked Ivar.

  “No, I think they are discussing something, but I can’t hear anything from here. How is it in our hospital?” Ivar said.

  “There are only six injured people there and Theodora says that they are all stable. You know, when she told me that there were only six, I was speechless with relief at first, but then I remembered that…” Albert began to describe his thoughts from earlier but was interrupted by Ivar.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Then you noticed that the ones in the hospital are the ones who were lucky. Unfortunately, I know where the others are,” his friend interrupted him in a toneless voice, gesturing downwards.

  Albert looked down.

  Of course, he knew what he would see there, but that didn’t change the sudden loss of strength in his knees, which is why he tensely gripped the posts of the palisade to keep himself up.

  The entire field was littered with corpses, at the Gate, directly below them, the dead seemed to be almost stacked on top of each other, like bricks. Almost as if someone had tried to build another wall in front of their gate.

  One made of the motionless bodies of the attackers and defenders that had fallen down.

  He had heard somewhere that the elves and demons mixed blood and bone meal into their mortar.

  When he saw the corpses, which in some places were piled up to form veritable little siege towers, he couldn't help but see a kind of morbid logic in it.

  It was definitely a way to get rid of the corpses quickly and usefully after a battle.

  The thought made him increasingly sick, but he refused to vomit over the palisade onto the bodies.

  A ridiculous thought since it would certainly not disturb them, but he still didn't want to give in to the urge.

  It quickly became clear to him why there were so many dead bodys here that they were already piling up.

  They were standing where they had tipped the cauldron over the poor devils.

  Anxiously he searched the field below him for faces he knew, or if the faces were not visible or no longer recognizable, for clothing or maybe even jewelry that he could recognize, but without success.

  "Yes, they are probably down there. I think I could see Horst lying somewhere here earlier, but now I can't find him," he said after a while, more to himself than to Ivar.

  "Horst?" asked Ivar, reminding him that he was not alone on the Wall

  "Horst Schlurfer, the gatekeeper. I think he was the first one they got, then we all took cover," he explained, still slightly absent-minded.

  "Yes, that's right, I've been trying to remember his name the whole time. He was right there with us when it happened, we were really lucky... unfortunately he wasn't," Ivar blurted out briefly, excited, before his voice took on a dull and halting tone again.

  He didn't even have to turn to Ivar to see the guilty expression on his friend's face. He could hear it in his voice.

  Anyway, I'm not the only one who forgot his name. Damn, how could that even happen in a city like this? As mayor, I should actually know everyone's name! He thought angrily as he looked at the battlefield below him and tried to find the gatekeeper's body.

  Finally, he gave up; Horst Schlurfer was probably buried under someone else.

  "I've been trying the whole time to find someone down there that I know, but I can't. There's just enough light with the moon that I might recognize someone, but somehow, they all look the same from here," Ivar finally said, slightly absentmindedly looking at the pile of corpses below them.

  Dead meat is dead meat. You recognize people, you recognize their look, their voice, the way they move, especially the way their face and lips move, but you can't tell flesh from flesh, especially not in a slaughterhouse, a disgusting voice whispered in his head, but he refused to say the thought out loud.

  It didn't sound like Ivar was expecting an answer anyway.

  In fact, they weren't even talking to each other, they were just using each other's presence as an outlet for their thoughts.

  However, there was one question he wanted an answer to. An answer Ivar couldn't give him, but compared to some gods, Ivar was right next to him.

  "Do you think we did the right thing?" he asked into the silence and turned to the man next to him.

  Ivar was silent for a while and Albert wasn't sure if he had even listened to him.

  I must have lost all sense of time. The attack did definetly not lasted that long, and it felt like we had been standing on that damn palisade for years to fend it off. Now Ivar is silent for maybe a few moments, and it seems to me as if we have been standing here in silence for aeons. I wonder if the others feel the same way, he wondered mentally in the silence that seemed to last for days while Ivar was probably thinking of an answer.

  "I have no idea," Ivar finally said.

  What did I expect? Albert asked himself in his thoughts.

  "Me neither," he finally said out loud.

  "The only thing I know is that Horst and a bunch of others are dead," he added soberly.

  "Yes, and we know that the matter is not yet settled," Ivar replied grimly.

  I would tear my arms and legs off if it meant that we were wrong, he thought, suppressing a groan and thinking back to his conversation with Mikal.

  "But I think we can safely to say that our guest was telling the truth, otherwise Aodhan would have been here to torch the place a while ago," Ivar continued.

  "Yes, that seems to be true. And apparently most of these lunatics don't even know that their leader is dead" he agreed.

  "Except Bartold, if we can believe our guest, he put this madness into their heads. It's strange, I always thought Miriam was the crazy one," Ivar mused to himself.

  They stood next to each other in silence for a while until something finally caught his eye. From the edge of the forest, a single silhouette began to move towards Schlucht.

  Someones coming... alone?, it flashed through his mind.

  "There! There's someone coming!" he told Ivar excitedly.

  "That's right, and whoever is coming is coming alone, maybe they want to negotiate. Can you tell who it is?" Ivar joined in his excitement, a spark of hope in his voice.

  A hope that had the same effect on the two of them as the sight of an oasis in the desert has on those dying of dehydration.

  A few moments ago, he had felt as if he would fall into a months-long sleep from exhaustion at any moment, now he felt almost electrified.

  He squinted and tried to match the silhouette that was approaching them to one of the bandits he knew.

  And indeed, when the person came close enough and was now standing in the bright moonlight that illuminated the field between Schlucht and the edge of the forest, he could see Miriam's in the moonlight almost radiant orange hair.

  "That's Miriam, by Grotar, and a few moments ago I said that she wasn't as crazy as Bartold. We should get the others onto the palisade so that they can all hear what she has to say," Ivar almost gushed.

  We could all use a little hope now, he thought with relief and turned to his city.

  "Everyone listen up, Miriam just came alone, they probably want to negotiate, now that they've seen that they can't get through here. gather together again on the palisade, I think you all want to hear that," Albert boomed down to his people in his magically amplified voice, that carried his relieve to the rest of his City.

  When he had finished his announcement, he carefully pulled the energy out of his throat again, and the pleasant warmth that he always felt slowly left his throat and gave way to a cold, numb feeling that felt as if he had just drunk freshly melted ice.

  "Could you warn me in advance next time," he heard Ivar groan next to him, but saw the slight grin on his face.

  "Oh, right, sorry," he grinned, patting him lightly on the shoulder.

  "I'm just going to assume that you apologized," Ivar said, rubbing his ears.

  The two laughed briefly together as the palisade filled up around them, and he felt as if he was laughing for the first time in decades.

  He almost thought he would hear a crunching sound in his facial muscles, and at the thought of that he had to laugh even louder, which Ivar immediately joined in with.

  When the two of them finally got their breath back, he finally noticed that Miriam had stopped halfway to them in the field and was now apparently looking in their direction.

  "Why did she stop now?" he wondered out loud.

  "Maybe she's just being considerate enough not to stand right in front of us before she yells magically at us," Ivar continued to chuckle.

  "Ha, yes, maybe that's it," he continued to amuse himself.

  Although I have to admit that it's impressive that such bandits even know enough about magic to do something like that. Of course, only the simplest intrinsic magic, but still, that's not something you just learn at a farm. Maybe Aodhan helped them with that, wait, can dragons even do magic? he curiously wondered to himself.

  Somehow, he knew that the mere fact that such things were going through his head again was a sign that things were going in the right direction again.