The banners of the Visigoths flapped above the valley, their edges ragged from weeks of relentless marches.

Medellin Valdesca sat her horse at the ridgeline, watching the clouds of sand were kicked up over the dunes in the distance below like smoke from a dying hearth.

She had been on campaign for close to three years straight now with only a breif repreive between each not to rest but simply to reorganize her forces before marching off once more to war.

But now, as she tightened her cloak against the morning chill, she felt only a strange heaviness, as if the air itself pressed against her lungs.

The orders had come at dawn.

Sealed with the emperor's mark, carried by a courier whose eyes betrayed that he had not dared read the parchment he bore.

Medellin had broken the wax, scanning the words once, twice, then a third time as though repetition might change them.

No restraint.

No hesitation.

The Concordat is ash.

Use whatever means necessary to break the eastern lines.

If coalition rises against us, strike them first.

Show no mercy.

She folded the parchment with stiff fingers.

For years, she had served the emperor with loyalty, even when his edicts grew harsh.

She had told herself it was necessity, not cruelty.

That war had no clean hands.

Yet this… this was different.

For the first time, the emperor gave not a command of conquest, but of complete annihilation.

Her captains awaited her word, standing at respectful distance.

Hardened men, many older than she, who had once doubted a woman's place at their head but had long since bent knee to her victories, and the sight of her overwhelming power.

They knew she had stared Julius of Romanus in the eye and lived.

That was no small feat.

She thought of Julius often.

Their clash during the second Visigoth-Lunan war had been the closest she had ever come to true defeat.

By every measure, the battle had ended in a draw: her her swords while numerous and powerful had been stopped by a single boy... no a single man wielding nothing more than a simple small sword.

Neither able to press farther.

But in her heart she knew she had been beaten in spirit.

Julius's soldiers fought not like men desperate for plunder, but like a wall of iron bound by a creed she could not fracture, saving all they could, while her own tried to reap every spoil.

Even in stalemate, his calm gaze across the field had burned into her memory.

She wondered if he had felt the same weight she now carried.

The emperor, her emperor, had never loved the Concordat.

He had railed against it at feasts, calling it a leash forged by cowards who feared Visigoth might grow too strong.

Medellin had endured those rants in silence, though she had privately agreed with the need for restraint.

Without the Concordat, war became a beast unchained.

And now she held its teeth in her hand.

Her horse snorted, stamping at the wet earth.

Medellin turned to her second, a wiry veteran named Corvus.

"The emperor has spoken," she said at last, voice level though her gut twisted. "We are to meet Aegyptus on the eastern frontier. No tactic is forbidden."

Corvus's eyes gleamed with something between hunger and relief.

"At last. No more shackles. We can bleed them proper, like the savages they are!"

She gave no reply.

Instead, she looked west, where Romanus banners no doubt marched through the rain as they themselves continued their own conquest of Francia.

She imagined Julius there, his cloak soaked, his eyes steady.

The thought unsettled her more than she cared to admit.

That night, Medellin walked alone through her camp.

Fires glowed within leather tents, shadows of men feasting, drinking, sharpening blades.

She heard laughter, curses, songs in both the common tongue, and even a few in the gothic tongue.

Yet beneath it all was an edge, a keenness she had not heard before.

They knew word of the Concordat's breaking had spread.

To the men, it was liberation — a chance to strike without rules, to use everything at their disposal to achieve victory whatever the cost.

She stopped at one fire where a cluster of younger soldiers spoke in hushed tones.

They fell silent when they saw her, but she motioned for them to continue.

One of them, barely grown, finally spoke: "General, if we burn their villages, they cannot march on empty stomachs. That's what the emperor says, isn't it?"

His face was earnest, almost hopeful.

Medellin studied him for a long moment.

In him she saw the future — not of victory, but of a generation taught that cruelty was strength.

Her throat tightened.

"War already takes enough," she said quietly. "If you must kill, let it be those who bear steel. Not babes in their cradles, nor old men at their hearths. That is not war. That is butchery."

The boy swallowed and nodded, though his eyes betrayed confusion.

When she left, she heard the others whispering after her.

She did not need to strain to know the words.

Some called her noble.

Others, naïve.

Most that she was just weak, unable to stomach what was to come because she was a woman.

In her tent, Medellin unrolled the emperor's orders again.

Her candlelight flickered across the ink, making the letters writhe like serpents.

She remembered the old songs of her people, tales of heroes who fought giants and monsters with courage, never with poison or treachery.

When had they become the very monsters they once sang of slaying?

A thought, dangerous and unspoken, wormed its way into her mind: Perhaps the emperor himself was the first to break the Concordat. Perhaps all of this fury is but smoke to hide his own sin.

If that were true, then this war was not honor, not vengeance — but theater.

A mask for ambition.

Her hand tightened on the parchment until it tore.

At dawn, the horns sounded for muster.

Medellin rode to the front of her lines, thirty thousand strong stretched across the desert, marching through the blazing sun on their way to battle once more.

She raised her sword, and silence fell like a blade.

"Soldiers of the Visigoths," she called, her voice carrying through the chill air. "To WAR!"

A cheer rippled through the ranks.

She lifted her sword higher.

"But hear me well — broken chains do not make us beasts. We are Goths. We are not carrion eaters. We take victory by strength, not by slaughter of the weak. If the emperor commands cruelty, then let us show him conquest without shame. And if the gods favor us, let them see we did not forget who we are."

The cheer this time was louder, though not all voices joined.

Some hung back, doubtful, torn between her words and the emperor's command.

Medellin felt the weight of their gazes.

She knew what she risked.

To defy an emperor was death.

But to obey him blindly might damn her people forever.

As the horns sounded again and the army began its march eastward, Medellin whispered to herself, too softly for any to hear:

"Julius… if I must face you again, let it be with my soul unbroken. Better to fall by your hand with honor than to win the emperor's war in shame."

And with that, she spurred her horse forward, leading her army into the mists — into a war she no longer believed in, but could not escape.

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